Chapter 6

Bailey

I spent an hour in the hot tub when I got home from Valentina’s party. If I was honest, it had been nice to be out with friends, socializing and behaving like a normal human being instead of a grumpy old recluse. The kids had been busy but sweet, and cuddles with Louisa were always my favorite.

I’d never admit it to Manny or Lucia, but I loved the food at Casa del Papaya. Lucia was a great cook, but there was something to be said for simple Mexican food with no frills. Salsa, guacamole, chips, queso, and tacos. I didn’t need Lucia’s grandmother’s special green tomatillo sauce or pork marinated in secret spices for four days.

Lucia teased me about what she called my very unrefined palette, but I was okay with that.

Of course, then the guy with the Nordic blue eyes showed up and sent my libido into overdrive. I’d thought those parts of me were dead in the water, so to speak, but apparently, I’d underestimated the impact of a really hot guy. Tall and broad-shouldered with the most stunning eyes.

Good thing I’d gotten out of there before I did something stupid.

Like talk to him.

The middle-aged woman he’d been sitting with seemed sweet, commenting on my purse on my way out.

Was she his mom?

If so, that made me like him even more.

A guy that hot taking the time to take his mother to lunch on a random Sunday afternoon?

“Knock it off,” I muttered, stepping out of the hot tub and wrapping myself in a warm towel.

I made my way into the bathroom and got under the warm spray of the shower.

I wasn’t as sore as I’d thought I’d be, but that was probably because of the crutches. The doctor said not to use them—I needed to build up strength in my leg again—but it was so much easier when I was out in public. It also kept me from getting overtired, which was a double-edged sword since I needed to work on walking.

Well, I needed to work on walking without pain.

I could walk.

It just hurt and I was self-conscious as fuck about my limp.

I’d never been self-conscious about anything in my life, not even in my teen years, but now I didn’t want the world to see how far Bailey Walker had fallen.

There was so much speculation about me in the press. Not as much as there had been the first year, but every so often an article would pop up questioning where I was, what I was doing, and why I’d dropped out of the spotlight. I’d gone from award-winning actress on top of the world to rarely leaving my house. The worst part was that the press seemed to think I’d dropped out because my face had been damaged in the crash.

I’d had some lacerations on my cheek from broken glass, but those had healed and a plastic surgeon had stitched me up so you could barely see the scars now.

No, they had it all wrong.

It wasn’t my face that was a problem; it was essentially everything else.

I got out of the shower, put on a pair of warm pajamas, and towel-dried my hair. Then I sat in front of the gas fireplace in the living room staring out at nothing. I should have been working on the screenplay I had in the works, but I didn’t feel like it.

I’d sold scripts for two episodes of a popular medical drama in the last six months, and my agent was pitching the current one, but I wasn’t in the mood to be creative.

Eventually, I’d have to get serious about making money, but not today.

I was okay financially.

My house and the car I never drove were both paid off, but the property taxes alone were more than what people who lived in cheaper cities paid for a mortgage, so the money I had wouldn’t last forever. I got some residuals from different projects I’d done, and I’d had some money left over from the sale of my house in Manhattan Beach after I bought this one. I lived frugally, for the most part, but there wasn’t enough to last me another forty or fifty years. Assuming I lived that long.

No, I had to sell more scripts, or my book.

I had an idea for a movie too, but it was so much easier to think about those things than to actually do them.

My phone buzzed and I looked down to see a text from Sage, whom I hadn’t spoken to in a while.

SAGE: I’m back! Want to do breakfast, lunch, or dinner this week?

I sighed.

She’d been filming a movie in Vancouver for the last six months, so I hadn’t seen her, but she was all over the media right now, and if we went out together, I would be recognized.

BAILEY: Why don’t you come over and we can order in?

SAGE: You’re so stubborn, Bailey. Why can’t we just go have lunch somewhere? You used to love Gladstone’s on the water.

I did.

It had always been my favorite place.

But we’d be recognized there.

It was just too risky.

BAILEY: Next time. I promise. Let’s just catch up here this time. I’ve got a lot to tell you.

She didn’t know about the second script I’d sold or that I’d started pitching my book.

SAGE: Tuesday? I’ll come over around eleven and we can hang out?

BAILEY: Perfect. See you then.

Sage knocked on the door at precisely 10:58 on Tuesday morning, a testament to how much she wanted to see me since she was never early to anything.

“Hey.” I hugged her tightly. “You look great.”

She swung her long, auburn locks over her shoulder and grinned. “Of course, I do. But so do you. How are you?”

“I’m good.” We walked into the kitchen, where I’d set out a brunch spread.

“I thought we were going to order!” she protested, looking around.

