Gwynneth Ever After (16 page)

If they
had
a relationship.

Or should have one.

“The film is already behind schedule, Gareth,” Angela reminded him, “and your contract says – ”

“I know what my – ” He broke off mid-growl. Inhaled. Exhaled. Tried again. “I know what my contract says.”

“Then you’ll go.”

“Do I have a choice?” What the hell, maybe a little time and distance would give him a fresh perspective.

Standing, Angela smoothed her skirt.

“Good,” she said briskly, her tone adding
it’s about time.
“You pack what you need and I’ll take you out for lunch. It’s only noon now, and we’re booked on the eight o’clock flight, so we have plenty of time – ”

“No way.” He shook his head. “Not today. I have some business here I need to see to first.”

Putting time and distance between him and Gwyn was one thing, leaving without saying goodbye was quite another.

“Damon wants you in the studio first thing Monday morning.”

“I’ll take the red-eye tomorrow night.”

“And go to work straight from the airport?” Angela raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“I’ve done it before.”

“When you were twenty, maybe.”

“I can handle it, Angela.”

She eyed him for a moment, then sighed. “Fine, I’ll change your flight. Then
you
can buy
me
lunch to make up for dragging me all this way just because you couldn’t return a phone call.”

The corner of Gareth’s mouth twitched. “Deal. There’s a phone in the kitchen.”

Angela looked down at the phone on the table by the couch, then back at him again. One slender eyebrow rose. “In the kitchen,” she repeated. She shrugged. “That’s where I’ll be, then.”

But she turned at the kitchen doorway, catching him with his cell phone already in his hand. She looked pointedly at the instrument. “Is that the reason this trip is so inconvenient?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you going to tell me about her over lunch?”

“No.”

Chapter 21

The phone rang, shattering what little concentration Gwyn had managed to scrape together. She stared at it for several long seconds, finally reaching for the receiver on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“You sound tired.”

The voice she’d been hoping not to hear, though the leap of her heart would indicate otherwise. She removed her glasses and dropped them onto the desk beside her keyboard. “Gareth...I didn’t expect...”

“Gave up on me, did you?”

“Yes – I mean no.” Gwyn dropped her forehead into her palm and rested her elbow on her desk. Who was she kidding? She didn’t know what she meant anymore. But she could fake it.

“Of course not,” she said firmly. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

The word
liar
hung so heavily in the air between them, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find it had been spoken aloud. Or that she’d done the speaking.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Not really. I’m trying to get in a bit of work while it’s quiet, but it’s not going very well.” Gwyn pushed away the sketches that had so far refused to translate themselves into anything coherent in her CAD program.
 

“How did you manage time for work? Did you lock them all in their rooms?”

“Nothing so drastic, although I’ll admit the idea has crossed my mind. Kirsten was able to come over for a few hours to keep them occupied for me. They’re reading stories.”

“And here I was starting to think I was indispensable.”

You are.

Gwyn forced a light note into her voice to match his teasing. “’Fraid not. But you were a great help, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Marginally.” A pause, then he cleared his throat. “I wanted to see you today.”

The shift in topic squeezed the air from her lungs in a little hiss.

Gareth continued as if he hadn’t heard the sound. “Unfortunately I have company until later this evening. My agent flew in with a message for me, and her flight doesn’t leave again until eight.”

Her
flight?

Gwyn gave her green-eyed devil a mental whack on the head. “Your agent hand delivers your messages?”

“Only when I don’t return her phone calls,” he said wryly. “Anyway, the point is that I have to go back to L.A. for a few days. The sound on some of the scenes got fouled up and they need me to do some dubbing for them.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, she cast about for a more suitable response than the desperate
please don’t go
that hovered on her lips. Nothing. She had nothing. She bit her lip and waited.

“I leave tomorrow night,” Gareth said. “I want to see you before I go.”

“I – I – ”

“I don’t know what time I’ll get back from taking Angela to the airport, so tomorrow might be better than tonight. May I come for lunch?”

It took forever to work the words past the lump in her throat. “I don’t think – ”

“Actually, you think too much,” he interrupted gruffly. “It’s only lunch, Gwyn. You, me, the kids...friends, I promise.”

Friends? Was that possible?

“I – ” she tried again.

“I know you don’t like fast food for the kids, but I can bring something a little healthier. Pizza?”

If you married Gareth, he’d be my daddy...

“No.”

Silence met the harsh, strangled word.

“No pizza, or - ?”

“I can’t, Gareth.”

“All right, then. Dinner. Without the kids.”

She shook her head for several seconds before she remembered he couldn’t see her. “I can’t,” she whispered again.

Gareth’s sigh bespoke his frustration. “You’re a stubborn woman, Gwyn Jacobs. Fine. You win for now, but only because I don’t have time to argue with you. I’ll call you before I leave tomorrow. And, Gwyn?”

“Yes?” She covered her mouth with her free hand. Had she really just squeaked?

“If you don’t answer the phone, I’ll come and see you in person.”

Chapter 22

Gareth jolted awake as something thudded onto his torso. “What the - ?”

He propped himself up on one elbow and stared at the newspaper sitting on him. The cordless phone joined it. He looked up at Sean, standing bleary-eyed beside the bed.

“Just for the record, you might tell her that it’s Sunday, it’s six a.m., and it’s my bloody day off,” his cousin muttered, shuffling back towards the bedroom door.

Gareth rubbed a hand over his eyes, wiping away the remains of sleep. “Tell who?”

