Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Simon forced himself not to cringe.

He had no idea what had actually set her off. Something more than the fact that he’d basically called her a spoiled child star, that was for sure. Not his most shining moment, but he knew damn well she’d been called worse in the tabloids.

It wasn’t that.

But damned if he knew what the real trigger was.

Right now, though, it didn’t matter. At the core of it, he’d lit the fuse.

He was an ass, just like she’d said, and he’d been baiting and belittling her since the moment he’d met her. He’d put his own shit between them, and it had sat there like a ticking time bomb until it had finally exploded.

But, dammit, he wasn’t letting his shit destroy her. Frannie was too damn strong, and he wasn’t going to be the one who broke her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching tentatively to put his hand back on her knee. “I’m really sorry. It’s not you.”

She released the pillow long enough to slap his hand away. “Screw you,” she said. “You think you’re so much better than me. You think all I do is playacting. That you’re out there saving people and making the world safe for democracy, and that what I do doesn’t matter. But you’re wrong. My work matters, too. I give people an escape. I give them empathy.”

She drew a breath, and he almost started to speak, but she continued on, her words coming out like the rat-a-tat of a machine gun.

“I give them something to talk about, to bond about. And sometimes I even save lives, too. And maybe you don’t believe me, but I can remember the name of every girl who wrote me a letter after I did a TV movie about anorexia when I was eighteen. And do you know how many suicide centers had an increase in calls—in saves—after one of my television movies back in the day aired? Do you have any idea at all how many people write me to say that they saw themselves in one of my characters? Who thank me for playing a character who got through the bad stuff and was stronger at the end? Do you have any idea—any fucking idea—of how much that can impact people?”

He swallowed, his mouth dry. He didn’t want to have this conversation. But he had to. If nothing else, he owed her that.

So he drew in a breath, released it, and said, very simply, “No.”

“Then you need to just shut—”

“But I know the other side of it,” he said, then hurried on when he saw the fury on her face. “I know the other side too damn well, and I’m sorry, okay? But there’s nothing grand or heroic about what I’ve seen. No lives saved, just lives and households destroyed chasing this fucking dream of Hollywood.”

Her expression was tight. Her eyes cold and appraising. She looked ready to bite his head off. But all she said was, “Tell me.”

He closed his eyes, wishing he could take the last hour back. Hell, wishing he’d told Damien and Ryan to let Leah take this case and run with it. But he didn’t. And somehow, that one simple choice had led him here. To this moment he wanted to avoid but knew he had to face.

“I was born in New York,” he said, looking at his hands and not at her face. “When I was six, my mom left my dad for an actor. My dad was ex-military, and he’d moved into private security. He wanted custody, and my mom didn’t argue. She was too happy fucking her fake daytime TV doctor to care what happened to me.”

He glanced up, saw that she was listening, then looked away again before the confusion—and the sympathy—in her eyes cut straight into his gut. “My dad died on a job. Trying to rescue a little girl from a kidnapper, and it all went down wrong. Three men lost, and the kidnapper, too. But the little girl was safe. My dad died in the hospital. He told me he was sorry, but he didn’t regret it. That he’d rescued that girl. That his life had value.”

“And your mother’s didn’t.”

Simon shrugged. “She cheated and then left. I don’t suppose he’d think anything else.”

“But that’s what you think, too. That’s why you started doing this. Security. Protection.”

His chest tightened. He’d almost forgotten she was there, he’d been so wrapped up in those horrible memories. He drew a breath, then met her eyes and nodded.

“My mom got custody of me, of course, and she followed loverboy to LA. They got married. She quit her job—she was a fund manager. I didn’t understand what that meant back then, but I knew she was good at her job. She ended up being his manager. Not that it went anywhere. He got one or two tiny roles. We lived in a hovel, and both of them ignored me. I was something to be dealt with. I wasn’t her child. I was an inconvenience that had to be managed in order to get to the job. But there was never any job.”

He closed his eyes as if he could ward off the rest of the memories, but they just kept coming.

“He started to blame my mother. Started to beat her. I was thirteen then and tried to fight back. He bloodied me up good. Then he…”

“Simon?”

Hisclosed his eyes, wanting to say that she was the last person he wanted to tell this to, because how the hell could she understand? But when he opened his eyes, he saw the compassion on her face and felt himself melting. “He killed her.”

“I’m so sorry.” She pushed the pillow aside, then leaned forward to take his hand.

“He came after me. I ran. And when I came back with the cops—he was dead, too. That selfish bastard was so lost in the goddamn Hollywood game that he killed himself and my mother when he couldn’t make it. And she was too much of a fool to see what he really was.”

Her fingers tightened around his. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The words felt hard. Wrong. He knew they were true, and yet it didn’t change the fact that this town—that goddamn business—had destroyed his entire world. And not just the one time, because there was Kristen, too, and—

He shook himself. “I have issues with your industry. I know it. I’m sorry. I took it out on you, and that was a shitty thing to do.”

For a moment, he was certain she was going to lash out again. After all, Frannie’s temper was famous. But all she said was, “I get it. A lot of folks have been burned by the industry. Me included.”

“But you came out the other side unscathed and famous with your perfect life, living large in LaLa Land.”

Her eyes darted to the side, but he caught the glimmer of a tear and once again regretted his words.

“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” she said. “I have fame and money, but I don’t have—” She started to tug her hand away, but he tightened his grip.

“What?”

“Nothing. I have everything, just like you said. Believe me, I’m not complaining.”

No, she wasn’t. But she wasn’t telling him the truth, either. His chest constricted, and he heard himself asking, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what? My climb up the ranks to my perfect Hollywood life? Why bother? Or do you think my past is coming back to threaten me?”

“I think that’s pretty damn likely, yeah. But I thought you might want to unload. Sometimes it helps. I just learned that the hard way.”

She looked up at him, her eyes warm and intense on his, and in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull her close and kiss her.

No.

No way was he going there.

For one thing, he had no fucking idea where that impulse had come from.

More important, he was on a job. And even if he was warming up to her a tiny bit, there was no way in hell he was sliding down that slippery slope with an actress.

Then she blinked, and the moment passed, leaving Simon wondering if he’d just imagined it. “Well,” she said, “I’m glad talking about it helped.”

“It did. Thank you.” Once again, thoughts of Kristen filled his head. Once again, he pushed them away. It was one thing to dredge up his childhood. He didn’t need to dredge her up, too.

Frannie pulled her hand away, then hugged the pillow again.

“I’m a good listener,” he told her.

She looked at him with that famous half-smile, then shook her head. “I believe you. But I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“I get that. I don’t know what it is. But this reporter does. So I’d say the odds are good that he’s the one making the threat. If that’s the case, then I need to know. It’s a hell of a lot harder to keep you safe if I don’t know all the facts.”

“I know. But—”

“Hey,” he said, conjuring a smile. “I showed you mine. You show me yours.”

As he’d hoped, she laughed, and in that moment, he knew why she’d become a star. The sound sparkled, filling the room like the tingle of electricity after a lightning storm.

That’s what she was. A force of nature. And the truly baffling thing was that he liked her. Despite her holier-than-thou attitude when they’d met, and despite his stepfather and his mother and all the bullshit with Kristen, he actually liked her.

A good thing, since he was protecting her. But he needed to keep his head.

Because even though he liked her, he knew damn good and well that he could never, ever trust her.