The Siren by KATHERINE JOHN (general ebook reader .txt) 📕

where I expected it to be. I felt the water close over my ankle as I lost my balance, flailing my arms as I reached for him to catch me.

Only, he didn’t catch me. He didn’t even try. He simply stood by and watched as I tumbled hard on my ass into the muddy puddle, the wind knocked out of me. Behind him, I could see the people waiting for the ferry staring, cell phones raised.

Anger seared my chest. I reached my hand toward him and smiled, hissing through my teeth, “Take my hand, or I will walk off this film.”

He snatched my hand and jerked me to my feet, his eyes cold. My dress was ruined. “Now smile for the cameras,” I growled, keeping a death grip on his hand.

I turned to the people and made a show of laughing it off, taking a bow as they filmed. Cole fired up his movie star smile and waved. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a lime-green raincoat among the onlookers, but when I looked again she was gone, swallowed by the crowd. A woman with a baby strapped to her chest and three kids trailing behind her came running over wanting a selfie with Cole. He obliged, opening the floodgates. We were still trapped in a sea of cameras when our golf cart finally pulled up.

I dove through the plastic, refusing to even look at Cole as he piled in behind me.

“You okay?” the driver asked, glancing down at my dress.

I nodded. “Just took a spill. My butt’s not as bruised as my ego.”

He laughed. “I can’t imagine what you guys put up with.”

Cole shot from the golf cart when it pulled up to the pier leading to our bungalows, but I was hot on his heels. “Hey,” I shouted, shading my eyes against the sun reflecting off the water as I trailed him down the wet planks all the way to the far end. I did my best to look nonchalant in case any of our crew were to see us, but I wasn’t about to let him get away. By the time he got out his key and pushed his door open, I was close enough to force my way through the door behind him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

I kicked the door shut, leaving us alone in his gargantuan bungalow. His television and glass floor windows were twice as large as those in the other bungalows, his kitchen a marble and steel full-size affair instead of a kitchenette, and his deck had a hot tub in addition to the plunge pool. Also, there was a giant, comfortable-looking suede sectional couch that didn’t match the decor in the rest of the resort, and the walls were covered in what I could tell was real art—bright splashes of modernist color interspersed with movie posters featuring Cole’s face. I guessed this was his private villa, not available for rent by the resort.

He spun to face me. “Wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you? Chasing me around like a love-sick puppy all day, acting like we’re together—you should be embarrassed.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. I hated myself for my desperation. “But last night—”

“We were drunk,” he spat. “And you know how I get when I’m playing a character. Peyton had his claws in me. I got carried away.”

My mouth hung open. “Are you saying you method-fucked me?”

He groaned. “My mistake.”

I shivered in the blasting air-conditioning, my chest so tight I could hardly breathe. Behind him, his ten-years-younger face smirked down at me from a life-size poster of him as Bad Billy, cowboy hat askew, the same gun he showed me in the wine cellar in hand. “Why did you offer me this part?” I demanded.

“It wasn’t my decision.”

I felt the tears hot on my cheeks but didn’t bother to wipe them away. “If you hate me so much, why did you let them cast me?”

“I don’t hate you. I just…I didn’t have a choice, okay? Jackson knows everything. He threatened to tell it all if I didn’t give him the money for this project and star in it with you.”

“What?” I sank into a rattan chair, my wet dress cold against my legs. “But you said—”

“He wasn’t in his room doing homework that night. He saw.”

My mind raced, piecing together elements of the night I’d tried so hard to forget. “What did he see?”

“It doesn’t matter. Enough.”

“But—” Carefully neglected memories began to rise from the lagoon where I’d buried them, nearly unrecognizable beneath thirteen years of lies. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He sighed. “It was better you didn’t know.”

“And now he’s blackmailing you—to do a movie?” It was like sand was stuck in the gears of my mind. This couldn’t be true. “That’s insane. Why?”

“I don’t know. I was a shitty father?”

“You didn’t ask him?”

“I’m not in control of the situation,” he growled. “Don’t you see that?”

I’d never known Cole not to be in control of a situation. “Why me? And Madison…?” I was thinking out loud now. “What’s his plan?”

“I don’t think Madison has anything to do with it. And I don’t know if there is a plan, other than to punish me, to make me pay for stealing his childhood—his words, not mine.”

It was too strange to believe. Thoughtful, sensitive, considerate Jackson, a blackmailer? The guy meditated for an hour every morning before our 6:00 a.m. call time. “He didn’t blackmail me.”

“He didn’t need to.” Cole smirked. “You would’ve walked across hot coals for work that paid enough to fill your pool.”

“Enough with the damn pool,” I snapped. “The script is actually good.”

The walls were closing in. I had too many questions. There were too many holes. Could I trust Cole? I stared down through the glass floor at the unsettled ocean, still murky from the storm. “We should have…” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t imagine what it was we should have done. It was all so long