Media Darling

by Fiona Riley

  “Well, if it’s true, I think it’s hot”—Alison added with a nod—“but more than that, I want to know what happened to turn two of Hollywood’s most powerful actresses against each other.” Alison raised her water glass and nodded toward Hayley. “Lucky for us, you’re on the case.”

  “Lucky indeed.” Hayley groaned and signaled for the check. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.

  Chapter Five

  “Your two o’clock fitting just got bumped up to twelve thirty,” Tremont said, his voice missing its usual warmth.

  Emerson sighed but nodded. Had her hands not been currently immersed in warm water, her cuticles soaking, she would have flipped off Tremont for his tone alone. He’d been giving her attitude since yesterday when she’d asked for Chandra to come in and speak with her privately.

  “Tremont,” she said.

  “Emerson,” he answered, with the same flat tone as before.

  She exhaled and shifted in her chair as the technician began drying her hands and prepping them for polish. “I can’t tell for sure, but I feel like you might be upset. You do such a wonderful job at hiding it. I think maybe you should be the Oscar-nominated one here.”

  He clucked and stood, tossing the magazine in his hands to the side as he leaned over her and said, “Nominated and lost. Don’t forget that little tidbit for your memoir.”

  The technician looked up at Emerson fearfully, averting her eyes when Emerson glanced at her.

  She pressed on. “Montie, I’m going to need you to get over this hissy fit sooner rather than later.”

  “Don’t call me Montie like you give a damn about what I have to say. That’s reserved for my mama and my sisters—people who appreciate my opinion.”

  “Your poor mother doesn’t ever want your opinion, and your sisters think you’re a diva. Let’s slow the bullshit train before it flies off the tracks, shall we?”

  Tremont pursed his lips and pulled out his phone. He scrolled through the screen and gave her his best impression of indifference, which was actually quite good. “You have to pick out an outfit for the gala on Saturday night. It’s the same woman who is doing the fitting for the film’s wardrobe department. Two for one, to accommodate your busy schedule.”

  Emerson looked over at her old friend and contemplated her next choice of words carefully. She needed his help for this to work, but she also needed to corral his broodiness. They couldn’t both be on the brink of instability, not when she had so much at stake.

  The technician finished applying the polish and top coat before setting up the hand dryer. Emerson nodded and told the woman to come back in a few minutes, promising to stay put so as to not smudge anything. Once their audience departed, she tried again.

  “Tremont. I know you think this is a bad idea. But something has to be done,” she said.

  Tremont gave her a look. “I don’t understand why you aren’t letting David and Chandra worry about this. You know that this is a hot topic, Emerson. Why put yourself in the position to make a mistake that you can’t correct?”

  “Maybe because they did such a bang-up job the first time around, I’m a little leery of their help, ever consider that?” She bristled, irritated that she couldn’t move her hands to help vent some of her frustration.

  “You know there was nothing they could do, Em.” His reply was soft as his usual warmth returned. He was trying to manage her, and that made her bristle even more.

  “Everyone spends so much time telling me that there is nothing that can be done and doing nothing that it’s a fucking miracle anything happens in this camp at all.”

  Tremont frowned. “We only want to help you, Emerson. We’re not the bad guys.”

  “Then let me have my day in court, Tremont. Let me have a chance to actually dictate the pace of this sideshow for once,” she replied.

  “You and I both know that the speed is out of our hands,” he said.

  That wasn’t entirely true, but Emerson didn’t bother arguing the point. She had a plan to bring this to a full stop, but she needed his support.

  “But the direction doesn’t have to be. I’m tired of being a pawn in everyone’s agenda,” she replied.

  Tremont let out a tired sigh as he sat next to her and stroked his hands through her hair. “I hope you know what you’re getting into, Emerson. Because once you start this, there’s no way to stop it.”

  She closed her eyes and let his words settle a bit before shooting him a sly smile. “Don’t get soft on me now. I’m going to need you to make sure this doesn’t blow up in my face.”

