Centre Stage (Lies for a Living Book 2)

by Lissa Bilyk

I swallowed, adrenalin cascading through my veins. “What can they possibly want?”

  “Just go home, gorgeous girl. They can’t follow us through the gates.”

  I drove on, trying to ignore the fact that some creepy person followed us. We made it home otherwise without incidence and buzzed Leslie to let us in, but when I checked one final time before easing the car into the complex car park, the black car had disappeared.

  That night we made love the old-fashioned way: passionately, easily, fitting together like we’ve fit together a hundred times before. I was surprised by how much I needed the comfort. I had work the next day and Cameron was often up for a run early in the morning, so we tried not to stay up late and pay for it the next day.

  We left the apartment together after a fruit smoothie for him and a more substantial breakfast for me, and made our way to the foyer. The early shift receptionist, Roxanne, a black-haired beauty with red lipstick who never made eyes at Cameron, waved to us cheerfully. I wished I was a morning person.

  Outside, with the skies overcast and heavy with the promise of a final snowfall, just beyond the black security gates, a dozen people waited armed with cameras.

  As soon as we set one foot outside, a cry went up. A dozen cameras raised to a dozen faces, a dozen flashes blinded me. Cameron acted quickly, swinging me around to cover my face; but there wasn’t much he could do. He was in his winter workout gear, a skin-tight neck to wrist and hip to ankle running suit, while I had my hair back in a no-nonsense bun and wore my business clothes.

  “Cameron!” the paparazzi called.

  “Is that your girlfriend?”

  “Are you married?”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Cameron!”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Readers are desperate to know!”

  “How long have you been seeing each other?”

  Overwhelmed, I let Cameron lead me back inside and sit me down while Roxy bought me a drink of water. My knees felt weak. I’d lost my virginity to Cameron, but I’d never quite felt so vulnerable and exploited as that moment, not even when I’d seen my grainy, badly-lit photo in the very magazines the paparazzi outside shot for.

  “How the fuck did they find out where I lived?” Cameron wondered, running his hands through his golden-brown hair and tugging it straight up. “I’ve been here for two years without an incident.”

  “Do you want me to call the police?” Roxy asked, concerned.

  “No, they’ll go away when they think we aren’t coming out.”

  “The car,” I said. “Cam, someone followed us home yesterday, remember?”

  Roxy put a hand to her mouth. Cameron balled up his fist and punched the flat of his other hand.

  “They followed us from your audition,” I added.

  Cameron ran his hands through his hair again. “Who on earth knew where I was?”

  Besides his agent Caroline, the people auditioning him, and myself, no one.

  Cameron decided not to go running that morning. Luckily, I could escape via the elevators to the underground car park and avoid the paparazzi by taking Cameron’s Jag with its tinted windows. I realised with a painful jolt that I might have to get rid of my little Bombalurina, the unreliable car I’d been driving since I moved to London. There was no point in tinting her windows: she simply wasn’t worth it. Instead, I’d have to fork out for a whole new car – or at least a trade-in, and I wasn’t sure I could. I still paid rent on my Kensington flat.

  I remembered to swing by on the way to work and feed Bronte, who I’d been neglecting lately. I picked her up and tried to give her a cuddle, but she wasn’t interested.

  “I don’t blame you, Bronte,” I said as I opened a can of cat food. “I’d be pissed at me, too, if I’d basically abandoned you.” She ignored me and tucked into her breakfast. I refilled her dry biscuit tower and ensured she had fresh water in her fountain. I grabbed a fresh change of clothes to keep at Cameron’s and wondered if maybe I should tell him I thought moving in was a good idea after all. Bronte would be better cared for, and I wouldn’t have to keep coming home for fresh clothes.

  Cameron kept me updated through the day. He could see the front gates from the apartment and dubbed it ‘Paparazzi Watch.’ When it rained he took photos and sent them to me, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the childish game. We were giving the paparazzi a taste of their own medicine, but at least we wouldn’t sell ours to a gossip magazine.

  They were still there waiting outside the gates when I drove home. I honked the horn at them and wondered if it would be so bad if I ran one of them over, just as a warning? They didn’t care who I was – they didn’t get a good enough look this morning, and they didn’t know Cameron’s secret lover was in the fancy silver car. They scattered like sheep. I worried for a moment they would try to race inside the gate, but even if they did, they didn’t have a key card to the elevator and Roxy – or Leslie, who would be on by now – had a panic button for the police.

  Up in the apartment I decided to tell Cameron I thought I should move in – or at least bring Bronte over so my poor kitty could have cuddles whenever she wanted. He seemed in a fine mood when I walked in and dumped my bag, and kicked off my shoes. He swept me up in a hug and kissed me, tasting of cinnamon.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked. He led me to the kitchen where he’d baked some of the apples I’d bought the other day and sprinkled them with cinnamon. I took one and cut into it as he stood, fairly bouncing with nervous energy beside me.

  “What is it?” I finally said when I could stand it no longer. It was fun to tease him sometimes, but he was like an impatient puppy.

  “Paulette, my publicist, proposed an idea she asked me to run by you.”

