by Tijan
Holy.
I couldn’t move for a moment.
Fucking.
No way.
Shit!
It was. This girl was a sibling, one who wasn’t known to anyone. My heart was beating fast, but I kept my voice smooth and controlled. “What do you mean?”
She rubbed behind her ear before bending, picking up a stone, and tossing it into the river. She watched it sink to the bottom. “He said it was going to be a happily ever after movie.” She paused a beat. “He said I wasn’t in the movie either.” Her eyes were back on me. Judging. Studying. “You can’t tell.”
It was an accusation and a request at the same time.
I breathed out harshly. “I won’t say a goddamn word. I promise.” I meant it. I meant every single word, every single syllable.
“My mom died beca—” She stopped talking and glanced behind her. I thought she’d look back, resume whatever she was going to say, but she didn’t. She held still, staring into the dark woods. A few seconds stretched to thirty, then a minute, and then two. I waited for what felt like a full three minutes before she looked back to me. An apology was in her eyes as she stepped back toward the trees. She said, “I’m sorry,” before she was gone.
She vanished.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
I strained to hear, but there wasn’t even so much as a twig snapping under her feet. There was no pounding of hooves either.
She was there and then gone.
And despite my earlier questions, I was left standing there, unsure if I’d just had a conversation with a ghost or not.
Brody
I was up. I was early. I was not bright.
Gayle put her plate, which held a scone and two apples next to me, her coffee next. I was tempted to grab the coffee, but I knew she’d smack the back of my head and that was only if she didn’t pour the coffee on my lap.
I sighed, scooting back my chair as she was pulling hers in. “I need caffeine.”
“Okay,” I heard her mutter, as I walked toward the breakfast buffet table.
I was reaching for the Styrofoam cups when Kara sidled up next to me, a single strawberry on her plate.
“Hey.” It sounded a bit breathless, and I watched her as I poured the coffee. I didn’t break eye contact, judging from the feel of the heat before I turned off the spout.
Putting the lid on my cup, I pointed at her face. “You’ve got the sultry smile on this morning. It isn’t going to happen.”
“The what?” She eyed the coffeepot longingly before following me back to my table.
I went back to my seat next to Gayle. The only seat open was across from my manager, and Kara took it, eyeing Gayle for a few seconds before she sat.
Pointing at her face again, I said, “I know your smiles. I know you name your smiles too.”
“I do not.” She started to look horrified.
“You do.” I picked up a piece of toast. “I’ve even seen you practice your smiles, and it’s not happening.”
“What’s not happening?” Her strawberry was beginning to look lonely. She was ignoring it.
“You. Me. Put the sultry smile away.”
“What? Come on.” She let out a nervous giggle, reaching up to pat her hair. “I don’t know what’s going on right now.”
Fuck it. I speared her strawberry.
Gayle spoke up as I did, saying, “He’s rejecting you, honey.”
“What?”
Another one of the actors, the one sitting across from me, joined the conversation. “Do you guys know what’s going on with the movie?”
“Shanna’s been in meetings all night and this morning. She blew a gasket about that herd of horses last night,” a third member said as she joined us.
“Really?”
The woman nodded to the other actor.
I should know their names. This wasn’t me being an arrogant ass or thinking I was better than them, I just mainly had screen time with Kara. I had learned early on that if I got close to the secondary actors, they assume I’d help them become better than I was. Every time I corrected their assumption, it never went well. Gayle said I could choose “softer” words, but the message had to be hard or it wasn’t going to resonate. I liked to go for broke in those situations.
Hell. I sighed to myself. Maybe I just liked being an asshole.
I narrowed my eyes.
Did I?
“What are you doing?”
“What?” It was the second actor who asked me that question.
Kara had been watching me, and she grunted, hiding a smile before she looked down at her plate. “Hey!” She slapped the table. “Where’s my strawberry?”
It was on the end of my fork. I popped it into my mouth and shrugged. “Maybe it fell.”
She groaned, rolling her eyes upward before getting up from the table and stalking back to the breakfast buffet.
The second and third actors were still watching me. Oh right. He asked what I was doing. I countered him with, “What are you doing?”
“Huh?”
I raised my eyebrows. Exactly.
The third actor’s eyebrows pulled down, causing a crease in her perfect, marble-smooth skin. I looked more closely at her. She had the beauty to be a lead actress. “What’s your role?”
“My real name is Kelly. I play the sister.”
Karen had a sister? I made a note to ask Morgan about that. Then the actress said, “Technically, I’m your sister. We haven’t shot those scenes yet.”
Oh. Peter had a sister.
“Do we get along in the script?”
Gayle’s head moved back an inch. I could feel her disapproval. “I thought you memorized the script.”
“I memorized my scenes in the script, and”—I turned to my on-screen sister—“we don’t have any together.”
“We do but not till the end. There are some phone conversations, and I comfort you when you think Karen is dead.”
“Do you like Karen?”
She started laughing, shaking her head. “God no. My character hates the bitch.” She motioned between us. “It doesn’t go over well for you and me.”