“I did,” I said, laughing. “I ordered all the groceries and then put them together the way I wanted to. Bagels, cream cheese, and lox, cinnamon rolls a la Bailey, quiche with bacon, scallions and gruyere, and fresh fruit.”

“Well, it looks fantastic.”

“American coffee, cappuccino, or mimosas?”

“Oooh.” Her eyes widened playfully. “Let’s live dangerously and do mimosas.”

I opened the bottle of champagne while she poured orange juice into the champagne flutes I’d put out.

“So.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “Guess who I got fired from a part?”

“What?” I was momentarily confused.

“Dirk.” She smirked. “He was up for the part of the bartender my character has a one-night stand with. And I told Olivier I wasn’t comfortable with him, that we had a history. So they cast someone else, even though Dirk was supposedly a shoo-in.” Olivier Dumond was the director of the movie she’d just finished.

“Oh.” I grinned. “That’s awesome.”

“I will never not get off on fucking with him,” she said.

I lifted my glass in a toast. “And I will never not get off on hearing about it.”

We clinked our glasses together.

“So tell me your news.”

“I sold another script to the studio for ‘Past Out’ and they want more from me. I’m almost done with two more, so we’ll see if they buy them.”

“That’s great! Congrats.”

“Unfortunately, Simon & Schuster passed on ‘Heartless in Hanoi.’ So that was the last of the big publishers. Now I have to decide if I want to self-publish or rework it and try again. Or write something else.”

“Fuck that. Self-publish it. It’s a great story,” she said.

I’d let both Sage and Lucia read it, and they’d loved it, but I couldn’t be sure they weren’t biased.

“We’ll see.” I took a bite of the quiche I’d made. It was pretty good, if I did say so myself.

“How was Valentina’s birthday party?” she asked.

“Sweet. Chaotic. Exhausting.”

“They’re eight. Did you expect anything less than chaotic and exhausting?”

“No.” I smiled at her across the island. “There was a really cute guy there.”

“Yeah?” She cocked her head. “Did you talk to him?”

“No, but I noticed him.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, you’re a mess, girlfriend.”

“Come on, give me a little credit… I haven’t even looked at a guy since the accident. And this guy, well, he had the most amazing eyes. Bluish-gray, and when he looked at me, I was tongue-tied.”

“But you didn’t talk to him?” She made a face. “I mean, you notice guys on TV all the time. How is this progress?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I thought you’d be entertained by the fact that I was distracted by a real-life guy.”

“I guess it’s better than those fictional knights you spend all your time with.” Sage didn’t understand my love of gaming at all.

“See? That’s my point.”

“You can’t hide forever, Bailey.” She absently twirled her champagne flute. “What happened to you was awful, but you’re okay. You survived. You’re getting healthier every day. There’s no reason for you to stay holed up like this. Everyone knows you were in a terrible accident. What could they possibly say?”

“This is Hollywood,” I said dryly. “A woman who’s physically perfect turns thirty and they have shit to say. Can you imagine how they’ll react to my limp? The scars on my body?”

“No one will ever see the scars on your body, and you can mask the limp with those shoe lifts. You can have them customized for different shoes.”

“I know. It’s just… I’m almost always in pain and walking for any amount of time makes it worse.”

“That’s why you need to have the surgery.”

“Not you too.” I glared at her. “Lucia is up my ass about that all the time and you know I’m done with surgeries.”

“Like I said, you’re stubborn. It could literally change your life.”

“They said that about the last two surgeries too.”

“But this is a new doctor and new technology. It’s an arthroscopic?—”

“I know the details,” I interrupted her. “Can we please drop it? I’m not willing to risk another surgery where I’ll spend another month in rehab, which will cost a fortune I don’t have, to be disappointed yet again.”

“Do you need money?” Sage asked, furrowing her brows.

“No. But there’s nothing new coming in anymore, so I have to be careful what I spend. And a month in rehab is unnecessary.”

“If it helps the limp and improves your pain, you could go back to work. I think it’s totally necessary.”

“You said the magic word—if. If it improves the pain. If it helps the limp. The last three years have been hell. I don’t need any more pain or suffering.”

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll drop it. For now.”

“Thank you.”

“Tell me what else has been going on.”

“Nothing. You’re the one with the exciting life.”

“Eh.” She shrugged. “It’s not that exciting. Mostly, it was a lot of long days of shooting and starving myself, so I’d look good in a bikini. I’m so tired of always being on a diet.”

“You don’t appear to be dieting today,” I pointed out.

She chuckled. “I get a week after a project ends to eat whatever I want, then I’ll start back up with my trainer and go no-carb.”

I remembered those days all too well.

And there was a tiny part of me that missed them.