  Tremont stopped playing with her hair and ran a file over his nails. “Oh, please. If you go down, I’m out of a job. I have bills to pay, boyfriends to throw money at, an image to uphold…I can’t have my Hollywood connection washing up and ruining the brand I’ve been working on for so long. Don’t kid yourself.”

  “That’s the sassy best friend I’ve been missing. Welcome back.”

  He pushed her wheatgrass smoothie toward her. “Shut up and drink your nasty green juice. You’re gonna need all the energy you can get.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Emerson went to salute her friend, smudging her nails in the process. “Shit. Go get her for me, would you?”

  “You. Are. Hopeless.”

  * * *

  “How’s it going in Tinseltown?” Deidre’s voice on the line was like a breath of fresh air.

  “Oh, you know, gloriously sunny and fake as the day is long. As usual.” Emerson glanced out the window of her rental home and surveyed the mountain view before her. The sky was blue and free of clouds, but the city just a short drive away was full of vultures.

  “Mm-hmm. How are you holding up?”

  Up to that moment, Emerson would have said she was doing okay. But hearing the sympathetic tone in her sister’s voice brought all the emotions to the surface. Her lip trembled as she spoke. “Dee, I’m struggling. This is so hard.”

  “I know, Em. I know,” Deidre said.

  Deidre was quiet as Emerson’s tears fell in steady streams. She loved that about her sister. She loved that her sister wasn’t afraid to feel and let feelings exist. It was something that Deidre had always supported in her—to acknowledge and feel things. That was such a foreign concept in this town. In this world. But she never hid her true feelings from her sister. She never blunted her emotions. She couldn’t. And she knew she was a better person for it. She owed that to her sister. She owed a lot to her sister.

  She wiped her cheeks and took a steadying breath. “How are the kids?”

  “They’re good.” They both knew what she was asking, but Deidre had the decency to pretend it was a normal question. “Alex is trying out for the lead in the school play—”

  “What play?”

  “Macbeth.” Her sister laughed, and she felt lighter.

  “Isn’t that a little heavy for fourth-graders?” Emerson smiled at the thought of her nephew dressed in oversized robes reciting lines he didn’t understand. He would be fantastic as Macbeth. That kid oozed charm and charisma.

  “They’re putting a modern-day spin on it. The students helped to rewrite the script a bit to make it more relevant to current day. Like—for instance—instead of witches, there are zombies.”

  “Obviously.” That made perfect sense.

  “It’s your fault, you know,” Deidre teased. “He wants to be just like his famous aunt. Plus, you send them to that bougie school where they encourage development in the arts…as if that’s a thing.”

  Emerson laughed at the way her sister dramatically drew out the word. “It’s a good school, Dee. You and Tom wouldn’t have agreed to let them go there if you didn’t think so, too.”

  “I know. Secretly I love that they have as much music and art classwork as math and science. But I’m still going to mock you for it because it’s so very Hollywood of you,” she said.

  “Says the woman who lives in a town that has a school like that nearby.” Deidre lived near enough to Aspen to capitali
ze on the posh private schools that had opened to accommodate the rich and famous families while they skied and shopped in the winter months. But over the years, Aspen had become more than just a winter getaway. More and more entrepreneurs and celebrities were taking year-round residence there to escape the hustle and bustle of Southern California. The two-hour flight was quick enough to be convenient, considering you could sit in two hours of traffic just trying to get in or out of LA these days. And although the unmatched natural beauty was what attracted Emerson to the area, the five-star restaurants and boutique shopping helped, too. Colorado offered Deidre and her family the privacy she and her husband desired while still giving Emerson quick access to them. It also afforded her the chance to make sure her niece and nephew had everything they could ever want or need. It was a win-win. Well, except for the small fact that Emerson seemed to have developed a fear of flying over the last few years, but she was working on that. Sort of.

  “Touché. Feel free to fund their college educations as well.” Deidre laughed.

