by Lisa Wingate
Amber’s eyes flicked to one side, and her lips tilted downward. “Except she didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t tell her, and he probably didn’t tell her because I’ve been trying to meet with him about recording for his music company, Higher Ground.” Looping her arms over her chest, she darted another look my way, then fidgeted from one foot to the other. “I wasn’t trying to do anything underhanded, Mrs. Doll, and I didn’t mean it against American Megastar, or Ms. Florentino. It’s just that … well … I guess I could have waited to contact J. C. Woods until I was actually off American Megastar, but once you’re off, you’re not news, you know? It seemed smart to do it now, so when I found out I was coming home this weekend, I set it up to meet him here in Daily. I been trying to call him ever since yesterday, and he didn’t answer his cell phone, so I figured maybe he wasn’t interested after all, and I was kind of downhearted about it. Then, when I found out he was actually here—I mean right here—I went a little nuts and blabbed the whole thing right where Ms. Florentino could hear.” She stopped to take a breath and stood there twisting and untwisting her arms like a little girl confessing in the principal’s office. “I really screwed it up bad. Now probably both of them will hate me, and I’ll get kicked off American Megastar, and I’ll be back here working at the feed store. I’ll just be stupid little Amber Anderson again.”
She started to cry, and I opened my arms and took her in. “Ssshhh, now, there’s nothing stupid about you, Amber. You’re a good girl. You didn’t have a way in the world of knowing this would happen. It was a smart thing, you trying to make use of your opportunities and look to the future.”
“I really wanted … I wanted Andy to have money for college, and …” She gulped down the rest of the sentence in a sob, and I felt my shoulder getting wet. “And I wanted … I wanted to make a place for kids who don’t have anybody, and I wanted … I wanted …” She choked on the words again, and I smoothed my hands over her hair, patting like I would have when my boys skinned a knee or had a fight with a bully at school.
“Hush, now. There’s a good girl.” Laying my hands on her shoulders, I pulled her back so I could look her in the eye. “You got to remember that when things are out of our hands, that doesn’t mean they’re not in God’s. I’ve got it written right there on my refrigerator, see? On that football magnet there by the ice dispenser? One of my sons put that on the coffin at Jack’s funeral. It says God’s ball on it because Jack told that to our oldest when Tim had his heart broke over not getting a football scholarship years ago. Jack sat him down and explained how sometimes in life you carry the ball, sometimes you just run along, and sometimes you’re flat on your back, but just because you don’t have the ball don’t mean it’s not moving toward the goal. There’s a whole team of men and angels at work in every life.”
Amber looked at the football and nodded like she could see Jack’s point. I turned her loose and grabbed a napkin from the table. “Here now, you wipe your eyes. One way or another, we’ll make this turn out.”
The phone rang and I grabbed it, knowing it would be Donetta, because I’d just been thinking of calling her to help me straighten out this mess. Whenever I’m about to call Donetta, she calls me first.
She didn’t even say hello, just, “Imagene, what in the world’s going on? First, you let Amber make her big surprise appearance at the fair before your best friend can get out there, and then I find out that Justin Shay’s been arrested for riding a bull naked at the rodeo, and you don’t bother to call and tell me that?”
“No one was naked on a bull, DeDe.” One thing about a Daily story, no matter how fantastic it is to start with, it’ll be even better by the time it gets around town. “He ran around the arena in red silky boxers, that’s all. Kind of like them things pro wrestlers wear. He wasn’t naked.”
“Even so—” Donetta clicked her tongue to let me know she still had a knot in her tail—“you coulda called. I had to hear it from Betty Prine, of all people. She come by here with her feathers up because she knew the gossip and I didn’t. How do you think that made me feel?”
“I’m sorry, Netta, I—”
“I wouldn’t leave you out of somethin’ newsworthy, Imagene Doll. Like just now, I got Amanda-Lee and Carter about to tear each other up in the back alley, and what am I doin’? I’m callin’ you.”
