by Maggie Marr
We all scooted into the booth. “I hear you’ve got a movie going into production,” Billie said.
“Maybe. We still have to confirm the cast.”
“That’s some big risk you’re taking with Kiley Kepner. I’m surprised you’re willing to go down that road.”
I froze. My eyelids closed. I did not want to look at Amanda, but I had no choice. Her whole body had tensed. I met her gaze and she stared at me with hard angry eyes while her face still held a smile.
“Kiley? You are casting Kiley in the role that was written for Mom?”
“It’s the only way to keep the script. If we’re not in production then we lose the option and, like I told you, Tom said he would burn the script if that happens. He’ll never let anyone option it again.”
“Right,” Amanda said. “I know that part. But there are hundreds of brilliant actresses in the world and any one of them could play that part and you’ve decided that Kiley Kepner is the right fit for the role.”
“Amanda,” I said, my gaze flitting from Billie to her, “can we talk about this later?”
“Nope, I want to talk about it now.”
Billie shifted in her seat. “Wow, I really stepped in it. Sorry guys,” she said. “I’m going to the bar to grab us some beers.” She scooted out of the booth.
Amanda leaned toward me over the table. “What are you thinking? Have you lost your mind?”
“I’m thinking how to get this movie made.”
“I have a hundred actresses on speed dial who would kill to play that role,” Amanda said. “They are personal friends. Let me make a few calls.”
“Seriously? You think I haven’t made those calls? Talk to Dad. He’s put the kibosh on this film so thick that every actress in town is suddenly booked for something, or is scared to say yes. The only actress who will consider doing it is the actress who hates dad the most.”
“I’d think that’d be a longer list,” Amanda said. She pulled out her phone and scrolled. “What about Olivia or Emma?”
“Tried them. So did Cami Montgomery. I am telling you, Amanda, there is no other way to keep the project alive but to go with Kiley.”
“And I told you how I feel about that. You do remember that conversation, don’t you?”
“You’re not serious. You’d rather see the entire project die than have Kiley play that role?”
“You weren’t here, Sterling, last summer, you weren’t the recipient of her abuse. I am telling you, in this case, that the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. You do not want to do this with Kiley. She will kill the whole damn thing. You are better off letting the project go than trying to make the film with Kiley.”
Amanda might be right, but I couldn’t hear it. I had cast my future with The Lady’s Regret. I couldn’t back away now. I needed something, anything to focus on other than the ache that grew in my heart every day. An ache that could turn to anger at the slightest provocation. A heart is a useless thing to have when love doesn’t work out.
The lights dimmed and the sound of a lone electric guitar came from the stage. A low and soulful sound. I glanced from Amanda toward the silhouette spotlighted on the stage. Rhett Legend Delgado. My half-brother. A brother who, until just two weeks before, I didn’t even know existed.
He had It. That It quality that no one could describe but everyone in the entertainment business tacitly understood. A charisma that demanded attention. An ability to suck the air out of a room. Both our mother and our father had It. I would argue that Amanda did, too. As for me, I’d been content to stand in the shadows, to make the movies, to be the driving force behind all the creativity. Until recently. The shadow had grown cold and I’d thought The Lady’s Regret was my ticket into the sunshine. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Jealousy and anger combined inside me. Rhett could sing. His smooth soulful voice was thick and ragged. The women in the audience were mesmerized. They stared at my half-brother wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The lights went up on stage, and his band mates joined him in the song. Amanda and I locked eyes. We knew. We knew that our brother was a rock star waiting to happen; a new Legend was about to take over the world.
“He’s amazing,” Billie said. “This song is even better than the one you sent me. Did he write this song too?”
“I have no idea,” Amanda said. “Probably.”
“Star quality runs in your family,” Billie said.
“So it would seem,” Amanda said. “Now we simply need to introduce ourselves.”
Chapter 23
Rhiannon
“Why are we here?”
The two dark-haired girls in the front yard were identical to one another. They looked up at me and my heart jolted to a stop. They were a darker-haired version of Amanda.
“I have to deliver something for a friend,” Mama said. “Come with me, please.” I got out of her truck and we walked to the front of the house. The two girls watched us. Neither of them smiled; both remained stone-faced at our approach.
“Is your mother home? She’s expecting me.” The envelope in Mama’s hand bore the name Anita Delgado. I remembered that name, that person. Until earlier this summer she had worked for Joanne and Steve. Then Amanda had discovered Anita and her father… My fingertips pressed against my lips. My eyes darted from the twin girls to my mother. She looked at me and her jaw was set in a hard line. She leaned down. “You are not to say a word to anyone about this. Do you understand?”
I nodded. I did understand. Suddenly, as I stood on the front steps of a lovely home in Castaic, I understood exactly who these two girls were and how they fit into Amanda and Sterling’s lives. Anita opened the door and her smile was wide, although there was hesitancy in her eyes. She reached out and gave me a hug. Then she looked at Mama.
“Joanne asked me to deliver this in person,” Mama said. “Surely you understand with things the way they are, with her illness, I couldn’t refuse.”
“Si,” she said. “Come in, come in. Girls, Rhiannon will stay with you.”
