Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Sunlight streams into the room, throwing strange hypnotic waving lines across the floor as it passes through the palm trees around the pool.
Although I’m not hungry, I eat a selection of sandwiches and cakes as Linc chats on about mundane things.
It’s strange how comfortable I feel with him but I believe Linc Boswell’s charm affects everyone.
He’s what I call a “shiny person,” someone who lights up a room and fills it like a warm hug.
Maybe I seek a family like his? Underneath all the lies and secrets, they have a bond that I’ll never experience.
My feeling of not belonging since discovering Sam and Willow adopted me is still with me.
The shrink my parents insisted I visit during my time at college told me I believed I’d been betrayed by them.
Which, of course, I had—I trusted them and they lied to me.
I can’t get over it no matter how hard I try and trust me, I’ve tried, I really have, but resentment is like a cancer: sometimes it can’t be cured.
Now I have the worry of becoming like my father.
The night Sam told me I’d been adopted, I wanted to kill them for lying to me my entire life—it was like an uncontrollable rage brewing just under the surface.
Since that night I feel like an intruder in the home where they raised me.
In fact, I’ve been more at home during my stays in the last three celebrities’ homes I worked for.
Maybe it’s because those families didn’t keep secrets from each other.
“Oh, there you are.” Allison pokes her head around the door and looks at me. “Isabelle is looking for you. She wants to continue the interview.”
“She’ll be right along once she’s finished her coffee and sandwich.
” Linc gives her a dismissive stare and waits for her footsteps to disappear along the hallway.
“She is Isabelle’s ears and eyes. As much as I love Isabelle, it concerns me that she needs someone to watch every move I make.
She won’t like me having coffee with you.
The one thing about Isabelle is she’s jealous all the time.
She has no reason to be jealous of you. I’m old enough to be your father.
” He shrugs. “You see, she overreacts to fake news and any time the press decides I’m having an affair with this person or that she gets nasty.
It’s one of the traits about her that I dislike.
Her jealousy almost broke us up one time.
I came home from a tour and she attacked me with her nails telling me to fire my female lead guitarist because she was rubbing up against me during a gig.
She’d seen footage on the news. It was all part of the act and she should know better but I couldn’t get it through to her and ended up leaving for six weeks. ”
I turn to look at him. This was all very good material. “Then what happened?”
“I came home.” He shrugs. “It seemed as if she had completely forgotten the argument, so I let sleeping dogs lie as they say. I wrote a complete album about those six weeks. Sleeping Dogs Lie.” He places his mug on the table and smiles at me.
“I gotta go. I’m meeting Lucas in the studio to run through a few new songs.
Catch you later.” He pauses and looks at me. “Unless you want to watch?”
The opportunity to watch him and Lucas jamming would be amazing but I smile and shake my head. “Maybe next time. Isabelle is waiting for me.”
“Anytime.” He walks away, grabbing the music sheets from the piano along the way.
I finish my sandwich and coffee. I’ll need to run through the stories Linc has told me with Isabelle to get her side of things.
I’ll try and keep Linc’s name out of it, or he’ll put me into the same basket as Allison and I really don’t want that.
Being almost neighbors, there might be a chance of Isabelle’s kids becoming the friends I’ve wanted all my life.
I hurry up the stairs and knock before I enter.
Isabelle gives me her best impression of a cat’s bum and crosses her legs.
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop smiling at her.
“Allison said you were ready to continue?”
“Yes, I’ve been waiting for a while.” Isabelle has changed out of her movie costume and is wearing a long silk robe adorned with red butterflies, over a skimpy swimsuit. She waves a hand at me in a circular motion. “Get on with it or we’ll never get this book written.”
There’s a question I need to ask her and it’s not about what Linc told me. “Allison mentioned that you employed another ghostwriter previously and her name was Jenny. Did she leave any notes or any other research I could use to shorten our process?”
“I’m not sure, maybe you should ask Allison.
I believe she cleared her possessions out of the room when she left suddenly.
” Isabelle’s eyes flash with anger. “What an ungrateful woman. I gave her the chance of a lifetime and what did she do? Drives to the nearest airport and vanishes off the face of the earth. I endured the cops coming here and asking me where she’d gone and why she left her vehicle at the airport—as if I knew?
Honestly, staff come and go all the time.
I don’t keep tabs on them. That’s not what I do. ”
I nod sympathetically and clear my throat.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll ask her. There are a couple of things I need to speak to you about that might be good inclusions in the book.