“Good gracious,” I said, stretching the phone cord around the corner into the pantry and cupping my hand over the receiver. “What are they saying?”
Donetta smacked her lips to let me know she was double disgusted. “Well, if I knew, I probably wouldn’t tell somebody that doesn’t bother to call me, would I?”
“Donetta.” Sometimes I wanted to beg forgiveness from Donetta and pull her hair all at the same time. “We been in the middle of a top secret operation all afternoon.”
“Are you sayin’ I can’t keep a secret?”
“Of course not. I wasn’t saying that.”
“Half the county heard about Justin Shay goin’ wild before I did.”
I started rearranging the cans on the bean shelf out of frustration. “Yes, I know, Netta. I’m sorry. We got caught in the traffic leaving the fairgrounds and I clean forgot to call you. You know how foggy I am sometimes, especially days when I miss exercise class.”
That made Donetta happy. “I been telling you exercise is good for the mind.”
“It is. I know it surely is. You were right.”
“No reason we got to get old, fat, and addle-brained all at once.”
“There surely isn’t. Two out of three’s bad enough.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, then finally, “Oh mercy, I forgot what I called you about.”
“Amanda-Lee and Carter having a spittin’ match in the back alley. Is everything all right now?” I grabbed onto the tiny hope that maybe this situation might have worked itself out on its own, because I didn’t have the first idea how to fix it.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” I pictured Donetta fluffing the back of her hair like she always did when she had to deliver bad news. She always said bad news goes over best with good hair. “Just now, she stormed in the door, hollering that she never wanted to see him again, and he walked off down the alley, I think. Then she went back and hollered something else out the door, then slammed it again. Now she’s headed up the stairs, and I don’t know where he’s gone. Maybe he got in his car and left. Anyhow, it looks like the romance is over, which is a shame, too, because I had a feeling about that pair.”
“Oh lands,” I muttered. “I better get my keys and get over there.”
“You’d best wait a minute.” I heard the squeak of Donetta going through the door into the back hallway. “Amanda-Lee don’t know it yet, but she’s got company up there. Her boss showed up a while ago, in a taxicab all the way from Austin. A real cranky lady. Tall, like one of them fashion models. Has some kind of foreign accent, that’s for sure. I couldn’t understand a word she said. Hang on a minute.” Donetta put her hand over the phone, and I heard the muffled sound of her hollering up the stairway. “Yoo-hoo, Amanda-Lee-ee. You’ve got company up there, hon. I say, you’ve got company up there, hon… . Hon?” The line hung up, and I figured Donetta’d hit the button by mistake. It didn’t matter. I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen next.
Chapter 25
Mandalay Florentino
“I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid!” I screamed, yanking open the back door of the hotel. Manda Florentino, producer, wanted to step back into the alley and punch him out, while Manda Florentino, victim of romantic stupidity, wanted to run away sobbing uncontrollably. I settled for screaming from the doorway and throwing a crumpled Coke can as Carter tried to exit the car he’d borrowed for our ridiculous high-speed chase from Imagene’s house to the Daily Hotel. Next time I saw Butch, I was going to smack him for giving Carter the keys. “You’re a liar, Carter … J.C… . whatever your name is. I guess you can sit back now and have a good laugh.
You conned me and I fell for it, but if you think I’m going to let you get your slimy mitts on Amber Anderson, you’ve got another think coming.”
Carter grimaced, pretending as if the truth actually stung. “Manda, it’s not what you think… .”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Jerk. What a jerk! How could he do this? Was there an invisible sign on me that said, Go ahead, tell me anything— I’ll believe it. “You should give up music producing and go into acting. ‘Church sound systems,’ the whole small-town Texas boy thing, and the brother with cancer, the poor little nieces back home. That was priceless. You deserve an Oscar.”
He blinked, like I’d caught him by surprise, rendering him speechless.
I called him a name my mother wouldn’t have approved of, slammed the door, walked three steps, then went back, yanked open the door, and hollered something else that would not have made my mother proud.
