Auctioned to the A-Lister

by Holloway, Taylor

  “To Napa?” Cindy seemed confused. “We can’t just go to Napa, Tommy.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Do you have somewhere else you need to be?”

  “I don’t have anywhere else I need to be,” Cindy stuttered.

  She crawled her way up from the back of the van and settled into the passenger seat. Outside, Meg Butler pointed her camera at the front windshield, but I doubted she could see much. She was standing with her hands on her hips, looking annoyed that we weren’t answering the door. Somehow, she must have figured out what was going on. God knows how. But she was here, and I was here, and Cindy was here. The last thing I needed was more gossip on the news about me.

  “Then let’s go,” I told her.

  “To Napa,” she repeated, as if still not understanding my plan.

  I grinned at her, brushing her sex-mussed hair off her face and kissing her forehead. “Yes. Right now.”

  26

  Tommy

  The drive from LA to Napa is nearly seven hours long and through the worst California traffic you can imagine. But I was with Cindy, so it flew by in a haze.

  California is big. I mean, everybody knows that, but it really is. Although only half the size of Texas where I grew up, it’s still gigantic. Going only halfway across the state still took many hours, and that’s if the weather, geography, and traffic cooperated (which was never guaranteed).

  Yet somehow, the drive seemed to take only minutes. Maybe it was because I was with someone I cared about and I enjoyed learning more about her every moment. I peppered her with questions, and she asked just as many of me. Meanwhile, my phone was going bonkers in my pocket as people wanted to know where I was. I had Oscar-campaign-related appointments today and back-to-back all next week, but for the moment, I ignored them all. Other than letting Derek know I wasn’t dead, I had no interest in my real life. I had questions to answer and a beautiful woman at my side.

  “What made you want to be an actor?” she asked as we drove. We’d driven all night long, taking turns so the other person could rest. It was morning now, and we needed to stop soon for food and real rest. This van didn’t get the greatest fuel economy. The only saving grace was that it gave us time to stretch.

  I shrugged my shoulders, feeling stiff. “I guess my uncle inspired me.”

  “Connor Prince?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  My wayward uncle had only recently decided to rejoin the land of the living thanks to his now-wife and future child. He was doing better now. He was way less weird now, at least, comparatively…

  “You didn’t want to do what your dad did?” Cindy asked, pivoting subjects.

  “Work in science and technology?” I shook my head. “I’m not smart enough for all that.”

  “Aren’t you?” she asked. “You seem pretty smart to me.”

  I looked over at her affectionately. She was literally the only person I’d ever met who looked better in the morning light than the night before. She was smiling at me. “I appreciate that.”

  “Did you go to college?” Cindy asked. She sounded somewhat wistful.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I did two years at Stanford before the acting thing got too busy and I was pretty much forced to drop out.”

  “What a problem to have,” she teased.

  “Yeah, I try not to complain about it too much,” I told her. “Obviously I’ve been incredibly lucky in almost every way. I’d like to go back one day and finish my degree though.”

  “What were you studying before your acting career took off?” she asked.

  “Mathematics.”

  She blinked her big hazel eyes at me. “Really? Math?”

  “What’s wrong with math?” I asked. Pretty much everyone had Cindy’s reaction, but I liked math. It was logical. Beautiful, even. Of all my brothers, I was the only one who liked math as much as our dad did. He’d been somewhat heartbroken when I chose not to pursue the field. I think he was still getting over it. “Math is great.”

  Cindy shook her head. “Nothing is wrong with math per se. Math is… math is fine, I guess. It’s just my least favorite subject.” She cocked her head to the side. “What’s something about math that you really like?”

  I laughed. What a weird question. “Um, I like the Mandelbrot set a lot.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s… really? You want me to tell you?” It wasn’t that interesting to explain…

  She nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

  “You take a point called z in the complex plane. Then you take the function y equals z squared plus c, and then iterate up from zero on z. If the series doesn’t tend away from z then that point is in the Mandelbrot set.”