  “Already done.” That was one of the first things Emerson had arranged once the kids were born—she’d made sure they would never want for anything, but she left what that meant up to her sister. She didn’t want to interfere or eclipse her sister’s parenting approach. That was something very important to them both, and it was why this relationship worked.

  “Oh, and Rory requested a unicorn for her twelfth birthday. Maybe you could work on that, too,” Deidre replied. She was the best.

  Emerson paused. It was now or never. “Rory. How is she?”

  Deidre was quiet for a moment. Emerson could hear a door closing softly on the near silent line. Her sister was going somewhere more private. That couldn’t be good.

  “She’s okay.” A pause. “She’s worried about you.”

  Emerson felt a pit form in her stomach—no eleven-year-old girl should worry about her aunt. “How much does she know?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Em, you’re on every channel. Everywhere. We can’t even turn on the radio on the ride to school because every thirty minutes one station or another is giving their celebrity update and you’re the main topic. Like, seriously. We even tried NPR and the classical station. You’ve peaked, sis. You are officially the center of everyone’s universe,” Deidre answered.

  “You mean my alleged relationship and alleged subsequent breakup with Rachel are the center of everyone’s universe. I highly doubt it’s little old me.” Emerson didn’t bother trying to hide her bitterness about this whole mess.

  “Well, yeah. That’s true. Although—to be fair—without you none of this would even be an issue. So it is about you,” Deidre said.

  She frowned. “Thanks, Dee.”

  “Anytime.”

  Obviously, Deidre was going to make her work for this. Fine. That was fine. She deserved it. “What can I do?”

  “To fix this mess?” Deidre sounded skeptical.

  “No, I’m working on that. I meant to help with Rory.” She meant that first part—she had a plan in place. She just had to implement it. The second thing, though…that was another story entirely.

  “It’s time, Em. I know we talked about it and I know we agreed on a decision, but things are different now. She’s not a little girl anymore, Emerson. She’s growing up so fast, too fast. And it’s time,” Deidre said.

  “You say it like it’s going to be so easy, Dee. Like telling Rory I’m her mother and not her aunt is just no big deal.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She almost never did.

  Deidre responded with a harsh intake of breath. “Don’t you think I wish it never came to this, Emerson?” she whispered. “Don’t you think I’ve dreaded this conversation for nearly twelve years? Of course it’s a big deal. It’s the biggest deal. It’s the only deal we ever made together that we’ve never faulted on. Because we couldn’t. Because we are in this together. A family. We’ll still be a family afterward, it’ll just be…different.” The sadness in her voice was palpable. Emerson felt every word.

  Emerson was crying again, but this time it wasn’t just because she was overwhelmed. It was because she was hurt. Because she felt lost. Because she’d failed her sister and her niece. This was all her fault. “I-I’m so sorry, Dee.”

  Deidre sighed. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Em. You have the right to take a chance on love. Now, you picked a real flaming bitch in Rachel, but you still deserve the chance to be happy. Lesson learned, right? Next time I want to weigh in on the more serious dating prospects. Especially if one of those prospects threatens to tell the world that you have a secret daughter being raised by your sister. Or, you know, something like that.”

  Deidre’s joke didn’t make Emerson feel any better. There wouldn’t be a next time. She’d lost her chance. This was the life she was meant to live—alone, renting a house to avoid the hordes of paparazzi and gawkers outside her primary residence that had descended on her like locusts after Rachel’s red-carpet reveal. But Deidre was right. None of this would have happened if Emerson wasn’t involved in the first place. She could never seem to get out of her own way. Her celebrity managed to fuck something up eventually. This was no different.

  “How much time do we have?” Deidre’s voice was soft. She sounded as heartbroken as Emerson felt.

