Fire in the Blood

2. Chapter Two – Waiting Game

2

Chapter Two – Waiting Game

Los Angeles

Teddy Hood stood in the empty house on Mulholland Drive and shook his head. Dorcas had finally agreed to selling their home, and now that she had finally moved her stuff out, the house was ready to be handed over to the new owner, an excited young actor who’d made his first million and wanted the now-legendary Hood/Prettyman mansion for himself.

Good. Let him have it. Teddy Hood was tired. Tired of the fighting, of the divorce, of Hollywood. Of Dorcas’s spite.

He checked his watch. He would have to leave now to get to his supervised visit time with his daughter, DJ. His mood lightened at the thought of seeing his darling tomboy daughter, only six and yet so headstrong. The only downside was…

Supervised visits. He swallowed the anger that the restriction riled in him. Damn you, Dorcas, and your lies. She’d made a big deal of his ‘temper’ to the press, and then to the custody judge who had been starstruck by her and had taken against Teddy. Unfairly, too, but Dorcas had the upper hand in the divorce and she knew it.

She knew way too much about Teddy’s past. All of it: the early days of his acting career and what he had been put through. The stuff of nightmares and nothing he wanted out in the world. Nothing. And Dorcas had been gleeful when she told him that she would think nothing of revealing everything if she didn’t come out as the ‘winner’ in their divorce.

He was just grateful she finally agreed to it. The face that the caring ‘humanitarian’ Dorcas Prettyman showed to the world was in sharp contrast to the destructive narcissist she actually was.

It had fooled him for a few years, too.

Teddy got into his car and drove across the city, glancing in the mirror to check he didn’t look too grungy. He’d been growing his dark brown beard out, not to hipster lengths, but so it covered his handsome face enough that he felt as if he had a mask on. Of course, his brilliant cornflower blue eyes would always give him away, but that wasn’t the point. He didn’t want to be ‘Teddy Hood,’ pretty-boy movie star anymore… he wanted out of the game entirely.

No more Hollywood. God, what an appealing idea.

When he arrived at Dorcas’s new ‘rental,’ a behemoth that was costing him nearly a quarter of a million a month, the supervisor greeted him and led him in. “We’ve had a bit of an upset,” she whispered to him. The supervisor, Fliss, unlike the judge, had seen through Dorcas immediately and adored Teddy—not for his reputation, but for the way he was with DJ.

“What happened?”

“Mommy wanted DJ to wear a dress for some press photos. DJ had other ideas.” Fliss, a non-nonsense middle-aged Englishwoman, tried to hide a grin. “Oh, DJ put on a dress but halfway through the photos, ripped it off. Underneath she had a Never Mind the Bollocks shirt on. Mommy wasn’t pleased.”

Teddy grinned widely. “How the hell did she get her hands on that?”

Fliss opened her eyes wide in innocence. “Can I help it if I leave my laptop open on Amazon.com?”

“You are a bad, bad influence. But thank you,” he patted her back, laughing. “So, I take it Dorcas went into one of her screaming jags?”

“Yup. She’s now in bed with one of her heads.”

Teddy rolled his eyes in unison with Fliss. “Good.”

In the living room, DJ looked up with pure joy as her father entered the room and flew into his arms. She looked cheerful enough. “Did Fliss tell you?”

“She did. You are a bad, bad child, Dinah-Jane.”

“Then why are you smiling, Daddy?” DJ grinned widely at him and threw her arms around his neck. “How long can you stay tonight?”

Teddy shot a look at Fliss who made a face. “Just the usual hour, Monkey.”

DJ’s face fell. “Oh.”

Teddy hugged his daughter tightly. “It’ll get better soon, I swear it will. In the meantime, let’s not waste any time moping, hey?”

DJ rallied, smiled, and they played together for an hour, laughing and joking around.

Teddy hated saying goodbye; it was the only time DJ got teary, but tonight, she clung on even more. “Can’t I come live with you, Daddy? I promise I’ll be good.”

Teddy’s heart shattered. “Monkey, you don’t know how much I wish you could. I wish, I wish, I wish you could.”

He hated to leave her crying, but Dorcas was fierce about him leaving exactly on the hour. As he walked out of the mansion, he heard his ex-wife calling to him. Bunching his hands into fists to stop himself breaking down in front of her, he turned.

Dorcas Prettyman had always relied on her good looks for everything in life. The daughter of a screen legend herself, her path to stardom was also eased by her spectacular looks, silky dark hair, and silver eyes. When she had been younger, her body was the stuff of legend, Jessica-Rabbit curves, but once she had built a reputation not just as an actress but as a charity maven, she had simply stopped eating. Teddy also suspected she was using but could never find proof. Dorcas could run classes on how to hide a person’s vices.

