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Alle Kapitel von CHASING HIS SUPERSTAR WIFE: Kapitel 21 – Kapitel 30

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CHAPTER 21

James's POVThe very next day after I had given him the instruction, Marcus would deliver the report at seven in the morning.I had been awake since five.I sat at the desk in my study and read through it with the kind of attention I had not given a document in months. I went through every page and detail. The films, the reviews, the construction company, the Edinburgh project, and the London years had produced all of it.Diana Marsh.That was the name I kept returning to. The woman who had taken Amelia from nothing and given her the framework for everything that followed. I had pulled everything I could find on Diana overnight. Her agency, her history, the actresses she had shaped over twenty years. Every one of them is serious. Every one of them had the kind of talent that did not need to be manufactured because it was already there—it just needed the right conditions.Amelia had found those conditions.I sat with the report and thought about how.She had arrived in London with almo

CHAPTER 22

Amelia's POVI did not speak for the first ten minutes of the drive.Priya knew better than to fill that silence. She sat in the front seat with her tablet, leaving me alone, and I stared out the window, letting the meeting sit in my chest and burn.Not because he had won. He had not won. Garrett was staying on the project; the amendment had been reversed before we reached the lobby, and every point I had walked in to make had been made cleanly and on record.I had won.That was not what was burning.What was burning was the two seconds.He had said my name. Not the formal version, not the usual Sinclair exchange we had been conducting since I walked into his building, but my name. With that particular weight he had always known how to attach to it. The weight that said I know you. I knew you before any of this. I know what is underneath.And for two seconds — two seconds that felt considerably longer from the inside — something in me had responded.Not to him. I needed to be precise

CHAPTER 23

Isabel's POVI saw the article at eight in the morning.I had been sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee and my phone and the particular restlessness that came from a night of light sleep and heavy thinking. I had been checking the publication's site since six. I was anxiously refreshing and waiting for Craig's piece to appear.What appeared instead stopped me completely.The Return. Why Amelia Sinclair's homecoming is the industry story of the year.It was a cover story, and it had three thousand words. There were also photographs.I read it. I read every word, and with every paragraph, the thing in my chest that I had been managing carefully since the pharmacy encounter tightened by one more degree."Earned," the critic had written. Presence, Marcus Cole had said. The room felt it immediately.I put my coffee down.I picked up my phone and immediately called Craig.* * *Craig didn't answer me immediately, as he answered on the fourth ring.That itself was information. Craig h

CHAPTER 24

Glen's POVI had not slept properly in six weeks.That was not unusual for me at this stage of a project. Sleep was something that happened between films, not during them. During them there was only the work—the endless, consuming, occasionally magnificent weight of trying to take something that existed perfectly in someone else's imagination and render it faithfully on screen.This project was different from anything I had ever done before.This project was based on a very famous book series.The books had sold over forty million copies across thirty-two countries. Forty million. That was the kind of number that stopped being a number after a certain point and became something else entirely—it was a responsibility, a pressure, a permanent reminder that the people waiting for this film had already lived inside this story in their own minds and were going to arrive at the cinema having already decided what it should look like.My job was to meet them there without disappointing them.T

TWENTY-FIVE

Glen's POVI had read the article over breakfast.Thomas had flagged it before I had even finished my coffee. The Return: Why Amelia Sinclair's homecoming is the industry story of the year.The piece was over three thousand words. It was a cover story, and from a very serious publication. I had read it carefully and felt the particular satisfaction of a man who had made a decision and then watched the evidence arrange itself in his favor.The critic's word had stayed with me.Earned.That was the word I had been unable to find for the quality I had seen in her films. "Earned" was the word. Everything she brought to a performance had been paid for somewhere. It was not manufactured, and it was not borrowed, and it was not something that came from technique alone. It had come from a life that had cost something.Sera had a life that had cost something.I closed the article and got in the car.* * *The coffee shop was on a quiet street. This was the kind of place that did not advertise

