Fatal Wild Child Read Free Page A

hoping he was in it. She didn't want to use his cell phone number if she didn't have to.
    Thankfully, Darlene, his executive associate, picked up. "Darlene, it's Gabrielle. I need to speak to Dad. Is he there? It's urgent. I mean urgent."
    Darlene understood the family code well enough. "I'll get him," she said smoothly. There was a five second silence.
    "Gabrielle?" her father said. He was the only one in the family to use her full name. "What has happened?"
    She took a breath, determined not to cry. Not this time. Not anymore. She had done that too often with her father. "There was an accident on the Yellowhead, Daddy. The brakes failed on my car as I was driving to Pocahontas—"
    "You're alright?" he said quickly.
    "Yes, but the Mustang is a write-off, Daddy. I had to ditch it into the river to stop."
    Silence. She drew a shaky breath.
    "You did?" he said at last. "You pulled yourself out of the river?"
    "No, there was a man, Seth O'Connor. He helped me get the car off the road and get me out of the river. I'm at his cabin now, Dad. This is his line." She looked around the room again, to make sure she was still alone. "You might want to check into his background. He's Canadian and I'm pretty sure he's military, but he doesn't wear dog tags. He saved my life, Dad. If he hadn't come along, I wouldn't have been able to control the car long enough to get it into the river."
    There was a short silence. Her father would understand what she had not said as well as anyone in Hollywood, for he was a major player in that world. Depending upon which biography the tabloids used, Cameron Sherborne was either the eighth or tenth richest man in Hollywood, and certainly one of the most powerful. He was a film producer and entertainment entrepreneur and because he was independently wealthy, with vast family fortunes invested around the globe, he answered to no one. That meant he could make the films he wanted to make. And Cameron Sherborne was in the business because he liked movies, not because he liked making money. He already had enough of that. His artistic sense, though, was good enough that he continued to make money—lots of it.
    Gabrielle listened to her father's short silence and knew he was thinking the same thing she was. He would look into Seth O'Connor's background because he had the unique resources to do that. It was worth finding out about the man who happened to be there just when Gabrielle's brakes failed.
    "I'm going to have to sneak back into the lodge, Dad. I look like I've been pulled through a hedge backwards. Any media around?"
    "Some," Cameron responded. "Can this O'Connor fellow bring you in?"
    "I'll ask."
    "And you're really alright?"
    "I'm fine," she told him. "A mild headache." She waited.
    "Make it soon, Gabrielle," her father said and hung up.
    Gabrielle put the phone back in place, staring at it, feeling almost winded.
    "What's wrong?" Seth asked, behind her.
    She swiveled the desk chair around to face the main room again. Seth stood at the front door, easing his feet out of his boots. He was carrying a big armful of sawn logs that he stacked on the tiled fireplace and bent to push one at a time into the fire. He glanced at her. "You look like the call didn't go so well."
    "That's just it. It went fine." She bit her lip.
    He picked up an iron poker from a tub of fire tools and pushed at the logs, arranging them precisely. The flames leapt, illuminating the planes of his face and the strong, tanned neck inside the open collar of his workman's shirt. There was a scar on the corner of his jaw, a small one, that was white with age, just where his strong jaw line began.
    He put the poker back with the rest of the tools. "If it went well, then why the frown?"
    The lashes around Seth's eyes were thick and black. She hadn't noticed them before. She gripped the edges of the chair. "Conversations with my father never go well." Then she dropped her gaze and grimaced. "Sorry, that's probably too much information."
    She