  Her expression was skeptical. “Okay. Sounds simple enough. Why do you like it?”

  “It makes pretty fractals.”

  She grinned at me. “Okay. I like it too.”

  “What’s your favorite subject?” I asked her. She seemed to know a lot about several different subjects, complements of all her reading and crossword puzzles. For someone that hadn’t been to college, she was plenty smart and clearly getting smarter all the time. Even in this van, I’d spotted three crossword puzzle books, one sudoku, and several types of puzzles I’d never even heard of. I even opened one when she wasn’t looking. Every puzzle was done.

  “History.” She blushed.

  “I like history,” I told her seriously. “Would you major in it if you went to college?”

  She frowned at me. When she finally replied, her voice was soft. “I will probably never go to college.”

  “You don’t want to?” I asked, confused. Were her grades in high school bad or something? I had a hard time believing that Cindy would be a bad student.

  “I can’t afford to.” Her expression was torn. “I thought that I would go to college growing up, but it doesn’t look like that will happen now. At least I have a trade I really enjoy. But it would’ve been cool to at least have had the choice.”

  Oh right. Money issues. That was something most people had to contend with. I’d been so insulated most—actually all—of my life. I’d been born to a rich family and only gotten richer.

  “You never know,” I said, worrying that I wouldn’t be able to avoid being patronizing if we talked economics.

  “My dad’s death benefit was supposed to cover my education,” Cindy said eventually. Her fingertips drummed irritably on the window glass. “But Marigold spent it all to move out here.”

  I’d been wondering where Cindy’s dad was in all of this. “What happened to your biological parents?” I asked. “Are they both dead?”

  Cindy stared out the window. “My mom is probably alive somewhere. But I don’t know where. She left when I was little. My dad died when I was sixteen in an industrial accident at the plant where he worked.”

  “That’s got to be hard to lose both your parents like that,” I said, again feeling like any problem that I might have was probably chump change by comparison. “My mom died when I was in my early twenties, but I can’t imagine not having either of my parents.”

  My mom had been older than my dad by a good margin, and they’d married late. Somehow, they managed to have a bunch of kids before time caught up to them, but I knew my dad felt like he never got enough time with her. I didn’t feel like I did. When she’d passed away from an unexpected, massive heart attack, it had gutted our whole family. Especially my brother Holden, who’d been with her when it happened but unable to do anything. He still refused to talk about it.

  “Well, I’ve always got Marigold,” Cindy said sarcastically. She giggled and it made me smile despite my morose thoughts. “She’ll look out for me until it isn’t in her direct economic interests.”

  “At least you know what you’re up against,” I offered.

  Cindy nodded her head and pushed her hair back irritably. “It took me a long time to figure it out. Probably a lot longer than it should have. But Marigold is not my family.” Her smile faded,
but she seemed okay with the truth of what she was saying. “I just have to stay away from her, and I’ll be fine.”

  We were finally coming up on a town worth stopping in. I pulled off the highway before the fuel gage did it for me.

  “Hungry?” I asked Cindy.

  The restaurant we chose was nothing special. It was just a little fifties style diner, but it looked cute and the reviews on Yelp weren’t abysmal. We were both hungry enough to deal with a three-star review greasy spoon restaurant. We settled into a glittery, red vinyl booth and Cindy continued her interrogation of me.

  “How old were you when you moved to Hollywood?” she asked.

  I smiled at her. I hadn’t talked about myself so much in years.

  “About your age. I’d just left Stanford. At the time it was just me and Derek doing the acting thing. He decided to go to New York and try his luck on Broadway. I moved in with my uncle in LA. We didn’t stay roommates for long, but he helped me a lot.”

  “It must be so nice to have a big family,” Cindy said. Then she froze.

  Her smile fell off her face and her skin turned pale.

