This was just her job on the line so far, maybe Hope’s eventually, but right now the focus was on her, and she’d do her best to keep it on her. Hope didn’t need to feel the brunt of Josef’s frustration and anger.
“Our best hope is that the judge will throw the case out of the court because there isn’t enough evidence, but it’s still going to take us a while, and several hearings, to get even to that point.” Logan shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Ange.”
“It’s nothing.” Angelica breathed slowly. She’d almost said it was nothing she couldn’t handle, or that she’d expected something like this, which was all true. But what she felt was that she’d deserved this in some way, and just that thought didn’t settle well inside her. Because as much as that was the feeling that was coming up, she wasn’t sure that she believed it anymore.
“It’s not nothing.” Logan flicked his gaze to Florence. “We should have put an end to Josef well before we did, and we had politics to navigate when it came to that, and I’m sorry. We should have protected you better, and you shouldn’t have had to deal with everything you did while on set.”
Angelica’s chest tightened. Her eyes stung with tears, but like hell would she cry right now. Looking down at her iPad, which still had no notes on it whatsoever, she used it to focus herself. She hadn’t expected that, and definitely not today.
“Thank you,” Angelica said quietly. “How many people are named directly in the lawsuit?”
“Just you and me, so far,” Logan answered. “So right now, it’s looking fairly good, but we anticipate that’ll be expanded going forward. We’ll have a few meetings with the lawyers so they can interview us and hear our side of everything and go from there.”
“I understand how this works.” Angelica lifted her chin up, flicking her gaze to Florence. How much of this did she actually know? Probably far more now than when she’d taken the job, and certainly more now that they’d filmed the last five episodes. “Going forward with filming, I think we need to find a better way to protect the crew from Josef’s interference.”
“Agreed,” Florence said with a sharp nod. “I’ve been tossing around some ideas about that.”
“Good.” Angelica almost asked her what those were, but she really didn’t have the bandwidth today to go through them. “About filming…”
“What about it?” Logan asked nervously, as if he was anticipating that she would hand in her resignation right here and now.
Which she’d honestly thought about doing, more than once.
“I’ll film the rest of this season, but unless you can prove that it’ll be worth it, I think going forward we need to go backto the shorter seasons.” Angelica tapped the stylus against the tabletop. “It’s too hard on everyone.”
“It’ll be easier when Josef is completely out of the picture,” Logan said.
“You just told me that it’ll be years for that to happen.”
Logan shrugged.
“We’ll evaluate it at the end of the season. I promise.” Florence nodded at Angelica. “I know the start of this season has been rough on everyone, but I do hope we’ve made some progress in smoothing out the bumps.”
Angelica pursed her lips in Florence’s direction. “That remains to be seen.”
Florence frowned.
Logan winced. “Ange, Josef’s influence isn’t completely gone yet. It’ll take time to weed that out of the show itself.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can wait.” Angelica looked at each one of them directly. “And we’re here to talk about the defamation lawsuit that he’s bringing against us, so I suggest we talk about that. Because he hasn’t completely left the show, whether you want to admit that or not.”
“You’re right.” Logan put his hands out to the sides. “I’m sorry.”
Nodding to acknowledge the apology, Angelica pulled up her calendar. “Now, when am I meeting with the lawyers?”
Chapter
Forty-Three
Bending down,Hope pulled the cooking sheet out of the oven and set it onto the countertop. She immediately started to pull the little puff pastries off and then hissed as her fingertips burned.
“Damn it!”
“You should have waited,” Angelica murmured from her perch on the other side of the counter.
“Thank you, peanut gallery.” Hope rolled her eyes, but she didn’t try to remove the food again.
Angelica looked at her over the bottle of beer that she lifted to her lips and the iPad that was sitting in front of her. She really didn’t stop working if she had a chance to keep going. Hope both loved and hated that, because Angelica would stop working as soon as everyone started arriving, but that also meant that she’d be focused on nothing but work until then.
