Untamed: (Heath & Violet) (Beg For It) (26 page)

“What, all that about
Heathcliff?” Sam said the full name like he relished doing it,
using it to mock him in some way. “You bet. Your fuck buddy’s a
diamond mine.”

This wasn’t
happening. “No.” I shook my head. It wasn’t true. I knew as
well as anyone in the business of photographing or filming
celebrities—you could doctor up a photo to make anything look real.
I could show you a picture of Kim Kardashian shaking hands with an
alien looking so real you’d swear it really happened.

“You made it up, Sam.
You didn’t have to do that. We had enough to go with.”

He laughed, hollow and
humorless. “Yeah, you really won them over with your pitch,
Violet.” He shook his head and seemed to think better of sticking
around to talk to me. But as he started walking toward the door, I
stopped him.

“What did you just
do, Sam?”

“I pitched a great
story, Violet.” His words had a razor-sharp edge.

“What did you get
Heath to sign?”

“You got him to sign,
sweetie. It’s your own fault you didn’t look them over.”

“Why didn’t you
tell me?” I shook my head, stupefied.

“You’ve been a
little preoccupied lately. The polite way of saying it would be your
head’s been in the clouds. But you know I’m not polite. Between
you and me, I can say you were fucking around instead of doing your
job.”

I rubbed my face with
my hands, still so shocked I lacked words.

Sam filled the silence.
“It’s not my fault you fell for all that hokey small town crap. I
did my job. I found us a story out in that frozen hell. Now if you’re
smart you’ll pick your jaw up off the table and thank me for saving
your ass. Because you were just about to get shot down real hard and
fast.”

“I should thank you?
For what?” Now I stood up, anger sweeping through me with powerful
force. “For lying to me? For tricking me? For getting Heath to sign
papers that…” The thought of the signed consent form nearly
knocked the wind right out of me again, how I’d handed Heath the
exact legal documents that were now going to subject him to the
prying eyes of Hollywood. No one did exposés like the Fame! Network.
They let nothing stand in their way of getting a good story—not
truth, not decency, nothing.

What had I done? I sank
back into my chair, my knees literally buckling underneath me. Heath,
tucked away in his mountain cabin, thriving on his solitude and
independence. About to have the Hollywood Hounds of Hell unleashed on
him.

“Here’s the thing,
Violet.” Sam stood, hands on his hips at the door. “You’ve got
two choices. You can keep your job and thank me for landing us this
show. Or you can get all huffy and pissy and pack up your shit this
afternoon. Because here’s the thing.”

His voice went all
quiet and menacing as he told me, “I went easy on you just now.
Because I like you. And I think you might be able to convince Heath
to play ball. But if you want to pick a fight, I have no problem with
that. It’ll take me less than five minutes to have everyone in this
office talking about what a little slut you were in that Vermont
town, fucking around with your man candy instead of doing your job.
They all know this exposé’s my idea. I can have you out on your
ass in seconds flat.”

I looked up at him,
wishing I weren’t so shocked. Wishing I wasn’t the stupidest
human being on the planet.

“You think about it.”
He nodded at me. “But don’t take too long.” He closed the door
behind him.

I sat there, the only
one remaining in the conference room, one woman at a long, empty
table. Our building had been given an environmental upgrade over the
past year, and all the lights now worked on motion sensors. I sat so
still for so long that the lights turned off. It seemed like the room
was empty.

And empty was how I
felt, like my insides had been scooped right out and thrown out the
15th story window.

How had I been so
blindsided? How had I worked alongside Sam for the past few weeks
with no idea what he was doing? How had I been blind and stupid and
so off base, actually getting caught up and excited like the Fame!
Network would want to do a corney smalltown Hallmark channel series?

And Heath. Was any of
what Sam said even true? I’d been in this industry long enough to
suspect at least part of it was. That was the genius behind all the
hype—find a kernel of truth to pop into a big balloon of scandal.
Sam wouldn’t have been so excited if he’d made up the entire
thing. He had to know that his facts, at least some of them, checked
out.

