Damage Control

by Jae

  Lauren looked at the piece of paper. “According to the CinemaScore polls, the people who saw the movie gave it an average grade of A minus.”

  Jill pumped her fist. “That’s fantastic!”

  Yes, it was. But Grace couldn’t relax yet. Audience ratings weren’t what really counted in Hollywood. For producers and studio executives, a movie’s success was measured only in dollars. “And how much did it gross at the box office?”

  “It’s hard to tell if all the media circus harmed the movie or not. If it did, the numbers would have been spectacular otherwise.” A big grin spread over Lauren’s face. “The three-day opening gross will be about twenty-five million dollars.”

  It wasn’t Grace’s most successful movie of all time, but it was more than respectable. The film had even almost earned back its production budget already. No tabloid would be able to write that Grace’s career was going down the toilet, just like her marriage. Relief weakened Grace’s muscles, but she jumped up nonetheless and stumbled through the living room toward Lauren.

  Lauren caught her and whirled her around, both of them laughing like maniacs.

  When they stopped in the middle of the living room, Grace felt so dizzy she had to clutch Lauren’s shoulders to stay upright. Lauren gripped her hips. The warmth of her hands filtered through Grace’s jeans. Grace stared into Lauren’s eyes, fascinated when she discovered that tiny green flecks sparkled in the hazel irises.

  Jill squeezed past them. “I think I’ll head back to the city now. Call me when you get the official numbers from the studio, okay?”

  Lauren and Grace looked at each other, then at Jill’s retreating back. They let go and stepped back at the same time.

  “What the…?” They were still in the middle of a Scrabble game, and she hadn’t even given Jill a congratulatory hug yet. Why the sudden hurry to leave? Was Jill hurt that she’d hugged Lauren and not her? She hurried after her and caught up with her at the door. “What’s going on? You didn’t feel left out, did you?”

  “No, that’s not it. I promise.” Jill glanced over to Lauren, who’d stayed behind in the living area of the cottage. She lowered her voice and added, “I just think that the two of you could use a moment alone.”

  “What? We don’t need… It’s not like that, really.”

  “Who are you trying to convince—me or yourself?” Jill asked.

  Before Grace could think of an answer, Jill squeezed her shoulder and was gone.

  Her head buzzing with thoughts, Grace trudged back to the living room. “Um, can I offer you something to drink? Coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I drank too much of it already, even by my standards.” Lauren glanced in the direction of the door. “Is everything okay with Jill?”

  “Yes. She’s just… She’s fine.”

  Silence spread through the cottage like a physical entity. It was so unlike the effortless conversation and the teasing banter they’d exchanged in the past. Grace hated this sudden awkwardness between them, but she had no idea how to change it.

  “So,” Lauren said and massaged the back of her neck with one hand, “you’re all moved in already?”

  “Yeah. I just had a few moving boxes.”

  “Need any help with these?” Lauren pointed at the last two boxes.

  “No. This one is just some board games that will go into the closet down here, and the other one goes up in the bedroom.”

  “And how are you supposed to navigate the ladder with the moving box and just one good arm?”

  Grace hadn’t thought of that. “Uh…”

  Lauren grabbed the moving box labeled bedroom and swung it up onto one shoulder, leaving one hand free to navigate the ladder.

  “Please be careful.” Grace clutched the ladder with her good hand while she watched Lauren climb rung after rung.

  “Yeah, I know,” Lauren called down. “Headlines about your lesbian publicist falling to her death from your loft bedroom wouldn’t look good.”

  “Uh, yeah. Exactly.” Grace realized that her position at the bottom of the ladder made her stare directly at Lauren’s ass. She wrenched her gaze away.

  “Do you want me to unpack the box and bring it back down?” Lauren called from the loft.

  Heat shot through Grace’s body. “No! I mean…no, thanks. That’s not necessary. Just put it down somewhere.”

  Lauren climbed back down.

  Since Grace was still holding on to the ladder, even though it was firmly attached to the loft and didn’t need to be held, their bodies came within inches of each other.

  Grace hastily let go of the ladder and stepped back. God, why was she so jumpy and overly aware of Lauren’s physical presence all of a sudden? Why couldn’t she just relax around her, as she had in the past?

  “Are you sure you want to stay here tonight?” Lauren’s brow wrinkled. “It’s not safe to climb the ladder with your cast.”

  Lauren’s concern warmed her. She wanted to reach out and touch Lauren’s arm but held back. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “Good.” A cough shook Lauren’s body. She pressed her hand to her mouth.

  Grace watched her with a frown. “You’re working too much. Now that the marketing campaign contributed to the movie’s success, you should really cut down on your hours. Maybe you could even take a vacation.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?” One corner of Lauren’s mouth curled into a half-smile, but the expression in her eyes showed that she wasn’t just teasing.

  “No! I just…” She lowered her gaze to the cottage’s hardwood floor. “I worry about you.”

  “No need. I’ll take a few days off, but not right now. At the moment, we need to keep you in the press for things other than your divorce.”

