“I met her at the coffee shop. Teresa, right?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah.” He rolled his beer bottle between his palms.
Right. Moving on. Lucy grabbed another card. “What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you?”
William took another slug of beer.
“You first,” Lucy said quickly.
His face turned thoughtful. “I confess I was on a reality show once.”
Lucy’s heart stammered. Of course she knew that. “Yeah?” The word came out breathy.
“AReal World,Big Brothertype show. They made me look like an idiot. I was a kid and I was naive, so I didn’t think. But I needed the cash, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. In hindsight, it was a bad decision that led to years of embarrassment.” Sadness oozed through his words, and he had the look of a man banished to Confession-induced purgatory.
“I thought you were loaded. Why’d you need money?”
The question apparently caught him off guard. “My parents shut off my trust fund. My mom was pissed at how I blew through cash. She was right. I get that now. I was stuck in Florida with Parker, and he had to get home for work. I got the casting call, took an advance, and sent him home with my payout. My mom got sick when we were filming. She died, and I missed her funeral because I didn’t get home in time.”
William cleared his throat.
“Then your dad married the housekeeper…Teresa,” she whispered. The beautifully sad Italian woman from the coffee shop Lucy’s first day at KDVX. She could relate to that type of thing… That’s the type of thing that tore her own parents apart again and again.
“A slime-ball producer spliced together video of me that implied I screwed half of the female population of Florida, aired it on national television, caused a rift between my dad and I, andthenmy dad married Teresa.” He tipped his beer toward her. “Now, the production company is trying to convince me to do a reunion episode.”
Lucy had apparently missed that invitation. But, then, why would they invite a lowly production assistant anyway? “Maybe you should do it?”
“No way in hell am I opening myself up to that kind of embarrassment again.”
“Will, hey, this is supposed to be fun.” She reached for his hand to give what she hoped was an innocent squeeze. She tried to tug her fingers away, but he held tight.
“I confess Teresa wasn’t just the housekeeper.” His hollow words echoed through the cabin.
“I think—”
“When I was a kid, she was my nanny. She helped raise me… She was never just the housekeeper.” The pain of his father’s betrayal to his family flickered in William’s eyes.
Silence stretched between them, but he still didn’t let her hand go. Lucy used to make him laugh and had prided herself on being exceptionally good at it. Right then, she wanted nothing more than to help him find his way back from whatever dark place had sucked him in.
“I confess that this one time, on assignment, I threw a box of condoms at my colleague. That was pretty mortifying.” She rolled her eyes, hoping to diffuse the tension and lighten the heavy atmosphere.
He slid his hand away and opened another beer for himself, tossing the cap into the trash bin. “That was pretty awesome.”
“Wrong word. Humiliating is more accurate,” she corrected.
“Luce, it was spectacular. And they’re multi-purpose if you change your mind and decide you want to play other games later.” His eyes moved over her in a way that was anything but innocent.
Her resolve disintegrated on the spot, but she kept on.
“I confess this other time I reported on location and totally rocked it. When I say rocked it, I mean I. Was. On. Fire. It’s such a rush being on live television.” She peeled off the rest of the label from her beer bottle. “And then a fly flew right into my mouth. I gagged and couldn’t finish. Somewhere, I’m on a Best of Bloopers reel, gagging and coughing up an insect on live television. I didn’t have a rooster collapse on me, but it was still holy-crap embarrassing.”
After that, the station where she had worked stopped allowing her in front of the camera. They decided she wasn’t cut out for on-camera work and made it clear her employment was behind the lens. Which was why she’d ended up in Confluence.
“You heard about the rooster, Luce?” he asked.
“Everyone’s heard about the rooster.”
That got her the dimples.
