Page 63 of Until the Sea Runs Dry

What a great way to begin a new job.

The annoying thing was, this was exactly the kind of behavior people expected of him. They expected him to be a bad boy. It was precisely why he made great pains to be the opposite. He wasn’t one of the movie stars who liked to inflate their ego by deliberately turning up as the last one on set.

Defending himself wasn’t sexy, however, and it was something his PR team had been very against, so for better or worse, Logan had gone along with his reps’s advice.

For years he had done everything they advised — after all, he was paying a lot of money for their expertize. When a case of mistaken identity created a bad boy image for him, they had run with it, explaining that the average housewife and mother secretly dreamed of being swept away by a rugged, bad boy movie star.

Logan hadn’t been interested in the games, thinking the entire thing ridiculous. He’d wanted his work to stand up for itself, only to be told that no one really cared who he was as a person.

Movie stars were like rock stars and supermodels: they weren’t real people. They were beautiful but untouchable, to be revered or despised — and nothing in between. If you fell in the middle of those camps, you were as good as dead.

All publicity was good publicity.

His phone vibrated with the arrival of an email. Half expecting a message from his irate director, he scrolled to his inbox only to notice that Jane had been speaking.

He’d been so lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t realized. He considered apologizing when his eyes took in the subject of the email that had just been sent.

It wasn’t from his director, as he’d suspected, but Trevor. And the heading for the email from his manager said URGENT!!! That much, he could read straight away.

He itched to open the email. Feeling Jane’s eyes on him, he decided it could wait a few moments. They were already pulling into his drive.

The car had barely stopped moving before she flung open the door.

“Thank you,” she said, though this directed at his chauffeur. Daryl smiled a little sheepishly through the rear-view mirror, having picked up on the uncomfortable vibes in the car.

“Of course, ma’am.”

To Logan, she simply stared. Waiting for him to say something, anything.

He wished he’d been paying attention to her and he was about to admit as much when his phone blew up with messages and calls.

Something was going on.

“One second,” he asked Jane, even as her face took on an irate expression. He listened to the voicemail from Trevor and cursed loudly.

He considered not telling her the news.

She likely wanted to put the day out of her mind, but it wasn’t done with either of them yet. He squared his shoulders.

“That photographer who followed me from set? He has already posted those pictures of us by the car. It’s all over the web that I was arguing with my new girlfriend when she had broken down by the side of the road.”

Jane’s eyes were round disks of shock. “Girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend,” Logan confirmed. “This day keeps getting better and better.”

“I can call the sites and clear this up,” Jane began, unable to believe that things could have been taken so much out of context. And so fast, too.

“That’s a terrible suggestion.”

He didn’t have time to explain what he meant by that. The seconds the words left his mouth, Jane got out of the car and took her bags from Daryl.

Keeping her head high, even though she could feel the sting of approaching tears, she tugged on Loki’s leash. Loki tossed him a sad look as the two disappeared inside the house.

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