  I looked over my own left shoulder to see what she was staring at. There was a television on in the corner of the restaurant. And on the screen was a grinning, heavily made-up Quincy Wilson.

  As if in a trance, Cindy got up and walked over and turned on the volume.

  27

  Cindy

  The announcer’s voice came out of the TV speakers louder than I expected and I had to punch the volume button five or six times in a panic to avoid deafening the entire restaurant. By the time the volume was at a decent level and I could listen in, what I was hearing made me wish I were deaf. And now, as a bonus, everyone was staring at Tommy and me.

  Meanwhile, I was staring at my sister Quincy. She looked like she was wearing about a pound of makeup, but unlike Lena, she couldn’t pull it off. She was trying though. She grinned into the camera as it zoomed out to show her sitting on her bed in a giant pile of shopping bags—apparently going on a “post break-up” shopping spree was a feature of this particular episode. I wondered where the money for all that shopping was coming from. Probably my last paycheck I’d never see.

  “On the next episode,” the announcer said, “find out if Quincy will go out with Ashton Radley, and whether her meddling sister Cindy will reappear with the stolen family van—or Quincy’s stolen boyfriend, Tommy Prince. Also, find out if Greenlee will land her contract with Ford Modeling.”

  I wanted to pinch myself. Was this actually happening? How the hell had Marigold managed this?

  A series of badly manufactured clips, complete with the franken-dialogue of a reality show played next. I watched in frozen, abject horror as my family’s fake melodrama filled the restaurant. It was mortifying, but fascinating. Like a train wreck, I couldn’t look away. There were even pictures of and references to me in the “story” of the reality show. It appeared I’d been cast as the villain; a scheming, talentless, tagalong who wanted the limelight for herself.

  Typical.

  “Oh God,” I breathed. “What the hell are they doing?”

  When I finally managed to rip my eyes away from the screen, I saw that Tommy looked as revolted as I felt. “It looks to me like your sister somehow managed to segue her paparazzi popularity into one of the worst quality reality shows I’ve ever seen.” He turned the volume down.

  “Hey!” a woman said from the kitchen. “Turn that back up! It’s the series premiere.”

  I pressed the button up, not wanting to invite the wrath of the people making our food or attract undue attention to us. Unfortunately, the woman was already staring. She picked up her phone and pointed at us.

  “You’re them!” she gasped, smoothing her hands down her apron. “From the show!”

  I swallowed hard. “Nothing on that show is real.”

  “Can I have an autograph?” she asked next, coming all the way out of the kitchen and staring at both me and Tommy excitedly. “And a picture with you two? It’s for my blog.”

  I felt too ill to reply beyond shaking my head ‘no.’ I had only watched approximately thirty seconds of my family’s godawful show, but I could already tell what the manufactured plot line was. At least in the narrative of the show, Greenlee and Quincy weren’t just wannabe ‘next big things,’ they were turning down major roles left and right. And major actors.

  Marigold must be so fucking proud.

  “Come on,” Tommy said to me, pulling me away from the television and holding me close. “Let’s just pick something up and keep driving.”

  I nodded, numb from the shock. My feet carried me out of the restaurant on autopilot. I was glad that Tommy was here to keep me grounded, because I probably would have been paralyzed without him.

  Marigold had actually done it. She’d gotten her girls on television. After everything she put our family through, all she’d wanted was for her children to be famous. And now, against all odds, she seemed to be succeeding.

  The woman from the kitchen pulled out a camera and took pictures of us as we left, but there was nothing either of us could do about it. She seemed vaguely put out that we didn’t want to take pictures with her for her blog. I followed Tommy back to the van and wished I could delete the last two minutes from my brain.

  Sadly, nothing is ever that simple.

  “What the hell is Quincy doing?” I muttered to myself. “Why is she doing this?”

  Tommy answered tiredly. “She’s making a name for herself, I suppose.”