CHAPTER 26

Amelia's POVThe first thing I did when I got home was call Diana.I sat on the sofa with my coat still on and the script folder on the cushion beside me, and I called her. It rang. And rang. And then it went to voicemail.I left her a message."Diana. Call me when you get this. I have news. Good news. The kind you are going to want to hear from me directly."I hung up and looked at the folder.Sera.I had said yes in a coffee shop on a Tuesday morning to the largest role of my career, and I desperately needed to tell the very person who had made that career possible, and she was not answering her phone.I checked my messages. Priya had forwarded the article to Diana that morning—I had confirmed it myself. Diana had not responded. She had not responded to the article or to the three messages I had sent since.That was unlike her.Diana Marsh was many things. And unreachable was not one of them. She had a particular relationship with her phone that she described as a professional oblig

CHAPTER 27

Isabel's POVLast week had been a very good week.But that was also part of what made today so unbearable.Last week I had gotten the call from my agent. Glen Winters' production. I was offered a supporting role. I would be playing Veda — a woman who moved through the story as an ally before revealing herself as something else entirely. My agent had said the words significant supporting role and I had felt something I had not felt in a long time. This was something that was not manufactured and not performed.I had felt genuine pride.I had earned that role.I would be playing Veda.James had connections to the production company — a favour called in, a word placed carefully in the right ear — but the audition had been mine. I had prepared for it. I had walked into that room and done the work and they had chosen me on the basis of what I had shown them.I had spent the week in a good mood. I was lighter than I had been in months. The Carter Holdings situation was still sitting at the

CHAPTER 28

James's POVMarcus had told me all about the news at eleven.I was in a budget meeting that had been going nowhere for two hours when he knocked and leaned into the doorway with that particular expression he used when the information was good enough to justify the interruption."Mrs. Sinclair has been cast in the Glen Winters production," he said. "It is a significant supporting role and it was announced this morning."I looked at him for a moment.And then I stood up."Reschedule this meeting some other time," I said to the room, and walked out.* * *I had been neglecting her.That was the honest version of it and I was very much so capable of the honest version when I was alone in the back of a car with nobody to perform a different version for.The past two weeks had totally consumed me. It had all begun with Amelia's return and the rest fell down like dominoes. The site meeting. The contract amendment and its reversal. The report from Marcus. The nights I had spent reading about

CHAPTER 29

Amelia's POVHe was already there when I arrived.He was standing outside the restaurant rather than inside it, which I had not expected. He had a bunch of flowers in his hand — yellow tulips, simple and unshowy, wrapped in brown paper rather than the elaborate cellophane that florists used when they were trying to make something look more expensive than it was.He held them out when I reached him."Congratulations," he said.I looked at the tulips.I had immediately thought that there was something about the simplicity of it—the brown paper, the yellow, the fact that he had brought them at all—as it was more disarming than an elaborate gesture would have been."Thank you," I said. I took them.He held the door open and I walked in.* * *The restaurant was busier than the dinner had been.The reason was the lunchtime crowds. It had the particular energy of people on a schedule, eating quickly, and having clipped conversations. A different kind of public than an evening restaurant—mor

THIRTY

Amelia's POVI had rearranged the living room cushions three times.I was aware of this, and I was also aware that rearranging cushions was not something I did and that the fact I was doing it now meant something I was not going to examine too closely.Mrs. Brooks was in the kitchen. I could hear her moving around in there, the particular rhythm of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and was doing it without needing to think about it. She had said nothing when I told her we were having a guest for lunch. She had simply nodded and opened the refrigerator and started taking things out.But she had looked at me once.I knew that particular look. It was the one she used when she had noticed something and had decided not to comment on it. I had been on the receiving end of that look enough times to know exactly what it contained.I put the cushion back where it had been originally."Mama! " Liam was in the corner of the living room with his cars, and he held one up for my inspect

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