“Is that supposed to be an excuse?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s not. Look, I’m sorry if I seemed unsupportive. I… I didn’t know what to think. Luc and Jimmy had already done all this work and they were sure it was your dad. They said they had evidence.”
“Do you believe my dad is guilty?” I asked Connor. That was all I really cared about. I wanted Connor to believe me. And because I believed that my dad was innocent, he needed to believe it too.
“I believe there’s no evidence that your dad was responsible that can’t be explained by an elaborate coincidence.”
“Tricky. But that wasn’t what I asked.” I knew Connor was smart. He was very smart. His best buddy was a lawyer, too. He’d picked up a few tricks, and he knew how to skirt an answer without lying. But half-truths weren’t going to cut it today. “I want to know if you, Connor Prince, believe that my dad stole two million dollars from you.”
“I believe that you think it’s impossible. And I believe you.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “You forgive me?”
I laughed bitterly. “No. Not even close. I was just curious.”
He reached out a hand to me. “What do I have to do to get you to forgive me?”
I wanted to take his hand, but I didn’t. I shook my head at him instead. I wasn’t able to forgive him just like magic. “Connor, I don’t know. Why did it take a week for you to come talk to me?”
“Why didn’t you come talk to me?” He challenged. “Communication is a two-way street.” He ran his hand through his long hair in obvious frustration before continuing. “At first I was waiting for you to come give me a piece of your mind. I mean, you’d never been shy before. At least, I expected you to come demand all your clothes and stuff back from my house. Or for you to call Luc. Or Jimmy. But you didn’t. You just ghosted me.”
“I was right here.”
“You were avoiding me, so I was respecting your decision to be alone,” he said earnestly. “I thought crowding you before you were ready to talk was too risky.”
“To the baby?”
He shook his head. “To you. To us.” Something in his expression twisted. “To the three of us.”
The three of us? My heart pounded. Hope swelled.
“So, because I was avoiding you, you decided that it was better just to wait?”
He nodded. “I figured you needed some time to become less angry with me. Every other time I’ve tried to push you when you’re angry, it backfired. Remember the blizzard? I remember the blizzard. The scar on my bicep remembers the blizzard.”
“I’ll always remember the fucking blizzard,” I grumbled. “I think I’m still cold.”
“So that’s why I didn’t push you,” Connor explained. “Things were going so great between us until Luc and Jimmy showed up. I almost told them to call the police and just tell them to write off the five million stolen—”
“Two million,” I interrupted.
Connor shook his head. “There were three million in money orders in the safe. They’re gone too. And they’re basically as untraceable as cash.”
This was just more evidence that it was not my dad. “Don’t you think my dad would have done something with all that money? Five million? He’s literally working across town painting holographic paint onto dancing cat puppets and driving a Ford Fiesta. He could be on a beach in Cabo with this money.”
“I know. Isabelle, I know.” He frowned. “It doesn’t add up.” He shook his head. “But to finish what I was saying before, we were doing fine. And then you were gone. You ran out of my house, again, like you hated me.”
“You could have followed me,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. The man had a point.
“I just reminded you about the blizzard.”
“You could have tried something.” But even my dad said Connor wasn’t to blame.
Connor spread his hands, looking down at me with a mixture of frustration and determination on his features. “I’m not the only one who could have tried something.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t support you the way you wanted me to, but going no contact with me didn’t give me much to work with.”
“So, why are you here today? You want me to move back in with you?” I infused my voice with skepticism and anger, but it was an act. I wanted him.
He nodded. “Yeah. I do. I want things to go back to the way they were before. But I realize that might not be possible. Maybe we could just start by talking?”
I licked my lips nervously. “Maybe.”
“Dinner Friday?” Connor asked. He seemed confident I would say yes. He already knew me too well. Quick to anger. Quick to forgiveness. Quick to make choices that I regretted later on down the line.
I nodded my head, staring up into his beautiful eyes like a woman possessed. Hope—that pesky little emotion that always seemed to follow me around—surged inside my heart. I tried to temper it. Beat it down a bit. But it was no use. All I wanted was back in Connor’s orbit.
41
Isabelle
The Threat
After Connor and I agreed to try and reconcile, or at least have dinner, I felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my heart. I wasn’t exactly pleased that my dad had been accused of a crime, but he didn’t do it, and the truth would come out in time. Hope really does spring eternal, I suppose. Because as soon as I could see a path forward, I felt a lot better.
Connor even helped find me that specialty dry cleaner who could come out the very next day. The woman I talked to on the phone said she’d come down to the studio to evaluate the fur suits before proceeding. I was waiting for her about midday when Ashton Radley appeared at my workshop door instead.
Crap. I’d made this whole commitment to myself not to be with him alone. But I hadn’t anticipated that he’d find me in my workshop. It wasn’t even close to the soundstage where he worked.
“It was hard to find this place,” Radley told me, walking in and looking around himself as if stunned to be slumming it away from the relatively plush areas they kept the actors. “I had to ask around.”
“Did you need something?” I asked Ashton. I may not have been able to avoid seeing him, but I did have my pepper spray in my pocket. I thumbed it, feeling comforted by the fact that I could drop him if needed.
