The Director (Hollywood Nights) (18 page)

           
Shay could feel her eyebrow arch and
tried to force it and the rest of her face back into a smooth, calm expression.
Jed said, “Now, you two should maybe get to know each other. I need to get some
work done. You have the rest of the afternoon.” He looked down at Shay and
said, “Talk to the kid will ya? I’ll be in the office if you need me. Have
fun.”

           
As soon as he was out of sight Shay
said, “Do you want to do this here or would you prefer the café on the corner?”

           
Bailey looked around the place and
said, “Here is fine. I mean, what is there to say? I work for him, not you. I’ve
been here for five years. You’ve been here for five minutes. I’m not exactly
sure what he wants me to do.”

           
“Well.” Shay moved to sit on the
couch and Bailey took a seat in the nearby chair. She made a mental note to
call Alex Harvey later and thank him for the skills he had taught her. She
wanted to strangle this little brat, but she wouldn’t. “What did he tell you he
wanted you to do?’

           
Bailey rolled her eyes towards the
ceiling and said, “Get to know you. You are apparently the most important thing
in his life now. I don’t know how that happened. I mean I’ve never heard of you
before, and then he goes to California rather than coming
home
to New York. The next thing I know his picture is all over the
place and you’re right there next to him. He shaved. Do you have any idea how
many times I have asked that man to shave?”

           
Shay didn’t want to point out it
wasn’t Bailey’s place to ask him to shave. Maybe she had started out like Frankie
had with Jonas, an assistant with a crush. Maybe the fact that Jonas and
Frankie made headlines as a couple had given Bailey hope. She didn’t know, and
she didn’t care. She did know that if he didn’t care about this young woman he
would have just fired her. He wanted Shay to sort through this. She was going
to give it a try, but that meant cutting through the bullshit, “You have a
thing for him.”

           
Bailey appeared insulted by the
diminished value of her feelings. “I have been working for him for five years.
I pick up his dry-cleaning. I make sure his plants are watered when he is away
for months at a time. I stock his kitchen when he comes home. I know what he
eats, drinks, you name it. I run his errands. I basically do anything he asks
me to do.”

           
“But isn’t that your job?” Shay
tried to ask it gently. Five years was a long time to be attached to someone
without return of emotional connection. It made her wonder.

           
“Yeah, but…” Bailey looked at her
fingernails, at the small painting on the wall by the door. “I got that for
him. It was for his birthday. I saw it and thought it would be perfect for him.
He let me pic the place to hang it. I put there by the door so he could think
of me every day when he left.”

           
Shay looked at the painting. It was
of an old ring with various keys on it. Shay knew two things about the painting
instantly. First, Bailey had hoped he would think of her as the key to his new
life. Second, Jed thought behind it was a good place to hide his extra keys
since that is where he removed them from when he gave Shay a set.

           
“It’s a nice painting.” Shay didn’t
want to break the girl’s heart, but she would if she had to. “How old are you?”

           
“Old enough,” Bailey answered.

           
“That means younger than thirty.”
Shay nodded as Bailey frowned. Of course she was just a kid. “Is it possible
that he looks at you more like a little sister and less like a love interest?
Maybe, just maybe, he thinks about you every time he sees that picture, but not
the way you want him to?”

           
Her little leg started swinging. Her
arms crossed. She was thinking. Putting things together in a way she probably
hadn’t considered before. Shay continued, “I understand. I was your age once. I
liked guys that unintentionally or intentionally led me on. I had a professor I
thought was the best thing since sliced bread because he gave me all sorts of
positive attention, never sexual, but my brain didn’t register that until he
announced one day he was getting married.”

           
Bailey stopped swinging her leg and
said, “Yeah, but right before this last assignment I had a date. I told him the
guy was taking me to the
Iron Kitchen
,
you know, that show where the chefs compete and the audience gets to eat the
food and judge it. Well when I told him that, Jed said, and I quote, ‘I’m
jealous’.”

           
Of course he was, but not for the
reason she thought. “In five years, your boss, Jed, the man who has a chef’s
kitchen custom made for this condo, tells you he is jealous that your date is
taking you to a show where chefs compete and the audience eats, and you take
that one comment to mean he is jealous of the guy not jealous of where you were
going?”

           
Shay might as well have slapped her
for the expression on Bailey’s face. She started thinking, putting it together,
and with a trembling lip said, “Kid. He always calls me kid. I thought it was a
term of endearment, but…”

           
“Awe, Bailey, it is. Just not the
one you want it to be.” Shay sighed. It was tough to be twenty-something, a
knockout, and in love with a good man that didn’t love you back. She didn’t
envy Bailey.

           
“I…have to go. I need to think about
this. I don’t know if I can keep working. I mean…I’m embarrassed, humiliated,
such a fool…” She stood and started for the door. Shay winced as Bailey lifted
the painting and looked at the ring of keys on a nail behind it. She put it
back where it came from and then left sobbing.

***

           
Jed heard the door shut harder than
necessary and figured things did not go too well. He wasn’t sure what was
eating at Bailey today. She was acting weird. He thought she might have needed
some girl talk, but apparently that didn’t work out either. He looked up as
Shay entered the office. He pushed back in the chair and rolled it away from
the desk. “How’d it go?”

           
“Why did you make me break that
little girl’s heart?” Shay propped her hands on her generous hips and frowned
at him. Her green eyes pinned him.

           
“Ah, crap,” he grumbled. “I guess
she is a
lot
lesbian. I wasn’t really
sure, but suspected. That explains all the questions about you though.”

