Нора Робертс - Hideaway

Bad enough, Charlotte thought, bad enough the damn trailer was all over the place, the reviews rolling out like slaps in her face.

She could fix that, she thought.

She picked up her phone. She’d see how the little bitch who’d cost her seven years liked the kind of press she could pay for.

The tabloids hit the day Change of Scene went into full release. Headlines shouting CAITLYN’S LOVE NEST and SEX IN THE CITY screamed from newsstands all over the city. Photos of the apartment building in Hell’s Kitchen, of Cate and Noah caught in a kiss outside the stage door dominated the front page. Interviews with neighbors inside the articles reported on wild parties, speculations of underage drinking and drugs. Details of Noah’s life, his family, sprawled through the column inches.

“I’m sorry.” She stood with him in Lily’s living room—or she stood, he paced.

“They went to my mom’s house. They got Tasha—I dated her for like five minutes two years ago—to say I cheated on her. I didn’t. They’re saying I use drugs—no, they don’t actually say it, just hint at it. My mom’s a wreck.”

She said nothing as he paced, as he ranted. What could she say?

“They’re hinting I got into Mame because of you. I didn’t even know you when I auditioned. How you’re turning down offers because I’m jealous, and you’re, like, what, under my thumb.”

When he ran out of steam, she said the only thing she could. Again. “I’m so sorry, Noah.”

He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It’s not your fault. It’s just … they make everything ugly.”

“I know. It won’t last. It’s all timed because of the movie. That’s what Lily thinks, and I think she’s right. I know it’s awful, but it won’t last.”

He looked at her then. “It’s easier for you to say that. Yeah, I’m sorry, too, and I know it’s screwing with you as much as me. But it’s Hollywood shit, Cate. You’re used to it.”

Everything inside her shrank. “Do you want to break up with me?”

“No. Jesus, no.” Finally he went to her, pulled her in. “I don’t want that. I just … I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know how the hell you do.”

“It won’t last,” she said again. But she was very much afraid her interlude of quiet had ended.

Grant Sparks knew how to run a con—long or short. After his initial terror and fury in prison, he calculated the way to survive meant running the longest continuous, multiarmed cons of his life.

Maybe of anyone’s lifetime.

He kept the gangs off his back—and kept himself out of the infirmary—by smuggling contraband inside. That meant bribing a couple of key prison personnel, but he didn’t have much trouble homing in on who he could get to do what, and what it took to incentivize them.

He still had contacts on the outside. He could order in a carton of reals, then jack up the price of an individual cigarette, split the profit with his source.

Booze and weed moved profitably, too. But he stayed away from hard drugs. Selling smokes would get him a slap. Selling smack? More prison time at best, a shank between the ribs at worst.

He took orders for items as diverse as hand cream and hot sauce, and earned a rep for reliable delivery.

He had protection, and nobody messed with him.

Making sure he also gained a rep for doing his assigned work without complaint, keeping his head down, following the rules came easily. He went to services every Sunday, after gradually letting the prison holy assholes convince him in the power of God and prayer and all that shit.

Reading—the Bible, the classics, books on self-awareness and improvement—helped him transfer from the prison laundry—a hellhole—to the library.

He worked out religiously, and became a de facto personal trainer, always helpful.

Because he needed to keep fully informed about certain people on the outside, he read smuggled-in tabloids, even read Variety . He knew the little brat who put him inside had made a couple of movies. He knew the bitch who’d screwed him over played the penitent mother with the press.

And it burned his ass to read about her engagement to some old, fucking billionaire. He hadn’t considered she had that much grifter in her. Maybe he admired it, on some level.

But either way, payback would come.

He saw an opportunity when he read the brat was in New York banging some dancer (probably gay). He spent some time working out how to give the little bitch a shot, who to assign, how much to pay for the job.

Making connections with anyone up for release had paid off in the past. He saw just how it could pay off now.

It took Cate less than two weeks to realize she hated school. Sitting in classrooms hour after hour listening to her instructor talk about things that—it turned out—didn’t interest her didn’t really open doors, she discovered.

It just closed her inside rooms someone else had designed.

Except for her French course. She liked learning a language, practicing the sounds of it, making sense of its rules and quirks.

Film Studies bored her senseless. She didn’t care about analyzing a film, finding hidden meanings and metaphors. To her, it dulled the magic that offered itself on-screen.

But she’d see it through, every course. Sullivans weren’t quitters, she told herself as she sat through another lecture.

“They expect me to know stuff because I acted, because my family’s in the business.”

She cuddled with Noah on his little bed on what she thought of as Blissful Mondays.

“You do know stuff.”

“Not the sort of things they want. In an acting class, I’d have more to say, I guess. But I don’t know why Alfred Hitchcock decided to film Psycho ’s shower scene in those quick cuts, or why Spielberg let Dreyfuss’s character live at the end of Jaws . I just know they’re both really brilliant, scary movies.”

Lazily, he stroked her hair, now nearly to her shoulders. “Do you want to take an acting class?”

“No. That one’s all yours. You’re the one in the hottest ticket on Broadway. I—”

“What?”

She turned her head, kissed his shoulder. “Stupid to think I can’t bring it up, since all that crap’s faded off.”

“You said it would.” He turned to kiss her in turn. “I should’ve listened.”

“It was a kick in your gut, Noah.”

“Lower,” he said and teased a laugh out of her.

“I was going to say that people at college—even the dean of students—have asked if I can get them tickets to Mame .”

“We’ve always got a handful of VIP seats available.”

She shook her head. “Do it once, it would never stop. Oh, I have to go. I have a class at ten tomorrow morning, and I haven’t finished the reading.”

“I wish you’d stay.”

“I wish I could, but I have to finish this, and I told Lily I’d be in around midnight. It’s already midnight.”

She slid out of bed to dress, sighed when he did the same.

“You really don’t have to walk me to a cab, Noah.”

“My girl gets an escort.”

Sitting, she pulled on her shoes, watched him pull jeans on that lithe dancer’s body. “I really like being your girl.”

He walked her, as he did every Monday night, to Eighth so she could hail a cab going uptown. She remembered the first time, after their first time, in the chilly drizzle, the shine of wet pavement. Now they walked through the heat of a long summer night, the humidity baked in by clouds that blanked out the moon and stars.

“Text me when you get home,” he said, as he always did.

And they lingered over a last lovers’ kiss.

As she always did, she watched as he stood on the corner.