“I just wanted to talk to you,” Radley said conversationally. He picked his way around the many props and materials littered around the shop. I knew my way around this workshop well, but for the uninitiated it could be a bit of challenge to find the best paths through plywood, puppets, and power tools. Worst case scenario, I figured, I could just throw a drill at him and run away.
“Oh? What about?” I asked, ducking around a few obstacles so that I had a clear path to the door if I needed it. I was on high alert.
There was no good reason he’d come down here. And this time, if he laid a finger on me, he might lose it. I had a lot of saws in here. And a couple of blow torches.
“I was wondering if you wanted to come with me to a party tonight,” Radley replied. “I know we kind of got off on the wrong foot initially. But I think it would be fun to go out. What do you say?”
“Oh, no, thank you.”
That was clear, right? It seemed clear to me. But Radley didn’t appear deterred at all.
“You don’t like parties?” he asked. “It’ll be really fun. One of my Instagram-influencer friends is helping launch a new tequila brand. We’ll have all we can drink.”
“I don’t drink—” I started to say. I wanted to add, “and I don’t really want to go out with you,” but Radley interrupted before I had the chance.
“Why not?” He seemed vaguely irritated. I was so over this. I had no desire whatsoever to continue this conversation. I needed Radley out of my space. The dry-cleaning lady would be here soon to look at the fur suits, and I needed to get back to work. The battle scene I was preparing for was the biggest and most expensive of the prac
tical scenes that we were shooting for ‘Night Stalker.’ It was going to require all of my time and attention. Between work and Connor, I just didn’t have time for pesky distractions. Especially rape-y creeps like Radley.
“I’m pregnant,” I told Radley, hoping this would finally get his attention. “I’m seeing someone, and I really can’t go out with you.”
“You’re pregnant?!” he looked at me like I was suddenly disgusting. Like a used Kleenex. “Is this a joke?”
Finally. Thank goodness. If only he’d had this attitude toward me from the start. Now our perceptions of one another matched.
“Yes, I’m pregnant, Ashton. And I’m seeing the father. So, I can’t go on a date with you.” I knew it was a little bit early to tell anyone that I was pregnant. I was only eleven weeks along. Most guidelines that I’d read said to wait until twelve. But others said that ten was okay. Some even said eight was fine.
“Who’s the father?” Radley asked.
I frowned at him. “That’s my business. I don’t really want to talk about my personal life with you.” I took a deep breath. “Actually, I think you should leave.”
Radley didn’t leave. He stared at me.
“It’s that weird stunt guy, Connor, isn’t it?” Radley was wearing the same expression that Connor wore yesterday when we found the semen-stained werewolf suits. Only the horrifying thing that he’d discovered? It was the fact that Connor had impregnated me (although, of course, he probably thought we did it without the involvement of what was practically a turkey baster). “I’ve seen you talking over the past few weeks…”
I drew myself up to my full height and stared Radley in the face. “What does it matter to you?”
“It is him, isn’t it?” Radley glared at me like I’d personally betrayed him. I thumbed the lid to my pepper spray. I was getting angry. This was really none of his business.
“Why are you so obsessed with this? With me?” I honestly couldn’t understand his fascination. So, he liked me? Whatever. I was off the market. He could go date someone else.
“He’s nobody.”
I laughed in his face at that. “Is he?” I shook my head at him. “You’re wrong. You have no idea who he is.”
His eyes narrowed and I froze. I didn’t need to be revealing Connor’s true identity to the likes of Ashton Radley. He seemed like the kind of guy who might blackmail him.
“He’s ruined you,” Radley said. “And I’m going to ruin him back.”
I blinked. Ruined? Fucking ruined? Man, fuck this guy. I wasn’t a single use napkin over here. What a prick. I mean, I knew he was a prick before, but damn. He was a next-level prick.
“You gotta’ leave now,” I told him. “This conversation is over.”
Radley was glowering at me. “What was Connor’s full name again?” he asked me.
I froze, suddenly hearing my blood rush in my ears as my blood pressure spiked. I‘d said too much. “Why do you ask?”
I knew that Connor valued his anonymity over almost anything. He didn’t want to be thrust back into the spotlight again. He wanted a quiet, normal life. Well, normal for him. He wanted to do his stunts, run his business without anyone knowing that he was in charge, and be able to have his freedom. And I might have just ruined all that.
“Never mind,” Radley told me. His eyes flashed dangerously, and he pressed his slicked-back blond hair back into place where it had fallen during his outburst. “I’ll figure it out all by myself.” He stared at me with an expression I couldn’t name. “You could have had me, Isabelle. You belong with someone like me, not him.”
I don’t want you. My expression probably said it for me, so I didn’t reply. Radley shook his head and walked away. Right as he was leaving, a very petite figure wearing a head-to-toe yellow hazmat suit came in the other door.
“Hi there!” the woman wearing it yelled to me across the workshop. “I hear you’ve got some, um, organic stains you need removed right away? I’m Cindy, by the way.”
I shook her gloved hand when she got close. Relief that Radley was finally gone flooded my brain. I doubted he’d be back.
