When Lightning Strikes (Whiskey Creek #1)(13)
Author: Brenda Novak

Simon jumped to his feet, suddenly decisive. “I’m calling it off. She’s not up to the task.”

Gail felt her jaw drop. “That’s it? We just wasted the past two hours?”

“I guess so.”

“Fine. I’m out of here.” Grabbing her purse, she headed for the door.

6

“Wait!” Ian caught her arm. “Don’t leave. He’s upset, not thinking clearly.”

“He can’t control his emotions and appetites long enough to implement a simple plan, let alone one that’ll be as tricky as this,” she said. “That’s all we need to know.”

“I can do whatever I have to,” Simon said.

“Then why do you need me?” she asked.

With a grimace, he dropped onto the couch, leaned back and draped an arm over his face. “I don’t know. You haven’t helped matters so far.”

Gail told herself to leave, as she’d intended to a moment earlier, but she couldn’t seem to convince her feet. She wouldn’t let him purposely destroy this opportunity to get his life back on track the way he’d destroyed all the others since he started acting out a year ago. He had so much potential. It drove her crazy to watch him self-destruct, especially in the public eye. Regardless of her opinion of him these days, he’d once been her favorite actor. His performances still captivated her.

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “No one can do this for you. If you want to see your life improve, you need to stand up and fight.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” he mumbled into the crook of his arm.

Fighting the wrong kind of battles. And if he didn’t change that soon, he’d learn how much worse his life could become. “Lashing out randomly in anger isn’t what I’m talking about.”

When he didn’t respond, Ian’s alarm seemed to grow. “Simon, we talked about this. When you hired me back, you said you could do it. You said you would do it.”

“I know.” Deadpan. Resigned.

“So…are you backing out or not?” Ian asked.

Simon muttered something Gail couldn’t decipher; it sounded like a curse. But then he said, “I’m in if she is. I’d walk through fire for Ty. Do anything.”

That didn’t mean he had to be happy about it, and he wasn’t, which would make her job that much harder. “Give me one reason I should trust you to pull this off,” she said.

He lifted his arm so could look at her. “I can pull it off. I’ll pour it on so thick there’ll be times when even you’ll think I’m in love with you.”

More than a little fatigued herself, Gail slumped into a chair. “There’s no danger of that.”

The fact that she’d cracked, shown some exhaustion and weakness, seemed to surprise him. The tension in his body eased. “What about you? You don’t particularly admire me, and you’ve had no experience with acting. Can you be convincing?”

Self-conscious about her clothing ever since he’d made the repressed PR failure comment, she unbuttoned the top of her jacket. “I won’t have to be. No one will bother to question how I feel. They’ll take it for granted. Average-looking no-name lands big movie star. Why wouldn’t a girl be happy about that?”

He sat up so he could study her with that intense expression she’d seen him wear so often in the movies. She’d said something that made him think or caused him to reevaluate. After all the bickering and chafing at their new roles, she couldn’t imagine what it was. But acute interest transformed his face from dark and brooding to arresting, and she found it impossible to look away.

“Even if we do everything we can, it’ll take some luck for this to work,” he said at length.

“Yes,” she agreed.

A frown tugged at his lips. “These days I’m not sure I can depend on luck.”

She tucked the fine hairs that’d fallen around her face behind her ears. “Feel free to hire a real actress, if you think it’ll help.” She hoped he would. Then she could have him return as merely a client, which would be enough to protect her business, and life would go on as usual.

Ian jumped back into the conversation. “Simon, no. We don’t want anything to do with a woman who might be interested in using you to get famous. You never know what someone like that will do. I say we stick with what we’ve got. Gail’s a known entity.”

“She’s inflexible.” He spoke in the third person even though his gaze never wavered from her face.

“She’s trustworthy.” Ian shifted his gaze to her, too. “That’s more important than flexible. Two years will go by quicker than you think.”

Gail held her tongue. She got the impression Simon was testing her to see how she’d respond. But despite what he said about her, criticizing him further wouldn’t help. She had a feeling he already thought the worst of himself. At least she gave him credit for his talent.

“There’s just one more thing,” she said.

Stretching out his legs, Simon crossed one ankle over the other—another deceptively casual pose. “What’s that?”

“My father.”

Lines formed on his forehead. “What about him?”

When she’d agreed to be Simon’s “wife,” she’d been thinking of it primarily in the context of PR advantages. She’d been so focused on how to pull it off, she hadn’t considered the impact it would have on her other relationships—probably because, until now, L.A. and what she did here had always felt so removed from Whiskey Creek. Despite being a small town of barely two thousand, it was a world unto itself. But news of her marriage would travel everywhere. There’d be no way to keep it from getting back to her family and friends. She had to allow for that, prepare for it. Which meant she had to include them in the process.

“Before the wedding, we’ll need to take a trip to my hometown so I can introduce you to everyone.”

He didn’t consider that for even a second. “Absolutely not. I’m not going to some Podunk town to be judged by your family.”

Her friends would be just as hard on him, maybe harder. She’d hung out with the same crew since grade school. But she wasn’t about to mention that. “If we don’t enlist their support, my father or brother will drive to L.A. to convince me that I’m making a mistake marrying someone with…shall we say…such a tarnished reputation.”