Once Max got her that far, the final leap out of her clothes and onto the Internet was but a hop.
“They owe you for what they did to you,” he goaded, never acknowledging that as an infant, Gillian couldn’t have been cognizant or the least bit responsible for the fate of her sister. Nor did he allow for the fact that she probably still didn’t know that Charli existed. “You have to get back by hitting them where it hurts,” he coached.
“Maybe I should just call them,” she ventured.
“So they can humiliate you more, like they did your father? They told the world that he was dead! They don’t give a shit about you. The only thing they care about is Gillian’s career and winning that Oscar.”
“There’s nothing that I can do,” she’d replied, feeling the way she’d felt her entire life: small, weak, and unable to control the world around her. She couldn’t fathom how she could possibly take on a big celebrity like her sister and a fancy socialite mother.
“Remember this, Gillian’s success is built on her image.” He paused for emphasis. “And you are her spitting image, which means that you can manipulate that image.”
Charli turned and looked into the mirror, closely studying her features. On one hand, she saw that she looked just like Gillian, but she certainly wasn’t as put together, as polished or as glamorous. It was as if Gillian was live, and she was merely Memorex.
Max read her mind. “The only difference between you and your sister is money and style. By that I mean all you need is a good stylist and aesthetician—”
“What’s an aesthetician?”
“Someone who specializes in skin care,” he explained.
“What’s wrong with my skin?” she asked, pouting. Now that she knew that her twin sister was a glamorous movie star, she felt more self-conscious about herself than ever. Like Gillian, she’d never been a typical beauty with long flowing hair and a light complexion. Lacking in confidence she’d failed to discover her true beauty, which went far beyond the ordinary. Even seeing her identical features on Gillian didn’t convince her that she could be that, too. It was confounding how two people who essentially had the exact same DNA could not look alike at all. She chalked that up to the difference between growing up in the sticks versus globetrotting through Paris, London, and New York.
Max held her gently. “There is nothing wrong with your skin, but in order for you to photograph like Gillian you have to do the things that she does. That means weekly facials to get that glow, it means a high-end hair stylist to get the right color and cut, and it also means losing five to ten pounds. After that, you’ll have Gillian and your mother both in the palm of your hand.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Trust me,” he’d said, before kissing her so passionately that her knees nearly buckled. Charlie had never met a man as polished, sophisticated, and smart as Max, who in fact had her in the palm of his hand.
That was three weeks ago, and since then the first salvo of nude shots had gone out and blown up the blogosphere, TV, and cable shows. Everyone seemed to be talking about the salacious nude shots of the celebrated actress Gillian Tillman-Russell.
Charli didn’t have any idea that her and Max’s little prank would cause such uproar. Controlling the world media was very scary, but it also made her feel a sense of power for the first time in her life.
Now it was time to take it to the next level. Gillian’s publicist had put out a press release stating that the pictures had been doctored and weren’t her, though no one could find an expert willing to say that, because they weren’t doctored, yet they weren’t her either. Of course, no one had figured out that Gillian Russell had an identical twin sister. Sometimes the answer to the puzzle is too simple.
“Let’s get one more shot of you and Mitzy in a sixty-nine.” Max focused his camera and adjusted his position to make room for the nine-inch hard-on that was coming to life at the mere thought of it. It was a beautiful sight watching the two women have sex. He’d always believed that most women were bi-curious, and the way these two went at it, he was certain of it. The Mitzy chick licked Charli like she was the last helping of a delectable dessert. Though Charli was more restrained, Mitzy’s skilled efforts brought tears to her eyes. And he got it all on film. Let them try to prove this was doctored, he thought. Satisfied that he’d gotten the money shot, he put his camera down and unzipped his pants. Before he got his shirt off, Mitzy was gargling with his balls, and Charli had taken oral possession of his manhood.
It was fabulous watching that stuck-up Gillian—Charli—suck his dick like it was her last supper. After visiting the brink of orgasm more often than he could bear without losing it, he laid Charli down on the bed and spread her long, lean legs. She was wet and slick, thanks to Mitzy, who now held her sex open for all to see. Before he took her, he grabbed his camera and got a steamy shot of Mitzy holding Charli open in invitation. He was sure that Brandon would love that shot, in particular, his princess’s treasured vault open for the masses to raid.
He put the camera down and slid all nine inches into her, stretching her tight wetness. He gave her strong, steady strokes, while Mitzy kissed first him and then Charli, all the while fondling his heavy balls.
While his right brain devoured the debauchery, his left brain decided that he wanted to always have access to Charli and her world of raunchy, hot sex that women like Lauren and her mother knew nothing about. There was nothing prim and proper about it, only primal, which most men understood fully. Having come to that conclusion he also came in her.
Chapter 23
A pall settled over the Russell estate after part two of the Gillian scandal shots was released. They spread through the media like a California wildfire, making the first set of shots look like a Mary Poppins photo shoot. There were close-ups, tongue-down-throat and tongue-up-twat shots that would have been virtually impossible to doctor, convincing many skeptics that the images were real. There were also no telltale signs of alteration, such as lack of symmetry or incongruent light reflections. The experts agreed that these shots had not been altered in any way.
