by Jayne Denker
“I am so sorry,” he said, his voice breaking along with his heart.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It absolutely is.”
She smiled at him warmly, found his hand and grasped it tightly, then stood and pulled him to his feet. “You didn’t invite the paparazzi here, or—”
She stopped. Niall didn’t have to ask why. He felt it too: Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. It was as if the very air on Main Street had been altered. Other pedestrians noticed as well; they froze in their tracks, looking around as though following a scent, not sure what they were expecting to find, but hunting until they located it.
Across the street, Mrs. D’Annunzio, locking up the deli for the night, frowned over her shoulder. A group of skateboarding teens dismounted and, flipping their boards up into their hands, stood stock still. Mrs. Rousseau found her way back up the street, her baleful eye scanning the area. It seemed as though even the mobiles hanging outside the wind-chime shop had stopped spinning.
Suddenly the photographer was back, and more showed up—on foot and in cars. They clustered near Niall, clutching their cameras to their chests expectantly.
“What is it?” Celia murmured, fearful.
“Nothing good. Come on.” Niall stepped over the low wrought-iron fence that separated the dining area from the sidewalk, then reached back and lifted Celia over with ease, intending to spirit her back to his car and get her out of harm’s way.
“Niall.”
Too late.
The arrival of Tiffany Sola and her entourage of similarly coiffed, manicured, and spray-tanned friends was like a flock of flamingos landing in the middle of Main Street. Traffic came to a halt. Everyone stared—and aimed their cell phone cameras.
Niall had almost been ready for it. As soon as the paparazzo had smirked at him, he’d started rifling through his mental file of things that would decimate him, and Tiffany’s arrival topped the list. Sure enough, here she was, she and her friends dressed in the most outlandish outfits he’d ever seen—country couture by way of The Dukes of Hazzard, with microscopic cutoffs, bared midriffs, low-cut gingham blouses with puffy sleeves, tight T-shirts, and sky-high straw wedges on their pedicured feet. He even thought he caught a glimpse of flowers painted on the flamingoes’ toes—no accident, considering where they thought they were alighting.
Niall felt every muscle in his body seize up; even his lips pursed with tension. Now the sudden presence of paparazzi, after his privacy in Marsden had lasted this long, made sense. They’d been tipped off. And not just about his being in Marsden—news that the famous Niall Crenshaw slumming as host of a rinky-dink, rural American Idol ripoff wasn’t worth their time and money to travel this far upstate for a photo or two. But a blowout with Tiffany Sola, even a fake one? That was worth the drive. Stage a photo op, and they will come, he thought ruefully. Thanks, Tiff.
“Niall,” Tiffany said again, approaching him and holding out her hands. He didn’t take them. “I couldn’t stay away any longer. I’ve missed you. When are you coming home, baby?”
Ouch. He’d forgotten what a crappy actor she was.
Once the tiny blonde was close to him, he spoke quietly, so only she could hear. “Tiff, don’t do this.”
“How come you never called me back or answered any of my texts?” she pronounced, clearly and loudly.
It was like they were acting out scenes from two different movies. Both of them were talking, but they weren’t actually replying to one another. Niall had never experienced anything so surreal—not even the dream sequence in Party Clown when he had to pretend to water ski in full costume, including red nose and giant shoes, against a green screen while production assistants crouched on the floor, spraying water and throwing small fish in his face.
Not willing to play her game, he tried to drag her into his scenario instead of falling into hers. “Tiffany, listen to me,” he said, still keeping his voice low. “We both signed off on this. We’re done, right? Let’s move on without a . . . a scene.”
She reached for him, and he instinctively recoiled. Just a bit, but it was enough to start the paparazzi snapping away again. Some of the townspeople kept their cell phones held high, getting the entire thing on video. But he wasn’t about to give them—or Tiffany—the show everyone expected.
Tiffany bugged her huge eyes at him, trying to communicate silently what she wanted his next line to be. He had no idea what she expected—a tearful, sentimental good-bye? A screaming row? A (God forbid) litany of apologies and an emotional reunion? He felt completely in the dark—so different from how he and Celia were able to speak volumes by just squeezing one another’s hand.
“And who’s this?”
Oh no. No, no, no. Of all the times for Tiffany to be able to read his mind, this was the worst possible moment. She’d spied Celia.
Tiffany, forgetting completely she had met Celia at the photo shoot, looked her up and down once, assessing, judging . . . and ultimately dismissing her. Tiffany’s posse followed suit, doing everything Tiffany did, just on a time delay of about three seconds. Then one of them snickered, like they were all still in high school and Celia had worn an uncool outfit.
That derisive snort snapped Niall out of his daze, and he stepped in front of Celia. “If you came here to talk to me, then talk to me, Tiff.”
She fluffed her hair, and her long nails clacked against each other—the only sound, aside from the snapping of camera shutters, on the whole street. Except for a very loud throat clearing, from behind him, punctuated by a sharp jab in his kidney.
“Ow!” He turned around to find an annoyed-looking Celia eyeing him. “Hang on,” he whispered. “I got this.”
“Doesn’t look like it to me.” She stepped to one side to get out of Niall’s shadow. “Tiffany, I’m—”
“Celia, no!”