” I tell her about the two stories that Linc divulged.
“It’s not very clear in the media reports that I read what exactly happened so how about you tell me in your own words?
It would make quite a hook for the book. ”
“Where did you read that I’d had breast implants?
” Her brow wrinkles into a deep frown. “I never flashed Linc on stage but my friends did and we all got arrested but I wasn’t showing off implants because I had no need to.
I have natural beauty.” She lifts her chin.
“I should sue the newspaper that said that but it was a long time ago and probably it has gone past its best by date or whatever they call it. You know—” She levels a shrewd look on me.
“—that’s the sort of lie that Linc would spread.
He figures it’s a joke. Don’t write anything in the book he tells you without running it past me first. That man couldn’t lie straight in bed. ”
I can’t avoid looking at her huge round breasts; the gap between them is wide enough to fit her palm and they sit up without sagging.
I’d say I was looking at Sam’s best work.
Why lie about it and make her husband look like a fool?
“I did ask him about you splitting your dress at the premiere of one of your movies. I wanted to get his side of the story.”
“He exaggerates, as usual.” Isabelle lets out a long sigh and rolls her eyes.
“My heel caught in the hem of my skirt and pulled it down is all. It did tear a little up the seam but not enough to show I wasn’t wearing any underwear.
” She raises both hands in the air and drops them.
“You see what I’m up against? Linc is always accusing me of being jealous but why should I believe him when he tells me he doesn’t look at other women, when he constantly lies to me? ”
I blow out a breath, wondering what on earth we can use to make this book sing.
“I believe you should include both these instances and maybe embellish them a little to make them readable. Both these would be inside information of your lives together and people eat that up. What do you say, if we include you in the three women that flashed him on stage? We won’t mention anything about implants, just that maybe you were having a girls’ night out and being on the front row and seeing your handsome husband sitting on the stage you got carried away? ”
“You think he’s handsome?” Isabelle’s eyes turn dark as she stares at me. “I find that comment inappropriate.”
The woman is impossible and she’s acting toward me as if I’m stupid.
I sigh. “I’m looking at the scene through your eyes, Isabelle.
I’m sure, as we’re talking about twenty or so years ago, he would have been quite a good-looking man at the time.
You can be assured I have absolutely no designs on your husband. I’m here to do a job.”
“They all say that.” She flicks the tips of her long fingernails together, the thumbnail clicking over the others, agitation flowing from her.
“Every time someone comes here to interview me it always turns around to the children or Linc. It’s as if I don’t matter.
” She inclines her head and looks at me.
“I hope you’re not planning on writing Linc’s memoirs because there’s no way he wants his life story told yet.
He’s always told me he’ll consider it when he’s in his eighties. ”
I know she’s trying to gain my sympathy but the poor little me act doesn’t work.
I need the facts and I don’t want to waste my time writing a memoir that isn’t going to sell.
“I’m here to write your story so you need to tell me everything.
No one’s life goes smoothly. It’s the ups and downs during people’s lives that makes them human and it’s that side of a movie star’s life the readers want to know about. ”
“There are some things I only discuss with my very close friends.” Isabelle purses her lips. “I’m not sure if I want everything to come out in a book.”
Hoping she is at last showing a crack in her armor, I smile.
“That’s why you have me. I want sensationalism but not at a cost to your reputation.
I want a book that will reignite your career.
You need to trust me. I would have hoped that as we’re practically neighbors and Sam is a good friend of yours that we could be friends. ”
“I don’t pay my friends.” Isabelle waves a hand at me.
“I don’t feel like talking anymore. Everything I was going to tell you has completely vanished from my head.
” She lifts her chin, eyes flashing. “Tell Allison to come in. She’s waiting outside.
” She hands me the key to unlock the door. “Leave the door open.”
I stand but can’t unlock the door with my trembling fingers.
When it clicks, I stagger out, grateful to be away from her.
An unsettling fear grips me and I glance over my shoulder to see her eyes fixed on me.
I’m trapped in this house behind two sets of gates and in an impenetrable fortress with a woman whose personality changes dramatically every time I speak to her.
I shudder as I think back to what Lucas told me.
Am I actually speaking to the real Isabelle, or is she just playing a role?
He did warn me. Maybe I should just pack my bags and leave.
Is this what happened to Jenny? Did Isabelle’s constant weird mood fluctuations drive her so crazy that she’s still running?