“Catherine. She’s on the phone. And apparently you’re on the front page.”

The door slammed behind Sean with a force that made Gareth wince. He dropped his head onto the pillow again, closed his eyes, and drew a long, bolstering breath. His ex-wife at six a.m. on Sunday. Oh, joy.

He fitted the receiver to his ear. “Good morning, Catherine.”

“We had a deal.” Her voice, unusually husky for a woman, might have been beautiful if it didn’t have that constant edge to it.

“Which one?” he asked dryly. To call Catherine demanding was a definite understatement, and at this point she’d extracted so many promises from him – most of which he’d come to regret – that he honestly needed specifics.

She ignored his question. “Have you seen today’s paper?”

He peered at the newspaper, still sitting where Sean had dropped it. “I’m looking at it now.”

“You weren’t supposed to let anyone know you were here.”

Gareth levered himself upright and stuffed a second pillow behind his bare shoulders. He held the receiver against his ear with his shoulder, unfolded the paper, and scanned the front page. “I was bound to be seen by someone,” he pointed out. “What did you expect me to do, hide in Sean’s apartment until you deigned to let me meet Amy? Our deal was for me to keep a low profile, not turn invisible.”

There it was. A tiny corner story at the bottom, all of a dozen lines long. He almost choked. “For God’s sake, Catherine, if you blinked, you’d miss it.”

“It’s still there.”

“Right.
Rumor has it that actor Gareth Connor is in town,
” he read aloud. “
The actor has been spotted in two area restaurants this week, accompanied by an unknown woman.
..give me a bloody break. There’s nothing concrete here – they even came right out and said it was a rumor!”

“It will still have the entire city watching for you, and you know it.”

“If you think that you’re going to use this as an excuse – ” he growled.

“Given the chance, I certainly would,” she snapped back. “Unfortunately, it’s not my decision.”

“What do you mean?”

“I talked to Amy. She wants to meet you.”

Gareth clenched the newspaper in his fist. A dozen emotions swept through him and settled in his middle. He fought past the tangle they formed. “She knows?”

“Of course.”

“You told her over the phone?”

“Well, I couldn’t very well demand that she come home from Europe to meet a strange man without some kind of explanation, could I?” Catherine responded sourly. “She’ll be home a week Tuesday.”

Still digesting the realization his daughter knew about him, Gareth scowled. He had to wait more than another week? He’d be done by Friday, Angela had told him, which put him back here on Saturday at the latest. He’d have the whole weekend to –
 

A vision of auburn hair and dancing blue eyes floated to mind and he bit back an oath of surprise. Damn, but thoughts of Gwyn surfaced easily. He forced his attention back to his ex.
 

“What time does she arrive?”

“She’ll let me know when her flight is booked. I’ll call you then.”

At her own convenience, no doubt.

“Please do. Was there anything else, or can I go back to sleep now?”

“Still a late riser, are you?”

Catherine had always risen at five in the morning. In the course of their short marriage, she’d done her level best to convert him, claiming that sleeping past that hour was akin to sloth. It had been one of the many bones of contention between them.

“As lazy as ever.” He didn’t bother to stifle a yawn. “It’s probably why my career’s never amounted to much.”

His ex-wife gave a pained sigh. “Very amusing, Gareth. There is one more thing...”

“What?”

“She wants to talk to you. Today. She’s going to call my cell phone at lunch.”

Amy wanted to talk to him?

But he wasn’t ready.

Gareth’s heart stuttered. Sixteen years he’d been preparing for this moment, and he was nowhere
near
ready.

Catherine cleared her throat.

Keep it together, Connor. You can panic when you’re off the phone.
 

He didn’t dare let Catherine see – or hear – the slightest hint of uncertainty. She’d only find some way to use it against him. He frowned.

“Why can’t she call me here?”

“Is that how you want to play the game now? You’ve broken one promise, so you think you can toss all the others aside, too?”

He gritted his teeth. Right. He’d agreed to have Catherine present the first time he talked to Amy. Another promise made, and another regretted. He sighed.

“I’m not playing games, Catherine. If it’s that important to you, fine. Where do you want to meet?”

“Well, now that you’ve made sure that everyone knows you’re in town, I suppose we’d best meet somewhere out of the way. There’s a restaurant in a little town called Chelsea on the Quebec side of the river. If you take Highway 50 to the exit, then turn left and follow the signs toward Kingsmere, you’ll find it just after you turn off the main road. It’s called L’orée du Ruisseau – ”

Gareth choked on an inhale.

“You know it?” Catherine asked.

In an instant, he sat across from Gwyn again, hair tumbled about her shoulders in a wild disarray that begged a man to become entangled in it; her red dress, modestly cut but sexier than any strapless number he’d ever laid eyes on...

“I said, do you know it?”

He closed his eyes. “I know it.”

“I’ll make reservations for noon.”

Gareth disconnected. Dropping the receiver onto the floor beside the bed, he rolled over. He’d barely closed his eyes again – and hadn’t even begun to sort through the hundred million thoughts bouncing about his brain – when a pillow whacked into the back of his head.

“Coffee’s on,” Sean informed him from the doorway.

“I thought you were going back to sleep.”

“After talking to your ex? I’d have nightmares. What did she want?”

“Other than to give me hell about all four square inches of newspaper article? Amy’s agreed to meet me.”

A long pause ensued. Then, “I’ll see you in the kitchen.”

Chapter 23