“No?” She gaped at him, incredulous.
Yeah, that had sounded pretty bad to him, too. But she didn’t understand the wild and woolly world of Tiffany & Co. Not to mention the paparazzi and the tabloids they sold their photos and news to. One false move and they’d be all over her like a swarm of bees. No, he amended, they shouldn’t be compared to the noble bee. Bees were hard workers; they served a purpose. These guys . . .
“Just . . . let me handle it, all right?”
“I can—”
“—speak for yourself. I know. Put away the kraken for now. Please,” he tacked on, seeing Celia’s face darken with frustration and anger. It was a new look for her.
“Niall?” Tiffany prompted. “Are you going to stand here talking to her all day, when I came all the way from New York to be with you?”
Oh for the love of...
If this scene were in one of his movie scripts, he’d move heaven and earth to kill it. Him between two women, in the middle of the street, both of them mad at him and eyeballing each other, all territorial ? Absolutely not.
“Okay, this is not the time or the place,” he said pointedly. “Tiffany, you and I need to talk. Privately.” He raised an eyebrow toward the flock of flamingoes, who—no surprise—didn’t move a muscle.
So he turned to Celia. “Can you give me and Tiff some time to talk?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you sending me away?”
“What? No! Not—”
Celia looked like she was about to rip him a new one, when suddenly her eyes widened in shock. She grabbed Niall’s arm and pulled him off the sidewalk, hard. He stumbled into the street just as he heard a rumbling roar.
“Gangwaaaaaayyyy! Aieeeee!”
He spun around in time to see a short, wide blur go by. Wheels rattled on the pavement, and the crowd scattered. Clipped in the shoulder, Tiffany stumbled on her platform wedges, and her palms slapped the window of a car parked on the side of the road.
“Son of a bitch!” she shrieked, and her flamingoes flocked to her to see if she was hurt.
There was one final “Whuf!” and the douche-canoe of a photographer who h
ad harassed Niall and Celia earlier stumbled backward, a helmeted head plowing into his stomach as though a member of the high school football team had decided to do preseason tackle drills in town instead of on the field. His camera launched out of his hand, the strap around his neck the only thing keeping it from soaring into the street. He still looked like his equipment was throttling him. Niall wasn’t sorry. In fact, he thought it was downright amusing that one of the skateboarders had nearly taken the guy out. Until it dawned on him what, exactly, Celia was shouting.
“Gran!”
Chapter 25
“Celia, honey . . .”
“Don’t talk to me. Just . . . don’t.”
Celia marched from the living room to the kitchen, her grandmother trailing behind her. She yanked open the door of the fridge and stared into it, unsure what she was looking for.
“Come on, girlie. It was no big deal.”
“No big deal?” The younger woman slammed the door and stalked into the dining room, where she started pulling items out of a plastic tote and slamming them onto the table, sorting them into piles. It occurred to her she’d already sorted this stuff, that the tote had been packed days ago, but Celia couldn’t be bothered to stop. It gave her something to do, somewhere to channel her energy, which was at an all-time high, and not in a good way.
“I was helping you,” her grandmother declared.
“You were riding hell for leather on a scooter last night!”
“I told you I was going to buy one!”
“A mobility scooter! Not a Razor!”
Holly shrugged. “Mobility scooters are for old people.”
“You—are—an—old—woman!”
“Hey!”
“You could have cracked your skull!”
“I was wearing a helmet! And that ass-hat of a photographer got in my way, not the other way around. He broke my fall, so it all worked out.”
“You could have broken a hip. And you have no defense for that.”
Holly followed her into the dining room; Celia promptly stomped into the hallway and out the front door. Seconds after the screen door slammed behind her, it slammed again, and her grandmother was there. Celia silently cursed the woman’s tenacity.
“I hear I kind of broke up some sort of confrontation.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Who was the chippy who out-peroxided Audra?”
“That was Niall’s girlfriend, Tiffany,” Celia grumbled, plopping onto the top step of the porch and resting her chin on her knees. “You know—the one in the movie. The one you said couldn’t act.”
Holly let out a small surprised noise. “She’s tinier than she looks on screen.”
“Not helping, Gran.”
Holly settled next to her with a little more effort than usual. Celia glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” her grandmother said immediately, although she was grimacing a little.
“A person your age—”
“Cut it out.”
Celia stayed silent.
“And stop all that thinking,” her grandmother ordered.
“I’m not thinking anything.”
“You’re thinking so much, I can hear the gears grinding from here. First of all, I’m fine. Second of all, you’re fine. The movie star loves you, not the blonde, and he sent her packing.”
Celia’s head shot up and she gaped at Holly.
“I was paying attention to what was going on between him and Peroxide while you were busy stomping off in a huff. Want to know what I heard?”
“ No.”
“Good. So Peroxide pulls Movie Star aside, and she says something like, ‘That went well,’ but of course your boyfriend’s not happy at all. He reads her the riot act, announces they’re through for good and all, and orders her out of town. Peroxide says, ‘Fine. I got what I came for.’ What did she come for, do you know?”
Celia sighed and shook her head wearily.