Which meant Heath
wasn’t who he said he was. He wasn’t a mountain man living a life
of independence and solitude, carving his own destiny out of wood and
metal. He was Little Lord Fauntleroy, Richie Rich, heir to one of the
greatest fortunes in the United States. He wasn’t an honest,
straight-shooting, small town guy introducing me to life’s simple
pleasures.

I’d been duped, by
both of them. I’d thought I was falling in love, the star of a
Lifetime Channel movie about a city girl who lets her hair down and
ends up with the country boy she never dreamed she’d fall for.
Turned out I was in another movie entirely. This was one of the kinds
I didn’t like, where one of the main characters rips off a mask
halfway through and reveals himself to be an evil villain. This was a
social satire, not a romance, where everyone was laughing at the main
character instead of rooting for her. I was in an indie flick
brimming with ridicule and satire.

And worst, maybe worst
of all was the way Sam had used me to get exactly what he wanted.
He’d gotten me to get Heath to sign the paperwork, agreeing to be
the center of an exposé.

At some point, I’d
have to stand up. Eventually, I’d regain the feeling in my legs and
I’d then be able to use them to move myself out of the dark
conference room. But until then, I sat there, silent and still,
hoping for another crazy plot twist. Maybe Sam would run in with his
pants on fire and reveal he was a schizophrenic pyromaniac? Maybe a
Marvel Comic hero would burst through the window, explaining we were
under attack?

But the longer I sat
there, the more clear it became: nothing was as it had seemed. And
any way I looked at it, the reality I now faced was all kinds of
ugly.

Heath

When I stepped out of
my cabin and the flash of a camera bulb burned my eyes, at first I
didn’t know what was happening. It didn’t even register that it
was a camera flash. I’d thought it was the sunlight hitting me
strong, or maybe a heavy-duty flashlight someone was shining in broad
daylight.

But then a guy stepped
out from behind a tree, snapping away.

“What the fuck?” I
roared, throwing an arm across my face, turning back to head inside.
I hadn’t had a lot of experience with paparazzi—that was my
rockstar brother Ash’s cross to bear—but I’d had a little. You
didn’t get away with being billionaire Richard Kavanaugh’s son
without getting hounded by cameras from time to time. In my
experience, it had always been at exactly the wrong time.

Like when my mother had
had her breakdown. That was the first time I remembered guys popping
out of alleyways with cameras, when my mother and the rest of her
Upper East Side clique had discovered my father had had an
out-of-wedlock lovechild. She’d taken to wearing large dark Jackie
O sunglasses even around the house and started jumping with fright
anytime anyone entered a room.

“Leave us alone!” I
remembered my mother shouting, mascara-drenched tears staining her
cheeks as she battered some camera hound with her Chanel handbag. I’d
only been nine at the time, too young to understand fully what was
going on. Then the cameras had come back a year and a half ago, after
dad had died, honing in on his funeral with telescopic zoom lenses.

Now they were outside
my cabin in Vermont. Was Ash in town for a visit?

I grabbed my phone from
my back pocket. I’d shoved it in there, but hadn’t checked. Must
have had my ringer off. I saw I had five text messages and four
missed calls, about a week’s worth from just this morning. Huh.

Before I could click on
any of them, my phone rang right in my hand. It was Nelson, the
Kavanaugh family attorney. That never meant anything good.

“What’s up,
Nelson?” I asked, getting right to it. Had someone died?

“We have a
situation,” he began. I sat down. Situations that required
explanations from family attorneys were best taken sitting with a
drink in hand. I didn’t have a drink, but I did have a chair.

“Tell me.” I didn’t
want him to mince words.

“It seems a TV
network has plans to feature you in an exposé. They ran a promo
earlier today.”

“Huh.” I still
didn’t connect the dots. My mind was moving too slowly.

“They’re known as
the Fame! Network?”

“What?” I stood up.

“They’ve run a
30-second promotional video. You may as well view it. I’ve texted
it to you.” I scrolled over to my text messages and clicked on the
video he’d sent.

A voiceover began with
a montage of footage, blending shots of me in my workshop with photos
of my family, from my past. “Hot Off The Grid,” the cheesy
narrator voice began, flashing footage of me wielding a blowtorch, or
shirtless and sweaty from a workout. “Heathcliff Kavanaugh. Heir to
billions. Royalty. Brother of rockstar Ash Black.”

