Page 20 of Crossing the Line
Waverly, aware of her role, hugged a silk pillow to her chest as she leaned against her mother’s satin-wrapped headboard. “Very handsome,” she agreed.
“Darling,” her mother slurred, “we only have a small window to solidify your career. To really make your mark. This business isn’t kind to women who venture beyond forty.” Her mother had drummed it into her skull since she was five.
It’s all downhill after forty.Personally, Waverly was looking forward to a little downhill.
It was true—parts for her mother were fewer and farther between, but Waverly was aware of the role that alcohol played in that.
She distracted her mother, filling her in on her schedule for the week, noting the pleasure it gave Sylvia. “Oh! I’m so glad you’re presenting atIndulgence’sStyle Awards,” Sylvia sat a little higher against her pillows. “Isn’t it exciting? Standing up there in front of all those people who wish they were you?”
“Sure, Mom.” It was, sort of. But to Waverly, it didn’t feel like a rush. It felt like a responsibility.
“You’ve got such a good following right now, and we need to make it stronger,” her mother yawned. “We need to give them more. You need to pick your next movie. Maybe start seeing someone? Is there anyone you’re interested in?”
Career and love advice from Sylvia Sinner. Because to her mother, who she dated, who she married, was just as much a part of her career as the roles she chose. Sylvia had been setting up Waverly with eligible and appropriate bachelors since she was fourteen. Every once in a while, Waverly had pulled off the impossible and quietly enjoyed a relationship that had nothing to do with her mother, sometimes an actor and sometimes a regular, normal guy. None of them stuck. There was the actor with the charming, crooked grin who used her connections to a producer to score a part. Then there was the musician who’d neglected to call for the duration of his world tour and then penned a song about her body as an apology that went unaccepted.
A relationship, fake or an actual attempt, was not something she was willing to throw into the mix right now. She needed to be unencumbered and ready to move.
“There’s no one who makes me look at them like that,” she said, gesturing at the screen where Sylvia was giving Robert one hell of a come hither look. And ignoring the vision of Xavier that immediately popped into her head.
“Don’t put it off, Waverly,” her mother said, her eyes closing.
“Don’t put what off, Mom?”
“Life. Look at everything we have, everything your father and I built. We’re counting on you to carry this on. Don’t make all of this be for nothing. You have real earning potential, more than I did at your age. Don’t waste that.” The words slurred and slowed before fading away.
Waverly listened to her mother’s steady breathing for a few moments and, satisfied that Sylvia was asleep, turned off the movie and gathered the dishes. She carried the bowl and mug to the kitchen, washed them in the sink, and armed the alarm before tip-toeing out the front door.
She had a broom and a dustpan in the pool house. She would clean up the glass in the drive before calling it a night, she decided, her shoulders slumped. One more task and then she could rest.
But the glass was gone. Not a sliver of it twinkled under the floodlights.Xavier the fixer,she shook her head. She was too tired to think about her warring feelings there. She let herself into the pool house, automatically arming the alarm, before venturing into her kitchen. Her purse and gym bag rested on the counter next to a plate with half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A note was scrawled on the napkin.
Snack then sleep. See you in the morning, Angel.
X.
He could have just gone home, yet he’d stayed to make sure she got her mother safely inside and then cleaned up the mess. He’d delivered her bags and made her a snack. All after keeping her safe and calm in the midst of a trigger.
Hell, he was getting harder and harder to hate.
CHAPTER SIX
She was going to kick Xavier’s ass.
“You’re not wearing that,” he announced again, his tone suggesting there was no room for argument.
But Waverly was in the mood for a fight. She whirled around in the mirror set up in her bedroom, her hands on her hips, to glare at him. “Exactly what is your problem with this dress?” she demanded.
It was Thursday in the week from absolute hell. She’d booked every spare minute in an effort to shake him loose, but he was only digging in harder. Through two red carpets, four lunches, five sessions at the gym, three cocktail parties, nine interviews, and even a damn baby shower for an actress she’d worked with once when they were tweens, he stuck.
The man was stubborn enough to make it look easy. She’d missed meals dashing from one event to the next, missed sleep, dragging her ass in the door at three in the morning from a cocktail party that turned late night pool party. The circles under her eyes were going to add an extra twenty minutes to her make-up for the event this afternoon. Yet Xavier showed no signs of cracking.
She hated him a little for it. Sure, he’d had the good manners not to mention the scene with her mother. But he’d spent every moment of the ensuing week annoying her with his mere presence. He’d gotten more vocal, too. He’d insisted on sitting in with her meeting with Kate and Mari again and dropped the bomb that Les Ganim had indeed left his job in El Plano and hadn’t been seen in ten days.
Then he complained every time she left the house. She wasn’t about to lock herself in a prison just because Wedding Dress Guy may or may not have come to L.A. She’d dealt with things like this her entire life. It was par for the course in her opinion and a legitimate threat in his. Just like everything else, they’d butted heads over. And then there was the picture that surfaced on the gossip sites after dinner at Nobu. She was tucked under Xavier’s arm, her fingers clinging to him as he guided her into the SUV. The headlines had been about her escaping a raucous crowd, but what she saw when she looked at the pictures was a raw and intimate portrait of need.
Waverly whirled back to the mirror, turning this way and that admiring the way the elegant, sheer fabric clung to her like a spider web.
“I don’t see what you could possibly have against this dress.”
