“Not tuberculosis?”
Leo smiled, and for a brief moment Max wondered if his agent had resorted to biological warfare to get him on Renowned. “No. Not tuberculosis. I just thought Hadley might be too nice to go along with it if she knew she was taking someone else’s spot.”
Max felt more anger stirring inside of him than he’d ever known in his entire life. “So you used Hadley . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Look, you getting Renowned without her was iffy. Her getting it without you? Not a chance. Not yet. So you used each other, really. It’s the nature of the business, and you know it.”
“She didn’t deserve to be dragged into any of this.” Max’s knuckles had turned white, but he still wasn’t able to grip the steering wheel tightly enough to dispense with the building rage.
Leo laughed again. “Your concern is touching. Surprising, but touching. But, hey, she got the house, I’m finalizing a much better contract for her, she’ll have Renowned on her résumé . . . and what’s more, she’ll finally be taken seriously. Did you know she didn’t have a manager before me? It was just her grandmother, taking meetings on her behalf.” As he talked he appeared to send a text. “Would I have loved it if she had it in her to become more of an entertainment mogul like you? Sure. But it turns out she’s really just a chef. And she isn’t very interesting outside of the kitchen.” He looked up from his phone. “Did you notice she seemed less Southern on Renowned than she ever has? What’s that about?” Shaking his head, he gave his attention back to the phone in his hands. “Poor girl. I don’t think she’s figured out who she wants to be.”
This guy, this creep he’d trusted with his career for more than ten years, who had been, at alternating times, father and friend and confidante and mentor, was now a stranger to him. But all the anger Max was striving to control came from the realization that Leo hadn’t changed. Not one bit. Who he was in that moment—tap, tap, tapping on his phone, playing with people’s lives as if they were nothing more than pawns in his game—was who he had always been. And Max had accepted him. Revered him. Paid him and paid him well to dash dreams, if necessary, on his behalf—all in the name of the genius of Chef Maxwell Cavanagh. The one-of-a-kind talent. The once-in-a-generation superstar.
“Get out,” Max told him through clenched teeth.
Leo looked at him in bewilderment. “What?”
“You heard me. Get out.”
He looked around. “You’ve lost your mind. You can’t just drop me off in the middle of Brooklyn, like I’m some—”
“It’s Bedford Avenue and you’re about three blocks from the subway. I daresay you’ll live.” He fiddled around with the controls on the vehicle’s console until he found the one he wanted. At the touch of a button, the passenger side door opened. “Now get out.”
Leo sneered at him as he removed his seat belt and stepped out. “You’re making a big mistake, Cavanagh. If you think you can treat me this way, after all I’ve done—”
“I would like to thank you for getting me this Range Rover though,” he interrupted with words and another push of the button. As the door latched shut, he smiled and added, “I like it very much.”
24. Sweat until translucent.
HADLEY
“Hello?” I answered my cell phone.
“Ms. Beckett? This is Graham from Legacy Car Service. I’m downstairs.”
“Thanks. I’ll be right down.”
I took a deep breath as I looked in the mirror one last time before leaving my hotel room. Not good, but it will have to do. I’d wrestled all night with the choices I had to make, and by the time I rolled out of bed at sunrise, I hadn’t made a single decision.
I’d almost texted Max at least a dozen different times, but I figured I’d lost the right. Besides, I don’t know what I thought that could possibly accomplish. Did we need to talk? Probably. Did we need to confuse matters further by hiding behind our indestructible force field of friendship and flirtation that seemed to be activated by text messages? Probably not.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket as I grabbed my bag and threw my jacket over my arm. Hmm. That’s a surprise.
“Hello?” I held the phone between my ear and my shoulder and shut the door behind me, verifying it was locked before I began walking toward the elevator.
“Hey, kiddo. You’re not to the studio yet, are you?”
Sure enough, it was Leo. I’d half-expected it to be Candace, using his phone.
“No. I’m just getting ready to leave the hotel.”
I smiled at a gentleman who was holding the elevator for me and held up my index finger and mouthed “First floor. Thank you” as he pushed the button for me.
I heard Leo let out a big gust of air. “Okay, good. Glad I caught you.”
Why? Should I not even bother going in? Had they just decided to bring in the cardboard cutout of me that’s standing next to the Hadley Home bakeware sets at Target for the rest of the Renowned shoot?
“What’s going on, Leo?”
“I just . . . well, I just wanted to connect with you. I’m worried about Max.”
The gentleman was holding the elevator door for me again, this time so I could step into the lobby, but there were too many people and too much noise out there. And I needed to focus.
“I’m going back up,” I mouthed and waved, and then pushed “32.”
My stomach began to feel queasy. “Why? Why are you worried about Max?”
“I think he’s drinking again. Or, I don’t know . . . something’s going on, that’s for sure. He was saying all sorts of crazy things last night.”
“Like what?”
He sighed. “I really shouldn’t get into it. I wouldn’t want to betray his trust that way. But I just wanted to warn you. I know you’ll be in the kitchen with him today, and there’s just no telling—”
“Hey, Leo . . .”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t realize you and Max were that close.” I bit my lip and measured my words very carefully. “I didn’t realize you knew him at all, actually.”
I used the moment afforded by his silence on the other end of the line to try and figure out if that had been a lie. I hadn’t known until I put it together about Candace the day before. And, even then, I didn’t officially know that it was the same Candace with a high-pitched voice who got assigned the task of dealing with the clients her boss no longer cared enough about to deal with personally. That could have been anyone.
Yep. I was pretty sure I was still on the moral high ground.
“The truth is, we have worked together. Mostly with his restaurant interests. He’s been coming to me for advice lately, looking for ways to get his career back on track.”
I suddenly felt pain in the palm of my hand, caused by my fingernails clawing away inside my tightly clenched fist.
“Well,” I began with an exaggerated kind and Southern tone. “You really are the best then, aren’t you?”
“Now, Hadley.” He chortled. “I hope you’re not insinuating that anything you and I discussed yesterday has anything to do with my dealings with Max.” He had begun the sentence with laughter, but by the end, his voice had morphed into a tone of insulted consternation—as seamlessly and fascinatingly as one of those time capture nature videos of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.