Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)

by C. D. Reiss

  “Nicole has to be your reason to stop.”

  “She is, I just . . .” Hands out, as if handing me an explanation. “I’m afraid. With her I’m afraid I’m going to screw up. I’m not afraid with you. I can do it with you. You make it possible.”

  In his outstretched hands was my power. I could accept it or deny it. I could trust him and myself. Trust that I had the power to build something with him that I’d always wanted. A family of my own.

  Or I could do what I’d always done. Run from the difficulty. The vulnerability and discomfort and stay on the outside looking in. I was safe there, but if I was being honest with myself, I was also miserable.

  “I know I’m a shithead,” he said. “But this shithead loves you.”

  He did. He loved me.

  I had a physical reaction. My heart expanded to fit the room. It grew to fit a feeling of worthiness and belonging. He loved me and he knew it.

  His love changed nothing. I loved him and I knew it, but I wouldn’t be able to fit myself into his life or understand the lies he’d told. And my heart shrunk back down, folding into itself like a bird tucking its wings in after a short flight.

  “I love you,” I said. I didn’t have to say it. I shouldn’t have, because it was irrelevant. “But I don’t think that’s enough.”

  He was still in the tunnel. The rest of the world, the airport, the VIP lounge had fallen away. So when Erma’s voice cut through the tunnel, I was startled.

  “Where’s Nicole?” she asked.

  Brad’s attention snapped away to his mother, then around the room.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was right here looking at you. Then I went to put the napkin in the garbage and—”

  “Shit.” He scanned the room from window to window, and I did too, checking behind the buffet, around the donuts, at the floor where a trail of crumbs and sprinkles ended a foot away from where Brad and I had been standing.

  “Not here,” I said.

  “Nicole!” he called. Everyone looked, but no little girl came.

  “They have to close the lounge,” I said, pointing to the concierge. “Now.”

  Brad ran to him. I pointed to Erma. “Check the bathrooms.”

  “Okay.” She went to the bathrooms, and I went through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

  She was probably fine.

  But Brad was famous and wealthy. He was the target of crazy people for simply existing. His security team didn’t come to Arkansas with us because he felt safe, but that didn’t mean word of his location didn’t get out. The right opportunity with the wrong person nearby could spell disaster.

  “Did a little girl come through here?” I shouted to the kitchen staff. The banging of pots and shouting of staff ground to a halt. I didn’t wait for an answer. They’d let me know if they saw anything. I scanned the floor, paced to the back exit. It was open. There were elevators. A stairway with an alarm. Huge hampers with linens.

  She could be in a hamper or two stories below. Shit shit shit . . .

  I upturned the hamper. It was too light to have a little girl under the tablecloths, but I checked anyway.

  “Hey!” A male voice from down the hall.

  I stood and looked. Security.

  “Did you close the lounge?”

  He got close enough to see me. “You’re the nanny?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s on lockdown. The elevators are shut. Please join your party in the lounge.”

  “There are low cabinets in the kitchen. She might be hiding in one of them.”

  He held one hand out to me and with the other he opened the door back to the kitchen. “Please join your party, miss.”

  I walked fast through the kitchen, taking the long way in case she was there, and entered the lounge where all the first-class passengers were now standing, looking distressed.

  I stood between Brad and his mother, catching another security guy with gray hair as he put on his most authoritative tone.

  “We cannot lock down the entire airport,” he said. “The way we do it is—”

  “Fuck your concentric circles,” Brad said.

  “I know this is stressful, but—”

  “You need to lock it from the outside in, not the—”

  “No child has been lost on my watch, sir. I promise you. This happens more often than you think.”

  His radio hissed and burped. He held up his finger and excused himself to take the call.

  “This is my fault,” I said. “It’s my job to watch her.”

  “Let’s not get into that.” He spoke to me, but his eyes were all over the room, as if he was looking for a dropped cuff link. I couldn’t blame him. My attention was on every nook and cranny a little girl could fit inside.

  “We were talking about our relationship,” I said, reaching under the buffet and opening the sliding doors. No kid. “What I should have been doing was watching Nicole.”

  “Your relationship with me is important to her.”

  “Do you think she heard us?”

  “I’m sure of it.” He turned to me and took my chin in his hand to get me to look at him. I felt safe and solid when I had his attention. “She’s not in the lounge.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know how I know. But we need more eyes out there.” He broke our gaze. “Mom.” He waved her over.

  “I think we should pray,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Brad said. “Do that. We’re gonna look in the terminal.”

  “The lounge is locked.”

  “Let’s pray then.” He grabbed the gray-haired security guard, who had just clipped his little radio back to his belt. “My mother needs to get to the chapel. She needs to say a prayer we find her.”

  “Yes, sir. Over there are people leaving to board their planes. You can get out that way.”

  We didn’t wait for another set of instructions. This lockdown was bullshit. I was sure they were trying, but I was also sure they didn’t want anyone to miss their flight.

  “You can’t cut the line,” Erma protested when Brad pushed through the crowd to get out. So many camera phones were pointed in our direction it was a wonder anyone was looking where they were going.

