He frowned at the admission as he sent someone to the side a questioning look. Seconds later a young man wearing large headphones came halfway onto the stage and handed Andrew a thick newspaper before quickly scurrying away.
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew,” he said, sounding truly sorry as he handed the newspaper over to her.
Dread filled her stomach as she reached over and accepted the newspaper.
When her eyes landed on the large black print stamped across the top she felt the air in her lungs rush out of her as if she’d been hit with a two by four.
“You didn’t know about this?” Andrew asked.
“No,” she said hollowly as she ran her eyes over the article title once again.
At least now she knew why she’d always been treated differently and why she never felt like she belonged, at least where her mother was concerned because the woman she believed to be her mother wasn’t. According to the paper, she was the product of an affair that her father had with his secretary and was of course deeply ashamed of. He had no knowledge of Jamie’s existence until she was dropped off at his door when Jamie was four years old.
Why?
Why would they do this to her? Why couldn’t they have just told her this? Did they really need to make this a public announcement? Then Nick’s words came back to her and she realized that to her mother, well, really the woman who’d tolerated her existence, hated that she was in the spotlight and wanted it for herself. Jamie could care less about that. The only thing that mattered to her at the moment was that she was truly alone in this world.
Chapter 18
“Open the f**king door, Jamie!” he shouted, pounding on the door.
“Go to hell, Nick!” she snapped back, shocking the living hell out of him.
There was no doubt that she wanted to tell him off, but he hadn’t expected her to actually do it. No matter how much he pissed her off, and he did that on a daily basis, she usually mumbled her way around it. But not today.
Then again she did have liquid courage in her room right now. He was going to kill the bellhop for bringing it to her. It was the last damn thing that she needed on a day like this and now that she had it and plenty of it apparently, she was probably going to do something incredibly stupid and make the news that they’d only received hours earlier a hell of a lot worse.
He wasn’t sure who he wanted to kill more right now, the ass**le who pretended to be sympathetic as he captured Jamie’s reaction to the news on camera or her so called family who’d just shoved her to the wolves. Actually right now he was pretty f**king pissed at the people working below him who should have been on top of this and given him a head’s up.
They should never have walked into that mess. He should have known first thing this morning and been given all the information so that he could have prepared Jamie. Instead they’d walked right into that little mess and by now the video clip of Jamie finding out that she was the result of an illicit affair between her father and secretary was all over the web.
The only good thing from this nightmare was that Jamie somehow managed to keep it together during the rest of the interview. Once it was over she was polite to the ass**le he wanted to deck and walked out with her head held high.
Unfortunately she took off before he could talk to her and holed herself up in her hotel room and wouldn’t let him in.
He wanted to hold her, comfort her, shake her for not letting him do all those things when the interview was over, but most of all he wanted to know that she was okay. He needed to feel her in his arms and know that she was all right.
“Let me in, Jamie,” he said even as he pulled out the card he managed to talk the front clerk out of.
“Go away, Nick,” she said, sounding stressed and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she was. He didn’t think of her as his little recluse for nothing. She didn’t have many close friends in her life and now it seemed that she didn’t have any family either.
It took a few well placed phone calls but he discovered that they’d sold the story for a hefty sum and were already booked with some of the bigger talk shows to share their story. Of course most of those talk shows were more interested in getting Jamie to come give them her side of the story and when he made sure that she was calm and ready he’d talk her into it. It would be good for her to clear the air not to mention good publicity for her books.
When it became painfully obvious that she wasn’t about to open the door he decided that he wasn’t going to wait any longer. He opened the door and stepped in and made another mental note to throttle the bellhop for this bullshit. He rubbed his hands down his face warily as he took in the empty candy bar wrappers, snack cake wrappers and empty cans of Coke strewed about the double bed where his little recluse sat with her legs crossed as she downed another Coke.
His eyes shot over to the nightstand overflowing with more junk food to the coffee table with four ice buckets filled to the top with ice and fresh Cokes. Realizing that the damage was already done, he grabbed a Coke and paused by the little table of junk food and grabbed a packet of Twinkies and kicked off his shoes before he sat down on the bed next to Jamie.
“I’m not speaking to you,” she said quietly, not bothering to take her eyes away from the television that unfortunately was playing a chick flick. The hell he put up with to do his job, he thought as he ripped open his Twinkies. When she reached over and grabbed one of his Twinkies he simply sighed and started in on the other one.
Normally he didn’t touch sweets. He’d never been big on them probably because that’s all he had to eat when he was a kid. His mother and “Aunts” hadn’t exactly been up to date on parenting one-o-one and hadn’t thought that a growing boy might need more than fake juice filled with sugar, chips and microwave pizza to live on. The only times he got a real meal were when he went to school or when he stole it.
When he was old enough to work he took jobs busting tables at restaurants mostly for the free meals. Once he got the hell out of his mother’s house and into a dump of his own he’d refused to live off junk food. He put his student meal plan to good use and kept two jobs during the school year so that when he no longer had the student cafeteria as an option he wouldn’t have to eat shit to live. Since then he rarely even indulged in anything sugary or sweet since it usually brought back sour memories, but with his little recluse he found himself simply enjoying the occasional treat.
“What’s the game plan?” he asked after a few minutes.