“Serious? A cameo or what?”
“A recurring role. It’s the mom’s brother. I thought maybe we could get together, and I could give you some hints on prepping for it.” Hopefully I could pinch one of the writers for some inside scoop so that I could back that up.
“Fuck. I’m out of town. When’s the audition?”
“Not until after hiatus. They haven’t even announced it yet. So we have time.” I’d just have to figure out how to meet with him without it interfering with my Reeve time. “Maybe you could even come to the studio. When will you be back?”
“Last week of March. I’m in Canada shooting the next Warrior Wick until then.”
“They’re making another one?” The first movie had been the worst thing I’d ever sat through.
“It’s indie. It didn’t have to make much to break even.” He had a point there. “So we’ll hook up when I get back?”
For a minute I considered just asking him on the phone. But I wanted the real dirt. The kind of dirt you got face-to-face with no time constraints. “Yes, when you get back. Maybe I can get my hands on a side by then.”
I was disappointed it wasn’t sooner, but it wasn’t like I was going anywhere before my two-month probation period with Reeve was up. And since NextGen would be done filming the season around the same time, I could likely slip away on a weekday to meet with him.
I stayed at Reeve’s both Friday and Saturday that weekend. And the next. It became our routine. Sometimes I worried about the passing of time, worried about Amber. Besides meeting with Chris, I couldn’t think of anything else to follow up on and Joe was working any leads that came in. He was more and more certain she’d gotten wrapped up in Vilanakis’s sex trafficking and that would take time to break.
I, on the other hand, was more and more uncertain. About Amber. About Reeve. About everything. I saw no signs of mob engagement when I was with him. I also saw no signs of Amber. But I did see signs of me – the woman who I’d been. The woman I’d run away from. The woman I’d forgotten I loved being.
Each week that passed by I felt less like I was playing a part with him and more like the act was what I put on the other days of the week. I’d lie to Ty Macy when he’d badger me about the origin of my hickeys. I’d dodge my agent when he tried to set up auditions for me, wanting to keep both my weekends and my break from filming as time to be with Reeve. I’d drift through my days, plastic and perfect on the outside, simmering with shame on the insides. Friday nights when shooting was over, I put Emily Wayborn to sleep and let Emily Barnes wake up.
It was early March when I woke up in Reeve’s bed alone in the middle of the night. When I couldn’t doze off again right away, I decided to get up and look for him. I put on one of Reeve’s T-shirts from his dresser and padded into the hall. It was dark and a peek downstairs over the hallway bridge told me that there wasn’t any light downstairs either. The house was quiet, and I realized it was the first time I’d truly been free to explore. Usually either Reeve or his men were around and I’d never had a reason to go into any of the rooms on the wing opposite the master bedroom.
But now I did. If I got caught, I was simply looking for him.
The first two rooms I went in were standard guest rooms, each with a bed and a dresser and a bedside table. The third room appeared at first glance to be the same, but then I noticed magazines on the nightstand. The last person to stay there had probably left them, but when I picked up the top magazine, I discovered it was the People magazine from a year before. The one that had my first celebrity photo. The one with Amber and Reeve in it.
It could mean nothing. It could also mean something.
Not wanting to flood the room with the overhead, I switched on the bedside lamp and looked around. There was a jewelry box and a hairbrush on the dresser. Strands of pale yellow hair clung to the teeth of the brush. I opened the top drawer and found women’s underwear. The next drawers were jeans and T-shirts and lingerie. The closet was filled with more clothing – evening dresses, blouses, shoes, slacks.
Reeve had been with plenty of women. The items could have been left by anyone. They could have been left by several different women, collected and stored in here over time. They could be things he kept for the use of the current flavor of the moment.
Why, then, was I so sure they’d belonged to Amber?
Because she was the last woman he’d dated, probably. But if they were her things, why were they still there when she wasn’t with him anymore?
The hair on my neck stood up and a chill ran through me. I didn’t want to be in there. There was no way I would ever know why the things were there without asking, and the longer I stayed, the more my mind ran away with possibilities. I turned off the light and went looking for Reeve for real this time.
Since the downstairs was too quiet for me to think he was there, I went back down the hall and started up the stairs to the third floor. I’d never been up there either and had no idea what I’d find. I heard him before I finished my climb. He was talking to someone, and while that should have been a reason to stay away, I needed him. Needed him to reassure me that there wasn’t any reason to believe he’d done anything to hurt anyone. Reassure me that what he’d shown me was the real part of him as much as what I’d shown him was the real part of me.
The stairs opened up to a single loft-style room. It was dark except for the moonlight coming in from yet another wall of windows. There was enough light to gather that the room was an office from the bookshelves and file cabinets along the inner wall. Reeve sat at a long sleek desk in the back corner, his face and bare torso illuminated from the large computer monitor in front of him.