“Why’s my mother the only one who’s worried about you?” He was violating his don’t-ask, don’t-care policy with her. But surely she had family and friends who realized how precarious her situation was and cared about her. Even though she’d made her own bed—so to speak—it did leave her business on shaky ground.
Take Paula Deen. The celebrity chef had never fully recovered after her fall from grace. There was no reason to believe Gina would, either.
“My mother’s dead and even if she were still alive, she’d say I was ultimately destined to be a failure.”
Sawyer drew back. “Mommy issues, huh?”
Gina let out a mirthless laugh. “Big-time. I was adopted at birth and a great disappointment to Sadie DeRose. I wasn’t beautiful enough, popular enough, smart enough, social enough to meet her expectations. She thought she and my father had found the perfect mother to birth the perfect child. And it turned out that I was merely average.”
Sawyer thought she was far from average. By anyone’s standards she was a huge success. And beautiful. He might not like her, but any objective person could see she was someone special.
“What about your father?”
“Gino?” Her face lit up. “He adored me. Unfortunately, he died when I was nine.”
“TheGino DeRose?” Sawyer didn’t know why he hadn’t put the connection together sooner. DeRose. The man was a legend in the film industry. A director whose body of work had changed the face of foreign cinema. “Wasn’t your mother an actress?”
She bobbed her head in a combination that was part-nod and part-shake. “Besides a few roles in my father’s films, she never really broke out. By the time I came along, she’d all but given up. I was her great hope.”
“Did she at least get to see your cooking show?”
“In its very early iteration. I don’t think she understood the cultural phenomena of FoodFlicks. I may as well have been a car show model to her.”
Sawyer suspected as many people watched FoodFlicks as they had Gino DeRose’s films. Perhaps even more. “What about your various business ventures? She must’ve been proud of those.”
“Most of it came later…after she’d passed. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t her dream for me. She wanted me to be what she couldn’t be. A movie star with a shelf full of Oscars and a face like Angelina Jolie.”
He turned to her, tilting his head to one side to take a long look. A thorough look. “You have a good face, Gina. I’d take your face over Angelina Jolie’s any day.”
She leaned back, rested on both elbows, and studied him as if she was waiting for the punch line to a joke. When none came, she said, “That’s the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me. You know what, Sawyer Dalton? You’re okay.”
“Right back atcha.”
They held each other’s gaze and moved close enough so that their legs were touching. The heat between them was palpable.
For a long while they didn’t talk, letting the sounds of the creek fill the silence. In those quiet moments he wondered about Danny Clay. Hadn’t Clay ever told her she was irresistible?
Sawyer wanted to ask, but resisted. They were having a moment. A weird moment, but he didn’t want to disrupt their tentative cease-fire.Whywas a whole other story. One that he was going to put on the back burner while he enjoyed the sun, the creek, and the pretty woman sitting beside him. Even if she was a natural-born disaster.
Chapter 6
In the middle of the week, Gina got so stir-crazy she decided to take a field trip. If she wore a thin disguise—the shades and floppy hat—and stayed in her car no one would recognize her. And it was such a pretty day. Too hot to stay inside when she could enjoy the comfort of her BMW’s top-of-the-line automatic climate control.
She set out with no particular place in mind other than State Highway 49. Once there, she’d planned to go north and let the highway take her wherever it led. But like the first time she’d tried this nearly a week ago, she got lost on a back road where verdant pastures dotted with cattle and sheep stretched out like a never-ending roll of outdoor carpet. Instead of pulling over and setting her GPS, she decided to follow the road to the end of the line. It had to lead somewhere. And who knows, maybe if she kept going she’d find civilization?
In the meantime, her surroundings didn’t suck. Gina, born and raised in Los Angeles, had never considered herself a country girl. But the landscape appealed to her. In fact, she could look at it all day as long as she was within walking distance of a Peet’s Coffee and a Whole Foods. So that pretty much ruled out Mill County.
Take lots of pictures, she told herself. When she got home, she’d blow them up to poster size and hang them in her office. While she was at it, she’d take a couple of shots of Sawyer too. Just for the view.
She wasn’t ready to forgive him for forcing her to live in a cabin that was better suited as a meth house than a real home. But he was nice to look at and had been a good ear when she’d needed one.
Nothing she’d told him by the creek side had been classified. Most of it had been spilled across the pages of her bestselling memoir. Still, it had been nice to confide to someone real, not a faceless fan. And his reaction had been perfect. Not pitying or patronizing…but sweet.
You have a good face, Gina…I’d take your face over Angelina Jolie’s any day.
The words gave her goose bumps. She replayed them in her head a few times and her chest gave a little kick. The weight that had been clamped to her chest these last weeks began to lift.
Then the phone rang and that tightness clutched her again. She glanced down at the caller ID. Robin, her agent.
