Exposure_A Love Story Read online

  Hannah Leighton continued breathing through the phone. “Yeah, shit is an understatement. You’re introducing Megara Jeffries. It’s a big deal, West. National Geographic. You said doing new vodka-flavor unveilings and night club openings were not considered community service, remember? ‘I have a conscience. I need more,’” she mocked in a baby voice.

  West closed his eyes. He had said that.

  “Do you remember that?”

  “Not quite in that voice, but yes.”

  “And since I’m your kick-ass agent, I reached out and showed these hiking-for-fun bleeding hearts that you would be a perfect spotlight for them.” Her voice was much louder now. “She’s been on the cover of National Geographic twice for crying out loud.”

  “Right.” West tossed the red bra hanging from the doorknob and the piece of material pooled on the ground near it toward the bed. April’s outfit had passed for a dress last night, but in the harsh light of almost afternoon and his agent’s amplified breathing, it looked more like a Halloween costume. He kept that last observation to himself, glancing at April, who apparently had not met Hannah, or she wouldn’t be crooking her finger in a gesture that invited West back to bed. He shook his head and pointed to his phone in an animated panic. April’s eyes grew wide as she blew her blond locks out of her face, scooted out of bed, and eagerly nodded as if she were privy to an important crisis. She held her finger to her mouth and tiptoed into the bathroom.

  Before the guilt in his stomach bloomed, Hannah was back in his ear.

  “West?”

  “I will… How much time do I have?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “Where?”

  “Moscone Convention Center.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Tamara sent you clothes. Did you get them?”

  West considered the living room and noticed the wardrobe bag hanging on the front closet door.

  “Yes. I’ll be there and in whatever is in that bag. Need to go.”

  West hung up before more breathing erupted into more yelling.

  “Baby, are we late for a photo shoot or something?” the husky voice spilled from behind the bathroom door.

  We? West ran a hand over his face, hoping to erase every choice he’d made since yesterday morning’s Kinesis workout, but the sandpaper feel only reminded him that the clock was ticking. He called down to Towner.

  Alice Towner was a saint. West already knew that, but he would now need to add wizard since less than fifteen minutes later, he climbed into a waiting car after kissing April on the cheek outside the service elevator and assuring her he would share her songs with some of “his people.” Christ, he was a good actor.

  Once again, he awkwardly offered Towner some folded bills.

  “Thank you, but I brought my lunch today,” she said in a voice that usually had West sitting up straighter.

  “You should try that little deli next to the dry cleaner. It doesn’t look like much, but they have scrumptious chopped liver,” Towner said before closing West into the quiet of the black sedan. She offered some version of the lunch comment every time he tried to give her money in a voice that reminded him of his Aunt Margaret. Not the tone, but the wisdom behind it.

  Twice a year, once the day before Easter and then again during the Christmas season, his mother’s sister came up to Petaluma from “the big city.” She giggled a little every time she used that label for San Francisco, as if she was the first person to think of it. The van from Bayview Care Community pulled in at three o’clock sharp. She insisted on it so she and West would have plenty of time to be “seated and prepared” at the backyard picnic table for tea at exactly four. When West was little, he cringed at being forced to wear the bow tie she had given him at Christmas and having to pull out the wooden bench for her as if they’d arrived at the Ritz. By the time he was a teenager, it was an eye-rolling intrusion into his all-important social life.

  Aunt Margaret, no nicknames for her, died when West was a senior in high school, and the strangest thing happened. He missed her, missed tea and time with her he would never get back. She’d helped him grow up, knocking every chip off his adolescent shoulder with a simple story or a pouty face. She’d been his friend when the comparisons to his brothers became too much. She’d kept his secrets and trusted him with hers. West didn’t know how significant Aunt Margaret was until she was gone. Life seemed to work that way.

  He’d thought about having tea a few times after she died to keep the tradition alive, but something far less important usually got in the way. He had never met anyone like her until a few days after he checked into the Fairmont.

  He’d been surrounded by photographers while trying to make his way into the lobby. Towner burst through the crowd of cameras, her winter-white bob perfectly quaffed, exclaiming, “Mr. Drake needs to get inside. Please stand back. His dear sister is in labor.” The piranhas had parted on an “aww” and allowed West to pass. He didn’t have a sister.

  As Towner escorted him to the service elevator and explained that he could use the side alley for his “comings and goings,” West had thanked her and discreetly handed over a folded hundred-dollar bill. Her help was well worth the money, but she had instead pushed up the brim of her glasses, shaken her head, and showed West a picture of her newest granddaughter. That was it, a picture, some random conversation about when peaches were in season again, and a handshake. It was the beginning of their relationship. Towner informed him less than a week later that she did not want to be called Ms., Miss, or Mrs. She was sixty-eight and none of those titles fit anymore, so she said. West, who was raised to respect his elders, couldn’t bring himself to use her first name, so they settled on Towner. “Like Madonna,” he had told her. He occasionally still tried to tip her, especially when he called on Towner to deal with his less-than-proud moments, but she never took the money.