As if on cue, the Kellermans walked into the dining area. Shanna was behind them, steam coming from her ears. As the siblings went to the breakfast buffet, Shanna bypassed everyone and left the room, sweeping outside. I locked eyes on each Kellerman in turn, wondering how much was truth and how much wasn’t. The aunt hating Karen made sense. That rang like something true, but I still wanted to know. Was there a real aunt? Did she hate Morgan’s mom? Did she hate Morgan?
The whole secrecy about Morgan, knowing she was out there, knowing how much she was out there, made me feel as if a lot of the script was off. I wanted her there, but at the same time, I didn’t. I wanted to know her, but I may never see her again.
She was like watching a masterpiece being painted by a painter. You knew the outcome would be breathtaking, but you had to sit back and let the painter do his thing.
And I was officially a pussy with that last thought.
I grabbed my coffee and shoved back my chair.
“Where are you going?” Gayle asked.
Somewhere I didn’t feel like such a pussy.
I shrugged. “I want to run over some lines.”
“You want company?”
I turned, feeling my jaw clench. “No.”
The Kellermans looked up as I walked past.
I was heading to my cabin when I heard someone behind me. The gravel crunched under a shoe, and I looked back.
Matthew held his hands up. “I come in peace.” He glanced back over his shoulder, putting his hands into his pockets. “I noticed you take off from breakfast. Is everything okay?”
No, no, buddy. I knew what he was doing. I read through his bullshit. It’d been a guess before, but I goddamn knew. He wanted to know if I knew about Morgan.
“I was hoping to see Morgan.” I narrowed my eyes, watching for his reaction.
I promised her I wouldn’t tell, but this guy already knew. I wasn’t breaking that promise, and I had a strong feeling he was going to dog my movements anyway, just from suspecting I might know.
I do. Deal with it, fucker.
He blanched, then gulped, and then narrowed his eyes. “I see.”
Did he now? A snide voice commented in my head.
“She’s the stepsister, right?”
His eyes rounded. “You have met her.”
“We had a nice long conversation last night.” I heard the disbelief in his laugh and added, “Down by the river.”
His laugh died. He grew serious again. “I see.” That damn phrase again from him.
“She’s under the impression she’s a secret. My question is: why?”
He started laughing again, saw I meant what I said, and his lips pressed together. “Are you kidding me? It’d be a field day for the media if they found out Karen Kellerman’s daughter still lives in the mountains and with horses. She’d be a laughing stock, and you know it. Would you want that for her?” His eyes were almost slits. “And how is it your business?”
“The second she told me who she was, it became my business.”
“Let me guess.” He rolled his shoulders back, shaking his head. “Hollywood it guy, who’s used to getting all the women he wants, has met someone who isn’t falling at his feet, and he’s intrigued. She probably ran from you, didn’t she?”
I shrugged. That wasn’t his business.
He laughed again, almost scornfully. “Yeah. The thing is that I know Morgan.” He stepped toward me, lowering his voice. “If you think I’m going to stand back and let you try to sweep her off her feet, you have another think coming. I can already see your intentions from a mile away.”
I looked between us. “Pretty sure there’s ten feet between us.”
“You know what I mean.”
“From my point of view, you’re the one embarrassed by her. Not me.”
This went from one to eight on the intensity scale. We were a few words away from squaring off and proclaiming ourselves enemies, but the problem was that we both knew where the other stood.
I saw the possessive need in him. It was the same look my dad had in his eyes when he drank. The fucker was an abusive drunk before he died, just like his brother, and it hadn’t been a good time. He wanted to control everyone. Matthew Kellerman had that look. She might be his stepsister, but he thought he controlled her, or he wanted to control her. And though I cared about her already and wanted her, all I felt right then was this insane need to protect her.
The last time my gut flared up like this was when I was waiting for Kyle at my awards show.
He gritted his teeth. “I am not embarrassed about my sister. I love her, and I do what’s in her best interest. She is kept a secret for a reason.”
“She was at the river last night. She’s been around. I’ve seen her four different times. If I have, trust me when I say that others will, if they haven’t already. It’s a matter of time.”
He lifted his head, his Adam’s apple moving up. “Is that a threat?”
“What?”
“Are you threatening to tell everyone about her?”
I shifted back on my heels as anger slammed through me. Christ. I wanted to punch him.
“No, and don’t you fucking dare try to turn that around on me. I promised her I wouldn’t say anything. I’m talking to someone who already knows about her.”
His head lowered, and his voice quieted as he said, “She asked you to keep her a secret?”
I nodded. “Which I think is the stupidest idea ever. Shanna’s going to find out eventually.” I remembered the fury on her face this morning. “You think she’s pissed about the horses? She’s going to be livid about Morgan.”
“A herd of wild mustangs is a safety factor. They never cross the fences, and them crossing the street in front of your car was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. That’ll never happen again. That stallion hates humans. He puts up with Morgan. No. She’s mad about the safety issues, but I assured her there are none. She won’t be mad about my sister.”
His stepsister.
