Chapter Nine
Kate pushed the thick bound agreement back over the table to sit in front of Garrett. “You bring Patrick on board and take care of him, and for that, you get one percent North America net on theatrical, DVD and Blu-ray,” she said.
Roman noted the change of phrasing. It was no longer five million they were discussing. Now Sauvage was sitting across the table from her, she had adjusted her language to make the terms sound less like they were picking over a commodity. There were producers who wouldn’t have bothered, or for whom being sensitive to Sauvage’s feelings wouldn’t have even occurred to them.
Garrett didn’t touch the wad of paper. “At least make it gross.”
Kate smiled. “You think you’re the only one who wants in on this deal, Garrett? I could raise another five million and more to take care of Patrick all by myself. I don’t need you. Net.”
Roman kept his jaw clenched least he smile and give himself away. She had used his shield.
But Sauvage was frowning, looking to Garrett.
And Garrett was smiling.
The ace. This was the ace, Roman realized.
“Patrick won’t deal with anyone but me,” Garrett said smoothly. “I offer compensations you and your backers couldn’t possibly extend. You could raise five million a hundred times over. You could even find and offer him the forty-two million that is Patrick’s current standard salary for a movie. I guarantee right here and now, in front of Patrick and everyone at this table, he would not deal with you if I’m not a part of the deal.”
And Garrett’s gaze flickered toward Roman. It was instant, and then gone.
Roman caught his breath and the shape and outline of the ace fell into place. Sweet Jesus, he breathed to himself.
He leaned across the corner of the table, and put his lips to Kate’s ear. “He’s got you. Give him the gross. I’ll explain later.”
Kate looked at him sharply. Then she sat against the high back of the buffet and let anger and frustration settled into her features. “Fine,” she said, her voice stiff. “Gross.”
Garrett rested his hand on the agreement, and slid it slowly across the table again. He turned it so it was facing her the right way around. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a gold pen and dropped it on top of the agreement. “I had a gut feeling,” he said. “The agreement is drawn up for 1% North American gross on theatrical, DVD and Blu-ray. All you have to do is sign.”
“Not without a lawyer looking it over first,” Kate shot back, fury dripping from every word.
“I’ll read it,” Roman told her, holding his hand out.
Kate handed it to him, her face in neutral again.
Roman scanned the pages slowly, absorbing the structure of the agreement. Most of the contract was boilerplate stuff – indemnifying everyone in case of the most unlikely scenarios possibly happening. His legal training was dusty, but he remembered contract law as being interesting because writing contracts was often future oriented, focused on what might happen and trying to cover every possible eventuality. This contract was written by someone who had really thought it through. And, surprisingly, it was a fair contract, covering Kate’s ass as much as it covered Garrett’s.
Roman pushed the contract back in front of Kate, open at the signature page. “It’s a good contract. Nothing scary,” he told her. “It binds him to exactly what you just agreed on. You, too.”
“I see,” she said. She glanced at Garrett. “You had a gut feeling, huh?”
Garrett lifted his shoulders. An elegant shrug. “I’m good at reading people.” He smiled. “And I do my research.”
Kate picked up the pen. Roman pointed to where she was to sign.
“I don’t read GC magazine on a regular basis,” she said, as she signed. “But about two years ago they ran a survey. Power women and their beddable quotient. A friend told me I was on the top fifteen list.” She handed Roman the pen, for his signature as witness.
“I remember the survey,” Garrett replied. “You were ranked at somewhere around sixty-three percent.”
Roman pushed the contract on.
“That’s right,” Kate agreed. “Something like sixty-three percent of GC’s male readership would take me to bed given the opportunity.”
Garrett picked up the pen and signed, then handed it on to Patrick Sauvage, who witnessed it. “Not hard to understand why,” Sauvage observed, with a small smile.
Kate stood up, picked up her satchel and slung it over her shoulders. “Well congratulations, Garrett. You fucked me over good and proper.” She smiled at the rest of the table. “Have a great day, everyone.”
* * * * *
Garrett arranged for Patrick to safely leave the hotel and the guards he’d hired managed to sneak him out without inciting a mob. With Patrick’s departure, that meant the need for hired heavies was lifted, too, and the slight pressure he’d been feeling since stepping into the bar of being surrounded and hemmed in lifted. Calm returned.
He pulled out his phone and thumbed through the menus quickly.
“The limousine is waiting,” Winter pointed out, her tone remote and ethereal, as she collected the paperwork and her tablet.
