“Time for dessert.” I smiled at her. Scooping her up in my arms, I carried her toward the bedroom where I could take my time. It wasn’t a cave, but it would have to do for tonight. The rest we’d figure out as it came along.
CHAPTER 17
Violet
Out the window of the 15th floor of the Fame! Network’s headquarters, you’d never know it was February. The sun shown down from the bright blue sky just like it did every single day of the year in L.A. On the street below, palm trees stood stock still in the completely windless mid-afternoon sunshine.
“You ready?” A co-worker poked her head into my cubicle. I hadn’t exactly worked my way into the corner office yet. But at least my cube had a view.
“Yes!” I stood up, a hand at my stomach to still the frantically flapping butterflies. Honestly, I felt super close to vomiting. I’d barely slept the night before, arriving into LAX at midnight west coast time. And the night before that, with Heath in his cabin? Not so much sleeping then, either.
My stomach flipped for a whole other reason. What that man did to me. I missed him so much already and we’d only been apart for 24 hours. Or was it less than that? I couldn’t do the time zone math, not on that little sleep.
However long it had been, it was too long. I so wanted to be back in his arms, fly right back there and film this show. We’d get to capture Vermont in the springtime. I bet it would be teeming with life after the winter, thawing and warming right up with flowers and birds and bees. Heath and I would join right in.
But I needed to focus. It would take every last ounce of brain cell power to make my pitch. I walked down the carpeted hallway, my Louboutin heels strutting their stuff. Shoulders back, chin up, I needed to own this. I needed to pitch the shit out of these executives.
“Hello everyone!” I entered the room, bright and enthusiastic.
“There she is!” My boss turned and smiled at me, or at least as much of a smile as he ever managed which really looked more like a cold survey. Sam sat by his side, looking slightly smug.
“You survived!” another co-worker congratulated me, rising to give me air-kisses on each cheek.
“Good to see you,” another greeted me, giving me a once-over. “I’d heard you’d gone native.”
“Oh, right.” I laughed it off, getting a vivid mental picture of the reindeer hat I’d taken to wearing around town. It got cold there, people! Reindeer hat cold!
But now wasn’t the time to get defensive, now was the time to sell. Our boss, the head production manager for our team, convened the meeting with me, him, Sam and five other people seated around a conference table. So much rode on the next half hour. My hands shook, but I drank a Pellegrino and reminded myself I was one tough cookie. I didn’t back down. I knew how to rise to a challenge.
And rose I did, after I got the nod. I stood and started telling them about Watson. Our little film crew had done an amazing job putting together footage, using the sights and scenes of rural Vermont to tell the story. I let the images play out behind me as I spoke to them from the heart.
“Imagine a place where you can fall in love. A place where you can completely be yourself. Where everywhere you look there’s something breathtakingly beautiful. I give you Watson, Vermont.”
I told them about the organic farm and crazy local Mad Mountain ski resort. I passed around hard ciders, shipped from Vermont the week before, now chilled and ready for them to enjoy as I told them about the local brewery. I showed them footage of ice skating and sledding, of covered bridges and mountains.
“And best of all are the people.” I could see them as I spoke, Helga winking to me as she danced to Bruno Mars, Dave talking passionately about the beauty of youth hockey. And Heath, of course, building his own cabin and making furniture so unique yet classic at the same time.
“We’ve found the real Stars Hollow,” I began my wrap up. “We’ve found the set of the Gilmore Girls, the town everyone wishes they were from. The kind of place where everyone knows your name. We’ve got a hit show on our hands here. I can’t wait to make it with you.”
I sat down, adrenaline still pumping through me. But even with the rush, I could tell the reaction in the room was…tepid. Polite clapping. I got a couple of nods and smiles. A few people tapped at their phones, already moving on to the next business of the day.
Didn’t they feel it? The potential? The magic? I noticed my boss hadn’t even touched his hard cider. Uh-oh.
I turned to Sam, clammy nervousness making its way up into my throat.