  He smirked at the thought of the hotel concierge being his only true friend and decided his Aunt Margaret would certainly approve.

  The driver notified West they would arrive at the convention center with five minutes to spare, which was good news. He didn’t want to listen to Hannah if some National Geographic rising star had to walk on stage alone. Like that would be a huge loss. The woman took pictures in freezing water, or with bears. She was obviously more than capable of walking on a stage. He had asked Hannah for more substance, but he’d secretly hoped she would stop sending him to publicity things altogether when he moved from LA. He should have known better; Hannah had selective hearing.

  “These groups are happy to have you. And why wouldn’t they? You’re pure star power, hon,” she had said last month when she set the event up and was far less pissed at him than she was on the phone.

  Closing his eyes and resting his head back on the leather seat, West wondered how many more of his fifteen minutes of fame were left.

  Chapter Two

  Meg had talked her way out of and into a lot of situations. It was a necessary skill if a woman wanted access to places and the ability to capture images most people only saw on a nature channel. She’d grown up raising her hand, but if she wasn’t acknowledged, she spoke her mind anyway. Her mother used to say her restlessness came from being the youngest in a family of four girls. That might be, but now and then the oldest, Hollis, exerted her superpower too, exactly like she had last Thanksgiving.

  “We need you home,” she had said, never one to mince words and even more bitchy now that she was eight months pregnant.

  “I am home.” Meg gestured to the living room.

  “Not what I mean, smartass, and you know it. Mom had eye surgery three months ago, did you know that?”

  “No.” Damn her. Meg often wondered if Hollis was riddled with guilt herself. She was a master at bringing it out in others.

  Her big sister quirked a perfectly waxed brow in that way that made Meg feel stupid.

  “Well, she did. Now you can ask her how she’s feeling. And you weren’t at Sage’s wedding, or min
e for that matter. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “It’s my job. No one asked me if I was going to be available for those weddings, and I can’t…”

  “Leave the animals?”

  “Oh, screw you. I’m sorry you’ve had a meltdown and discovered your softer side thanks to your way-too-kind-for-you husband, but the rest of us still work. I don’t need this right now, Hols. I’m home, and I don’t have another assignment until after the new year. I will talk with Mom and find out why she’s not telling me things.”

  “That’s temporary. You’re all about keeping it real, little sister, so I’m telling you how I feel, how we all feel. You are missing out on our family, and while your pictures are stunning and your success is brag-worthy, we miss you and we need you.”

  “Bullshit. No one has ever needed me. You guys want the whole family picture now that you’ve paired up and gone all Hallmark Christmas special on me.”

  Hollis played a little violin with her fingers, shook her head, and returned to the rest of the family in the living room for pie. Meg had been so frustrated—she wasn’t sure if she was pissed or guilty. She’d eventually settled on a mixture of both. That was the same year Anna had blurted out her love for Dane, and Meg was again caught in a blizzard of emotions as the life she’d left behind all those years ago shifted one step further away.

  The sister closest to her, the one who loved her even in her disarray and flights of adventure, was in love and it would be no time at all, Meg knew even back then, before she too would be off and married.

  Meg had brushed the whole thing off by the time her plane landed in Canada at the start of the year, but her mind had been clouded. She woke before the sun a few months ago with a sense of almost paralyzing loneliness. The predawn sky from her tent in the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia was deep violet. It was a morning she’d experienced more than her fair share of times, but that time, her heart began to race as if she’d recently received bad news. For the first time since she was eighteen, her self-imposed solitude rang empty.

  She lay back on her sleeping bag with a sense that all the lives that were important to her had learned to live without her, that they were going on and would continue despite her existence. Meg had felt pangs of longing for home before, but they were easily dismissed. This was different. This made her cry.

  When the feelings didn’t subside despite her usual distractions, she realized she wanted to be home for the first time ever. She took her last shots of the Spirit Bear, turned in her images, and spent a few weeks in the home where she grew up. Her mother kept making her waffles, and her father hugged Meg until she couldn’t feel her arms. She was their baby, the last to leave and the last “singleton,” as her dad exclaimed one morning over breakfast.

  “It makes sense that you are home now. I think you’re ready for a change. Thirty is right around the corner and you’ve sown your oats.”

  Meg had twisted her face in confusion at the awkward reference. She often wondered where her father came up with this stuff but assumed it must have been handed down through the generations of quirky Jeffries men.

  “My oats, huh?”

  “Yes. You’ve been out there roaming around with the animals, and now you’re ready to make your own nest or cave or den. You know what I mean.”

  “I’m sure I don’t, but it all sounds good, so I’ll let you have it. I’m happy to be home, and yes, a rental den or cave has appeal. Let’s start with that.” Meg had opened her laptop that morning, again somehow knowing it was time.

  Her father ruffled the top of her head, as he often did when he was emotional or not sure what to say, and they’d gone apartment hunting that afternoon.

  As of this morning, she had a couch and a dresser for her bedroom. She was well on her way to a full nest. With or without underwear, she was still Meg Jeffries—the wild one of the Jeffries clan.