Garrett glanced at her. “It can wait. I need a few minutes. You go ahead with MacDonald. I’ll join you when I’m done.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked, and there was a note to her question that implied she wasn’t being merely polite.
Garrett reminded himself that Winter was privy to more than just his human life. So far, she had proved to be a surprisingly effective executive assistant, even though she had been foisted on him over his loud objections.
He glanced around for eavesdroppers. “I need to speak to Roman,” he murmured. “I think he picked up far more about that deal than was spoken, or than Kate was aware of. I want to know how much of a hindrance he’s going to be.”
“He and Kate have already left.” She shifted the pile from her right hip to her left. “You’ll have to catch up another time.”
Annoyance touched him, until he realized that she wasn’t telling him what to do. She was simply pointing out facts in a remote, disinterested voice. He frowned. “Is something wrong?”
She gave him a brief smile. “Nothing. Why?” Her eyes, disguised behind the dark contacts, met his without wavering. “Roman’s cooperation or lack of it isn’t the issue today,” she added. “We can deal with him later if we need to.”
Garrett tucked his phone away again. “If I didn’t know Nial better I would say that has an ominous overtone to it.”
She glanced up at the big screens behind him, then gave him another smile. This one seemed brittle.
“You’re right,” he finished. “We need to let them think through what has happened, and allow it to settle.” He headed for the door and she fell into step beside him. “Am I dropping you at your hotel?”
“Are you done with business for the day?” she asked.
“Today, yes. Why?”
“Then the hotel is fine. But after we’ve dropped you off.”
He cocked his head to look at her, puzzled.
She gave a small smile. “You’ve never used an executive assistant before, have you?”
Garrett pushed open the door for her and felt the heat of the mid-afternoon drop over him like a warm blanket as they stepped outside. Winter caught her breath.
“There’s been plenty of talk about my control issues,” Garrett told her. “But a really good executive assistant, one that really makes a difference, needs to know everything about your life. And with my life — my lifestyle and well, being what I am...I knew I was never going to let someone I hired that far inside my shields.”
“If Nial gets his way, if vampires are revealed and accepted by humans, that won’t be an issue for you any longer, will it?” Winter pointed out, as they descended the concrete stairs down into the basement car park.
Garrett considered this new aspect of coming out. He hadn’t applied it to doing business in quite this way, before. There were a lot of aspects to how he moved through his day that he could change. No more pretending he had to halt after eight or ten hours because he needed to rest or eat. If he wanted to work through the night, he could...and on into the next day.
And when he needed to feed, he could disappear for the hours necessary to feed and recover without inventing excuses.
“There will be advantages, certainly. But it won’t be easy, the first few weeks and months we tell the world,” he warned her. “The misunderstanding and misinformation will be overwhelming.”
“That’s why Nial wanted you working with him,” Winter replied serenely. “You’ve had experience dealing with massive projects like this.”
The driver already had the car door open for them and the engine running. Winter stood back and indicated Garrett should get in first, and he overrode his instincts, and slid onto the seat. She settled beside him. MacDonald was already seated on the bench behind the driver, his gaze on the screen of his massive silver laptop, his fingers rattling across the keys.
Winter glanced at MacDonald, then at Garrett. She pulled out her computer tablet and turned it on. “Your calendar tomorrow morning is light,” she told Garrett. “But we should use that time to lay out what needs to be dealt with before we head out on location. That will be a long list, I presume.” She slid her finger down the screen. “With this meeting today, all your commitments in Los Angeles have been completed, so there is nothing preventing you from returning to Boston tomorrow on the noon flight. Do you want to make that flight? I can set up the tickets tonight.” She looked at him expectantly.
Garrett sat back, letting himself relax. “Why not?” he replied.
“You’ll need to be at LAX by ten to make check-in and security clearance in time, so we should meet around seven-thirty to discuss the film shoot. I’ll order breakfast for your suite and make it a breakfast meeting. Does that suit you?”
He nodded, aware that MacDonald would be listening to all of this. She was making it sound like he, Garrett, was human and a food eater. That he was perfectly normal. Well, she would have had a lot of practice doing that with her two husbands, although Sebastian did eat food, even though he was wasn’t really human.
3inter glanced out the heavily smoked windows of the limousine. “Your hotel in about three minutes,” she judged, and looked down at the tablet once more. “I’ll have certified copies of the contract made and distributed to all the stakeholders, and Patrick Sauvage’s contract, too.”
MacDonald lifted his head. “You’ve already signed a contract with Sauvage?”