She would, however, have applauded my uncovering Carter for the shark that he was and telling him exactly what he could do with his music company. During her years in Hollywood, my mother had learned how to handle sharks. She’d warned us girls about two-faced lecherous show-biz men. I knew better than to fall for a guy who was too charming, too smooth, too … perfect. Too good to be true.
I knew better.
Why had I been so stupid—about Carter, about David? Why was I so gullible lately? Why was I willing to split with David and fall right into Carter’s arms, into his trap? Was I that desperate, that blind, just because I was thirty-four, not married, and I hated my job? The reality pinched some tender place inside me as I dashed up the stairs. Donetta hollered something from below, but the words were too faint to distinguish over the roar of self-recrimination.
Why had I let myself become such an idiot, such a sap?
Why did this hurt so much? Why did I feel hopeless, as if I’d never find my way to something good, to someone good, to a life, a relationship, that meant something?
I wanted to lock myself in my room, lie down in bed, and never get up. It wouldn’t matter if I did. My job, my existence, waspointless, so much so that I was trying to convince myself the results of a reality TV show really made a difference in the grand scheme of things—that it was my sacred duty to uphold justice, compassion, and the dreams of a little country girl who wanted to make it big. But the truth was that Amber was looking after Amber, and Carter was looking after Carter, and Ursula was … sprawled out on the furry bed amid a sea of pink satin pillows.
I stood in the doorway blinking, hoping she would disappear, hoping I’d finally gone over the edge and the Ursula image was an anxiety-induced hallucination.
She rolled onto her stomach, raised her head in a lithe maneuver, and raked an outstretched claw through the thick white fur of the bedspread like a lioness marking her territory. Her hair, hanging in the disheveled remnants of a bun, tumbled around her with a life of its own, and deep rings of smudged mascara gave her pale blue eyes an icy glow. For Ursula, she was a wreck.
“Hello, Mandee-lay,” she purred, stretching her fingers into the bedspread again, then drawing them back, the thick white fuzz bulging between her fingers. “The patroness below showdt me to the room. I hope this izz my bed. It izz deee-vine.”
She waved vaguely toward the adjoining door, still open from this morning. “The room with the lee-tle bearzz suits you, daah-ling.”
I glanced at the door, pictured Carter standing there, laughing and agreeing to be our driver for Operation Amber. No wonder he was so quick to sign on. He had an operation of his own underway.
I’d let the wolf in the door and never thought twice about it until he blew down my house of straw. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. I didn’t care if it cost me my job, my livelihood, my reputation. I didn’t care if Ursula ruined me in LA. For once, I was going to come out on top.
The shelion would not be leaving me bleeding on the floor today.
“I’m surprised you came.” I crossed the room to the adjoining door, pushing it closed to shut out the memories. The blue gorilla sat in Carter’s chair, smiling as the lock clicked into place.
Something twisted painfully just below my ribs.
An empty Ziploc bag lay dripping on the lamp table by my bathroom. I picked it up, swallowed hard, felt air squeeze from my lungs. I won’t break down in front of her, I told myself. I won’t.
Ursula turned on the bed and reclined against the pillows. “There was a lee-tle fish in the bag. It wazz dead, so I didt away with it.” She flipped a single finger toward the bathroom. “I do not like lee-tle fish.”
A sense of loss, disproportionate to the missing goldfish, stabbed inside me. I wondered if the fish was really dead or if Ursula had derived some perverse pleasure from flushing it, watching it wriggle and squirm and try to fight the current. Down the toilet, like the rest of my life.
Anger seeped in where the hollow ache had been, filled me until I felt like I would burst if I didn’t wrap my hands around Ursula’s long, jewel-encrusted neck and squeeze, very hard.
Patience, give me patience. My father’s most important life advice to me when I started into the working world—when you’re tempted to do something stupid, step back and ask for patience.
Or in the words of a Chinese fortune cookie, He who dances with the devil must watch his step.
“It was important that the situation here progress … as plannedt.” She tilted her head solicitously, resting her chin on curled fingers.