  And yet, the mere act of speaking eluded her when the stage manager explained where she would be standing and that something was going to lift her above the crowd. She had a million questions and wanted to protest, insist she could walk onstage, but all that defiance came out as a passive smile, and she did something she rarely did—she followed directions.

  Standing in darkness speckled with only a few filtered lights, Meg knew she’d only allowed herself to be led because she was scared. The first time she used a guide in Kenya, she listened more than she spoke and followed his exact instructions. She had never captured images of big predators before and her stomach danced the entire month and a half. It had been exhilarating and palm-sweating scary at the same time. Her palms were sweating again as she stood on some grate in the convention center as if she were about to be ejected from a cannon in front of a roaring crowd, but she was nowhere near exhilarated. She was terrified.

  Second guessing why she’d left the comfort of a job she knew and loved and doubting her ability to be anything more than a photographer in the field, Meg tried to remember which slide was first in her presentation. The stage manager’s whisper cut through the darkness. He explained that the man introducing her was running late and her cards had been placed on the podium as she requested. Meg was three-quarters of the way to convincing herself things would be fine when she remembered the green skirt and the rest of her morning.

  Did he say up and over the audience?

  West was questioning Tamara’s choice of pants for the afternoon. He tended to leave the “look” to her, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever worn red pants before and unless his next job was hosting one of those talent shows that was all the rage these days, he’d be sure to tell her this was his last pair. As the car inched through traffic toward the convention center, all he could think about was the shit he was inevitably going to get from his three brothers back home if they happened to see any pictures of the event or coverage on television. Hannah had said the damn thing was televised. Not that they watched all that much, but somehow, thanks to YouTube, everything managed to find its way back home.

  West looked back down at the pants and sighed. He had not exactly grown up in a fashion-forward family, and the outfit would no doubt provide enough comic material to last them all until next Christmas.

  He preferred to dress himself from his vast collection of jeans and T-shirts. In the early days, that was fine, but once the movies started taking off, he was given a “team.” That included his stylist, Tamara. West had reluctantly agreed to be “dressed” for talk shows and other publicity-related events. Not that he considered an environmental symposium publicity, but the press would be there, so Hannah and his publicist were given final say on the outfit.

  West had to admit, when he first decided to commit to acting for a “finite period,” as his dad had suggested, he’d never imagined going from blind auditions for bit parts to being followed into the grocery store and receiving public bathroom selfie requests overnight.

  Things had died down a bit now that they were on the fourth film in the franchise, but the week the first Full Throttle opened, his world changed. The ride had been trippy. He wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t enjoy the money and the things it afforded him and those he loved, but he was getting older. How long could a guy wear leather pants and a tank top before people started laughing? Even if he stayed in shape, the work wasn’t exactly stimulating.

  “Your face is not what independent films are looking for, hon. Most moviegoers want to picture you naked, not spouting endless monologues on being misunderstood,” Hannah had said a few years ago when he expressed an interest in working on a project outside of the Full Throttle franchise.

  West used to pride himself on balking at authority. In fact, being the family rebel, the one McNaughton boy who wasn’t going to settle for a small city, fueled everything he did up until recently. It was who he thought he was, although LA had a way of knocking a person around. He might have started out with a fire in his belly, but after years of trying to make his life, his career, into what he’d imagined, West had given up
and made it big at the same time.

  He’d worked hard and now made good money. The people in his hometown thought he was a genuine badass thanks to a few stunt men and excellent lighting. He’d even been able to use some of his success to help his brothers start a brewery. But along the way, he gave up on showing people what rested beneath his bravado. That was why he was drawn to acting, wasn’t it?

  Mr. Hernandez’s Acting 101, and his first monologue made him feel completely exposed and protected behind a fictional character at the same time. By his senior year, the applause convinced him he could take people somewhere, give them a good cry or a laugh, and return them safely to their seats. It was the rush of feeling, wasn’t it? Hell, West couldn’t even remember anymore.

  All he knew was that at some point, he realized he was successful in a world where most dreamers were destroyed or sent home. If that meant people defaulted to the face he was born with and his extra hours at the gym, he needed to accept that. The thirst for that first rush or the desire to transport people somewhere else through his acting rarely surfaced anymore. After the third Throttle film had topped the box office for three straight weeks, Hannah threw West a bone by getting him some more interesting press opportunities, and most of his endorsements now were things he cared about. In return, he agreed to stop “trying to be something you’re not,” as Hannah so bluntly put it, and to reprise the role of Nick Shot as many times as the franchise requested.

  He was grateful and hardly wondered anymore if the only McNaughton brother to leave their town for “something worth doing”—as he’d said in a rage when his father told him it was time to come home and stop playing around—was reduced to expertly tousled hair and a smoldering gaze.

  He was still the same kid who held the family record for school detentions. The guy who went to LA with nothing more than clothes and a cash deposit for an apartment. Somewhere underneath his glossy exterior, West still had a soul. The problem was no one ever asked to see it.

  The car came to a sudden halt at a large metal door by the back of the convention center. Perfect timing, he thought, wondering what the hell had gotten into him today. Reflection time was over.