I swore and wanted to
throw the phone across the room and smash it into bits, but that
wouldn’t change any of this. And I needed to watch it and see just
how bad it was.

“He’s hidden
himself away in a tiny town in Vermont. What does he have to hide?”
The promo continued with a few images from Ash’s scandal days, and
then the real kicker: the headline from a newspaper announcing my
father’s death. Implying I was somehow linked to his untimely
passing. From stomach cancer.

I wasn’t holding a
drink, but if I had been I would have smashed it to the ground. As it
was, I banged my fist so hard on the table I heard a crack. Might
have splintered one of the legs. I’d deal with that later.

First I had to Hulk
smash whoever was responsible for this shit. It couldn’t be Violet.
Could it? Fuck all, this was a fucking mess.

“Get it the fuck
down!” I yelled, kicking the wall for good measure.

“Yes, I filed a cease
and desist approximately two minutes after the video was brought to
my attention.”

I nodded. Good man.

“But apparently
you’ve signed a consent form,” Nelson added. “So it’s going
to be somewhat more difficult.”

“I what?”

“You’ve signed a
consent form for them to do the show.”

“No!” My voice
thundered out in protest. I’d never head of such bullshit. I’d
never have done that.

“I’ve scanned and
sent the image of that as well,” Nelson added calmly, apparently
having anticipated my response.

I clicked to open and
damned if I didn’t see the fucking papers fucking Violet had
fucking given to me the night before she’d flown back to L.A. The
papers she’d told me the Fame! Network needed to air footage of the
shop downtown. They wanted to feature the local artwork, she’d told
me. I roared like a lion shot with a gun.

“I’m assuming from
your reaction that this was not your intent when you signed the
papers.” Nelson was British, through and through, and as such he
kept calm and carried on even in the face of violent outbursts.

“I had no idea I was
giving them consent to film me,” I growled.

“Yes, I assumed as
much.” Nelson gave a slightly disapproving tut tut. “I must urge
you, Heathcliff. Never sign any documents without giving them to me
first for a thorough review.”

“It wasn’t…I
didn’t…” I rubbed my forehead in my hands, knowing I had only
myself to blame. I’d let myself get sucker-punched. There was no
other way of looking at it.

“Never fear, I will
find a way,” Nelson assured me, unflagging in his placid
determination. “There’s absolutely no question of them filming
that exposé. As for the promo video…” I could almost picture him
giving a subdued shrug of his British shoulders. “That is out in
the world. I can get them to remove it from the network’s website,
but it’s making its rounds through social media and there’s no
stopping it now.”

“Fuck!” I drove my
palm into the wooden wall, making a couple of books fall off of a
shelf.

“Yes, well. I’ll
leave you to it,” Nelson prepared to sign off. “Speak to no one.
Sign nothing. And call your mother.”

The first two
directives I had no problem with. It was the third that got me. I
winced. If anyone hated the spotlight more than me, it was my mother.
Publicity had been the straw that broke her back, the cause of her
midlife breakdown. Without the paparazzi, she would have simply had a
broken heart when news of her husband’s infidelity broke. Caught in
the spotlight, her sadness blew up into full-scale nuclear meltdown.
Unable to even parent her children, she’d sent us all off to our
grandmother in England for two years. She hated, absolutely loathed,
how Ash had turned that spotlight back onto our family. Now I’d
done it, too.

“I’ll be in touch
by the end of the day,” Nelson said, ending our call.

Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck. I
checked my call log. I’d missed one from Ash, one from my mother.
One from Dave, which might be about the upcoming hockey game but
probably wasn’t. Word was probably getting around town even out
here in the wilderness. Someone had seen that promo and sent it to
someone else and the news was passing, growing, multiplying like a
disease.

The fourth and final
call, just twenty minutes ago, was from Violet. And my phone went
sailing across the room. It crash-landed on the couch cushions and I
guessed maybe later I’d be happy I didn’t break it, but just then
I wanted the satisfaction of it bursting apart into tiny splinters.