Here With Me (Adair Family 1)

Shocked, I raised an eyebrow.

At my silence, she gave me a sad shrug. “I’m not exaggerating. Don’t get me wrong, I have some good friends in the industry. But I have some girlfriends in LA who started out in the business at the same time as me and hate that I’ve had success. They try very hard to hide it but can’t. I’m just one more pretty face standing in their way.”

“You’re more than a pretty face. You’re a damn good actor.”

“Thank you, Robyn. I mean it. You’re a good person. I could tell that right away about you. But it makes sense. Mac is too.”

The insinuation that I was anything like Mac caused a twist in my gut. It wasn’t that I was blind; I could see there were similarities between us. But I still didn’t know how to handle my emotions when it came to my father.

Reading my silence, Lucy admitted, “I have a shitty relationship with my father too.”

I glanced at her sharply, surprised she trusted me with personal information. “I didn’t know that.”

“No one does. I don’t talk about my personal life in interviews. Drives the journalists batshit.” She chuckled. “I’m very good at evasive maneuvering. Adds to my mystery. Anyway … my dad ran out on us when I was eight. Mom remarried a real dick, and my dad never came back. I hated him for a long time, and I know I would benefit from hashing out my issues with him. You’re brave.”

“You think I’m brave?”

“Coming all the way to Scotland to face the man you feel abandoned by? Yeah, I think that’s pretty damn brave.”

Her words were a balm; I hadn’t been feeling very brave since arriving here. “I haven’t spoken to him about anything but this case. I don’t want to upset him while he’s recovering, so everything is still up in the air between us.”

“That’s fair. Just because you don’t want to push him right now doesn’t mean you’re avoiding the issue. Right?”

“I don’t know about that. It feels like I’m putting it off. You should’ve seen me when I first arrived. I sat down in his office and honestly thought I was going to start sobbing my guts out right there and then. I couldn’t leave fast enough.”

“Robyn, I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened between you two, but give yourself some slack. Parents have this ability to cripple us emotionally. Trust me. You’re doing good. I mean, look”—she gestured up the sand dunes to my trailer as we approached—“you’ve turned what was a flying visit into an indefinite stay so you can find the person who did this to Mac. Give yourself some credit.”

I snorted. “I would if I were any closer to figuring out who’s behind the attack.”

Concern strained her features. “You don’t have any clue?”

“There are a few people who have motive, but there’s no evidence to support it’s any one of them.”

“Shit.” Lucy drew to a stop at the hood of the Range Rover, her arms crossed over her chest. “I’d hoped you were getting somewhere.” Her stunning blue eyes met mine. “At least Lachlan discovered the security system was hacked.”

Surprised moved through me. “He did?” Why didn’t I know about that? I felt a sting of emotion I didn’t want to name.

“Yeah. He just got word last night. His security guy found all kinds of evidence the system was hacked, so now he’s trying to hack the hacker to see if they can trace who it is.”

“Did Lachlan inform the police?”

Lucy shook her head. “He’s pretty irritated with them. They came around a few times this past week to interview members and informed Lachlan they were out of leads. He’s supposed to tell them if anything else happens, but—”

“He thinks he’s more competent than the cops?” I sneered. Arrogant asshole.

“No.” Lucy grinned. “I think he thinks you’re more competent because you have a reason to be invested in it. That’s why I hoped you might have figured something out by now. Don’t tell Lachlan, but it’s why I’m sticking around. I’m supposed to be in the South of France with this guy I’m casually seeing, but I didn’t want to leave Lachlan, or Eredine, for that matter, in the middle of all this.”

The thought of Lucy taking off disappointed me. While we’d only known each other a week, I’d miss her if she left. She was the opposite of everything I thought a famous actor would be in real life. Down-to-earth, funny, considerate. Plus, she was the most confident woman I’d ever met, and while some might think her arrogant, I found it refreshing how much she owned the fact she thought she was the shit. More people should be like Lucy.

But I didn’t want her to feel unsafe. “I don’t think Eredine or Adair would want you to put off plans for them.”