“Sure, if that’s what you want.” Hope smirked. “I think that’s something we can manage.”

  “Cadence did catch a good moment on the camera—one that Josef will like.”

  “She did,” Hope agreed. “So, finish it?”

  Angelica sighed heavily. “Yeah. Let’s finish this. But next time, don’t walk so far. I’m still not supposed to be one hundred percent weight-bearing.”

  “Jesus, Angel. You should have told me.”

  Angelica shrugged lightly. “I figured we had enough to argue about before I brought that up.”

  Laughing, Hope started the slow walk back to the hotel after helping Angelica put her mic pack together again and then her own. “Your health matters, Angel. Stop trying to convince people that it doesn’t.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “I’ve been looking for you.” Josef’s voice boomed toward them, causing Hope to jerk with a start.

  They were lucky she had stopped pressing her hand against Angelica’s back as they got closer to the hotel. Hope bit her lip as Angelica continued to walk toward Josef, as if she’d been expecting this kind of drama.

  “What can I do for you?” Angelica asked, her shoulders rigid and her back ramrod straight.

  If Hope had ever seen her go into a battle, this was the look she had. Everything seemed that way with Josef lately. The tension between him and everyone on set was getting worse every day. Josef flicked his gaze over at Hope, but he focused his wrath on Angelica.

  “Why is he here?” Josef spat.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t even know he was coming.” Angelica’s fingers curled into a tight ball.

  “If I find out you called him in here, it’ll be your job.”

  “You’ve been threatening my job since day one of season one, Josef.” Angelica clenched her jaw hard.

  Hope had to hand it to her. She never really backed down when it came to Josef. It was rare that she did anyway, and she always put up a fight.

  “I didn’t call Logan in,” Angelica repeated.

  “Were you the one who did it? Because you two are fucking?”

  The way he spat out that word sent a shiver down Hope’s spine.

  “You’re crossing a line,” Angelica lowered her voice into the threat level.

  Hope just stood there stunned, no idea what to say or do. She’d never been directly called out on anything like this before, and not in such a way that it’d be so negative.

  “No, you’re the one who⁠—”

  “I have done that. You’re right,” Angelica interrupted him. “I have crossed lines. But don’t think that just because I’ve done it you can break the same rule.”

  “You called him in here to stir up drama!” Josef hissed at her, his cheeks turning red. “I won’t let you take this from me, Ange. I’ll take you down and bury you with me.”

  “I didn’t call Logan,” Angelica reiterated.

  It’d be so easy for Hope to jump in and say she was the one who had made the call, and she was just about to, but Angelica put her hand out, fingers spread as if she knew Hope was going to do that.

  “And you accosting me because he’s here isn’t going to win you any favors, Josef. I suggest to batten down the hatches and start forming a plan for what’s next. Because if Logan’s sniffing around, then you’re certainly on the edge of something.” Angelica stared at him hard.

  Hope wished she could do something, say anything. She just wanted the arguing to end.

  “There you are!” Cadence stepped outside, a grimace on her face. She locked her eyes on Hope and then immediately shifted to Angelica. “Rex is looking for you.”

  “Thank you,” Angelica said. She stepped around Cadence and slipped back into the hotel through the kitchen doors.

  Hope stayed silent as she held her breath and waited for Josef’s next explosion, hoping it wasn’t going to be directed at her. Josef scowled at her, but he remained silent as he pushed his way back inside. Instead of following, Hope stayed right where she was, feet planted in the gravel and the setting sun at her back.

  “You okay?” Cadence asked.

  “Whiplash.” Hope frowned. “Not literally.”

  “I gathered.” Cadence shut the door, stepped out fully, and took a deep breath. “I’ve never liked him.”

  “I don’t know many people who do lately.” Hope put her hands on her hips and stretched her back. “He’s on a rampage this season, though.”

  “He hasn’t been this bad before?”

  “Nope. Bad, yes, but not like this.” Hope closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders. “Where are we with filming?”

  “Interviews.”

  Hope nodded, mentally taking stock of everything she needed to do and then some. The phone in her pocket buzzed. Frowning she stared at the screen.

  Rachel.

  “I hate to bow out again, but I need to take this.” Hope frowned at the phone. “I’ll make it as quick as I can.”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry.” Cadence nodded and scuffed her shoe against the gravel. “I need a smoke after that whole thing with jerk-face anyway.”

  “Good.”

  Hope started back the way she’d come from, answering the call before it went to voicemail even though she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to take it. Her family had been so distant in the last year because of Rachel. As much as she’d wanted to work on that, she knew she had to work on herself first.

  “Is everything okay?” Hope asked as she answered.

  “Uh… Hi. Yeah. There’s no emergency.” Rachel’s voice wavered.

  Hope bit her lip and wrinkled her nose as she stared out across the river. “Then why are you calling?”

  “Hope…”

  “What?” Hope bit out the word. This wasn’t the time or the place for Rachel to be calling, and after everything that day, Hope’s brain was fried on keeping her tongue in check.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Hope’s chest tightened. Those two words filled the air in her lungs, turning it from burning hot to boiling. And she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She burst.