I kept the need to correct him to myself. Instead saying, “She’ll be pissed that you kept information from her, and she’ll be even more mad because Morgan wasn’t written into the script.”
It hit me then.
That was why he was keeping Morgan a secret. He was right. As I said those words, I knew they were true. Shanna would want to put Morgan into the movie. It would take the script from silver to gold, even though she already thought it was as good as she could get. Right now the movie was an inspirational memoir to the loving memory of Karen Kellerman, the last wife of the man who ran a global franchise of Kellerman Hotels. Put in the surviving daughter who lives with wild mustangs, and forget a movie that might win some awards. She’d have a goddamn blockbuster. It would kill at the theaters if it were all done right.
But Morgan’s life would never be the same.
She couldn’t be reclusive with the herd anymore. No matter what, people would come to find her. They’d want to see her.
Matthew was watching me as if he could read my thoughts. “Yeah. You’re getting it now, aren’t you?”
A spark lit my anger again, even though I didn’t know which one of us it was directed at: him or me.
“If you don’t want Shanna to know, get the whole crew moved into the city. Get ’em out of here. They’re going to see her.”
“They aren’t looking for her. My sister is like a ghost. If she wants to stay hidden, she will be.”
“I saw her four times.”
“She wanted—” He bit off his own words as if he were being forced to swallow something foul. “You’re right. I don’t know the other times, but I can say that if you saw her last night at the river, it was because she wanted you to see her.”
“She didn’t know I was there.”
“She has instincts like a deer.”
“Deer can be snuck up on.”
His eyes went wide again in frustration, and he flung out his hands. “What do you want me to say? Shanna’s already looking for reasons to sue. Not disclosing the herd was a breach of contract. I do one more thing like sending the whole crew to the city, and she’ll blow a gasket.”
“It’s better than Morgan being found.”
He gripped the back of his neck, his fingers holding tight while he seemed lost in thought. Then he let loose a long, drawn-out breath of air. “Fuck.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “I can tell her there is something wrong with the main house, which would make it easier to send everyone into town, but what about you?”
“I’m the only one not in the house.” I shrugged, knowing I was coming off smug and not giving one shit about that. “Your siblings need to use the other cabins, but everyone else needs to relocate.” I smirked. “For their safety.”
“Your manager will probably want to stay in your cabin then.”
“She can try.”
“It’s a two-story cabin. Your main living quarters is on the second floor, but there’s a bedroom on the first. It makes no sense that no one wouldn’t move in there.”
He was right. The cabin was a little fucked up, but I liked it when I saw it. “I need my privacy. Shanna has to go into town too. Both of them.”
“Goddamn.” Matthew lifted his head, looking out over the fields. “You know what’s funny? We have the regular horses coming tomorrow. We even had to get a new door and lock, make sure everything’s extra secure so the stallion doesn’t steal any of the mares.” He flicked a hand toward the barn. “Those stalls are going to be full of domestic horses. Morgan will start showing up because she’ll want to check on them and make sure they are cared for. That’s just how she is.”
“Perfect timing then.”
He threw me a harried look, the side of his face of grimacing. “Stay away from my sister.”
I felt his warning low in my gut. I ignored it and threw my o
wn challenge back in his face. “So, no more late-night walks to the river?” I gave him a wry smile. “I can’t guarantee she’ll stay away from me.”
He turned to stare at me. All pretenses were gone.
I wasn’t backing the fuck down.
Matthew
Crossing into his office, he could hear the crew in the house, but he was still reeling from his last conversation. Brody Asher. A goddamn Hollywood male diva.
He knew the excitement the females and a few of the males had about this star. He could have anyone, but he had his hooks in Morgan.
Fury started boiling over inside him, and Matthew reached for the armrests on his chair. He wanted to throw the thing across the room. He wanted to trash every piece of furniture in his office, but he really wanted to smack either one of the main reasons this movie would get any attention. The director was one reason. Asher was the other. His name would draw all the attention.
Kara was easy on the eyes, but she wasn’t Brody Asher.
A growl erupted from him, and he shot back up, stalking to the other side of his office.
“What the hell is going on?”
Abby was in the doorway, her mouth slightly hanging open. She had changed into a sundress and was fixing the ties around her neck. She added, “You okay?”
He only grunted. He wasn’t mad at Abby. He didn’t want to take it out on her.
“Okay.” She sounded resigned, stepping in and closing the office door behind her. All the sounds from the crew were muted to a low murmur. “What’s going on?”
“Asher knows about Morgan.”
“Ugh—”
He turned to continue pacing but stopped at the window. His hands were on his hips, and he stared out beyond the barn to the field she always ran toward. He couldn’t see her, but she was out there. She really was like a ghost.
“Say what?” Abby came to stand next to him.
He let out a deep pocket of air. “He knows about her. He’s talked to her even.”
That same gargle sounded again, coming out like a wheeze from her.
Reaching up, he patted her on the back, but he never turned away from the view. He knew it was ridiculous. Morgan could hear a cricket moving on a blade of grass yards away. Matthew knew Morgan heard Asher and made the decision to stay.