“Of course it was,” I bit out, forcing a crocodile smile to match hers. I was through groveling before the throne of Ursula Uberstach.
“Wouldt you like to give me a report?” It wasn’t a question, of course. It was a command to stand and deliver.
I’d like to give you a lot of things. A nifty little report isn’t one of them. “Things are going well. I tried to call and save you a trip out here. I know how busy you are.” Busy making back-room deals, busy trashing me, busy ruining the lives of perfectly innocent people, busy sleeping with the president of Dysterco, busy plotting to commit fraud.
Fraud … An idea began to form in the recesses of my consciousness, a divine inspiration. Maybe, just maybe, I could salvage this situation yet.
Ursula’s mask cracked for the barest instant—like a tiny nuclear reaction far out in space. A flash, then nothing but silky-smooth darkness. Emptiness.
For the first time in a long time I didn’t envy even the tiniest part of her. She was powerful, successful, gorgeous. Gorgeously vacant. Successful only because she used people like toys, because no one mattered to Ursula but Ursula. She wasn’t trying to change the world—she was only trying to make it revolve around herself. No matter how many impressive credentials, or how much power was attached, I didn’t want to be like her. Ever.
She shifted on the pillows, sat a little straighter, scenting a change in the wind. “My case wazz stolen in the airport, with my phone and my identification. This delayedt me momentarily.”
Not long enough. I’d never wished identity theft on anyone before, but I wished it on Ursula. I hoped some hairy-shouldered man in a greasy tank top was charging a new above-ground swimming pool to her Visa right now. “That must have been difficult.” There was a flippant undertone even Ursula couldn’t miss.
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, but I am here now. I understandt you have experienced some problems? I have seen the press coverage.”
I’ll bet you have. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“The segment of Am-beer is very … important. Your job here is very important.” She stroked a finger across her perfectly tanned chin, rested a long red fingernail against her lips, trying to read me.
“Why, exactly?”
Her eyebrows shot up, then lowered. “Mandee-lay? Do you care to explain?”
The muscles in my jaw tightened. My teeth clenched, and I forced words through the barricade. “Why would Amber’s segment matter when she’s off the show next week anyway? As a matter of fact, wouldn’t it be more conv
enient if Amber’s segment was a complete botch job—if, say, someone tipped off the paparazzi and they swarmed the place?” Boom. Boo-yah. Bombs away. Direct hit, right over downtown Ursula-ville.
She looked remarkably calm, disturbingly so. For a flicker of an instant, I thought, What if I’m wrong? What if this is all a figment of Butch’s really vivid imagination?
I pictured his face in the car. He didn’t seem the least bit unsure of himself. I’d never ever known Butch to lie about anything. Why would he lie about this?
Ursula’s chin lifted and she watched me coolly from beneath lowered lashes, her eyes narrow slits of frosty blue. “Mandee-lay. I suggest you explain yourself.”
You first. “I think the question’s pretty self-explanatory. Wouldn’t it be easier to take Amber off the show next week if her hometown segment was a flop—if there was a plethora of negative media about her coming here with Justin Shay and turning the town on its ear? If she’s not the little hometown good girl anymore, then everything she sings about, everything she claims to be is a lie, isn’t it? She’s a hypocrite, and hypocrites don’t get viewer votes.”
Ursula shrugged, tracing the red fingernail over her lips again. The usually flawless manicure was chipped. She paused to inspect it. “Mandee-lay. What are you suggestingk? I think perhaps you have been in this dreadful Texas climate too long. Perhaps you have become dehydratedt. Otherwise, I know you would not say something so … ill advised.”
“Why don’t we cut the pretense, Ursula?” To borrow a line from Butch. “I know what’s going on. You promised to have Amber off the show next week. Period.”
She winced. Barely.
Ah-ha. A crack in the ice …
“Butch should not hide in closets listeningk.” She fluttered a hand in the air, like a queen dismissing peasantry. “He izz a boy. He misunderstoodt. I toldt him this when I gifted his job back to him. He seemed to understandt.”
“I think he understands very well.”