His grin widened. “Let’s go with bad guys. It’s cute.”
“That’s twice in one night I’ve been cute. You better watch out or I’ll give Jamie Lee a run for her money.”
Trace raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to see that.”
Oh God. There went that blush again.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, it seems unlikely the company would give your name to the…”
“Bad guys,” Trace finished with a smile. “Okay, so they can’t get my name. And that means…?”
“It means – how did they know it was you who rode in the limo after them? That you were the one that picked up the flash drive?”
He raised both eyebrows. “Good point, tabloid girl.”
“Thank you. So let’s assume the ba-” I stopped myself.
Trace raised an expectant eyebrow.
“Our unknown assailants,” I switched.
He grinned at me again.
I tried to ignore it. Not an easy task when he’d had years of practice making women the world over swoon with that same set of pearly whites.
Instead, I shifted a little farther away from him. “The unknown assailants get to wherever they’ve been driven, and they realize they’ve lost the drive. They call the car company looking for it. The company checks the car – no flash drive. Our bad guys have to assume that whoever was in the car after them must have taken it. So how do they find out it was you?”
“They must have seen me in the car. Easy enough thing considering the amount of cameras on me as I arrived that night.”
I sat up straighter. As far as I knew, Trace’s car had not been shown on the red carpet pre-shows. And I knew pretty well, having been glued to them all for any glimpse of Trace or Jamie Lee. While my tabloid status hadn’t actually garnered me an invite to the red carpet, I still had my Wedding Watch duty to report on the event the next day (a.k.a. to speculate on the happy couple’s status and couture).
I relayed this info to Trace. “So,” I concluded, “these guys must have been at the event in person. Would that be possible? I mean, that the car would have had time to drop them off at the event, then double back to pick you up directly afterward?”
Trace nodded, the look in his eyes suggesting that the little hamster on his mental wheel was picking up speed. “It is possible. I drove down from Malibu to Decker’s place earlier in the afternoon. The limo was just to make a showy entrance, so we really only rode in it for a total of ten minutes from his place to the awards.”
“What time did the car pick you up?”
“Ten to six.”
I raised an eyebrow. I knew the awards show had started at six on the dot.
“The bigger name you are the later you arrive,” Trace explained. “At least that’s what Decker says.” He winced. “Said,” he corrected himself.
Since I didn’t really have any words of comfort, I glossed over the verb-tense gaffe and focused on the lead at hand.
“Let’s say the car drops the bad guys off at the event, then takes ten minutes to swing by Decker’s and pick both of you up. That sounds totally doable.”
“So we’ve narrowed it down to the guest list at the awards show. That’s what, only a thousand people?”
I slumped back down in my seat. “Two actually.”
“Great.”
I opened my mouth to attempt something reassuring when my cell rang out from my pocket. I pounced on it, hoping maybe the Arrive in Style lady had changed her mind.
“Cameron Dakota?” I answered.
“Hey, Cam. It’s Allie.”
The tension drained out of my shoulders. “Oh. Hi.”
It must have drained out of my voice, too, as Allie answered back with a, “Well, gee, don’t sound so enthused to hear from me.”
“Sorry. I was just expecting a call from someone else.”
“Who?” she asked, and I could fairly hear her jumping into journalist mode.
“No one important,” I hedged. “What’s up?”
“Okay. Um, well, some guy just called here looking for you. He left a message.”
“Who was it?”
“That’s the weird thing. It was clearly a guy’s voice, but he said to say it was ‘Carla.’”
The tension returned with a vengeance, and I hit the speaker button to let Trace in on the call.
“What did he say?” I demanded of Allie.
“Um, well, it was kind of a strange message.”
“Hit me.”
“He said that he has the item you’re looking for. And, if Trace would like, he can purchase it for a hundred thousand.”
“Dollars?” I asked, fairly choking at the amount.
“I guess.”
“Sonofa-“ Trace started.
“Who was that?” Allie piped up on the other end. “Was that Trace?”
I swatted Trace on the arm. “No. It was no one important.”
“O-kay.” Yeah, she believed that about as much as she believed the Loch Ness Monster was going to rise out of the water for a photo op with Big Foot. “What’s this item? What is Trace selling to this guy?”
“Nothing important,” I quickly shot back.
“Right. Nothing.” She may be the queen of co-eds, but even she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that. But luckily she was smart enough to know it was all she was getting out of me.
“Was that all he said?” I asked.
“’Carla’ said he’d meet you at the lion enclosure at the MGM casino tomorrow at 1:00PM, and you could purchase the item then.”
I motioned for Trace to hand me a pen, and I wrote the name of the casino on the back of a leftover room service napkin.
“Thanks, Allie.”
“So… does this mean that you guys are in Vegas?” she asked.
“Uh, sort of.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Nothing important.”
“Right.” She blew out a breath, and I could tell she was not entirely enjoying being my secretary with no chance of a story as payment.
Which reminded me…
“Hey, exactly how did you end up taking this call from Carla? Shouldn’t it have gone to my desk?”
