After shutting the door, he returned to his room, where he found his pants and dug his cell phone from his pocket. He hadn’t heard from Maxi since he’d been told he could stay on the property. He needed to talk to him.

Drawing a deep breath, he hit the Phone icon. It’d been long enough since they’d communicated that Maxi should’ve been able to fly halfway around the world by now.

But what time zone would he be in? Would he be awake and available?

Seth paced at the foot of the bed while he waited for the phone to ring.

“Hello?”

Relieved that Maxi had answered, he stopped moving. “There you are.”

“What do you mean?” Maxi asked. “I only just got off the plane. Thanks to some congestion on the runway, we were stranded on the tarmac for hours, and we missed our connection. So now we’re stuck at Charles de Gaulle Airport and can’t get out of Paris for another eight hours. God, I hate flying. They make it as miserable as they possibly can, don’t they?”

“Who’s staying in the guesthouse?” Seth demanded without comment.

After a moment of silence, Maxi said, “I already told you. Tia Beckett’s staying there. Why?”

“You never gave me a name. Who is she?”

“You don’t know?”

Confused by this answer, Seth shoved a hand through his hair, which was getting so long it fell nearly to his shoulders. “How would I?”

“Do you live under a rock? She starred in my last film, Expect the Worst.”

“So she’s an actress.” Seth didn’t get out much, and he certainly wasn’t familiar with what was going on in Hollywood or the movie industry. He didn’t care about any of that. But the title of the film certainly seemed appropriate to this situation.

“Yeah. Why?” Maxi asked. “Is something wrong?”

“We haven’t exactly gotten off on the right foot,” he admitted. “What happened to her face?”

“Oh, that. I thought I mentioned it. She was in a car accident shortly after the film’s release. Ran a red light about a month ago.”

“Was she drunk?”

“No. Alcohol wasn’t involved. But it just about destroyed her face. You can imagine what that would do to an actress. She’ll never look the same, no matter how much cosmetic surgery she gets, and that means she’ll be unlikely to get the parts she would’ve gotten otherwise, which is unfortunate. She’s talented. Really talented. I fully expect her to get an Oscar nod for my film. And I believe she deserves it.”

Seth cringed as he remembered asking her if she was the house sitter. “And this talented actress is here, taking care of your parrot?” No one would expect that, would they?

“She needs somewhere to stay until she can get back on her feet.”

“You mean to hide.”