  In the past, Grace would have been happy to have a publicist who focused on her career above everything else, but now she couldn’t help worrying about Lauren. “Just don’t overdo it, okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  Another moment of silence between them seemed to last forever.

  “I’d better head back. I don’t want to navigate the dirt road in the darkness.”

  Grace followed her to the door.

  Lauren opened it and then turned back around but didn’t say anything.

  “Uh, drive safely,” Grace said because it was the only thing coming to mind.

  “Will do. And I’ll call you about rescheduling Good Morning America.” Then the door closed behind Lauren.

  Grace went to the window and watched the Honda Civic slowly make its way down the dirt road. She stood there, clutching the windowsill, until long after the car was gone and the clouds of dust had settled back down.

  Finally, she turned and restlessly roamed the living room. The piece of paper Lauren had brought over still lay on the coffee table. Grace picked it up and stared at the numbers, written in Lauren’s bold handwriting. The opening-weekend gross was great. She’d made the goal she’d worked on for so long. That would put her in the running for even larger, better roles. She should be happy, ecstatic even.

  Then why on earth did she feel so unsettled?

  CHAPTER 25

  One good thing about living up in Topanga Canyon was that her mother didn’t drop by quite as often. At least that was what Grace thought—until her mother came by unannounced a week after Ava’s Heart had been released. Once she stopped complaining about the “homicidal excuse for a road” leading up to Grace’s property, she perched on the couch and handed her a business card. “Here,” she said with obvious pride. “Look what I found for you.”

  Grace glanced at the card. Richard Lomas, PR consultant and manager, it read. Her fingers tightened around the card, and she barely resisted the urge to crumple it up and throw it into the nearest garbage can. “I don’t need a new publi
cist. I already have one that I’m very happy with.”

  “But I—”

  “No, Mom. This isn’t up for debate. Lauren really did a great job with the marketing campaign, and she went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure I got positive press after the tabloids found out about the divorce. I’m not going to fire her, no matter what you say.”

  Her mother clutched her chest as if Grace had driven a dagger into it. “I said nothing of the kind. Why are you getting so defensive?”

  Grace slumped against the armrest. “I’m sorry. I thought you wanted…”

  “Well, I still think Ms. Pearce isn’t the best choice of publicists for you, but I guess for the time being, she’ll have to do,” her mother said.

  Biting her lip to keep from defending Lauren again, Grace held up the card. “What’s this, then?”

  “He’s Todd Walbert’s manager.” At Grace’s blank stare, she added, “The soccer player.”

  “I know who he is, but why do I need the contact data for his manager?”

  “Well, as you would know if you followed the celebrity news, Todd recently had some PR problems too…”

  Grace nearly snorted. Hitting a paparazzo could be called a PR problem all right. Not that she couldn’t understand the impulse at times.

  “Richard and I got to talking, and we thought that Todd and you could help each other out.”

  “Help each other out,” Grace repeated. “How?”

  “What better way to show the media and the public that you’re not depressed about the divorce than going out with a handsome young man like Todd?”

  Grace groaned. She should have realized where this was going. “I know you mean well, but I don’t want to go out with Todd or any other handsome young man.”

  Her mother regarded her with a sorrowful expression. “And that’s exactly the problem. What’s the media supposed to think if you become a recluse, living hidden away in the wilderness—”

  “Mom, we’re just forty minutes from LA. This is hardly the wilderness.”

  Waving her objection away, her mother continued, “Spending most of your time with your lesbian friends?”

  “They’re my friends, Mom. Yes, they happen to be lesbians, but that’s not why I’m friends with them, and I’m not spending that much time with them lately.” It had been five days since she’d last seen Lauren and three days since she’d last heard from her. Not that she was keeping track or anything. She hadn’t seen much of Jill either. Truth be told, she’d avoided Jill, knowing she’d insist on talking about Lauren.

  “But you’re not spending much—or any—time with anyone else either. You don’t go out.”

  “I just haven’t felt like it with the cast and everything.” Grace rubbed her fingers over the cast she’d been wearing for nearly two weeks now.

  Her mother continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You show up at red-carpet events without a male companion. You don’t have the slightest interest in any man. How long do you think it will be until the rumors about you being gay start again?”

  Damn. As much as she hated to admit it, her mother was right. “So you and your new best friend, Richard, want me to do…what exactly?”

  “Go have dinner with Todd. I hear he’s nice. Maybe you’ll like him. And if not…” Her mother shrugged. “Well, you’re an actress. Act. You’ll still get some gorgeous photos of the two of you in the press.”

  For a moment, Grace considered suggesting they call Lauren and ask her opinion about this publicity stunt, but she could vividly imagine what her mother would say to that idea, so she just nodded. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  Her mother delivered a smacking kiss to her cheek. “Wonderful. I knew you’d be reasonable.”