           
“Jed!” Shay’s eyes widened. “She is
not a lesbian! She is in love with you!”

           
He heard the words but couldn’t
really process them. It didn’t make sense. Bailey was a whopping twenty-five
years old. She rarely talked about men, she always talked to him about women,
noticed every woman coming and going that even remotely caught his eye. “That
doesn’t make any sense.”

           
Shay softened towards him. Her look
turned from angry to sympathetic. She made a slight laughing sound and walked
towards him. He extended a hand and she took it. He pulled her to his lap and
hugged her as she placed her head on his chest. She sat like that a moment then
lifted up to talk to him.

She explained, “She is in love
with you. She’s been waiting for you to notice her the way you noticed me.”

“I’ve never noticed anyone the
way I notice you,” he admitted.

Shay pushed her hand through his
hair and said, “She’s heartbroken. She’s a young woman, and a man like you
could make anyone fall in love.”

“A man like me?”

“Yes,” she said and put her head
back on his chest. He held her close and listened. “You’re kind, generous,
funny, and you really don’t know how you affect people Jed Gunner.”

“I guess not,” he admitted.
“She’s a good kid, loyal, trustworthy. There has to be a mistake. She’s like a
little sister; a tiny little Janice with crazy hair, and clothes that are too
bright to look straight at.”

Shay giggled. Then she said it,
“I love you.”

His heart slammed into his chest
and he wasn’t sure if he heard her right. He was afraid he didn’t hear her
correctly so he didn’t respond. He just squeezed her tighter and held on.

Later…

           
“Babe,” he called as he entered the
bedroom. She wasn’t in there, but the bathroom door was closed. He touched the
knob. It was locked. He really didn’t understand what her deal was with the
bathroom. He grew up in a house where taking a leak did not constitute a closed
door.

           
He remembered running to his mother as
a toddler when he scrapped his hands or cut his knees. He remembered vividly
the time both of his siblings were arguing in the bathroom while the poor woman
tried to shower, Jonas age four pulling on one end of Janice’s favorite doll
and Janice at age six on the other. He was eleven. They were screaming, crying,
and slapping at one another. He had just walked in from soccer practice and he had
to round them up and drag them out before she strangled them.

He laughed. Okay, so maybe it was
just a mom thing. They stopped ruining her bathroom time when they were older,
at least he and Jonas did. He’d have to ask his siblings if this was a real
issue. Of course they minded manners in public places, but home was the place
to be comfortable, real. He hadn’t lived with anyone but family unless he was
on assignment. Most of his assignments were around other men. No one paid any
attention to those details.
 

           
Shay found him in the kitchen as he
prepped for dinner. She had taken a nap after Bailey left. Bailey had sent him
a text a few hours later asking if she was fired. He had to ask, “Did you fire
her?”

           
“Who?”

           
“Bailey. She sent me a text asking
if she was fired.” He tasted the sauce.

           
“No,” Shay frowned.

           
“Do you want me to fire her?” He
placed the pot with the finished sauce in it on the back burner of the stove.

           
“Of course not.” She frowned at him.
“She’s embarrassed. She’ll get over it.”

           
“What’s wrong?” he asked. She seemed
a bit off. A bit cranky.

           
“Ugh! I got my period. I was hoping
I could skip it, but I forgot to take the other pill and now it’s here, and I
just feel…evil.”

           
He had forgotten all about that part
of a woman’s life. It explained why she wasn’t disappointed the week he
couldn’t catch up with her when they were back in California. Timing was
everything and after thinking back, he realized her timing had been pretty
perfect to avoid this whole scene until now, when it was unavoidable.

           
“Should you be messing with the
sequence of that stuff? I read somewhere that the older women are the more
likely they are to have complications from birth control. Higher risks of all
sorts of things.” He focused on the final details of preparing dinner.

           
“Like pregnancy?” she quipped.

           
“I…” he started and then stopped.
“Well, when you put it that way.”

           
“I’m sorry,” she said.

           
“Do you want kids?” Now was as good
a time as any. He figured there were a lot of things they needed to cover and
if he learned anything from his younger siblings it was that talking about this
stuff in advance was better than finding it out when it was too late.

           
“I don’t know,” Shay shrugged. “I
don’t know what kind of mom I would be.”

           
“You don’t?” He frowned at her. This
woman had taken care of him when he was sick with the flu. Surely that was an
indication of what kind of mom she would be.

           
She shrugged and said, “I’ve never
really had to think about it. I mean when I was a little girl I used to think
that I would grow up, get married, have two kids, a dog, a cat, and a big house
where I could entertain and…well. I got older, and the idea of prince charming
coming along to sweep my up off of my feet…just.”

           
He tried not to let his feelings get
hurt as she explained herself.

           
“Then I met you,” she said.

           
His bruised ego began to mend itself
a little bit. “And?”

           
“And…I don’t know. I mean some parts
of this seems as easy as breathing. My feelings for you are just…there,
undeniable, indescribable.” Realizing he hadn’t disclosed his thoughts she
added, “What about you?”

           
“So much of this has seemed
impossible to me for so long. I had given up on finding someone to love much
less thinking about the rest of it.” He picked up the pan and shook it, easily
causing the items inside to slide up, out, and flip back into the pan. He sat
it down and turned the burner off. Dinner was done, but this conversation
couldn’t wait another minute. He looked at her and said, “You just started your
career. I wouldn’t want you to give that up.”

           
“I’ve been an extra and I was the
lead in a movie that never had more than ten takes.” She looked at him. He took
a few steps towards her. She started again but he cut her off.