  “This is going to backfire on her though, right?” I asked Tommy. “She can’t just go around pretending like she’s famous, can she? She doesn’t have any real connections. She’s never had a film role in her life. And, unless I’m mistaken, you aren’t really dating her.”

  Tommy shrugged his shoulders. His expression was annoyed. “Plenty of people get famous by pretending to be famous. It’s definitely one way of doing it. If she can continue to grow her notoriety, it might even pan out for her.”

  “But she’s got no talent at anything and she’s lying about everything,” I protested. “She’s even lying about you. And who the hell is Ashton Radley, anyway?” He was a good-looking enough guy on the show, but he somehow gave me bad vibes through the screen. He was blond and swaggering. He dressed like he fell off a yacht. He looked a bit like if Justin Bieber tried to get a job caddying at a country club. “If he’s really an actor, it seems like he could do better.”

  That made Tommy smile for some reason. “Ashton Radley is a struggling C-list actor. He used to be a relatively up-and-coming B-list actor until a run-in with my uncle ended up in his arrest and public disgrace. From what I understand, he’s got some legal troubles right now.”

  “What’s he doing dating my stepsister?” I hoped he realized what he was getting into. She was an energy vampire.

  Tommy thought about it for a moment. He shook his head. “My guess? Damage control. He needs to get his name out there somewhere, and I bet you some producer told him that reality television could help him do that.”

  “But this show is so trashy.” I shook my head in dismay. Even for my family, this was majorly trashy.

  “So is he.” Tommy rolled his eyes at what must have been a memory he didn’t share. “He’s the worst type of scum. Believe me.”

  Tommy’s expression was resolute enough that I did.

  “Well, then maybe they’re a good match. But this can’t last,” I told Tommy. “There’s no way, right? She can’t keep this together for very long.” I bit my lip. “Unless she releases the sex tape.”

  Tommy was driving, but he looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. “Sex tape? There’s a sex tape?”

  I winced. “I don’t know. That’s Quincy’s big dream. Make a sex tape with a really famous guy and then she’ll be famous. She wanted Ryan Reynolds for a while. I’m sure she’d like you for that role as well.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes. “That’s definitely not gonn
a’ happen. Ever. But she might be able to convince Ashton Radley. Rumor has it, he’s into that kind of thing.”

  I gulped. “I really don’t need to see my sister’s sex tape become big news.”

  “She’s not your sister,” Tommy reminded me gently. “You really are better off staying away from them, like you said.”

  I took a deep breath. “You’re right,” I said eventually. “I just can’t believe Marigold managed to get her wish. This was all she ever wanted. Her daughters are becoming household names.”

  “They’ll end up flashing out,” Tommy promised me. “If that was the series premiere, they’re going to have to manufacture a lot of drama to create an entire season. This was probably just a pilot episode, and it might not even get any traction. I think you’re probably right about it being temporary. If they aren’t able to keep the headlines up, and after the sex tape with Radley drops, what else do they have?”

  “I don’t know,” I told Tommy. “That’s what makes me feel so nervous.”

  28

  Tommy

  Cindy was clearly a bit traumatized by her family’s sudden entrée into reality television, but it did make a certain twisted kind of sense. Marigold (I’m assuming it was her because Cindy insisted that she was the brains of the operation) must have gotten wise. She would have known that a single piece of gossip—the fact that her daughter Quincy had been photographed with me—was not enough to sustain any sort of prolonged interest in her family. She’d probably made herself some sort of a deal.

  If I had to guess, Marigold had a nice conversation with Meg Butler or someone like her in the world of tabloids, and they’d struck a bargain. There must have been a cancellation or something on the reality lineup, and Marigold just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Ordinarily it should take months to produce a show, so it was the only explanation that fit. Either way, both sides would get something they wanted. Marigold would get the chance to put her daughters on television with a Kardashian style reality show, and in exchange Marigold would provide Meg with a steady stream of salacious gossip.