“Got it,” Hope said.
Libby had defied the odds so far in Irish Hills. With Hope and J.J. on her team, she felt the odds were getting better daily.
They’d figure something out.
The priority with their friend Goldie was to reconnect. She needed to know she could trust them when she couldn’t trust anyone else.
Libby wouldn’t bother Goldie about the town’s problems. She had enough of her own right now.
Chapter Eight
Goldie
Goldie showered, changed, discovered there was no laundry service, and started to question everything about this plan to hide in Irish Hills.
She needed to get her phone charged first off.
She had zero bars, and the battery thing was red. Normally, Tally did this, the tech stuff. Before Tally, there was her assistant Dylan, and before Dylan, it was Kara. She’d had a personal assistant going on twenty-five years. But a lot of good that did her while hiding out in Irish Hills.
The primary occupation of Goldie Hayes had been her occupation. She had someone for everything from laundry to technology to drive her where she needed to go.
She walked around the main floor of Two Lakes. She found an outlet in the main sitting room and plugged in her phone.
The view caught her attention. She marveled again at how pretty this spot was. With these rooms, a place this size, on water, could easily be ten million bucks somewhere chic.
But here, in the Midwest, who knew what real estate like this went for?
Goldie continued to explore the first floor. Off the kitchen, there was a huge pantry. The shelves contained a few food items. Did she need to buy food?
She decided against that. She’d order takeout or something. If she was going to stay much longer, maybe she’d look into getting a chef.
Scratch that. She wasn’t staying long. This hideout was temporary. She could take care of her basic needs for a few days. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do things for herself. It was that she didn’t have to. She had a pile of mucky clothes to launder while her phone charged. After that, start making some calls to find a new agent. You couldn’t go it alone in L.A. without a shark on your side. She needed a shark.
To the left of the pantry, another door revealed a laundry room. It was large, old-fashioned looking, and smelled funny. Like bleach and Tide mixed in with mold. The appliances were harvest gold, actual harvest gold. In L.A., they’d call these vintage. Here, probably they were just old, but there were two washers and two dryers. They were probably doing a ton of laundry here back when they were booked solid.
“Okay! Now we’re talking.”
Goldie rounded up her sopping wet clothes from this morning and put them in the washer. At home, she did not operate her washer. All she knew was that it was a computer, just like everything else. There was a panel that controlled everything, and it looked like it could also launch the space shuttle.
“Ah, you’re old school. Thank goodness.”
Goldie put her clothes in, set the dial to small load, cold, and dropped in a cup of the nearby powdered detergent.
She hit start. And boom, one thing accomplished.
Back when she was a kid, it was her job to wash all the linens in the cottages. Sunday, they’d pick up all the linens, get the washstarted, and she’d help her parents clean before the next set of guests would arrive. She remembered it was a quick turnaround.
She also remembered thinking, as a girl, that the moment she could hire a maid when she was famous and a movie star, that was the first thing she’d do. Movie stars didn’t do laundry or change bed sheets!
Sure, if pressed, she could still make a crisp-looking bed.
But she was rarely pressed these days.
Goldie had hired a housekeeper first, and then a driver, and then an assistant.
Because of them, Goldie’s home was meticulously cared for. She didn’t have time for it. She had deals to make, hair to get electrified off, red carpets to walk, and lines to learn. Her priority was always her career.
Goldie walked back out to the sitting room and checked her phone. It wasn’t fully charged, but there was enough to make the call.
