Chapter Twenty-One
They relaxed through lunch and missed their time swimming with the dolphins.
When they finished lounging and kissing and lazing poolside, they stayed in the sun, skinny-dipping, until Rhys couldn’t ignore his office for another hour.
Vivian and Dean would have information by now.
Rhys pulled Jules out of the water, wrapped her in a thick white towel, and padded inside with one wrapped around his waist to find his phone.
He’d missed a lot of calls and didn’t care. He hadn’t had sex with Jules, but he’d never had more fun with a woman. In. His. Life.
Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d ever even laughed as much as he had today. He’d certainly never played hooky from his job, and he couldn’t find it in him to care if Vivian was pissed.
“I thought we weren’t checking our calls and messages.” Jules stepped out of the shower, towel drying her hair.
“We’re ignoring Sloane but not your stalker.” His eyebrows rose as he thumbed through the messages and decided to speak with Dean first. He worked with intel, saw the world in black and white, and only offered facts. Dean wouldn’t drop Romeo comments.
“The entire office is looking for you,” Dean said when he answered.
“Yeah, well. This assignment requires swimming. I didn’t have my phone on me.”
“Must be hard. Swimming with a movie star.”
Rhys had never been more thrilled to have a photographic memory. “Yup. Something like that. What did you find out?”
“That we’ve got a problem.”
“We have a lot of problems. Want to narrow it down?” He watched as Jules rubbed lotion over her long legs and realized he wasn’t breathing.
“Let’s start with the man who approached her this morning.”
Rhys squeezed the back of his neck. How had that been this morning? “What about him?”
“His payoff for doing that was upward of ten grand.”
“I’m sorry. What?” He straightened. “For that guy? What’d we miss? A hit job gone wrong? Christ.”
“That’s the thing,” Dean said. “We’ve both talked to Vincent Von Charles, and I had someone else sit down with him today.
Von Charles is an attorney. He knows he didn’t do anything illegal, per se, but doesn’t want this to get around.
So he’s talking to control the narrative and be done with it.
He’s not going to lie, and he doesn’t have the skillset to do anything but chase ambulances and hunt for medical malpractice lawsuits. ”
“Who would pay him that kind of money?” Rhys grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
“Exactly.”
“No, I’m serious, man. Who paid?”
“All I’ve got are my three least favorite words—”
“Fucking hell. Really?”
“Yeah. I don’t know,” Dean muttered. “Viv’s having a conniption.”
Rhys puffed his cheeks and blew out the air slowly. “I kinda feel like doing that right now, too, brother.”
“The payments are untraceable. That’s one thing.
But the other is why. Why? Why do this? What was accomplished?
Especially given how much money was spent.
Then the flowers? Again, another untraceable transaction.
With much lower stakes. Smaller buy-in. But still, why?
Why does this dude want her to retire? Who wins? ”
“I don’t have a clue. Some guy who wants her to be his very own stay-at-home puppet? There are a lot of delusional people out there.”
And if they had any idea how good Jules was with her mouth, they’d be even crazier.
Hell. He was feeling pretty crazy at the moment.
If this was what messing around was like, Rhys was crawling out of his skin for more.
Though it wasn’t just her mouth and her pussy.
The way she’d come for him, the empowered boldness that had blossomed when he came for her—it was more than he could fathom.
Like… more. And he didn’t even know that was possible.
“You know what we’ve never looked at before?” Dean asked.
“We’ve covered everyone.”
“Not her colleagues. Her coworkers. The people she competes against at all those award shows you have to go to. The people who have thousands of dollars to blow on stupid stunts like this morning.”
His brow furrowed. “She’s America’s sweetheart. Everyone loves her.”
“Except Mason Marlow,” Dean tossed in.
“Yeah.” Rhys wandered to the sliding glass door in the living room that overlooked the pool and stepped onto the patio. “Except that dude.”
“We’re always on the lookout for typical unhinged fans who take it too far. For the obsessives who want to break into her car to leave their deranged poetry. But we’ve never considered who would benefit if she stepped out of the limelight.”
“We’re talking about a very small, very elite group of actors.”