  “I think we’re out of it.” She’d realized that when the press release came out. Rachel had forced her hand. She knew it was only a matter of time before Rachel spilled the bigger story, the truth about Rory. Up to now she was just gathering sympathy for a relationship gone awry, but Emerson knew that she was only building her fictional backstory so that when she dropped the inevitable secret child bomb, she’d seem less like a heartless woman scorned and more like a betrayed and abandoned ex-lover. Emerson could already tell that the public was eating up Rachel’s side of the story. She’d seen the fan pages—she was quickly becoming public enemy number one. Emerson sighed. “What does Tom think?”

  “Mostly homicidal thoughts toward Rachel with occasional outbursts of tears. Luckily, I have the kids convinced it’s man-opause. That should hold them until you get here.” Deidre chuckled before getting serious and saying, “You are going to come here for this, right, Emerson?”

  “Of course”—Emerson wouldn’t dream of doing this over the phone—“this is a family emergency. We need to be together.”

  “Good.” When Deidre sniffled, Emerson’s soul quaked. She knew this was going to change everything for all of them. But she knew that Deidre and Tom were going to get the worst of it up front. Maybe, maybe over time she could repair things with Rory. And with Alex. But nothing would protect her sister and her family once the truth came out. They might as well kiss their privacy good-bye, which was what Emerson had been trying to prevent since the day Rory was born. Rory deserved a life outside of Emerson’s shadow. She deserved a chance at normalcy. That would be impossible now. There wasn’t enough anything in the world to make this right again. And that was what kept her up at night: the countdown to the fallout. It was inevitable, and it was happening right that very second.

  Chapter Six

  Chandra Patel’s face had been in a scowl for the entire time Hayley had been in her presence. While she’d formally introduced herself, she hadn’t bothered disconnecting the call she was on. Hayley imagined her look of frustrated concentration was probably a common occurrence if the stress lines etched in her forehead were any indication. Chandra had handed Hayley some papers, mumbling something about giving them to legal, before she wandered out of the room.

  Hayley shifted the file folder of documents into her messenger bag. She looked at the pack of gum tucked into the pocket and considered whether it would be rude to be chewing something when she finally met with Emerson. A quick survey of the waiting area she was in didn’t help her decision; there was no trash can to use in the disposal process, and she would never swallow gum again after that near-choking incident in sixth grade scarred her for li
fe.

  After forty-five minutes of waiting beyond her scheduled meeting time, she began to wonder if she was going to meet with Emerson at all. Chandra had come in and out a dozen times in the last twenty minutes, always mumbling something into her headset, barely acknowledging Hayley’s presence. About five minutes ago, the handsome and stylishly dressed black man who’d been with Emerson the other night had stepped out and looked at her before he sighed and left without a word.

  Hayley checked her phone and started texting Alison when the door to her left opened, startling her.

  “Emerson is ready for you.” The man she assumed was Emerson’s PA spoke briskly as he motioned for her to enter. Hayley tried not to stare, but his subtle eye makeup was freaking incredible. His eyeliner application was perfect, and his eye shadow blending was unbelievable. She wondered if it would be inappropriate to ask him for a few tips.

  “I’m Tremont Winters, her assistant. I’ll be with you at all times, so get used to the idea,” he added curtly.

  “Could you try to be a little more welcoming, Tremont?” Emerson’s voice called out from behind the changing screen erected in the corner of the room. The sounds of hangers sliding along metal almost muted his clucked response.

  Emerson emerged from behind the screen with a small smile on her face. Her tight black tank top was rolled up, exposing her firm abdomen, while a woman with her hair in a messy gray bun struggled to keep a tape measure loosely around her hips.

  “Sorry for the delay. It turns out I have a dress fitting that is happening in my room at the moment.” Emerson winced when a pin scratched across her skin as the seamstress adjusted her glasses and stumbled, jerking Emerson back by the tape measure.

  Hayley laughed and then clamped her hand over her mouth when she noticed Tremont glaring at her. “Uh, it’s okay.”

  Emerson cocked her head to the side and replied seriously. “No, it’s not. But unfortunately this is not an uncommon occurrence. You should know that up front.”