  “You’re sorry? What the hell for?”

  “For choosing him over you. For blaming you. I-I was wrong.”

  “You know what, Rach…” Hope shook her head, her fingers clenching tightly around the phone. “Fuck this. You turned everyone against me. You harbored Rex and Eva when I didn’t know where they were. You chose him. Do you know how much that hurt? Do you know how fucking hard it was to go through a divorce with no one there with me? And I blame you for all of that. You told Mom and Dad that I was the reason our marriage broke up. You told them I cheated on him. And I didn’t. You lied.”

  “I-I didn’t understand it.”

  “You didn’t take the time to understand it!” Hope screeched. “And if you think you’re calling now because I’m going to come crawling back to you like you didn’t just spend the last year removing me from your life. Grow up, Rachel.”

  Hope pulled her phone away from her ear and she was just about to hang up when she heard Rachel sob. She breathed slowly, pulling herself back together one molecule of air at a time. She’d wanted this, hadn’t she? At some point, she’d wanted to be able to sit down with Rachel and hash out everything that had happened and maybe become friends again.

  “Rachel…” Hope started on a sigh as she pushed the phone against her ear again. “I’m not unwilling to work on this with you. I’m unwilling to do that today or even this week. I need to finish filming this season before I can manage that. But you have to realize how much damage you’ve done in this. Because without that, we’re not going anywhere.”

  “I do realize that.” Rachel sniffled again.

  Just hearing those four words put Hope even more at ease than she’d been before. It was at least some admission of what she’d done.

  “Good,” Hope responded. “And one more thing…” She debated whether or not to even say it, but based on the conversations she’d been having with Angelica, she wanted to start this now. “You won’t blame Ange for any of this. She’s not a home-wrecker, she’s not the other woman. And if I hear any of that language coming from you or anyone else in the family, I will walk away.”

  She’d never been more sure about that boundary. She’d protect Angelica at all costs, even from the people who were supposed to love her the most.

  “Okay,” Rachel agreed.

  “Okay,” Hope answered. She stared across the river and closed her eyes as the cool breeze touched her cheeks. “I need to go film now. I’ll call you when I get home, and you and I can sit down and start to work on this.”

  “I’ll be there whenever you want to meet.”

  Hope sighed. “Okay. Bye.”

  She hung up. Hope lifted her chin to the sky and just stood in the quiet of the moment, breathing in the rest of the day as it turned to evening and letting it wash through her.

  What a day.

  Chapter

  Thirty-One

  “Ange, got a minute?” Logan stepped into the staging area.

  Angelica frowned as she popped up from rustling around in some bags. “That depends on what you mean by a minute.”

  “Looking for something?” Logan slid into one of the seats and propped an ankle over his knee.

  Sighing heavily, Angelica put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. “My iPad. I haven’t found it all morning.”

  Then again, she’d been thoroughly distracted by Hope that morning when they were in with Ansel and she hadn’t managed to pull herself together since then. And she was supposed to meet with the owners in the next five minutes, but all the questions she wanted to ask were on that damn iPad that she couldn’t find.

  “I’d like to talk about Josef,” Logan said, ignoring Angelica’s panic.

  She narrowed her gaze at him before looking over his shoulder at the open door. “I’d rather not talk about that right now.”

  “Ange… we need to talk about it.” Logan patted the table next to him and gave her a direct look.

  Sighing, Angelica sat down, but her gaze kept flitting all around the room as she tried to see her iPad anywhere. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “You didn’t call me.” Logan frowned slightly. “You promised me you would.”

  “It wasn’t bad.”

  Logan sighed heavily, standing up and walking to the door to shut it and subsequently sealing Angelica’s fate into the room to have this damn conversation. She tensed and bit the inside of her cheek.

  “Ange, be honest with me, on a scale of one to five, one being you want to quit because of him and five being your favorite person on the planet, how do you feel about Josef?” Logan crossed his leg again and stared at her directly, as if he knew exactly what he was doing.

  It was far harder to avoid questions like this than the typical ones that required a yes or a no. Pursing her lips, Angelica rolled her shoulders and settled into her chair even more. “One.”

  Logan’s eyebrows shot up as if he wasn’t expecting that response. “One?”

  “One,” Angelica confirmed. She rubbed her thumb over the pads of her fingers in a nervous gesture. She didn’t want him to pry any more. She just wanted to find her damn iPad and get back to filming. Avoidance was certainly the best way to deal with Josef.

  “How long has it been that way, Ange?” A deep line formed in the center of Logan’s forehead, and he leaned forward, as if he actually cared about what she said.

  “Since he was gone for the first part of last season.” Angelica sighed. “We’re much better at our jobs when he isn’t around.”

  “And why is that?” Logan had eyes only for her, and it was unnerving.

  She wasn’t used to being the one on this end of the questioning, and while she knew she needed to talk to Logan about Josef, it also meant potentially revealing her relationship with Hope. She tensed and pressed her lips together hard.

  “Why are you here, Logan? You’re supposed to be on leave.”

  “I am,” he answered, frowning. “But when I get enough calls to complain about Josef in a single very short filming season, I have to make myself available for the people who work for me.”

