Нора Робертс - Hideaway

“Stand up,” Maureen murmured to her. “You’re vibrating. Stand up, use the energy.”

She stood up, paced a minute, got her breathing under control. “I can’t stay in L.A. I can’t go anywhere, do anything. Every time I think it’ll ease off, she comes up with something else, and they’re back outside the gates.”

This time she saw the looks exchanged. “What? What is it now?”

“She’s engaged,” Lily said flatly. “To Conrad Buster, of Buster’s Burgers.”

“B-Buster’s Burgers?” The sound that came out of Cate started as a squeak, rolled into a helpless laugh. “You’re not kidding?”

“I wonder how many Triple B’s with the magic sauce she had to scarf down to rope him in. The press is doing their share of snickering, too,” Maureen added.

Miranda hooked another stitch. “I remember her giving me a lecture once on the evils of red meat. Now she’s queen of Busterville.”

“He’s seventy-freaking-seven years old—ought to know better.” Lily reached for one of the candied orange slices on the tray on the table. “He has two ex-wives but no children. He’s obscenely rich and popped a twenty-five-carat diamond on her finger last night. The story broke this morning.”

“Well, if I had a glass, I’d raise it,” Cate decided. “Eating burgers and planning a wedding should keep her too busy to take any shots at me.”

The beat of silence told Cate differently. “What? Let’s just have it.”

“She never misses a trick, sweets. Her hope, as she tells it, is that her daughter, her only child, will open her heart and stand as her maid of honor.”

“She just couldn’t leave me out of it. She’s getting everything she could want—money, fame, a rich husband with no kids to get in the way. But she can’t leave me out of it.”

It fired her up again, all over again.

She paced the room where the fire crackled, the sea rolled outside the glass, the trees sparkled like wishes, and felt everything in her go hot, go hard.

“And it won’t stop. If I try to work in Hollywood, in film, it’ll never stop because I’m wrong, there’s more she wants. She wants to crush me. She can’t damage Dad’s career, or Grandpa’s, they’re too big. But I’m just getting started.”

“Don’t let her take this from you, Catey.”

“G-Lil, she already has.”

She dropped down on an arm of a chair in front of the window where her great-grandmother had once looked out to see her doing handsprings.

“She’s used what she did to me, twisted it around, and she’s squeezed all the joy out of the work for me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back. I don’t know if I want to try. I do know that I finished production because I was obliged, because I couldn’t just give up. And I did the best work I could. I can’t do it anymore.

“I need a life. I need to see what else there is. I don’t know what I want to do or be, but I know I won’t find it in L.A. I need to be able to walk outside without a stupid wig and a bodyguard. I want to sit around with people my own age, meet a guy who doesn’t care what my last name is. Maybe I’ll take some classes, maybe I’ll get a job. I just want a chance to do something, be somewhere without everyone hovering and worried and putting up shields for me.”

“There are paparazzi in New York, too,” Lily pointed out.

“It’s not the same. You know it’s not. New York doesn’t run on movies, who makes them, who’s in them. I need this, and I’m asking you to give it to me. I can take it without asking when I turn eighteen, but I want you to give this to me.”

The front door slammed, and the aggrieved shout of “Mom!” beat Miranda’s youngest to the room.

“Flynn, there’s an invisible wall in front of you.”

“But, Mom—”

“It may be invisible, but it’s also impenetrable. I’ll let you know when I take it down.”

With the abject disgust only a twelve-year-old could muster, Flynn stalked away.

“Sorry, Cate. You were saying?”

“I guess I said it.”

“It breaks my heart,” Lily began. “It breaks my heart what she’s taken from you. You know how I love you—you’re my girl every bit as much as Flynn’s my boy. You did see he had a bloody lip,” she added.

Miranda nodded, kept crocheting. “Wouldn’t be the first.”

With a nod, Lily looked back at Cate. “I’d love to have you with me. You understand how busy I’ll be with rehearsals and meetings, even before we open. But you have family in New York, too. If this is what you want, I’ll talk to your father.”

“It’s what I want. Right now, it’s all I want. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” She rose. “Well, why put off the hard stuff?”

“I’ll go out with you.” Miranda put her crocheting aside. “Make sure Flynn puts some ice on that lip.” As she passed, she gave Cate’s arm a squeeze. “Well done.”

“Let me grab a jacket.” Maureen got to her feet. “And you and I can take a walk.”

“Maybe I should go with G-Lil to talk to Dad.”

“Leave this to her.” She put an arm around Cate to lead her out of the room. “I happen to know a number of people around your age. So do Miri and her Mallory. Not all of them are actors.”

“Any of them cute straight guys, say, eighteen, nineteen?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Cate knew Lily did what she could when Aidan knocked on her open bedroom door.

“Hi. I was about to go back down. Later,” she added when he closed the door. She braced herself. “You’re mad.”

“No, I’m frustrated. Why don’t you tell me when you’re unhappy?”

“You couldn’t fix it.”

“How do you know what I can fix?” he tossed back. “Damn it, Caitlyn, I can’t try if you don’t tell me.”

“You are mad, so fine, be mad. But I wasn’t going to come crying to you. Again. I have a right to figure out what I want, what I need. And she’s got a right to spout her idiot bullshit the press laps up.”

“She doesn’t have the goddamn right to make you so unhappy you’d talk about giving up what you want and need. I haven’t pushed certain buttons because I thought it could make matters worse for you. But Charlotte isn’t the only one who can use the press.”

“I don’t want that!” Even the idea turned her insides to jelly. “She would. She’d love that kind of attention.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Aidan replied. “Just because I don’t choose to play dirty doesn’t mean I don’t know how.”

“You could hurt her,” Cate acknowledged. “I think she underestimates you, all of us, really. She hates us, all of us, so she underestimates us. And…”

To give herself a moment to gather the right words, to find the right tone, she trailed her finger down the carving in the bedpost.

“I understand her better than you think I do. Lily called her soulless that day. A soulless excuse for a mother.”

“You remember that?”

She met his eyes again. “I remember everything about that morning, from you holding me when I woke up scared, and G-Lil singing a duet with me while I showered so I’d know she was right there.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said quietly.

“I remember Nina’s pancakes, and starting a puzzle with Grandpa. The fire snapping, the fog burning away so the sea broke through. I remember the things she said, and I said, and everyone.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. “So does she—in her own way. She’ll have done a rewrite, cast herself as heroine or victim—whichever works best. But however she remembers it, however she rewrites it, for her it’s not about me. It’s how she can use me to hit at you, at Grandpa, at G-Lil, at the whole family, but especially you. You chose me over her.”