Throb(9)
“Yes, ma’am. Watching your face is better than getting a foot massage myself anyway.”
chapter three
Cooper
Early afternoon sunlight streaks in through the tall windows in my office, a ray landing directly on the shelf against the wall where my father kept his most coveted prizes. Nine Academy Award statues, a picture of my mother smiling on the beach in Barbados, and a framed photo of me, Dad and Miles on a fishing trip in Alaska.
My father beams proudly, standing between Miles and me, both of us holding up king salmon. I was probably eleven or twelve, Miles six or seven. It was the summer after our father divorced Miles’s mother.
My mother, Rose, had been the love of Jack Montgomery’s life. But a tragic car accident tore her from us not long after I was born. Her untimely death left my father reeling … and raising a six-month-old son on his own.
Although my father never truly got over Rose, a few years later, desperate to fill the void and find a mother figure for me, he met, and quickly wed, a beautiful, budding young actress. The first few years were marital bliss—my father was thrilled when Courtney gave birth to Miles less than a year into their marriage. Unfortunately, it didn’t take much longer than that to realize Courtney was more interested in partying and an acting career than mothering their two children. She began making the rounds at all the usual Hollywood parties, the Montgomery name opening doors for her like a magical key. For the sake of his children, Dad tolerated her late nights and overindulgence in a lifestyle she wasn’t accustomed to—until he discovered she was carrying on an affair with a twenty-three-year-old unemployed wanna-be rockstar.
When they divorced, Dad took full custody in exchange for a substantial financial payout to Courtney. She disappeared on a worldwide tour with her rockstar and never looked back. Although Dad loved both of us fiercely, Miles somehow resented my mother. And over the years, that resentment spread to me—the child of our father’s precious Rose.
“This is from today,” Helen says as she hands me a DVD. “Miles brought it over himself an hour ago. Said to tell you tonight is the first stranded date.” She stops on her way out, turning back to me. “He seemed a little anxious.”
I bet he is. After a tense two-hour meeting with the president of the stagehands’ labor union , I’m really not in the mood for more of Miles’s reality crap. But I pour myself a late afternoon drink and pop the DVD into my Mac anyway. I watch the first few minutes, dreading the conversation I’m going to have with my brother when I tell him I’m not giving him the loan he needs.
It’s no secret that Mile High Films is struggling financially since the split five years ago, but I had no idea how bad things were until I made a few calls this morning. My brother owes half of the film industry’s biggest suppliers a ton of cash. If it were any other film house, the credit would have dried up months ago, but the Montgomery name carried him far. Now the name is almost all he has left … aside from this show he’s banking on.
The contents of the crystal tumbler burn as the liquor slides down my throat in one hefty medicinal gulp. I lean back in my chair, closing my eyes for a few minutes as Miles’s daily feed drones on from my computer. The alcohol seeping into my blood, I actually begin to relax for a minute.
Then I hear her voice.
My eyes jar open. I’m positive it’s her before I even look up at the screen to confirm it. All morning, my mind has drifted back to her over and over again.
Her hair’s wet, slicked back from her face, and she has no makeup on, but I’m sure just from the sound of her laugh. A tall, thin-but-solid, tattooed, longhaired guy stands next to her in the pool. The filming doesn’t pick up what they’re whispering, but I can tell that he’s flirting with her. The way he looks at her, watches her mouth move, stealing glances at her perfect tits on display in her bikini top. I have no idea why, but it pisses me off. A fuck of a lot.
Sitting up in my chair, I move closer to the monitor and turn up the volume, hoping to eavesdrop on their conversation. But all I can hear is a bunch of complaining, whiney women in the background, standing around lounge chairs. The tatted rock-and-roll-looking guy in the pool says something and lifts one eyebrow. What the fuck did he say? I rewind, but still can’t make it out. So I do it again. And then again. Each time getting more annoyed watching that stupid eyebrow raise as he grins at Kate.
I speed up the parts where Kate isn’t on the screen, stopping each time she reappears. And when I come to a shot of her getting a foot massage, I feel like breaking something.