  I sat up straighter. “What is it?”

  “Well, normally in these cases the tabloids go crazy and send paparazzi after the celebrity, trying to catch any kind of evidence they can to sell to the magazines, no matter how circumstantial.” He started pacing along the kitchen floor. “But when couples get married or have babies, one way to keep the magazines away is to invite one – just one – to have special exclusive coverage, with exclusive pictures. It works because that’s the only magazine the public can read about them in, so it sells; it also works because then the couple are in charge of the photos that get put into it, and what the article says, and of course, there’s the payout.”

  I put down my spoon. “You want us to sell our story? I hardly think you and I dating is very interesting.”

  He stopped pacing, his eyes shining with excitement. “If we upped the stakes it’d be interesting. It’d get more attention and the magazines would have to bid for exclusive access.”

  “How do you think we can up the stakes? I’m a nobody from Australia – you’re practically assimilated.”

  He took my hands. “Tori, I want to sell it as an engagement shoot. I want to marry you.”

  I blinked, my heart racing, my breath caught in my throat. “You what?” I spluttered. “Did you just propose to me in possibly the most unromantic way ever?”

  He dropped to his knees and placed his hands on my thighs. “I wanted to do this earlier, but I want you to just get used to the idea first. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, waking up next to you, keeping Bronte out of trouble, having beautiful brown-haired babies, the lot. And you can have the security and freedom to do whatever you want to do – you don’t have to be John’s assistant forever.”

  “I like being John’s assistant,” I said, the first words that came to me. In truth, I wasn’t sure how to respond to this ring-less proposal. “But don’t you think this is a little fast? We’ve known each other less than a year!”

  He shrugged. “When it’s right, it’s right. I broke a lot of my own rules with you, Tori. Who says anything about what we’re doing is wrong?”

  I slipped off the stool. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “You always have to think about everythi
ng,” he pointed out, unable to keep the accusing tone out of his voice.

  “Yes, because you always spring things on me with no warning. I’m not a spontaneous person, Cam. I have to think about things.”

  “You didn’t have to think about me.” He frowned. “Well, not much. How is this any different?”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “If you just proposed to me then you did it as a business arrangement and without a ring. I don’t ask much of you, Cameron, but I do ask that you at least try to be a little romantic on one of the most important days of your life.”

  He tried to take my hand but I twisted away from him, hurt and angry.

  “I just don’t see how it’s a big deal. I knew from the first time I spoke to you that you’d be the one I wanted to marry.”

  “That’s lovely,” I said, trying not to cry from frustration. “But you can’t assume that I’d feel the same way.”

  Understanding dawned on his face. This time when he reached for me, I let him bundle me into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, nuzzling my hair the way I loved. “I just assumed. I was wrong.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I whispered back. “But at least I think I can make a compromise.”

  “Mmm?”

  “I think it would be a good idea if Bronte and I moved in.”

  Silence: nothing but the feel of his arms tightening around me, squeezing the air from my lungs.

  Then: “I’m so pleased.”

  Chapter Seven

  In the following days I packed up my apartment and started hauling boxes. We moved Bronte in first. She yowled the whole way in her cat carrier, and when I set it down in Cameron’s living room – our living room, I reminded myself – she refused to come out. It wasn’t until I fetched her favourite treats that she cautiously stepped out, eyeing her new domain, and after she had her promised treat, began exploring. Cameron had a window in the kitchen that opened: we set up some milk crates outside and book cases inside so she could come and go at her leisure.

  We watched the paparazzi get frustrated at our outwitting them. Because there was an open-air car park, they didn’t realise there was an underground one as well. Cameron asked Roxy to warn the other residents about the mob, and after a few days of no one coming or going through the gates except in cars with tinted windows, they gave up and started trickling away.

  “They haven’t gone,” Cameron said when I asked if he would go for a run out the gates with Hayley. “They’ll hide now and use long-focus lenses. If we keep this up the heat will blow over and the interest will be gone. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”

  He said nothing more about proposing. He’d been busy at the Jack the Ripper workshop while I was at work. I suppose he had other things on his mind now.

  We thought we were safe – until the photos were published online and in gossip magazines. Some die-hard fans recognised the apartment complex, and all of a sudden we had to deal with random strangers showing up asking to see Cameron, people asking the postie to deliver letters, people trying to climb the gates and almost getting run over in their fervour. One woman flashed us as we made the mistake of walking past the gates. Cameron turned his head away, but then the woman started hurling abuse at me and offering to give him a good time.

  Cameron refused to respond and we hid inside.

  The fans weren’t as dedicated as the paparazzi, and they scattered when it rained. But it certainly scared me, peering out the window and seeing them way below chanting for Cameron, holding home-made signs up, trying to shake the big black gates from their reinforced hinges.

  Roxy called the police. A few of the other residents complained to us, but Cameron shrugged and said there was nothing he could do short of moving house, and he liked living there.

  It was a bright, clear, crisp day when I arrived home to Cameron bouncing around the apartment like an excited puppy. I tried to be the calm, reasonable one when I asked him what got into his juice this morning.