  Except Brad, who was unfazed. “Hell I can’t.”

  We were out in the terminal in another minute. Erma wringing her hands, Brad holding one of mine. How long had he been holding my hand? Publicly?

  I didn’t even care. He needed to hold my hand as tight as he could.

  “What were we saying when she was near us?” I asked, hoping there was a clue there.

  Brad shook his head, looking over the crowded terminal. People saw him and tittered, or stared, or elbowed their friends. A couple of security guards passed us, all eyes on the corners and walls, looking for a little girl.

  “We have to keep moving. Mom, you go that way.” He pointed the same direction the security team went. “Keep your cell phone on. Cara and I will go this way.”

  Erma complied, and Brad and I walked. I let go of his hand, but he grabbed it back. He was shaking. I didn’t think I’d ever feel him shake, but for the first time he looked powerless and out of control.

  I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same way.

  CHAPTER 70

  BRAD

  I had everything I wanted, but everything I needed was getting torn away. I was trying to hold on to a career I’d fought for, and I was losing something I didn’t even know I needed. Cara was leaving, and Nicole was gone.

  I’d never felt so alone. I’d never panicked so hard. I’d never felt so out of control.

  “We’ll find her,” Cara said. We weren’t looking at each other, but everywhere, past everything, everyone, watching for a moving object in a sea of movement.

  “Sure.” I said it just to say something, but I didn’t know what right I had to be confident. The terminal was endless.

  “She’s a survivor. She’ll probably find us.” Cara scanned corners. What
would I do without her if I lost my daughter?

  Her mother, Brenda, didn’t have a staff. Didn’t have a security detail or tons of time to teach Nicole anything. She’d been an overworked coffee shop employee who sometimes couldn’t find child care. With all that against her she did a great job. She never lost Nicole. She raised a girl who was healthy, smart, and well mannered.

  And what had I done? Nothing. Denied her. I never even asked how she was. Never told Brenda what a good job she was doing. If I could do it all over again, I’d make it so Brenda didn’t have to work. I’d free her from her job so she could take care of our daughter full time, and I’d step in and be a part of her life.

  Too late for all that.

  Maybe not. Maybe if I found her, I could change things. Maybe I had the power to give Nicole everything Brenda couldn’t. Maybe I could finish the job right.

  “It’s just that she’s used to small spaces from her mom taking her to work,” Cara said. “So if she’s mad or scared, she could be in a freaking cabinet.”

  I stopped, yanking Cara’s hand back.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You know. When her mother couldn’t get a sitter?”

  Eyebrows up, chin raised, in a split second Cara and I were on the same page.

  Cara, being the woman of my dreams, had been on the same train of thought. Once we found Nicole, I was making changes, and she was going to be a part of it.

  CHAPTER 71

  CARA

  “Ah! Coffee Chain!” I said. “Do you think?”

  “No, but we don’t have any better ideas.” Brad stopped a woman in her twenties holding a paper cup with a blue logo in one hand and a wheelie suitcase in the other. “Hey!”

  Her face registered annoyance then shock.

  “Oh my God, are you—”

  “Yes, I am. Where did you get that coffee?”

  She swung her arm back in a general direction, speechless.

  He kissed her on the cheek and pulled me away. We got to the end of the hall, looked left, then right, and found a Coffee Chain almost immediately. The sign was big, but the shop seemed eternally distant. We ran. That coffee shop was our only hope. If she wasn’t there, we didn’t have a next part of the plan. We’d have to start searching all over again.

  So we ran, crashing into travelers, hopping over suitcases, dodging when we could. Brad was fast, and he pulled ahead. When I got to Coffee Chain, I walked into pandemonium. Brad was behind the counter, bulldozing through the objections of the manager, slapping open cabinets. Someone was calling security. A dozen people were photographing the entire thing.

  Despite the chaos, I could tell one thing. Nicole wasn’t drawing ponies in the cabinets.

  What had Brad and I been saying that made her run away?

  You take her.

  No, you take her.

  She was five. She had no way of knowing we weren’t trying to get rid of her. She thought she was being pushed off again. She’d get yet another home.

  Which was what I was consigning her to if I left.

  I put my hands over my mouth and looked at the floor.

  I was breaking up a family.

  My family.

  I looked at my shoes and considered what that meant. How much of a commitment that was, and how the rules changed when the stakes were so high.

  A slight pink glow flashed against the floor and one side of my left sneaker. It happened so fast I should have missed it. But I didn’t.

  I looked left, to a standing three-panel ad for frothy autumn drinks. And down, to where the panels lifted two inches from the floor and I could see the flashing lights of a certain little girl’s favorite sneakers.

  I pulled back the partition, and my heart dropped down while my breath flew up.

  Nicole Garcia-Sinclair crouched in the space where the floor met the wall with her arms wrapped around her knees. She picked her head up when the partition disappeared.

  “Brad!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. She started crying. I scooped her up in my arms, one arm under her knees, one under her arms.

  I didn’t care if she was crying. She could cry all day and night.

  “I love you, Nicole.” I held her close and spoke with her tear-soaked face near mine. “I love you. I love you so much.”