“Or…” He brought his hands to the table and rose up to standing. “We could go in another direction.” With a point and a click he opened a different file on the laptop connected to the screen. “You’ve heard from Violet. Now let me show you something different. Something a little more exciting. More juicy.” One by one, the faces around the table grew more attentive, focusing up and on what Sam had to offer.
What was he talking about?
“Get ready to feast your eyes on a secret. A scandal.” Sam stood in his element, dishing dirt, loving every second of it. I had no fucking clue what he meant, but he was a master at it and he had everyone’s complete attention. “Wealth, privilege, celebrity status, all hidden away. Under wraps. Until now.”
And there, in all his shirtless glory, appeared Heath on the screen. Massive and ripped, he stood with a blowtorch in his hands looking giant and sexy as hell.
“He can blow my torch,” the woman sitting next to me murmured.
That feeling I’d had earlier like I might throw up? It came back. Big time.
But Sam was just getting started. “What would you say if I told you I had an exposé on my hands? An epic one?”
“You want hot?” He splashed another image of Heath up on the screen, looking giant and muscled. When had he gotten all that footage of him? And always without his shirt?
“You want wealth and privilege?” Sam asked. An image of the quintessential older businessman flashed on the screen, hair slicked back as he lounged in an opulent office. “Meet Richard Kavanaugh, CEO of Kavanaugh Industries and one of the wealthiest men in the world. He passed away a year ago, leaving a cool billion to his children.”
“Including this mountain man.” Up went another yummier than yummy photo of Heath, in plaid, his profile silhouetted against a snow-capped mountain range. “Whose name happens to be Heathcliff.”
Now I was having trouble breathing, literally. I tried to take a sip of my water but all I did was choke and gasp. No one even noticed, they were so rapt with attention on Sam’s pitch.
“Not enough, you say?” Sam was loving every second of this. He had everyone right where he wanted them, eating out of the palm of his hand. “How about some royalty?”
An elegant elderly woman flashed onto the screen, looking like the queen of England. “Meet the Baroness of Warwick. She’s Heath’s paternal grandmother.”
Another image arose that caused a collective gasp from the room. It was the equivalent of TV gold: Dutchess Kate and Prince William. With the Baroness. At a polo match. All of them wearing hats.
“And there’s more,” Sam gloated, bringing up a photo of the baroness holding Princess Charlotte, the royal baby. THE ROYAL BABY!
“Not enough for you?” Sam practically roared over the twitters and yelps of excitement. “How about we add a celebrity into the story?”
Up popped a photo of rockstar Ash Black onto the screen, standing there smiling with his fiancé. Everyone knew that story, how the notorious bad boy rocker had had his heart tamed by the children’s librarian. But now Sam had gone too far. How would he tie that to Heath?
“Look in the back,” Sam instructed us, zooming in as if on a crime scene. He drew a circle on the touch screen—and voila. Heath was standing behind them at what looked like a black tie event.
“It’s the mountain man! Heath! He’s Ash’s brother!”
“What?” Now I exclaimed with the rest of the room.
“That�
�s right.” Sam nodded his head, drinking in the attention, adding more photos into the mix. A picture of them from when they were younger, standing with their father at some sort of a charity event. Another picture from another year, again at a black tie gala.
“Remember last year when Ash went off the grid? Everyone thought he was in rehab? He was in Vermont with his brother Heath! Hot Off the Grid!”
Oohs and aahs arose from the room.
“There are so many layers here!” Sam exclaimed in rapture. “At the very least, this is a Fame! Insider Exclusive.” He referred to the hour-long exposés our network ran, focusing in on intrigue and scandal. The last one had re-opened the Natalie Wood debacle, airing supposedly new evidence regarding her death.
Sam turned to the audience as images continued to play out behind him, an estate that looked straight out of Downton Abbey, a college campus that screamed Ivy League, and then, the man at the center of it all, Heath, in his shirtless glory.