“Who have the money to pull it off,” Dean pointed out again.
“But not a motive. If anyone wanted to bump Jules for a role, they’d be more successful flirting with a casting director or sleeping with a producer. These are professional, grown-ass adults. They don’t try to hoodwink their colleagues unless there’s a screw loose.”
“I might’ve said the same thing before this whole Mason Marlow disaster. He’s A-list. He’s in the upper echelon, but trust me, his PR team is in overdrive right now. Maybe they’re taking advantage of the situation.”
Jules poked her head out the door. “Who’s that?”
“Dean.” Rhys put him on speakerphone. “Jules walked over.”
“Any news?” she asked.
“Still working on some ideas, but here’s one we haven’t tried. Who don’t you get along with professionally?”
She glanced at Rhys, her brow knitting, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”
“Humor me.”
“Obviously, Mason and I aren’t seeing eye to eye.”
“What about someone you beat out in a casting decision? Or an award they thought they deserved more than you?”
“Um…”
“Margot’s working with Scarlett and making a list of possibilities, but what’s your gut reaction?”
“My gut doesn’t say anything. I don’t have a list of people like that. I mean, it’s a cutthroat business. No denying that. We all have roles we wanted and were passed over for. But at the end of the day, we move on to the next audition.”
“What about long-term frenemy-type situations?” Dean asked.
Frenemy wasn’t a word Rhys would have expected to come out of Dean’s mouth.
“I don’t know.” She crossed her arms. “Olivia?”
“That’s someone who messed up, not who hates you. What about someone who smiles to your face and talks about you behind your back?”
“To be honest, I don’t have a huge friend circle. You’ve seen how people have burned me over the years. They sell secrets to tabloids and blogs. They don’t tell me to retire.”
“Maybe someone close to you,” Dean pushed. “Tabitha?”
Jules shook her head. “She talks trash to my face.”
“And,” Rhys tacked on, “she’d lose out on the attention she gets by hanging out with you.”
“Yeah,” Jules replied.
“How about someone who’s always chasing the same auditions?” Dean asked. “Someone Margot struggles to handle?”
“Margot’s a shark. No struggling with her.”
“All right.” Dean sighed. “We’ll brainstorm names and send them over. Let us know if anyone makes you say, ‘Huh.’”
She raised her shoulders and dropped them as though she didn’t have a clue. “Sure.”
Rhys ended the call.
Jules gnawed on her bottom lip. “What didn’t Dean spell out for me?”
“The man from this morning? Someone paid him a lot of money to do that.”
“How much?”
“Thousands.”
Her mouth rounded. “What? Why?”
“We don’t know.” As he led her back inside, he checked the time. “Want to get dressed and go to dinner?”
A tease of a smile curved over her lips. “Dressed or dressed up?”
“Lady’s choice.” Part of his job meant versatile clothes that looked good no matter where he went. He much preferred cargos and a T-shirt but not with her. He’d fit in wherever she wanted to have dinner.
“Have you ever lived with a woman?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked toward the bedroom again.
“No.”
She paused at the door. “Have you ever had a roommate who was a woman?”
“No.”
“Vacationed with a lady friend?” She grinned, leaning against the doorjamb.
“No. What’s up?”
“All of my stuff is here.”
Yeah, he’d registered that when they’d returned inside.
It was right by the door, and the butlers were notoriously discreet, but they’d dropped her luggage here while they’d been outside.
Time would only tell if someone had seen them, taken a picture, and sold it to the highest bidder.
If that happened, he’d be homicidal. But they’d cross that bridge later.
“I know how light you pack,” she continued. “And I have a lot. Mentally prepare yourself for how much counter space I’ll use.”
He laughed. “I’ve traveled the world with you, Jules. I’m aware.”
She turned, tugging her shirt over her head as she walked into the bedroom. “Okay. You’ve been warned. I also take a while to get dressed.” She looked over her naked shoulder. “Much longer if you come in here and distract me.”
When their two weeks of vacation were over, he was going to miss this part of her. Not the assignment. Her. The version of her who looked over her shoulder and laughed like no one was watching.
“Plan to take longer,” he said, following her in.