“Hi,” I said, grinning at her bright yellow, very scientific looking getup. It seemed appropriate to me. Hers was not a hygienic business. “I’m Isabelle Schmidt. Thanks for coming out right away. And yes. I do.” Thankfully one cum stain, Ashton Radley, had already left. But that still left five fur suits. “I don’t know how exactly to prepare you for this,” I told Cindy. “But it’s pretty gross.”
Cindy gestured down at her bright yellow duds. She really was buttoned up from head to toe. It would be hard for her to get anything on herself. “Don’t worry,” she told me. “I’ve seen pretty much everything. There was this Furry convention around the corner from our dry cleaners a couple of weeks ago. It’s not for me to judge or anything. I’m just here to clean the messes.” She shrugged and giggled. “We all have to make a living doing something. I didn’t expect mine to be doing this, but what can you do?”
That seemed like a pretty good and healthy attitude. I should try to adopt one of my own. About Ashton Radley. About Connor Prince. About my dad’s predicament. About my pregnancy. If Cindy here could spend her days cleaning semen out of fake fur without being dour, I didn’t have much to complain about.
“Okay,” I told her. She was exactly what I needed today. I made a mental note to tell Connor that Ashton Radley was trying to figure out who he was, but first I needed to deal with the fur suits. “Follow me.”
42
Connor
The Underwriters
“That went terribly,” I said to Luc and Jimmy. We’d just walked into an ambush. Half of the underwriters were already in full panic mode. The other half were in attack mode. I’d been expecting questions, not a mutiny.
My advisors-slash-friends both nodded. Luc futzed with his mustache before replying to me. “Yeah, it really did. But it still could have been worse. At least now we know what we’re up against. We can prepare. Mitigate.”
We were seated at the now-empty conference table in the administrative offices that my production studio rented whenever we needed to have a real meeting. Luc had found a couple of beers from somewhere, and we were toasting our bad fortune.
“At least it’s good that your identity as Connor Prince wasn’t really important to them,” Luc added. “I know you’d been worried about that. But they didn’t seem to care.”
“No,” I agreed. “No one even seemed surprised. Maybe the lawyers had already figured that out a while back. But they still had plenty to be angry about. They weren’t shy about sharing their feelings either.”
“They certainly weren’t shy,” Luc agreed, taking a deep drink of his beer and then checking his watch. He sighed deeply and then stretched. “They had plenty to say. I thought that would take two hours, not four and a half.”
“Now what?” I asked. “Because if they’re about to start running from this production, you’re right, we need to figure out what our plan is.”
Just as I’d gotten Isabelle to thaw out, life had just thrown me another ninety-five mile per hour curveball. And it had hit me square in the solar plexus.
“Well,” Jimmy said, leaning forward and looking over his notes. “We can provide them with the records of what we’re currently doing to document the investigation and try to figure out what went wrong. It’s not like we’ve been sitting around. We’ve taken a lot of actions to try and get the money back. That ought to help reassure them.”
“Let’s omit the fact that we’re investigating the lead actor and having him trailed by a private investigator in whatever report we formally provide,” Luc said. “They really didn’t like that we’re considering him a suspect.”
The underwriters had already convicted Maurice Schmidt in their kangaroo court of opinion. In their uninformed wisdom, they believed that there was no other possibility. The idea that one of the actors might be involved had made a few of them nearly apoplectic. They’d accused me of be
ing unhinged for even suggesting that we look at alternatives.
“What do we do about Isabelle?” Luc asked me.
I raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”
Jimmy and Luc exchanged a look. “Isabelle is Maurice’s daughter,” Luc said patiently. “Now that the underwriters are taking an in-depth look at everything we’re doing on this production, they’re going to figure out two important things. First, Maurice’s daughter Isabelle was working as his unpaid apprentice, and it was because of her that Maurice quit. And second, you’ve now hired her as the visual effects supervisor, even after knowing her dad was implicated. That isn’t going to look good.”
“Wait until they figure out that she’s carrying my baby and I’m sleeping with her,” I said, feeling like my entire life was about to collapse. I laughed at myself. What the fuck was I doing? I was a walking disaster.
“You’re sleeping with her?” Jimmy asked, stunned. “I thought you two hadn’t even spoken in weeks.”
I sighed. “We haven’t. Not since before Christmas. I meant before all this with Maurice and the money.”
Luc and Jimmy exchanged another glance, communicating God knows what between themselves.
“What?” I asked irritably. “Just spit it out.”
Luc sighed. “You’re going to hate this, but maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to keep Isabelle at arm’s length for a while. I know you two had a thing going, and that this is all really complicated between you. I know she’s pregnant with your baby and the surrogacy contract is out the window. But it really wouldn’t be good for our underwriters to learn that you are in a personal relationship with the only daughter of our prime suspect. It doesn’t make you look like a good investment. It does make you seem unhinged.”
I counted to ten before I replied. I was getting better at containing my temper. When I spoke, my voice came out calm and rational. “But we know Isabelle wasn’t involved. We don’t even know that Maurice was involved at this point.”
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