“He’s tucked away in this nothing town in the middle of nowhere. And we’re the ones who can expose all of it. He’s our in. We can scoop Ash Black, find out what really went on behind the scenes last year when he dropped out of the public eye. We can lift the lid on the Kavanaugh fortune. Was Richard Kavanaugh’s death due to natural causes? We want to know!” The headline news of the magnate’s passing flashed up on screen: “Investor, Pioneer, Billionaire, Dead at 67.”
“When we first went to Siberia…I mean Watson, Vermont—” The room laughed at his joke. “I was bored out of my mind. But then I started getting curious. And I found us a goldmine in Heath. I think we can even get a series out of this. We can grow it as big as we want.”
Sam pointed at me, giving me a wink, like we were in on this together. I sat there pale faced and so shocked I couldn’t manage a single word. “And this one here. You know what Violet went and did? She got him to sign off on it.”
He held up paperwork, the sheets of paper I’d handed Heath a couple of days ago. To get camera crew access to the shop. “We’ve got it here in writing. His permission to film. We’re in!”
The room erupted in raucous applause.
“Amazing!” The woman sitting next to me grasped my wrist and exclaimed with excitement. “Great work!”
“I love it!” our boss declared, his hands coming together in big, hearty claps. “Let’s get the ball rolling!”
“You won’t be sorry! We’re going to hit a bullseye with this one!” Sam gave him the double gun salute with his index fingers, firing away with a wink.
“Pull in Nance and Claire. I want a full team on this.” He rose, having officially given us the green light. “Good idea, going with the one-two like that,” he added, straightening out his already iron-pressed shirt, tucked into his perfectly neat and tidy pants. “Violet bores us to tears so Sam can come in and knock us right out of our seats. Clever way to pitch. That’s what I like to see around here.”
The people around me filtered out of the room, buzzing and talking amongst themselves. I sat stone still, practically gasping for air like someone had punched me hard in the stomach.
Sam lingered. He fiddled with a pen. “Well, they sure loved the pitch, didn’t they?”
“Is that all true?” Many, many questions fought for space in my brain, questions about what he’d been hiding from me for how many weeks and how and when he’d decided to throw me under the bus and what the fuck was in the paperwork I had Heath sign? But I asked the question that struck me right at the heart.
“What, all that about Heathcliff?” Sam said the full name like he relished doing it, using it to mock him in some way. “You bet. Your fuck buddy’s a diamond mine.”
This wasn’t happening. “No.” I shook my head. It wasn’t true. I knew as well as anyone in the business of photographing or filming celebrities—you could doctor up a photo to make anything look real. I could show you a picture of Kim Kardashian shaking hands with an alien looking so real you’d swear it really happened.
“You made it up, Sam. You didn’t have to do that. We had enough to go with.”
He laughed, hollow and humorless. “Yeah, you really won them over with your pitch, Violet.” He shook his head and seemed to think better of sticking around to talk to me. But as he started walking toward the door, I stopped him.
“What did you just do, Sam?”
“I pitched a great story, Violet.” His words had a razor-sharp edge.
“What did you get Heath to sign?”
“You got him to sign, sweetie. It’s your own fault you didn’t look them over.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I shook my head, stupefied.
“You’ve been a little preoccupied lately. The polite way of saying it would be your head’s been in the clouds. But you know I’m not polite. Between you and me, I can say you were fucking around instead of doing your job.”
I rubbed my face with my hands, still so shocked I lacked words.
Sam filled the silence. “It’s not my fault you fell for all that hokey small town crap. I did my job. I found us a story out in that frozen hell. Now if you’re smart you’ll pick your jaw up off the table and thank me for saving your ass. Because you were just about to get shot down real hard and fast.”
“I should thank you? For what?” Now I stood up, anger sweeping through me with powerful force. “For lying to me? For tricking me? For getting Heath to sign papers that…” The thought of the signed consent form nearly knocked the wind right out of me again, how I’d handed Heath the exact legal documents that were now going to subject him to the prying eyes of Hollywood. No one did exposés like the Fame! Network. They let nothing stand in their way of getting a good story—not truth, not decency, nothing.
