own life. But we’re going to protect you.”
“I’ll take the bodyguard, I’ll use a car and driver. I won’t go anywhere alone. For now, it’s here and the studio.”
“Now I’m pissed off all over again.” Her face stony with rage, Lily dropped into a chair. “The girl’s hitting eighteen now, Hugh, for Christ’s sake. We should all be worried about the bad boy she thinks she’s in love with, the clubs she’s sneaking into.”
“I hope to get to all that.” Cate managed a smile. “Maybe a little late on the schedule.”
While Cate focused on preproduction, Charlotte made the circuit.
God, she’d missed the cameras, the lights, the attention. It didn’t matter when she sat in hair and makeup before her segment on a talk show whether she felt disapproval or fascination in the air.
She was on!
She knew how to play the part. After all, she’d had seven years to refine it. Remorse over what she’d done, grief over what she’d lost, the faint, shaky hope for a second chance.
And just a thin line snaking through that pushed the real guilt on Denby and Grant.
They’d lied to her, terrified her until she’d done a terrible thing.
Before her interview—a third-tier gossip rag, but cover story—she perused her wardrobe.
She needed new clothes, a star’s wardrobe, but at the moment, she needed to stick with the simple. Not quite dull, she thought, scowling at the meager selection in the small closet in the crap house she rented. She could never go all the way to dull, but simple, clean lines, no flash had to do for now.
So . . . the black leggings—she’d worked out like a fiend in prison to keep her shape—the scoop-neck tunic in soft blue.
No bold colors.
Laying out the choices, she sat down at the desk—the crap house came furnished—she used as a makeup table, switched on the good makeup mirror she’d invested in.
She needed a flash tan, but the pallor worked for now. As soon as she could spare a couple weeks, she’d have a little work done. Nothing drastic, but she was sick and tired of looking at the lines.
As with the mirror, she’d invested in good skin care products, good makeup. It didn’t pay to be cheap. And she’d made a little extra doing makeup for other inmates on visiting days.
She spent an hour perfecting her face. The pure, no-makeup look took skill.
While she dressed, she rehearsed—and she plotted. This current run of interviews and appearances wouldn’t last. She’d have to take one of the offers on her table. Lean pickings—straight to video for two, and the third wanted her to play some lunatic in a B slasher that had her cut to ribbons in the first act.
Bullshit on that.
Maybe she could find a way to juggle both other offers, get things rolling again. And that would boost up more press.
Make some connections. If she could find a man who’d back her career—and get her out of this crap house—she’d really be riding again.
An old, rich man, she considered. All you had to do? Lay them right, and you lived like a queen.
She couldn’t get pregnant this time to pull another man into marriage—too late in the game for that even if she could stomach the idea of another kid. But sex, with generous doses of flattery, adoration, and whatever bullshit worked could do the trick.
She’d find one, the right one this time, one without all those sticky family ties and interference.
But in the meantime . . .
As she used a perfume sample on her wrists, her throat, she thought of Cate.
Maybe she hadn’t ever wanted the kid, maybe she’d seen Cate as a means to an end—but she’d treated that selfish, ungrateful girl like a princess.
Beautiful clothes, Charlotte thought as she walked out into the tiny living room with its ugly navy sofa, its hideous lamps. The best clothes, a professional nursemaid. A nanny—and fuck that Nina sideways. Hadn’t she hired a top designer for the kid’s bedroom? Bought her the sweetest little diamond studs when she’d had the brat’s ears pierced?
She made one mistake—and it wasn’t even really her fault—but one mistake, and the Sullivans try to make her into a monster.
She looked around at the beige walls, the secondhand furniture, the view of the street barely steps away from the front door.
Her eyes shimmered with tears of self-pity. For years, she thought, she’d honestly believed nothing could be as bad as prison—the sound of cell doors locking shut, the smell of sweat and worse, the