My breath caught.
I’d left the blinds open. My bedroom looked out into the back yard.
Fuck, had they—
Her hand covered mine. “This was earlier this morning, much earlier when I couldn’t reach you, so I called them. They reported you were sleeping when they caught the men and that they’d already cleared them out from near the pool area. They also erected a backdrop just beyond all the privacy foliage on the back of the house, just as another layer against prying eyes.” She handed me my phone. “The report is in your email.”
I released the breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding. “Shit, Mags,” I whispered, finally starting to grasp that this was bigger.
“It’ll be okay.”
“You have to say that,” I muttered, pulling the bacon off, and needing to keep my hands busy, I began chopping ingredients while I gave the bacon time to drain. “It’s your job.”
“That’s true.”
I snorted.
She placed her hand on my back. “She’s fine. You’re fine. We’ll sort this out.”
Not feeling much better, I nodded. It would always feel like this—like the end of the world, like it was the worst thing to happen, like a huge tsunami was cresting my direction and it would swallow me under.
“Fucking paparazzi,” I muttered.
“They are a little annoying when they’re parked outside your front gate.”
I muttered and cursed some more.
A nudge on my back. “Good thing you’re moving.”
I snorted again, but this time it was paired with a chuckle, with an absurd sense of humor. Nothing about this was funny, and yet, what else could I do but find that note of comedy in it? “Property values have to go up. A major event happened out front.”
Mags’ lips twitched. “If only your real estate agent had my PR skills.”
“If only,” I said, grating some cheese. “If she did, I’d probably get double over asking.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” She made a grab for the block of cheese. “Go back to cracking eggs. I think we’re going to need all our strength to come up with a plan to handle this.”
I relinquished the block and grater, took up the eggs again, whisking them until they were fluffy—also chef school for a movie role had seriously helped me in this department. “Don’t you already have a plan?” I asked, ladling some of the prepared eggs into the pan.
An edgy silence.
“What?”
“Sometimes I don’t have it all figured out.”
My stomach sank, and I turned to face her. “Wh—” I cut the question off. “Oh, man, you’re evil.”
She patted my arm, topped the eggs in the pan with some cheese, prompting me to get to work with the peppers, onions, and bacon. “I just don’t want you to feel left out, is all. Sometimes you men like to be involved with all the plotting.”
“Hilarious,” I muttered.
“Aaron seems to think so.”
“Aaron is getting laid on a regular basis,” I grumbled. “It’s rotted his brain.”
“Speaking of getting laid . . .” She trailed off, not leaving any question that she wanted me to finish that statement.
“Do I need to circle back to Tammy and my business is Tammy and my business?”
She held my eyes, and usually, I would have given in.
I was an easygoing guy, for the most part.
My childhood had made my sticking points few and far between—when a kid was just doing his level best to survive, sticking points were really for those who had the luxury to actually have them—but when I had one, I didn’t cave.
No matter what.
I just made sure to only fight battles that mattered.
Shifting my eyes from hers back to the pan, I flipped the omelet and waited.
Not long, because she knew me, knew the truth about my sticking points. She sighed and muttered, “No, you don’t. But Tal—”
“Mags,” I warned.
She pushed on, resting her head on my shoulder. “She’s a good person. She’s been through—” Cutting herself off, she straightened, carried the grater to the sink. “Just . . . please, treat her with kindness. She deserves that and so much more.”
My heart pounded in my chest, the need to delve deeper, to find out what she’d been through great.
But it wasn’t Mags’ story to tell.
It was Tammy’s.
So, I just turned back to the pan, removed the first omelet, and asked, “You think she’ll want the works, too?”
Chapter Fourteen
Tammy
I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.
But once I’d started, once I’d heard Maggie say She’s fine. You’re fine. We’ll sort this out, I hadn’t been able to stop.
At first, I’d thought the sorting out was getting me to leave.
But then I’d heard Tal curse the paparazzi and had remembered the flashes from the night before and quickly realized that the sorting out wasn’t about them trying to get me to do an extra-long walk of shame. Rather, it was about how to navigate the troves of photographers apparently clustered outside.
As I was processing that—wondering what the photographs looked like, wondering how bad it was if they, as people in the industry, were concerned, wondering what my brother would think, what the guys at the department would say at me having saved some big shot—Mags and Talbots’ conversation had grown lighter . . . and I’d been struck mute.
On one hand, I was a little jealous of their obvious closeness. On the other, I was exceptionally touched by the way Talbot had refused to explain himself or our . . . interlude—and I was sticking with calling it an interlude—to Maggie.
He’d said it was something that was between us.
That sounded nice.
To be an us.
I hadn’t really ever been part of an us, not even in my marriage. So, at least, I hadn’t been in an us since I was six years old, and my mom had died. My dad had stepped up, raising my brother and me by himself, but there still hadn’t been an us, still hadn’t been that connection, that closeness. And I’d