Both the girls looked at their mother. They were younger than me and they couldn’t be much older than twelve. Their thick black hair shone in the sunlight. It was pulled up into tight braided buns on their head. I sat on the front step. They both remained under the shade of the tree, one with a book, the other kicking a soccer ball against the house. The pounding of the soccer ball stopped. “I remember you.” She wore a blue soccer shirt and loose-fitting black soccer shorts. “You’re Rhiannon.”
“I am. Did you just come from a game?” I asked.
“We lost,” she said. “Ellen let two goals get by her.” She nodded toward her sister, who sat under the tree with a book open on her knees.
“Stop, Sophie,” she said. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Whatever.” Sophia kicked the ball hard against the wall. The ball bounced back and up and into the hands of a tall, lean guy.
“Rhett, give it back!” Sophia yelled.
“Stop. Mom doesn’t want you to kick it against the house,” he said. “Go to the back yard and use the back stop or the goal if you want to practice.” He tossed the ball to Sophia. His gaze drifted to me. He had dark hair and eyes the color of night. I was madly in love with Sterling, but this guy was hot. He had a sharp edge that seemed to slice through him, as though he were something very bad.
“You’re Rhiannon Bliss,” he said. His voice was rougher when he spoke to me. More of a deep growl. His eyebrows clenched tight. “Ellen, go with Sophia.”
Ellen sighed, closed her book, and pulled herself to standing. She brushed her hand over the back of her soccer shorts.
“Bye,” she said and waved to me. She gave her brother a nasty look as she rounded the corner of the house toward the back yard.
“What are you doing here?” His hands were on his hips and he stood on the sidewalk in front of me.
I covered my hand over my eyes to block the sun, and looked up at him. There was an anger that pulsed off him, an irritation at my presence.
>
“My mom had to drop something off to your mom,” I said.
“I bet.” He shook his head and rolled his eyes toward the sky. “I can only imagine what kind of dictate has come down from Mr. Legend. This time.”
I bit my bottom lip. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t certain about the relationship between Anita and Steve, I was merely speculating.
“Oh, come on,” he said and a sharp unkind smile fell over his face, “don’t act like you don’t know. Surely you’re smart enough to figure it out.” He cocked his head to the side. “We’re the bastard set. The ones without the fancy last name. The kids of the housekeeper Mr. Legend kept banging.”
I closed my eyes. My heart hammered in my chest. What could I say, confronted by a truth that had been unspoken until this very moment? Rhett took two steps closer and I fought the urge to bound up the front steps and pound on the front door. His eyes were sharp and a hard cold meanness settled into the dark of his eyes.
“What? Rhiannon,” he whispered. “You don’t like slumming with the help?”
“Stop it!” I said. An unbearable anger pulsed through my chest. My eyes heated with anger and frustration over the assumptions Rhett made about my family, and me, and who we were and what we believed. “I never said that. I would never say anything like that. I’m not that way. Amanda and Sterling and Joanne and—”
“Don’t even say their names.” He was close to me now. Inches from my face. Anger pulsed from Rhett’s body. Rage. His fists opened and closed at his sides. “This is my house, this is my family. You and that Legend family don’t exist in this place.” His gaze held me, and his nostrils flared. He pulled back and turned away and walked toward the driveway and around the corner of the house. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need too. My heart thumped hard in my chest. I took a long deep breath trying to still the nerves that rattled through me. I sat down on the top step, uncertain why someone I’d just met hated me so much.
I pulled my thoughts back from the past and gazed at the photograph I held of Maeve, Amanda, Sterling, and me taken the summer before Joanne got sick. The summer before I fell in love with Sterling. The summer before the debacle that was Mom and Dad and Joanne and Steve and all the destruction that lust had caused. The final summer of our happiness. We’d been in Cape Cod. All of us. In a giant house that our parents had rented for the summer. We acted like one big happy family that summer, the summer before the end. The photo was in a silver frame on the bookcase in Maeve’s room.
“I’m going back to Paris,” I said. I set the picture back onto the shelf.
“No, you’re not,” Maeve said.
We’d spent all day shopping and walking and talking about everything aside from the obvious. Today had been a wonderful distraction but now, with the day coming to an end and Maeve brushing out her long hair, my mind returned to the problems that lay hard and fast in my heart.
“I don’t want to stay here,” I said. “Not this way.”
“Yes you do and you are,” Maeve said. She placed her hairbrush on the white princess dressing table from our childhood and turned to me. “You love Sterling.”
I crossed my arms and shook my head. I walked toward the window in Maeve’s room.
“And he loves you.”
“He hates me,” I said.
“No, he does not. He’s hurt and he’s confused and he doesn’t know what to do to protect his heart. He may want to think he can hate you, but he definitely does not.”
“Nice,” I said. “Just the assessment I want.” My eyes locked onto Maeve’s. “Like I said, I’m going back to Paris.”
“You know Mom and Dad set a bad precedent that summer,” Maeve said. “While I understand why they sent us away, and why you agreed because, hell yes, that summer was confusing as shit. I don’t even remember half the things that went down. They shouldn’t have let you leave. Because now, big sister, every time things get tough that is exactly what you want to do.”
