She nodded. ‘Of course. I’m going to see my sister get married.’
‘You know she cancelled my flight?’ he said. ‘I got the notification yesterday and the refund today.’
‘Makes sense, given that we’re no longer getting married. Unless you were still planning to tag along?’ There was a challenge in her words, and he didn’t meet it.
Instead, the shake of his head gave the answer. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Didn’t think so,’ she retorted. A mixture of anger and anxiety took over and she knew she had to get out of there.
Deciding to leave everything else behind, she grabbed the handles of the holdall, ready to flee.
‘Kara, don’t go. I’m asking you, please. Don’t throw away eight years of our lives. Stay here and work through this.’
‘For the sake of your favourite client or for me?’
‘For us.’
She stared at him for several seconds, before blurting out the thought that was right at the front of her mind. ‘There is no “us”, Josh. You showed me that the other night. Tell me something – did you come straight here after me today, or did you take the meeting with Corbin and HR first and then come here?’
‘Oh for God’s sake…’ he replied, agitated. ‘Look, I had to stay and be professional. I couldn’t just go running out after my girlfriend.’
All she wanted to do was curl into a ball and sob, but she managed to make her voice work. ‘Your ex-fiancée. The one you let down. And you just did it again.’
‘Okay, okay, I get it. At least give me a chance to sort this.’ His voice was raised when he said that, and Kara could tell that he was transitioning along the emotional scale from pleading and semi-remorse to frustration and irritation.
‘Tell me something else, then, Josh – if I agree to stay with you and get married as planned, will you drop the studio and Corbin Jacobs as your clients and stick up for me instead?’
She held her breath. In three days’ time, they had been supposed to make their vows to each other.
‘In sickness and in health.
For richer and poorer.’
She was about to find out if the next line was:
‘Forsaking all others, including corporate clients and misogynistic scumbags.’
11
OLLIE
He’d been back home for ten minutes, and he still hadn’t opened the video that purported to be a scandalous snippet of his wife doing some real-life close and personal stuff with Van Weeks, the actor who had played her love interest in the play that had just closed.
Calvin had offered to come in with him and handle the press, but much as he’d appreciated the offer, Ollie had declined. He had his own people for that, without putting demands on his old friend. His agent, his manager and his PR team – all of whom were based in LA and received a generous percentage of his earnings – were already blowing up his phone, and he was ignoring them all because he didn’t want to deal with any of them until he understood exactly what was going on.
And the truth was, if he was going to witness something devastating, he would rather do it alone and when he was ready. That’s why he’d come in, tossed his jacket on the coat stand, gone to the ridiculously well-stocked bar in the corner of his living room and grabbed a bottle of Budweiser from the self-service beer fridge. A Jack Daniel’s or a shot of whisky would probably be more effective, but he wasn’t a hard spirits kind ofguy, so they’d only make this worse. As would a DUI, and he needed to drive to the airport later. One beer was going to have to be the limit.
After throwing back a slug of lager, he took the drink over to the kitchen island and leaned his elbows on the marble, holding his phone in front of him. With a churning stomach and an all-consuming feeling of dread, he pressed play.
The first thing that came into focus was a stranger, someone he’d never seen before in his life. It was a woman, maybe early twenties, sitting in what looked like an airplane seat in the business-class section of an airplane. He had an immediate flash of relief – Sienna only ever flew first class. That was followed by a second flash of dread as he remembered her complaining when she booked the flight that it was the only time that suited her schedule, and it didn’t have a first-class cabin so she was going to have to slum it in business.
Shit. Back to the screen. The person filming was staring directly into camera, eyebrows raised as she mouthed three words. He didn’t need a lip reader to confirm what she was saying. OH. MY. GOD. Then, ramping up the suspense, she moved the phone away from her face and began slowly turning it to her right, so that the passengers in the row one behind her, on the other side of the aisle, came into focus. A woman, her body partially turned away from the camera so that she was facing the guy in the window seat. Ollie’s trepidation escalated another few notches as he focused on the woman – white T-shirt, black leather jeans, the same ones he’d bought for his wife when they had a session with a personal shopper at Bergdorf’s a few weeks ago. But what he hadn’t ordered was the hand that was trailing up and down her back. Or the other hand, that was clearly cradling her neck as the couple kissed, and kissed, and yep, they were still kissing.
Desperate to drag his eyes away from the woman, he switched his focus to the guy. He was wearing a beanie pulled down low, and gradient glasses that partially hid his eyes. His arms were muscular, his shoulders wide, and Ollie was pretty sure that grey T-shirt was Tom Ford. And he was almost definite that it had been another of his wife’s purchases on that personal shopping trip. She’d claimed it was a gift for her brother. Ollie now doubted it had ever made its way back to her brother’s penthouse in West Hollywood. He checked out the jaw, the colour of the tiny wisps of blond hair that were sticking out of the black wool hat. Ollie immediately recognised him.
Van Weeks wasn’t a huge star. He’d done a few pilots, had a couple of minor TV roles, but he was far better known in the theatre world. Chances were, the average person on a flight wouldn’t know who he was. No, the star attraction here was Sienna Montgomery, former child star and member of the Montgomery family dynasty, as recognisable as the Fondas, the Sutherlands or the Baldwins.
That was confirmed by the caption underneath the clip.