“You were busy with Kate Lindenstream stuff. I handled it,” Garrett told him dismissively.
MacDonald frowned. “Who did you get to draft it?” he asked. “These Hollywood types love to squelch. If you don’t have an absolutely waterproof deal—”
“It’s fine, Tom,” Garrett told him shortly. “Forget it.”
MacDonald tapped the edge of his screen with the wide ring on his wasted finger, considering. “Alright,” he agreed, and went back to work.
Garrett let out a sigh and let his mind turn back again to Kate’s parting words. You fucked me over good and proper.
Even though he had been braced for her fury, the bitterness pouring from her had still left him feeling uncomfortable. The expression in her eyes had been bleak, and her pointed chin had been held stiff and unresponsive. He had wanted to send her a message afterwards, to try to erase some of the negativity. None of this was supposed to impact so badly upon her, but trying to explain that was out of the question.
For now, anyway.
“Garrett,” Winter prompted.
He looked at her.
“I’ll sort all this out and I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow, yes?”
The car was pulling up under the hotel portico. He had been lost in thought.
He stirred and reached for the door handle, but the hotel valet beat him to it. The door opened, pulling in heat and light. Garrett winced. “Seven thirty,” he agreed.
“She’ll be fine, Garrett,” Winter added.
He glanced back at Winter. She sat in the corner with her legs crossed, looking effortlessly efficient, composed and calm.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“Kate Lindenstream. You’re worried about her. But there’s no need.”
Garrett pulled out his sunglasses and pushed them on. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he told her and shut the door on her.
That was another reason he’d never used personal assistants until Nial had foisted his wife upon him as a means to insert his own people onto the set. Personal assistants ended up becoming too personal.
* * * * *
Winter had the limousine drop MacDonald off first, then she could be dropped at her hotel without complications. She breathed a sigh of relief when MacDonald was gone. The long, thin man made her feel uncomfortable although she had no idea why.
As the limousine drew closer to the hotel, she was aware of a building tension in her. She could have reached inside and smoothed it away, but that would have meant dealing with the subject matter that was causing it, and for right now she was afraid to touch the subject.
So she sat on the bench, her tension winding slowly tighter the closer she got to her temporary home.
By the time she walked through the lobby, carefully not catching anyone’s eye, and slumping to make herself look thick around the waist and as unattractive as possible, she was trembling with the effort to hold it all inside her.
The elevator ride seemed endless, even though no one stepped on or off the elevator and she miraculously got the car all to herself. It was mid-afternoon and quiet.
Sebastian was working on his computer when she stepped into the suite, and Nial was on the phone. Nial was always on the phone these days.
Sebastian rose to his feet as soon as he saw her. “What happened?” he demanded sharply.
Winter held up her hand, telling him silently to halt as he headed in her direction. Her hand was shaking, she saw. It was all going to come out of her. It was rising like noxious yeast.
Nial turned at Sebastian’s tone, looked at her, and said into his phone “I’ll call you back,” and switched it off. He threw the phone onto the seat of the big armchair. He didn’t come closer to her, but his gaze ran the length of her, assessing carefully. “You’re not hurt and you haven’t been since you left this morning.”
She swallowed. “They hauled Finka Zupan’s body out of a drainage culvert yesterday. I saw it on TV.”
Neither man reacted. They just stared at her.
“You were going to talk to her,” Winter accused them. “Just talk!”
Sebastian glanced at Nial.
The glance did it. The glance was too much confirmation for her. Winter clapped her hand over her mouth as genuine nausea enveloped her and rushed for the bathroom. There was no time to adjust her body chemistry and she knew she deserved this at the very least.
She staggered to the toilet, crumpled in front of it and was violently, massively sick. It wrenched at her body and muscles long after her stomach was empty, and it was worse for the fact that in her life Winter had only ever been genuinely sick once. She normally adjusted her physiology to avoid this horrible experience. Now she was paying twice over for that privilege because being sick and vomiting was such a new experience.
Cool hands soothed her back as the spasms eased. Something cold and damp pressed against her neck.
Winter turned her head into the shoulder she knew would be there waiting for her and let the tears take her. They were few, but each one felt as hard as a bullet and hurt as it rolled down her cheek.
She was picked up and carried into one of the bedrooms and laid on the bed. Her wig was carefully lifted away and her hair loosened, along with her clothes. She was cradled against one body and another, warmer one fitted itself against her back. That was Sebastian.