  Brad came to us and ladled her with kisses, reaching around the both of us, helping me hold her and pulling us all together at the same time.

  “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God, and Cara. Thank you.”

  The relaxed guy without a care in the world was back, but different. The relief and joy in his smile were as real and honest as another person’s could be. All the other stuff? Well, that was just stuff. That smile was the man I loved, and it was for me and Nicole.

  “Daddy,” she sobbed. “Who’s going to take me?”

  He didn’t look away from her, but his hand squeezed my elbow.

  “We’ll figure it—”

  “We both are,” I interrupted.

  I cringed at my own words, hoping Brad hadn’t changed his mind. Had I overstepped? Was I promising her something I couldn’t deliver?

  But his chest expanded and his shoulders dropped as if he’d taken a deep breath, and I knew I hadn’t overstepped.

  Nicole choked back a sob. “Really, Daddy?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You belong to both of us.”

  The big lump in my throat finally went down when I swallowed.

  I’d run away from this, from him, from Nicole, from every child I ever loved, and at that moment the running was done. I’d run right home.

  He turned away from his daughter and looked at me. Only me. Joy in his face. Relief. A victory dance and I was the ultimate prize.

  For a second his gaze went foggy, as if he was looking inside instead of outside. He squeezed his daughter and kissed her forehead, then took out his phone. Assuming he was calling security to call off the search, I held my hands out for Nicole. He shook his head.

  “I have her.”

  He put the phone to his ear. Security found us. Radios squawked and sharp voices called off the search. Travelers dropped their suitcases to take pictures of us, and I was concerned about Nicole’s reaction. She had her cheek on her father’s shoulder.

  I was going to suggest he get out of the way of the impromptu paparazzi, but the knee-jerk fear of exposure got very far away when I heard who he was calling.

  “Gene,” he said into the phone. “You sitting? . . . Good, because you’re about to fire me.”

  What the heck?

  “I’m not doing Bangkok Brotherhood.”

  “Brad!” I shouted louder than I intended.

  He winked at me. Was he joking?

  “Never . . . yes, I’m sure. I tried, but I’m not dragging my family onto a movie set right now. I need time to get to know my daughter.”

  “You can’t!” I said, probably echoing his agent’s sentiments. “It’s a hundred-million-dollar movie! They can’t shoot it without you! You’ll—”

  “—never work again,” he said into the phone and to me at the same time. “I can live on what I have for the rest of my life. I don’t care . . . No,” he said, stopping himself. Nicole looked up at him and their eyes met. “I do care.”

  He took the phone away from his ear and held it up for me.

  “—the studio? They won’t even make the bond. Overland is going to make sure you’re over. Do you know what over means? You won’t get a line in community theater in Buttfuck—”

  I grabbed the phone before Nicole heard any more foul language.

  “Hello?”

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “This is Cara.”

  “That answers nothing. Nothing. Whoever you are, you’re standing next to nobody. He’s flipping burgers in three months. Three weeks.”

  “Wait—”

  Brad snapped the phone out of my hands. “And tell Roger his project is a maybe. Me going to a shoot in Argentina during the school year isn’t hap
pening. I’m reassessing all my future projects against how it affects my daughter.”

  He held the phone to his ear as Gene ranted and raved, but Nicole was telling him a secret in his other ear, and he seemed to be listening to that with real interest.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” he said.

  Nicole nodded.

  “Miss Cara?”

  “Yes, Nicole?”

  “Are you coming with us?”

  “Where are we going?”

  We both looked at Brad.

  “We’ll talk later, Gene.” With that he hung up the phone and looked from me to Nicole and back. “Where do you want to go?”

  Nicole shrugged and looked to me for corroboration.

  I didn’t know what to say or think. His agent had said it all. He’d sunk his career with a phone call. “You’re freaking me out.”

  “Kinda freaked myself out,” he said. “But I lost everything today and got it back. I might not be so lucky next time.”

  “Mr. Sinclair,” the gray-haired security guy said, “your flight is boarding.”

  “Wherever you go,” I said, “I’ll go with you. But I’m confused.”

  “Well,” he said, lifting Nicole onto his shoulders. He held her ankles, and she covered his eyes. “Why not take a family vacation in Thailand? I hear it’s nice and relaxing. Away from it all.”

  “We need to renegotiate our agreement,” I said, moving Nicole’s hand off his eye. He leaned down and kissed me. I let him.

  I let Nicole see it because I wasn’t going anywhere. She could depend on us. Not me. Not Brad, but us. I was there, with her, with him, forever.

  CHAPTER 72

  CARA

  “How do you fly to heaven if you’re old?” Nicole asked. This latest salvo in her attack of unanswerable questions had started as soon as she got up in the morning. “Does someone come and fly you?”

  Actually, the barrage had begun the moment we entered the monastery with men in saffron robes. She’d tapped a little gong at sunrise and asked questions we couldn’t even answer for ourselves.

  “What is exist and not exist?”

  You try explaining what “exist” means to a five-year-old.

  “Her grandpa’s not gonna like it,” Brad said over breakfast on the patio. There always seemed to be chimes and bells in the little Buddhist resort.