The great thing about Sheila is she can talk the hind leg off a donkey, so I usually only have to nod, smile, or on the phone, grunt in the affirmative. It’s a good relationship. I do my part.

She goes on. “Imagine? No agent and no publicist. What a world, how would you cope? Now, seriously, the shit is hitting the fan. How did I never know what a fuck-face Audrey is? Shit, that bitch is eee-ville-town. How did you manage to tap that so long? To think I even wanted to schtupp her once. Oi vey! So have you seen the picture?”

“What picture?”

“The one of you and that waitress chick all Romeo and Juliet-style on a balcony.”

My blood freezes in my veins. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, if you’d answered your fucking phone or listened to any of my seventeen thousand and two messages, you would know Audrey gave you until today to get in a room with her and Peak to, as she said, “save her reputation,” or she’d take yours down. When she found you before, she had a P.I. track you down at Devon’s. The P.I. hung out having a nice beach holiday and taking lots of gooey pictures. How the hell she got him to not sell the pictures himself is beyond me. That broad is one capable c—”

“All right, already.” My hand is trembling with barely controlled shock and rage. I feel like I … “Hang on.” I’ve managed to drive almost to Devon’s so I pull into a small parking area near a beach access path. I get the door open and gulp a breath of cool Carolina air.

On a balcony?

Son of a bitch.

I know exactly when that was, the morning after we … the day Audrey showed up. Keri Ann had been standing at the open French doors of the bedroom, looking out to the ocean. I remember coming out of the bathroom and seeing her there, re-clothed in the sexy little dress I’d pulled off her body the night before. The morning sun spilled around her, and the ocean breeze was sifting through her hair.

She’d spotted a sea turtle nest and was pointing it out and all I could think about was wrapping her back up in my arms and working out ways to persuade her to spend the whole day in bed with me. I loved the surprise and wonder in her eyes, mingled with her knowing smile that told me she knew what she could do to me, even while she looked unsure. And I loved her gasps and moans and how she suddenly became an expert at taking me from zero to sixty so I had to perform mental gymnastics just to keep from exploding into a hurricane of frantic want.

Instead, I’d wrapped my arms around her and tucked her small body against my bare chest, settling for asking her to come to California. Planting a seed for a future. I could get though the next phase of my life knowing Keri Ann would be at the end of it.

And some asshole had taken that private moment and turned it ugly. And Audrey had seen it, too.

“Anyway, Sunshine,” Sheila rasps from the phone I’ve pulled away from my ear. “You better get your ass over to my office so we can get a statement together before she presses the button on this. She’s going to say she lost the baby from grief over you having an affair, and that’s why she sought comfort from her director. She has a tag on your toe, buddy. The timing of it all is irrelevant, she’ll say those pictures were taken whenever it suits her story, although I’m assuming they were taken the last time you went off the grid and drove me mental.”

Sheila never pauses for breath.

I head down to the beach so I can think and breathe.

She goes on, “She also has footage of you assaulting some guy in a nightclub. Says she’s afraid of you. I’ve told Duane it’s bullshit, it’s not even you in the video, but as you know that’s also kind of irrelevant at this point. Where are you, anyway?”

I make it out onto the sand, it’s almost high tide. I close my eyes for a second. “It is me in that video. And I’m in South Carolina.”

“Fuck me sideways. Can you make my day any worse?”

I snort. “Probably, just give me time.”

“How about after I navigate this mess with the least amount of dings to your persona, we re-negotiate our contract?”

“Fine.”

“I’ll take that as written in blood. Now, how soon can you get back here?”

I think about everything Audrey is threatening. It’s bad. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. The public loves a good scandal. The more convoluted the better. And in the end she is threatening Keri Ann, too. Her privacy. Her reputation. Everything.

I conjure the image of what I’ve just seen at the gallery in my mind’s eye. This is the first of many great things to come for Keri Ann Butler. As long as I don’t ruin it. If I do, she’ll no longer be Keri Ann Butler, Artist … she’ll be my latest conquest and tabloid fodder. The saying there’s no such thing as bad publicity is a crock. For her, there would be. Forevermore, people would assume she became well-known due to her association with me. She’d be stuck in whatever seedy story Audrey spun for eternity. I can’t honestly think of anything worse. For anyone.

“Give me a second.” I waffle between heading back immediately and doing an amended version of what I came here for. Seeing her. But, I can’t go and face Keri Ann’s disappointment in me, and at the same time risk blowing up her entire life. I can’t be that selfish. It’s one thing if I’m going down in flames, but how can I take someone else with me? How can I take her with me? Who knows what story would be spun, what lies would be seeded? I wouldn’t put anything past Audrey. It still stuns me how little I know her.

I take a deep lungful of cool ocean air and open my eyes to the beach. It’s midafternoon and warm for December. I’d love to just run right now and clear my head. Feel the rough sand and surf on the soles of my feet. Then when I was done, I’d head to Keri Ann’s, like that first day when I jogged to her house and she opened the door all sleepy, irritated, and dressed in the tiniest but most innocent looking pajamas I’d ever seen. I’d lost my balance trying to get the door closed and fallen practically on top of her, getting a mainline hit of strawberry shampoo and warm bedroom skin.

I turn and look the other way—down the beach—and my chest thuds. Someone, a girl, is jogging. It’s her. I know it, although she’s way too far away to see clearly. I back up a few steps.

This is her world, her life, and I just keep crashing it.

I understand what I need to do. It might mean I lose her in the end, but it’s the only way to go forward. The only way I even have a shot at making this work. It also occurs to me I’m being a coward, but I swallow that thought quickly.

“Sheila, I’m headed back right now. Can you stall Audrey, or do you need me to call her?”

I turn around and head back along the beach path, and I don’t look back. I start the damn car, turn around, and head back the way I came.

Sheila barks out a hacking cough that has me wincing. “You should probably be the one to call Audrey. Just tell her to wait. Tell her you’ll hear what she has to say. Try not to say anything else like where you are.” She punctuates each word, in case I don’t get it. I do. “Audrey is seriously unhinged right now.”

“Fine,” I tell her. “It’ll be late when I get back … call you first thing.”

“I’ll be on the edge of my seat.”