  He handed me two plane tickets to Ibiza.

  “Let’s run away for a few days. Valentine’s Day is coming up: let’s just forget everything and go somewhere sunny. I already asked Hayley if she’d drop in to feed Bronte, and I warned John I might whisk you away for a few days.”

  My mouth dropped open. I wanted to protest. Something along the lines of, You can’t just take me away from everything, or I have a job I need to go to, or I’m only half moved in! Let’s wait until I’m settled. But nothing came.

  Because secretly I wanted to leave everything behind.

  With my apartment still in a chaotic state, Cameron and I packed and left for Spain. I lost my key card in the chaos of the foyer as we waited for a car to pick us up. We wanted the fans and remaining paparazzi to see us leaving with luggage and to be uncertain when we might return. We hoped they’d give up and leave us alone.

  We spent three glorious days on the beach in the sunshine – including a freak hot day, the likes of which I normally only got to experience in London in August – and made love every night. Cameron took his runs in the morning while I wandered along the beach, and he’d go to a gym to fulfil his weights requirements while I cooked dinner in our self-contained suite.

  We returned to London fresh and happy and ready to turn the recent stresses aside.

  Until the pictures started cropping up online.

  Pictures on me in my bikini. Pictures of Cameron running through the surf. Pictures of us canoodling on the beach when we thought we were anonymous.

  Now the paparazzi knew what I looked like, and they’d sold the first pictures before we even got back.

  I ignored the hateful comments about the size of my thighs and breasts, and Cameron laughed off the shots of him enjoying himself in the water. But now we’d busted our chance to get to the magazines first, like he’d suggested with the engagement shoot. ‘Anonymous’ sources had provided commentary on Cameron’s new-found happiness with the promise that it wouldn’t last.

  I wondered if our whole lives were going to be tainted by celebrity business. We’d never be ordinary, that was for sure.

  I was fined for losing my key card. Leslie looked smug as I handed over a cheque that was more than I earned in a month, but she didn’t say anything. I wished she would – I’d have liked an excuse to lash out at her, to relieve my frustration at myself. I only had myself to blame – it had been lying on top of my suitcase and could have easily been knocked off. Anyone could have taken it.

  Carly had lined up more auditions for Cameron during his absence, but I had to go back to work. I’d kept Bombalurina in the underground car park while we were away because it was much safer than at my apartment. I could have taken the train to work, but I’d resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to say goodbye to my little faded red car, sooner than later.

  She was in shadows, but I noticed a sparkling of fairy dust on the ground around her. At first I thought the caved in windshield was a trick of the light, but as I moved closer, I saw the damage.

  Her windows had been smashed in. Her bonnet had been hacked at. The lights were smashed beyond repair. I circled the car to find that all the tyres had been slashed – and that wasn’t all. While I was living it up in Ibiza, someone had not only attacked my car but spray painted something on the side furthest away from the elevator.

  SLUT, it read. WHORE. And worst of all, CUNT.

  I started shaking. I could barely dial Cameron, and thought it would be better if I sat down.

  He answered after one ring. “What’s up? Did you forget something?”

  “Someone vandalised my car,” I said in a small voice. No one but residents had access to the underground car park: the paparazzi hadn’t even known about it.

  It was someone in the building.

  “Shit,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”

  We called the cops, but there was little anyone could do. There was no evidence left behind. There were no security cameras because only residents with key cards had ac
cess. I had insurance, enough to replace the tires, but Cameron insisted on getting rid of Bombalurina right away. Cameron also suggested that we hire me a bodyguard, as clearly some crazy fan had gained access to the car park and gone after my car, and my car alone. I didn’t want a bodyguard, and I argued how could they tell it was my car among the dozens others parked here and left unattended?

  Cameron had only to point out that mine was the cheapest in the car park by several tens of thousands of pounds.

  “But I can’t afford a car like these,” I said, close to tears. I just wanted Bombalurina. She’d been the first big thing I’d bought in England, my first car, and she was sentimental to me.

  “We’ll find you another,” he said, closing me in his arms.

  “Why is this happening to me?” I asked him. “I’m a good person. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life.”

  He kissed my forehead. “We’ll find out. I’ll launch a complaint with management. Whoever it is won’t get away with this.”

  I called John and explained my car had been vandalised and he gave me the rest of the week off to sort things out. I felt bad taking the time off work because I’d just been to Spain but he seemed to understand the pressure I was under with the paparazzi and the stalker fans and now this.

  For the first time I started to feel frightened.

  When you’re rich and famous, you have connections. Cameron took me out to buy a new car, and instead of taking me to a used car lot like I asked, he took me straight to a Bentley dealer.

  “I can’t afford a luxury car,” I told him.

  “Think of it as an early Valentine’s Day gift,” he said breezily, and ignored my protests.

  “What if we break up?” I said warily.

  He didn’t even look at me, but smiled. “We’re not breaking up, Tori. We’re perfect for each other.”

  “But I don’t want to be indebted to you.”

  He parked the car and took my hand. “If it makes you feel better, if we break up, you can keep the car as alimony. Everything’s going to be in your name. It’s your car, princess.”