“Anyway, Peroxide acts all gloaty and says something like funny how, now that they can move on, he doesn’t have someone to move on with, but she does, and that’s what’s called irony. Movie Star tells her to stop trying to sound educated, then he freezes, looks shocked, and shouts as she’s walking away, ‘Wait—you cheated on me?’ ” Holly let loose a throaty chuckle. “It was inspired. Absolutely beautiful.”
“How is that beautiful? She cheated on him, and he was upset about it.”
“Don’t you get it, girlie? He wasn’t upset. And he said it loud enough that all those photographers heard him, and everybody filming him with their phones, too. He wins. Peroxide knew it too—beat it out of there with her clones so fast they made their own slipstream down Main Street. So you’re in the clear. Go be with him. Well, not at the moment, of course. You’re gonna have to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Those nosy photographers are swarming all over the place,” said a new voice. Celia looked up to find her father on her grandmother’s property for the first time since she’d come back to town. “If you go out there, they’ll be all over you. You’re who they’re looking for.”
“What?” It came out as a stunned whisper. What in the world for? she wanted to shout.
“Well, that makes sense,” Holly said. “Movie Star and Peroxide are finito, and it looks like you busted them up.”
“I didn’t—”
“You sure about that?”
“Dad!” she gasped, horrified. “I’d never—”
“You did, whether you think you did or not,” her grandmother interrupted. “I see the way that boy looks at you. I’ll bet anything he and Peroxide were done for, the minute he clapped eyes on you.”
Celia covered her face with both hands and groaned.
“From what I’ve heard,” Alan grunted, leaning on the post at the base of the stair rail, “those photographers are going to be camping out in town until they get their pound of flesh—yours—thanks to your thing with Crenshaw. God,” he muttered, “you sure can pick ’em.”
“Don’t, Alan.”
Celia’s father ignored his mother-in-law. “I thought you scraped the bottom of the barrel with Matt, but this guy . . .” He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
“Great timing, Dad. Thanks so much for your support.”
“Now you’ve disrupted the whole town—everyone’s going out of their way to protect you. Nora’s refusing to serve any stranger with a camera around his neck. Mr. D’Annunzio won’t sell them subs, either. Charlie Junior has locked them out of the bar completely—that’s driving them nuts. They’re gonna have to stay in Whalen if they want a bed, but it looks like they’re sleeping in their cars. Disgusting. More important, we’ve got it locked down enough that everyone knows not to talk to them about you. Or about anything, but they’re only asking about you.”
“Why?”
“Don’t act innocent. You know why. They want the dirt on Niall Crenshaw’s new girlfriend. But nobody’s giving them any. They came to the wrong town for that. They even went to the school and the library, looking for yearbooks to find out more about you. Ellen told them the library’s closed for renovations and locked the door in their faces. Marisol made up something about security requirements and wouldn’t let ’em in the school off ice. We’ve got a sign on the doors of the town hall saying it’s closed for asbestos removal. They’re letting people in the back door when the photographers aren’t looking. Stupid flatlanders think we can’t organize a town-wide shutout. You owe your neighbors big time for this, missy.”
“I know.”
“To make things easier on them, you’re staying put from now on. Right here—nowhere else.”
“You can’t ground me, Dad. I’m an adult. Besides, I’m still helping with Night of the Shooting Stars.”
“Not anymore, you’re not.”
“Watch me.”
When Celia managed to wrangle a few moments alone, she slipped away and called Niall’s cell
phone. It went straight to voice mail. She wasn’t surprised, considering he probably wanted to avoid most people looking for him at the moment. She didn’t leave a message, but typed out a quick text, asking if he was all right and asking about the Night of the Shooting Stars rehearsal. He didn’t answer.
In between packing up her grandmother’s things, she kept sneaking glances at her phone. Holly noticed, but she never asked.
No answer from Niall all day.
After midnight, when she was just dropping off to sleep, her phone chimed. She lurched up and grabbed it from the nightstand.
It’d be better if you stayed home for now.
Celia didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
The paparazzi rolled up sometime before daybreak. When Celia woke from a brief, restless doze and looked out her bedroom window, it seemed as though the property was bristling with zoom lenses. After her initial shock, she looked closer and realized there were only eight or ten photographers, but that was plenty, especially when they were camped out on the front lawn.
“Gran—?” she shouted.
“I see ’em,” her grandmother called back from somewhere else in the house.
Celia’s bedroom door opened, but she didn’t turn around. Keeping a wary eye on the photographers, who were milling around, talking to one another, drinking Dunkin’ Donuts coffee they brought in from outside the town limits, and halfheartedly taking photos of the house and the street, she asked Holly, “What do we do?”
“Well, for starters, they’re trespassing, so we’re going to do something about that.”
“Call the police?”
“No. Open your window.”
“I am not opening my window.”
“Then it’s gonna get messy in here pretty quick.”
Celia looked over her shoulder to find Holly setting a full laundry basket on her bed. “Gran . . . what are you doing?”
“I have this terrible habit of planting too many tomatoes. I do it every year, in fact. But this year I really went overboard. And, since I don’t have the time or the patience for canning, or even to make sauce, we really should find a use for them.”