What had I done? I sank back into my chair, my knees literally buckling underneath me. Heath, tucked away in his mountain cabin, thriving on his solitude and independence. About to have the Hollywood Hounds of Hell unleashed on him.
“Here’s the thing, Violet.” Sam stood, hands on his hips at the door. “You’ve got two choices. You can keep your job and thank me for landing us this show. Or you can get all huffy and pissy and pack up your shit this afternoon. Because here’s the thing.”
His voice went all quiet and menacing as he told me, “I went easy on you just now. Because I like you. And I think you might be able to convince Heath to play ball. But if you want to pick a fight, I have no problem with that. It’ll take me less than five minutes to have everyone in this office talking about what a little slut you were in that Vermont town, fucking around with your man candy instead of doing your job. They all know this exposé’s my idea. I can have you out on your ass in seconds flat.”
I looked up at him, wishing I weren’t so shocked. Wishing I wasn’t the stupidest human being on the planet.
“You think about it.” He nodded at me. “But don’t take too long.” He closed the door behind him.
I sat there, the only one remaining in the conference room, one woman at a long, empty table. Our building had been given an environmental upgrade over the past year, and all the lights now worked on motion sensors. I sat so still for so long that the lights turned off. It seemed like the room was empty.
And empty was how I felt, like my insides had been scooped right out and thrown out the 15th story window.
How had I been so blindsided? How had I worked alongside Sam for the past few weeks with no idea what he was doing? How had I been blind and stupid and so off base, actually getting caught up and excited like the Fame! Network would want to do a corney smalltown Hallmark channel series?
And Heath. Was any of what Sam said even true? I’d been in this industry long enough to suspect at least part of it was. That was the genius behind all the hype—find a kernel of truth to pop into a big balloon of scandal. Sam wouldn’t have been so excited if he’d made up the entire thing. He had to know that his facts, at least some of them, checked out.
Which meant Heath wasn’t who he said he was. He wasn’t a mou
ntain man living a life of independence and solitude, carving his own destiny out of wood and metal. He was Little Lord Fauntleroy, Richie Rich, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the United States. He wasn’t an honest, straight-shooting, small town guy introducing me to life’s simple pleasures.
I’d been duped, by both of them. I’d thought I was falling in love, the star of a Lifetime Channel movie about a city girl who lets her hair down and ends up with the country boy she never dreamed she’d fall for. Turned out I was in another movie entirely. This was one of the kinds I didn’t like, where one of the main characters rips off a mask halfway through and reveals himself to be an evil villain. This was a social satire, not a romance, where everyone was laughing at the main character instead of rooting for her. I was in an indie flick brimming with ridicule and satire.
And worst, maybe worst of all was the way Sam had used me to get exactly what he wanted. He’d gotten me to get Heath to sign the paperwork, agreeing to be the center of an exposé.
At some point, I’d have to stand up. Eventually, I’d regain the feeling in my legs and I’d then be able to use them to move myself out of the dark conference room. But until then, I sat there, silent and still, hoping for another crazy plot twist. Maybe Sam would run in with his pants on fire and reveal he was a schizophrenic pyromaniac? Maybe a Marvel Comic hero would burst through the window, explaining we were under attack?
But the longer I sat there, the more clear it became: nothing was as it had seemed. And any way I looked at it, the reality I now faced was all kinds of ugly.
CHAPTER 18
Heath
When I stepped out of my cabin and the flash of a camera bulb burned my eyes, at first I didn’t know what was happening. It didn’t even register that it was a camera flash. I’d thought it was the sunlight hitting me strong, or maybe a heavy-duty flashlight someone was shining in broad daylight.
But then a guy stepped out from behind a tree, snapping away.
“What the fuck?” I roared, throwing an arm across my face, turning back to head inside. I hadn’t had a lot of experience with paparazzi—that was my rockstar brother Ash’s cross to bear—but I’d had a little. You didn’t get away with being billionaire Richard Kavanaugh’s son without getting hounded by cameras from time to time. In my experience, it had always been at exactly the wrong time.
Untamed: (Heath & Violet) (Beg For It) Page 19