There was silence on the other end. Then, “Weeeeell…I figured that you’d want me to answer your phone in case any important calls came in that required your immediate attention.”
Bullshit. What she really meant was any that required her immediate thievery of stories that came in for me while I was away.
“Stay away from my phone while I’m gone.”
“What? I was just trying to help.”
Help herself onto the front page.
“Just keep a healthy radius away from my desk until I get back.”
“And when will that be?” she asked.
I bit my lip. “Soon.”
“You need any help out there?”
“No!” I took relish in saying. Then quickly hit the end button.
Once I did, Trace immediately broke his silence.
“That wig-wearing sonofbitch! He’s seriously trying to blackmail me?”
“It appears that way.” I paused. “Do you think he knows about the bad guys after you?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We clearly were too eager to get at that drive. He saw an opportunity and took it. Sonofabitch!” he repeated.
“I hate to put it this way, but what’s the big deal?” I asked. “I mean, a hundred thou isn’t that much cash to you, is it?”
He shot me a look. “Contrary to what you may think of me, I don’t actually walk around with rolls of hundreds in my pocket. Yeah, I can get the money, but unless our blackmailer takes plastic, it’s gonna take a little time to get that amount liquidated. And time is one thing we don’t have.”
“Right.” His twenty-four-hour deadline was quickly approaching. “What do we do now?”
Trace plopped back on the bed. “What can we do? Meet up with this creep tomorrow.”
“And?”
I gulped. About to be tested to the fullest, I had a feeling.
* * *
Since there was little else we could do, we decided to call it a night. I slipped out of my jeans (under the cover of the hotel sheets – I wasn’t quite ballsy enough to show off my Victoria’s Secrets in front of a guy) and shut off my bedside light. Trace did the same (only he dropped trou in full view, stripping down to his boxers. Be still my beating heart!), then flipped on the TV. We watched a couple mindless sitcoms and one medical drama, before Leno appeared, his opening monologue punctuated by snarky comments about Jaime Lee’s dress.
Trace immediately flipped it off. Apparently he’d heard enough about that for one day.
Instead, we lay in the darkness, listening to each other breathe. Even though we were each sequestered in our own double beds, I had the irrational thought that I was sleeping with Trace Brody. He was a good four feet away from me, but the thought sent tingles to places of my body that hadn’t tingled in a very long time. I had to say, it wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
“I’m sorry,” Trace said.
I jumped a little at the sound of his voice, suddenly worrying that he might have female-tingling-parts radar or something.
“Sorry?”
“For dragging you into this. For not calling the cops.”
“In case you didn’t notice I kinda dragged myself.”
I could hear him smile in the dark. “Yeah, you did.”
“And, as for the cops, well, that wasn’t an option. They said no police, remember.”
“Yeah, they did, but…” He paused. Cleared his throat. “That wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want to call them.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “No?”
“No.” Again with the throat clearing. “The truth is… I was afraid of the bad press.”
“Oh for the love of…”
“I know, stupid, right? I mean, my life’s at stake and I’m worried about looking bad in the papers. It’s just… your thinking gets a little crazy sometimes living your life in the public eye. It’s not an excuse, but there’s no way you could possibly know what it’s like to live your life in front of the camera.”
I bit my lip. “Actually, I kinda do,” I admitted.
Generally my past was not something I liked to think about, let alone talk about. But after the heartfelt admission, I felt I owed it to him to at least be honest.
“I used to do a little modeling,” I said. “Granted I was no Trace Brody, but I’m not a total stranger to the fishbowl feeling.”
I heard rustling on his side of the room as he propped himself up on one elbow. “A model? You?”
“I know. Shocking.”
“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean you’re easily pretty enough to model. I just didn’t… you just seem too… real.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” Especially the pretty part. Damn if that tingling didn’t just kick up a notch.
“Why’d you stop?”
“No reason,” I hedged. “It just got old.”
“Liar.”
I grinned in the darkness. “When did you get to know me so well?”
“So what happened? You gain a pound? Blow a shoot? Get taken advantage of by some evil photographer?”
I rolled my eyes. “You watch too much TV. Nothing as cliché as any of that.”
“So what was it?”
I sighed. “You want to know the truth? I just didn’t recognize myself anymore.”
Trace was silent a moment. Then, “I know the feeling.”
“No, I doubt you do.” I closed my eyes, transporting myself back in time. “I’d been modeling for a couple of years, and my career was really starting to pick up. I was going to all the right parties, meeting all the right people, living life fast and furious.”
“Sounds cliché so far,” Trace teased.
I ignored him, continuing before I lost my nerve. “I had just come off a runway show in New York, right after a swimsuit shoot in Malibu, and was in Paris for a magazine shoot. It had been weeks since I even knew what time zone I was in. Anyway, I was on set, waiting for the other girls in the shoot to get their hair done, and I picked up this fashion magazine to pass the time. It was all in French, so I couldn’t read it, but the pictures were pretty. Especially this one picture of this woman in a long evening gown on a beach somewhere. Her hair was soft and glossy, flowing behind her, her neck dripping with jewels, her skin glowing perfectly in the warm sunset. She was glamour personified. And I was so jealous. I found myself wishing I could be like her. That if I could be that glamorous, that perfect, I’d have achieved something in life.”
