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“They can’t fire you, can they?” It didn’t make a lick of sense to him. It was a couple of photos that could be easily explained. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Even the perception of scandal can put the movie’s profits at risk,” she murmured as she got up and reached for her robe. “This is a film about a father and a daughter. I know it’s dumb because it’s a story. It’s fiction. But a relationship between me and Gavin could make this film have an ick factor that would doom it at the box office.”
He watched her, his eyes taking in every inch of that gorgeous body. She was breathtaking, and he knew he was risking more than mere heartache. He was going to miss her the rest of his life.
“Well, my agent called five times,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose I should listen to the messages.”
“Or you could come back to bed and take a little more time.”
She took a long breath. “I think I would rather get it over with so I can move forward with other plans.”
He was certain those plans would include going home to LA. “Would it help at all if I did some press with you?”
She put the phone to her ear. “They would simply say I brought you in for cover. You would be my bayou beard, so to speak.” She chuckled and then put the phone back down. “Well, that answers that question. Gavin was right. The studio has already reached out to ask me to step back given the bad press around me. Not us. Me. They still think Gavin has box office potential. They’re paying my contract, but they would like for me to willingly walk away. For the production’s sake. My agent says she’ll find another project, but I shouldn’t think the rom-com I was supposed to start after this one won’t do the same thing. She’s talking to them later today.”
He didn’t understand it at all. “Why would they still want Gavin but not you?”
“Probably because he’s got a solid box office record, and they paid him about two million more than me,” she replied, putting the phone down again. “No one will care, and in the long run, it’ll be one more thing to sell his eventual autobiography. If I don’t come out and say he forced me into something—which of course he didn’t—it will blow over for him.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Hollywood isn’t a fair place.” She sat back on the bed.
“Brynn, why won’t it blow over for you?”
She shrugged. “It probably would. Eventually. Especially if I stay out of Gavin’s life and he stays out of mine, but that seems sad. I don’t know when I’ll be able to let go of being angry with my mom. I’m angry with him, too, but I can’t see myself staying angry forever. I don’t want to lose the only family I have. But by the time the scandal blows over, the damage to me will be done. I don’t have an established adult career. Watch for it. In the next few weeks there will be lots of stories about how I’m one more damaged child star. It’s a narrative that sells.”
His heart ached for her. She’d worked all her life and one set of pictures could take it all down? “You can fight it.”
She shifted, her back against the headboard. “What if I don’t want to?”
“So you’ve decided to go to Paris?” He wanted to argue with her about her career, but she loved art, too. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea for her to get away.
“Or I could stay here for a while,” she said, a ghost of a smile on her face.
He forced himself to sit up. The idea of her staying here was everything he wanted. And absolutely nothing he could have. He couldn’t be the reason she gave up on her dreams. “Brynn, you have the chance to study art. Why would you give that up? Unless they took that away from you, too.”
“No. I’m sure the offer is still open, but I think it likely will be open to me next year, too. If I’m good enough now, I’ll be better then. And if the offer isn’t on the table in a year, I’ll know the offer was about Gavin and not me.”
He couldn’t believe she would turn this opportunity down. “Or you take the chance and prove them all wrong.”
“What if I’m tired of constantly proving myself?” Brynn asked, her voice weary.
That weariness was exactly the problem. “Yes. You’re tired. You probably shouldn’t make any decisions right now.”
She shook her head. “No. I think this has been a long time coming. I think it was always going to happen, and I’m going to accentuate the positive. I’m going to stay here in Papillon. I’ll let Mom and Ally stay at the house in LA, and I’ll get a place here. I can’t stay in the cabin long-term. I’ll need some place with a kitchen and maybe a second bedroom I can set up as a studio. Is it weird that I’m kind of excited about buying dishes and stuff? I didn’t get to do that when I bought the place in LA. It came fully furnished. I never got to decorate a dorm room. I kind of want to go to Walmart and see how I can do this on the cheap.”