A title which, of all people, Dorcas Prettyman was least entitled. She would host benefits but would ask an extortionate fee to do it and insist on NDAs for everyone. Anyone that crossed her was met with a tsunami of spite so vicious it could leave someone speechless for days. She was, quite simply, terrifying.

And now in her mid-forties, her looks were starting to fade, her dark hair was now dyed an unflattering straw-blonde, and younger, prettier, easier to work with actresses were taking the roles she had always expected to be offered. Rather than move into character roles like her contemporaries, she began to write her own roles… which were not well-received. Dorcas had become a laughingstock behind the scenes in Hollywood, and Teddy had borne the brunt of her rage.

She hadn’t started to beat him until DJ was three years old. It was on the night of the Oscars and nominee Dorcas had been passed over for an actress she hated. The actress in question, Tiger Rose, had won Best Actress for a film starring opposite Teddy and their onscreen chemistry had been the talk of Hollywood.

Dorcas, of course, immediately suspected they had been f*****g, despite Teddy’s denials. Unlike most Hollywood husbands, he had remained faithful, even through the last few years when any love between him and Dorcas had been minimal.

Teddy was dead on his feet, having taken a red-eye flight back from a film set in the Ukraine the previous day. He’d supported Dorcas on the red carpet, of course, and commiserated when she had lost. Of course, he had to applaud his costar for her own win, and that had set Dorcas off. In the limousine on the way home, she had practically screamed at him, blaming him for her loss.

He had gone to sleep in the guest room, eager to fend off any further argument, but in the early hours, he had been rocked awake by searing pain as Dorcas beat him with an empty vodka bottle. It smashed across his brow eventually, and Teddy had been left with a scar above his right eye.

It was all hushed up, of course, and Teddy declined to press charges for DJ’s sake. Dorcas had been repentant… that time. She never made the mistake of hitting him where it showed again. Teddy, his male pride more than dented, made a show of putting up with her moods, never telling anyone how miserable he was, but inevitably, rumors started. A former nanny to DJ, whom Dorcas had verbally abused, broke her NDA and sold a story to the press of Dorcas’s moods and how whipped Teddy was. Teddy was humiliated.

But it wasn’t until his beloved younger brother Billy had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor did Teddy see the light. As Billy wasted away in hospital, he begged his older brother, Teddy, not to waste any more time. “She’s poison,” Billy had said, his honesty forthright because he had nothing to lose. “She always has been. Teddy, please, take DJ and go. You’ll both be happier.”

Teddy told Dorcas he was leaving her the evening of Billy’s funeral. She reacted as expected, laughing in his face, not taking him seriously.

She soon found out he was deadly serious and went into damage control mode. Nannies, bodyguards were all paid off to say he was a bad father and neglectful. Dorcas was clever—she never outright said he was abusive—that would be very hard to prove, because he was the farthest thing from it, but she started a whisper campaign. Going into one of her saintly martyr modes, she gave interviews where she would espouse how hard it was for a single mother out there, how she barely had time to shower because of it, that she cared little for the trappings of fame—all while renting a beautiful mansion and making Teddy pay for it.

Teddy drove home now, his heart heavy at leaving DJ, and when he got to the small apartment he had rented—private, out of the way, and nowhere a movie star was expected to live—he took his jacket off and slumped onto the sofa. He flicked the news on, expecting to hear more about himself and Dorcas, but instead saw a beautiful woman speaking outside a hospital building, surrounded by press. He turned the television up.

“During the ensuing struggle, Braydon Carter was killed, and India suffered serious abdominal injuries. She is currently in emergency surgery. We’ll give you an update later, but in the meantime, we ask you respect both India’s and her family’s privacy and remember there are many other sick people and their families here who deserve their privacy as well. Thank you.”

Jesus. India Blue was hurt? Teddy felt a pang of sadness. He didn’t know the singer well, had only met her a couple of times, but she was a sweetheart, a rare talent. Teddy watched as the spokeswoman walked back into the hospital. She looked tired and distressed, but still walked with purpose and with confidence. The reporter at the scene identified her as India’s lawyer, Jess Olden.

Jess Olden… Teddy had definitely heard of her; in fact, she was legendary in Hollywood circles for winning the best possible outcomes for her clients in savage, bitter battles regarding alimony, property, and more importantly, custody.

An idea formed in his mind, but he put it aside for now. Jess Olden was clearly devastated by her friend’s attempted murder, and now wouldn’t be the ideal time to ask if she could take him on.

But when—and if—India Blue made it, and Teddy hoped she would, he would approach Jess Olden. Ask for her help.

Because he wanted his daughter back for more than a supervised hour every two days, and he had the strangest idea that Jess Olden was the right person to help him.

And it had nothing, nothing at all to do with the fact that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Nothing.