to point fingers and push me over. There were also hands that were eager to lead me further into temptation, down a path it would be nearly impossible to return from. The hands reaching out to help were few and far between, so they were much easier to ignore.
Needless to say, I didn’t want to go to the hospital with Maren. And yet here I was, striding through the too-white, too-sterile halls as she squeezed my fingers tight enough I was worried my bones might snap.
I couldn’t remember if she mentioned being close to her father back when we worked together. Many of my memories from back then had shifted and altered because of the drug use and my own immature perception of things at the time. I thought I recalled her saying that her dad never wanted her to be an actress, that he didn’t think it was a ‘real’ job. But seeing the way she turned white and nearly passed out on the tarmac, I figured even if the two weren’t necessarily tight, she still cared about him very deeply. Maren was a master at keeping her expressions and reactions under control. It took a lot to rattle her, and even more for her to show her actual emotions to someone else. She’d gotten much better at keeping her professional mask in place in the years we’d been apart. Back in the day, she would let it slip when I pushed her far enough and when I went out of my way to get under her skin. Today, there had been none of that.
Nope. Not even a hint of her true temper showed through that icy façade she’d perfected.
While her attitude and personality seemed to have hardened with time, her outward appearance hadn’t altered as much. Of course, she no longer looked like the girl-next-door, but more like her super sexy older sister. Maren always had kind of a Snow White thing going on. She was on the pale side, rather than being California tan. She only changed her dark hair when it was required for a role. It wasn’t simply brown, but rather one hundred shades that varied from almost black to a shimmery honey. Her eyes were the same. There just weren’t enough names and ways to describe all those colors that shifted and changed with her mood.
Her looks matured right along with her defenses. While I’d started out thinking I could persuade her to change her mind if I appealed to her compassion and the soft core of her heart, I now understood those parts of her were no longer around. It was a damn shame, because that’s what I liked best about her. It was much harder to find a genuinely kind person in Hollywood than it was to find one as naturally stunning as Maren.
We rounded a corner, and Maren dropped my hand as she ran toward a shorter young woman who was pacing in an agitated way near the small waiting area. Maren grabbed the woman by the shoulders and gave her a little shake, demanding, “Where is my dad? Is he okay?”
The younger woman, who had an edgy, spiky haircut that was dyed a variety of colors, looked over Maren’s shoulder in my direction, her eyes widening as I found a wall to prop a shoulder on so I could hover out of the way unobtrusively. I kept my head down to avoid being immediately recognized, but since I was in a t-shirt and all my tattoos were clearly visible, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone stopped and asked me if I was Salinger Dolan. Normally it wouldn’t bother me, but Maren was right about us getting caught together in her hometown. That would be a PR nightmare and, honestly, a much bigger mess for her to clean up image-wise than it would be for me. Not to mention getting caught in a hospital in a city I had no business being in; it would undo all the recent work I’d put into rebuilding my brand and name. Jeno would kill me if a picture of me standing outside an ER leaked right now.
The girl, whom I assumed was Maren’s assistant, clutched the taller woman’s arms and told her in a quiet voice, “He’s in with a cardiologist right now. He’s awake now and able to speak and ask questions. He seems a little bit disoriented and obviously scared. I told him you were on your