“Sounds like she did her job well, huh?”
I sighed out loud. “Too well. I looked closer at the woman’s face and guess what? It was me. It was a picture I’d done on a shoot three months earlier in Cancun. I’d forgotten all about it. I literally didn’t recognize myself.”
Trace let out a loud bark of laughter. “Seriously? Oh, that’s classic.”
“That was when I realized just how fake my life had become. I was bouncing from glamorous locale to glamorous locale, playing part after part so well that I’d completely lost touch with reality. The glamorous woman in the picture had spent the better part of her youth mucking horse manure in rural Montana, making fun of everything that I now stood for. Everything about her was an illusion. Everything about me had become an illusion.”
I took a deep breath, shaking off the unsettling feelings the memory had stirred. “Anyway, that’s when I quit. Walked out right then, didn’t even finish the shoot I was on.”
“Wow. That must have taken some guts.”
I shrugged. “Guts and foolishness are very closely related. I was making six figures as a model.”
“I take it your tabloid doesn’t pay that well?”
“You’ve seen my place.”
“Point taken.” He paused. “So, what drew you to it?”
“Even though I didn’t want to model anymore, I still loved creating beautiful pictures. Stepping from the front of the camera to the back wasn’t that hard – the principles of lighting, angles, composition are all the same. I know it’s not exactly high art, but I can make a living doing what I love at the Informer.” I paused. “Well, barely a living.”
Having spilled my guts, silence fell over us. Again, the sound of his breath was the only thing I heard.
“So, you have any of those swimsuit shots saved?” he asked, laughter on the edge of his voice.
I tossed a pillow at him. “No!” Though the tingling was back.
“You’re from Montana then, huh?”
I nodded in the darkness. “Yeah.”
“You miss it?”
“Sometimes. But I go back to visit every year. Kinda keeps me grounded, you know?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I have no idea about being kept grounded.”
I rolled over to face his silhouette outlined against the bed sheets by the faint glow of neon lights through the window. “Don’t tell me fame ain’t all it’s cracked up to be?”
“Oh, I’m not complaining. Hell, I know how many people would kill to be in my shoes.”
I was glad to hear him say it. I’d never pegged Trace as the whiney celebrity type.
“It’s just…” He paused. “Well, I guess they’re awfully big shiny shoes to fill sometimes. Once in awhile I’d just really love to put on an old pair of boots and… and go mucking around in manure. You know?”
I grinned. “Have you ever mucked in manure before?”
“No,” he conceded. “But it sounds charming.”
I threw another pillow at him. He tossed one back, hitting me in the middle.
“There’s just such a thing as too perfect, you know? Like this whole wedding thing. It’s the end of the world if the dress isn’t perfect, the first photo of it taken
at the perfect time, by the perfect photographer, leaked to just the perfect paper. Once in a while I’d really just like permission to be a total fuckup.”
I grinned. “I’d say you’ve pretty much fucked up this whole flash drive thing.”
He laughed. “I have, haven’t I?”
I joined in for a second, then the laughs died down, bringing with them the silence again.
Maybe it was the anonymity of the darkness. Or maybe the revelation that he wasn’t as deliriously happy as his airbrushed photos and multi-million dollar mansion would have you believe. But I found myself asking the question that had been plaguing me since I was first assigned to Wedding Watch.
“Why are you marrying Jamie Lee?”
There was a pause. Too long of a pause. Before he answered with, “What do you mean?”
“Do you love her?” I told myself it was the newshound in me asking, not the woman who’d just been sharing her deepest darkest secrets with him in bed in the dark.
“Jamie Lee is a great girl,” he said.
“She is,” I agreed. Though I noticed he didn’t actually answer my question.
“I mean, what guy wouldn’t want to be with her, right?”
“Right. You’re the perfect couple.” I should know. I’d used that exact phrase enough times in the Informer over the past few weeks.
“Yeah. Perfect.”
I bit my lip. Nothing more to say, really. I closed my eyes, ignoring the odd letdown in my chest.
“Hey, Cam?”
“Yeah?” I asked. A little too breathlessly, I realized in hindsight.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Trace,” I answered back. Then I closed my eyes.
And tried to ignore that persistent tingling.
Chapter Seventeen
I awoke early to the sound of Trace sawing logs in the bed next to me. I couldn’t help smiling. The movie star snored. Awesome.
I quietly slipped into the bathroom, showered, turned my underwear inside out, and redressed in my clothes from the previous day. Trace was still snoring when I emerged, so I slipped out of the room in search of coffee.
Downstairs the casino was already buzzing with die-hard gamblers. Or maybe I should say still buzzing, as most of them looked like they were on the tail end of their evening rather than the bright side of a brand new day – hair disheveled, clothes wrinkled, eyes bloodshot and unblinking as they stared at cards, dice, and slot machine screens.
Hollywood Secrets Page 17