Winter let herself be soothed. If she refused Nial and Sebastian’s comfort, who else was there to offer such warmth to her? She was weak and pathetic, but she wanted to be held and reassured right now, even if the men doing it were the ones who had caused her misery in the first place.
The hypocrisy prickled softly, until she could no longer ignore it. She sat up.
“I suppose I should give you the benefit of doubt.” She wiped her cheeks dry with her hand. “Did you do it?”
Nial lifted himself up with one of his powerful, cat-like movements, so he was resting against the bedhead. “Does it matter?”
Sebastian folded his long legs so he was sitting cross-legged, and rested his hands loosely on top of them where they crossed over. He wasn’t contributing just yet, but she could see he was with Nial on this one by the expression in his green eyes.
Winter pressed her hands together. “Of course it matters. To me.”
“Why?” Sebastian asked, his tone reasonable.
She tried to find a few words to encompass an entire conversation her answer would take if she was thorough, and sighed. “If you have to ask, Sebastian, it’s not worth me answering.”
“You value Finka’s life above your own?” Nial asked.
“Yes!” Winter replied.
“Really?” he pressed. “I have a gun at Finka’s head, and you would say ‘shoot me, not her,’?”
She bit her lip. “You can’t go around just...killing for convenience’s sake.”
“We didn’t,” Sebastian replied.
Relief touched her, until Winter realized she had handed Sebastian a way to lie to her and tell her what she needed to hear at the same time. Her relief congealed. “Then if not for convenience, why did you kill her?” she asked.
“We didn’t kill Finka.” Nial tugged at her arm, bringing her toward him. She let herself be pulled into his arms. “She was already dead when we reached her.”
“Someone else killed her?” Winter asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We didn’t want to bother you with it. You’re busy,” Sebastian replied.
“Too busy to know something as important as the fact that someone else wanted to kill Finka?”
“It was a simple mugging gone wrong. She was a stranger here,” Nial said. “Her motel was in an area where I wouldn’t want to travel alone at night. We found her outside the back of her room. Someone had taken all her possessions and ID. It was only your description that told us it was Finka. We left the body where it was. Someone moved it afterwards.”
Winter let her aching head rest against his shoulder. “You would lie to stop me worrying about this, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would. You are worth more to me than a dozen Finkas. Alive or dead.”
His pragmatic answer was no answer at all.
She sighed. “So I will never know what happened, then.”
Nial lifted her chin so she was looking him in the eye. “It has happened. You cannot change it. Regret Finka’s passing, yes, but now it is time to move on, Winter.” His eyes were very blue in the dim light filtering through the heavy curtains over the window. He gave her a small smile as he carefully hoisted himself off the bed with minimal disturbance to her. “And now, I will make you some coffee, for we are all in for a long night.” He paused. “Make that a long week. I saw your portfolio was thick with papers. She signed the contract?”
Winter nodded. “She didn’t like it, but she signed. Watching those two bargain was...interesting.”
“Then Kate will not hold up production on the movie, if she has both money and Sauvage in the bag. One week, and we must have everything completed here in Los Angeles and be ready to move onto location.”
“That’s most of what I have to do tonight. Prep work,” Winter agreed.
Nial gave a dry smile. “Garrett may not have liked having you added to his entourage, but he has no compunction about using your labour.”
“That was my idea,” Winter told him. “If I am to pose as his assistant, I should really be of assistance, or people will notice. That MacDonald is far too observant, for one. He listens, even while he’s working on his own stuff.”
Nial held up a finger. “Coffee first. Then business. There is a proper order to these things.” He strode from the room.
“He just likes to lick the spoon,” Sebastian observed. “The glutton.”
“He makes better coffee than you do,” Winter replied, stretching and rolling over to look at him.
Sebastian picked up her hand. “If Nial had been lying, he would have simply told you we found the body in the culvert, where the police did. You know how to lie as well as we do, Winter. The simple lie is the most foolproof. Why would he embellish a lie, to you of all people, with details about the motel room and muggers?”
“Maybe, because if the story had been that simple, I would have suspected it was a lie because of its sheer simplicity?”
Sebastian shook his head. “You really want to think badly of us, don’t you?”
She sat up. “No! Of course I don’t, Bastian. But the timing...”
“The timing is unfortunate, yes,” Sebastian agreed. “Coincidences have hanged innocent men before now.” He grimaced. “Would we kill to protect you? Of course. In a heartbeat – if killing was needed. Did we kill Finka? No.” He turned her hand over, lifted it and kissed the palm. “But the thought crossed my mind,” he added, his lips tickling her flesh.