  “How many complaints did you receive?” Angelica tried not to twitch. Maybe it wasn’t just Hope’s phone call that had tipped Logan over the edge.

  “Last week there were three.” Logan rested back in the chair. “From three separate people.”

  “Oh.” Angelica breathed out slowly. Was the crew so distant from her that they didn’t feel they could speak to her about any of this?

  “I can see your mind working, and no, they would have come to you, but after the car accident, they didn’t want to put any more added stress on you.” Logan swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tilted his head to the side. “And because the complaints involved you.”

  “Involved me?” Angelica furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

  “The ones last week, specifically, were all about Josef’s treatment of you—well, you and Hope.” Logan sighed. “I didn’t know he was bringing Leanne in, I need to be clear on that. If I’d known, I would have told him no, and I suspect he knew that.”

  Angelica’s cheeks heated, but a small amount of the tension in her chest released. “I don’t think anyone knew.”

  “We’ll have to pay her, of course, but it’s not going to be easy finagling the budget to accommodate that.”

  “I don’t think Josef cared about that.” Angelica crossed her arms, wishing she could cross her legs, but with the cast still on, she was stuck sitting in this awkward and uncomfortable position. “I mentioned it when Leanne showed up that first week. I was just as shocked she was staying for a second.”

  “And glad she wasn’t staying for a third?” Logan asked.

  Angelica breathed deeply and nodded. “Yes. It was… tense.” That was the most she was going to say about that.

  “Do you think he brought her in specifically to goad you?”

  “Why does Josef do anything?” Angelica lifted her chin, staring down her nose at Logan. “He wants drama and tension on the screen, and he knows exactly how to get it—with or without consent.”

  Logan frowned. “How did you feel about Leanne being here?”

  Damn, he was back to those how questions. Angelica brushed her fingers over her legs. “I really need to get back to filming.”

  “Ange, I need you to talk to me. Remember? Like we talked in Los Angeles, it’s no different now than it was then.”

  Except that it was. Back then she wasn’t doing exactly what Josef accused her of, and everything wasn’t coming to a head where it’d all crash down on her. She had to be better than she was back then. Angelica clenched her jaw tightly as she stared at him.

  “Logan, I don’t know who to trust right now.” Angelica looked around the room. “Every time I think I can trust someone, they prove me wrong.” She sighed. “Having Leanne on set was difficult. Personally, for me. Professionally for everyone else. Josef continually threatened my job and Hope’s job by having Leanne here, telling us that she would be one person to replace both of us.”

  “He what?” Logan froze. “For the record, Ange, none of production is thinking about replacing you and Hope.”

  “Well, that’s good to know.” Angelica rubbed her fingers again.

  The knock on the door was loud, and Rex popped his head in. “We’re waiting on you.”

  “Yeah, I’m on my way.” Angelica nodded at Logan. “Filming.”

  “Yeah. We’ll talk more later.”

  Great, that was exactly what she’d wanted to hear.

  “And if I see your iPad, I’ll bring it to you.”

  “Thank you.” Angelica nodded at him and stood up from the chair to get to work.

  When she reached the front desk, Angelica stopped abruptly. Rex stared at her oddly, but Angelica was frozen. Her fucking iPad had everything on it, and she needed the information in order to do this. Well, she could do it without, but she really would prefer to have her notes. Sighing, she stalked forward and touched Rex’s arm lightly.

  “Have you seen my iPad?”

  “Nope,” he answered with a shake of his head. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Angelica held her breath and then shook her head. “My iPad issue is throwing me off my game.”

  “Issue?”

  “It’s gone. I can’t find it, and you know me, Rex, I don’t just misplace items.”

  “No, you’re anal about everything,” he mumbled.

  Angelica chose not to take that as a dig but more as a statement of fact about her. “It has my notes for this scene on it.”

  “Ah.” Now he seemed to understand.

  “Lyric’s looking for it. Eva too, actually.”

  “Eva?” His ears perked up at that one.

  Angelica cringed. She was supposed to be better than this. She should have held that information back, because he would be the first person to figure out that she and Hope were back in a relationship. “I saw her this morning when I was in with Ansel. She wanted to tell Hope good morning.”

  Rex pressed his lips together hard before sighing. “She does have a certain affinity for you.”

  “She’s a smart kid, and I appreciate that.” Angelica looked around the room again. “Where are Wylde and Maggie and Kaidee?”

  Rex shrugged. “Rounding people up for this shoot has been difficult. You and Hope vanished yesterday when Cadence was trying to find you⁠—”

  The hair on the back of Angelica’s neck stood up and her stomach plummeted.

  “—these owners are damn near impossible to find when I need them. And when I don’t need them, they’re always hanging around,” Rex finished.

  Angelica spun back into the conversation. “Like they don’t really want us here?”

  “I think they want us here.” Rex lowered his voice and dipped his chin to look at her squarely. “I’m just not sure they want us to be up in their business.”

  “That’s every hotel.” Angelica clenched her jaw and put her hands on her hips. “No one likes to have their vulnerabilities and failures on full display for the world to judge.”