I spun around and looked at Maeve. “This from you? You have a passport stamp from every country on the planet.”
“Right, but that’s different,” Maeve said and her lips curved into a smile.
“Please, tell me how,” I said and sat on her bed. My little sister thought she had me all figured out. Well, I wanted to hear it, perhaps a part of me needed to hear it. I wanted to grasp onto the hope that Maeve would have something, some suggestion, to illuminate the pathway back to Sterling’s heart.
“My trips are planned in advance. Your trips are an immediate reaction to perceived failure or fear.”
My heart thwacked hard in my chest. My nostrils flared and my palms grew moist. I fought the urge to shoot up from Maeve’s bed and rush out of the bedroom and down the hall.
“Not true,” I lied and tried to keep my face calm.
“Very true,” Maeve said with a gentle smile on her face. “And you know it. I can give examples. When we moved to Ireland, after that summer with Sterling, when you went to school in England. After you dated that boy in Dublin you took off for Paris. Do you remember the summer after graduation? Remember the college guy who wouldn’t leave you alone, so you took off? Then, in Paris, when Gerard wanted to get serious, before he left for Syria, you decided to come back to the states?”
“I came to the states because of Mama’s ankle. To help her.”
“Right,” Maeve said and nodded. “That was convenient. I seem to remember a call where Mama said she didn’t need any help. That she had someone staying with her. That I should stay in India and you should stay in Paris and—”
“All right,” I said. I held up my hand and took a deep breath, trying to quell the discomfort in my chest. “I see your point. I understand what you’re saying, but my life is in Paris.”
“And Sterling isn’t,” Maeve said. “Nor is this mess we have to wade through that was created by our parents and his. If we don’t get this figured out now, we never will.”
She was right. Maeve was one hundred percent right. I did not want to deal with this mess. I wanted to run. To get away. In Paris I could pretend. Miles away, I would see what I wanted to see. I could simply leave the dirty scraps of this life behind, and go back to my life in Paris. That life included my paints, my brushes, my canvases, and friends who were not family. Friends who didn’t expect or need or create unfathomable problems that I could barely see, or try to fix.
“You are in love, and the man you are in love with loves you back,” Maeve said. “He’s loved you since we were kids and it’s not gone away for either of you. I think it’s time for you to stay. Time for you to fight for what you need and what you want. Your missing piece isn’t in Paris. Your missing piece is a love that you are meant to share with Sterling.”
“He doesn’t want it, Maeve.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “He told me that we can’t get past what happened. All the bad things between our families. All the lies.” I was shaking. My little sister had hit upon the truth. I was afraid, I was running, I wanted to be with Sterling, but I didn’t want the pain of his rejection.
“He’s afraid,” Maeve said. “And, really, can you blame him? You left him the last time you were in love. After he lost his mother. And now he finds out he has this entire separate family and that you knew about them. Why wouldn’t he be scared?”
“I was a child. We were kids, Mama told me not to tell.”
“Rhi, I’m not blaming you. I’m not saying you were wrong.” Maeve put her arm around my shoulder. “I understand what you did, and deep down inside I am certain, if Sterling could get past the hurt and the fear and all the other bullshit, he would understand what you did, too. But you can’t leave again. Not if you want him. Not if you want to try to build a life with him. This time you have to stay. This time you have to fight for what you want no matter what our parents say or what Sterling says. You have to go and make him understand.”
I clasped my hands together into a ball on my lap. I looked at Maeve. “That will be the hardest thing I’
ve ever had to do. I don’t know if I can even do it.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Maeve said. “But losing Sterling forever would be even harder.”
Sterling
Backstage Billie handed Rhett a card. Amanda and I leaned against a cement block wall painted black with streaks of red. We watched from a distance. Rhett leaned toward her with his arm above her head, his hand pressed against the wall. He was so obviously trying to work his musician magic on Billie. She smiled and leaned in. After years as an A&R exec she had to be immune even as Rhett laid on the charm. Once Rhett had the card and slipped it in his pocket, Billie said good-bye and slipped down the hall.
“Good luck,” she whispered to me and Amanda, and raised her eyebrow. I glanced at my sister and then we both looked at Rhett. He stood at the far end of the hall. Gone was the soft smooth smile he’d given to Billie. Instead his face was marred by an angry look that was hard and cold. There was an urge deep in my gut to run down the hall and lunge at him. Beat the shit out of him. Pummel that mean look into submission.
“Come on,” Amanda said. She hitched her purse up over her shoulder. “Let’s rip this bandage off.”
I followed behind Amanda. Where did this need to pummel the smug and angry look that decorated Rhett’s face come from? He slipped out the back door of the club and we followed. He halted and turned toward Amanda and me. We were nearly the same height but he was slighter, more lean.
“This is awkward,” Amanda said. “We came to see you. I left several messages for you—”
“Whatever you want is not for me,” he said. “I feel pretty damn good about my life. Sorry to hear that yours sucks so bad.”
I took a step forward and opened and closed my fists at my sides. Wow, this guy had a chip on his shoulder the size of Africa. Amanda grasped my forearm. “Easy, killer,” she whispered.