  Reasonable, yeah. Grace watched as her mother pulled out her phone and went outside to the patio, the only place up here where the cell phone reception wasn’t so spotty. She’d always been reasonable when it came to relationships—she’d gone out with Nick when a studio executive introduced them and she’d married him because it seemed like the right thing to do and because her mother had started to get worried about her squeaky-clean girl-next-door image after two years of living together. Reasonable Grace Durand would never do something stupid, would never act on impulse. What the heck did Lauren even see in her?

  She shook her head at herself. Why was she thinking about Lauren again?

  Her mother returned to the living room. “You’ve got a date. Saturday, at seven.”

  Grace inwardly groaned.

  When Lauren passed Tina’s desk on the way to get herself another cup of coffee, her colleague was clicking through celebrity gossip websites as part of her morning work routine.

  Lauren’s step faltered when one of the pictures on the gossip blog caught her attention. She would know those incredibly blue eyes smiling into the camera anywhere.

  Tina turned. “Good job,” she said, pointing at the blog. “Making her go out with the hottest hunk in soccer was a genius idea. The media is eating it up.”

  Lauren narrowed her eyes at the picture of Grace with that soccer Adonis. “I sure as hell didn’t come up with this harebrained scheme. You should know me better than that. No publicist worth her money would suggest a stunt like that.”

  “Maybe it’s not a PR stunt,” Tina said. “They look pretty…friendly together.”

  Yeah, they did. Lauren took in the way Todd Walbert had his muscular arm wrapped around Grace’s waist and the way she smiled up at him. It made her want to barf, even if a voice deep down whispered that this was how Grace smiled at the leading men in her movies too. It wasn’t the kind of smile Grace had given Lauren when she’d kidnapped her to see the Eiffel Tower.

  “Excuse me. I need more coffee.” She walked past Tina without another glance at the picture on the computer screen.

  By the third date, Grace had to admit that her stereotypical notions of what a sports star might be like had been completely wrong. To her surprise, Todd wasn’t a chauvinist who talked about soccer all the time. He was funny, a great conversationalist, and as handsome and nice as her mother had said.

  But there was no spark, no butterflies when he called to set up another date, no damp hands and weak knees when he said good-bye with a brief kiss on the lips, and definitely no desire to ask him in for anything more.

  Todd nudged the dessert menu in her direction. “Come on. I need to keep my weight in check too, but making an exception every now and then can’t hurt.”

  Grace regarded him with her arms crossed over her chest. “What is it with people always trying to get me to eat things that are bad for me?”

  He shrugged and gave her a boyish grin. “Maybe we just don’t want you to miss out on the little pleasures of life.”

  That sounded like something Lauren might have said. Sighing, Grace opened the dessert menu. Taking a look couldn’t hurt. Oh, they have coffee crème brûlée. Lauren would love that.

  “I’m having the banana custard pie,” Todd announced. “How about you?”

  “I’m not sure I should—”

  The ringing of her cell phone interrupted. She pulled it out of her purse with an apologetic look. “Sorry. I forgot to turn it off.” When she flipped the cover open to reject the call and turn the phone off, she saw the name on the display. Lauren. Her breath hitched. “Uh, it’s my publicist. I have to take this.”

  Todd leaned back. “Go ahead.”

  Turning a little to the side for privacy, Grace accepted the call. “Hi, Lauren.”

  “Sorry to interrupt your evening,” Lauren said. Her voice sounded a little husky, sending a shiver through Grace.

  Oh, come on. She had worked with some of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. There had never been the slightest bit of attraction to any of them. Surely her weird
reaction to Lauren, who by Hollywood standards was merely average-looking, was just a fluke. You’re imagining things. You’re attracted to men. Just not Todd.

  “Grace?” Lauren’s voice came through the phone.

  “Uh, sorry. It’s okay,” she said, sounding a little raspy herself. “What can I do for you?”

  Lauren coughed.

  Had she been working late again? Grace frowned.

  “You know how I’ve been trying to get you a new spot on Good Morning America?” Lauren said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, one of their guests canceled, so they have an opening, but it’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “Are they pretaping it?”

  “No. I want you to do it live,” Lauren said. “That way, they can’t edit anything out or present things out of context.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Yeah, but it means you’ll have to fly to New York tomorrow.” Lauren coughed again. “Can you meet Tina at the airport tomorrow at ten? She’ll have the interview questions and go over them with you. They’re all pre-approved, so there won’t be any surprises.”

  “Tina?”

  “She’s one of our account executives. Very competent.”

  Grace didn’t care how competent Tina was. Why was Lauren suddenly trying to push her interviews off on a colleague instead of handling them herself? Was this how it would be between them from now on? Anger gripped her. “You know what? Maybe we should just forget about it.”

  “What? Why? Grace, Good Morning America is important. It could give the movie a new push.”

  “Well, it can’t be that important if you’re not even handling it yourself.”

  Static filtered through the line; then Lauren’s husky voice was back. “Oh. You thought… Haven’t you read my e-mail?”

  “What e-mail? I went to one of Todd’s games and now I’m at a restaurant, so I haven’t checked my e-mail all day.”