The only person who could have imagined how an un-doctored shot that looked exactly like Gillian could not be her was Imelda, who you’d imagine would certainly remember carrying twins and giving one away, but she was not talking a lot lately. In fact, she was playing it very close to the vest after the uproar that ensued after Gillian discovered that her father was alive. For a minute she thought they were going to kick her out of the estate, but thankfully they hadn’t.
The last few years hadn’t been kind to the baroness. She’d always spent a lot of money baiting the hook for her next husband, including couture wardrobes from the Paris runways, first-class travel throughout the world, and the many other accoutrements necessary to lure and catch Mr. Big Bucks. She didn’t mind at all, because her efforts had always reaped substantial rewards, that is, up until her last husband, the baron. Though he, too, had all of the trappings of great wealth, she discovered too late that he just didn’t have the wealth itself. As a result, not only had she spent a fortune getting him to chase her, but she’d come up empty-handed. She’d tried to salvage the situation using what money she had left to find a runner-up, but so far, there were no takers. She was discovering that it was hard out there for an over-the-hill gold digger.
Imelda was another source of Brandon’s disappointment with Gillian. When he first met his mother-in-law-to-be he thought she was a regal, rich, and worldly socialite, but over the last few weeks, he saw clearly that she was just an old, broke-ass hootchie looking for the next baller. The only difference between Imelda and a video ho was the stripper pole. After seeing her first husband on TV, he realized that she was no better than he was. She’d just cleaned up sooner and ran a little farther and a lot faster than he had after his own escape from the boonies.
Now he had to figure out how to get that woman out of his house, and decide whether he wanted her to take her slut daughter along with her. Tha
t, he knew, would depend on whether she brought home that Oscar, which he knew was now a long shot. If she didn’t, she and her mother could both pack up and get the fuck out. He felt humiliated and conned after seeing the raunchy videos that had been sent to him personally. Video of his wife having sex with another man! Of course the bitch had the nerve to try and say that it wasn’t her! Just like she said those photos weren’t of her! What did he look like? Boo Boo the fool? All this time he thought he had married a lady who would help upgrade his image, but instead Gillian was nothing but a lying whore who’d used him to get ahead. He’d been played like a country fiddle, but that was all about to end, right along with her chances of winning the Oscar.
Rage boiled in his blood at the thought of her fucking another man. A man who hadn’t spent the last three years giving her the world, and she still has the nerve to play him like a pussy. Obviously she didn’t really know who she was dealing with. He might be all polished up, but the dirt and grit from the streets remained just beneath the surface.
Gillian was having a similar conversation in her head, though in her version leaving wasn’t predicated on whether she won the Oscar. When all of this was over, she was leaving one way or the other. She’d been essentially numb since the latest shots were released, and the new video had her paralyzed with fear and confusion. They were all so real looking that for a split second she had to think about whether it was her!
To make matters worse, a few tabloids had picked up the thread of a rumor that surfaced right after Paulette was killed, and the media was having a field day speculating anew on suspects. Because she’d lived with Paulette before moving in with Brandon, someone with a wild imagination decided that they were lesbian lovers and that Paulette blackmailed her after she became famous, and that Gillian killed her to protect the secret. Now, of course, with pictures of her with another woman, they had “proof” that she was gay, so maybe she killed Paulette, too.
What bothered her most was the fact that her husband automatically believed what he saw, and probably what he heard as well. He had not once considered that she could be telling the truth. Since the photos were released, he’d looked at her like she was pond scum. They now slept in separate bedrooms.
Her mother, on the other hand, was uncharacteristically as quiet as a mouse. Gillian realized that Imelda felt bad about lying to her about her father and was trying to stay out of the way and not cause any more problems, but now was when she really needed to talk to someone, and with Reese consumed by Rowe’s illness, she called Lauren overseas.
“Hi, it’s me,” she said.
The connection was bad, so she could barely hear Lauren. “Hi, Golden Girl,” she said.
She was back in South Africa and had no idea what was going on in the tabloids back home. “Try Tarnished Girl instead,” she said, wearily.
Even with a bad connection across continents, Lauren could hear the despair in her friend’s voice. “What’s wrong, sweetie?” she asked. She’d never heard Gillian sound so despondent before.
Gillian couldn’t stop the flood of tears that came. She’d been holding so much in that it only took a kind and concerned voice to bring it all to the surface. After blowing her nose, she caught her breath and told Gillian everything that had happened.
“Oh my God, Gillian,” she exclaimed. “You poor thing. That’s awful.”
“I swear it’s not me.”
“You don’t even have to say that. We’ve just got to figure out who’s behind this.”
“I don’t know how. My publicist has been working with a tech expert trying to trace the computer source through the Internet provider, but so far they’ve run into dead ends. And Brandon totally believes that I’m a whore who’s tricked him into marriage.”
“Forget about Brandon. Right now we need to focus on you. I have an idea. I’ll take a flight out tomorrow and be in L.A. in a couple of days. Together, we’ll get through this.”
Gillian wanted to cry all over again—out of relief. Finally she’d have someone she could talk to, who was unconditionally on her side. “Lauren, you don’t have to do this.”
“There’s no way I would let you go through this alone.”
“You are a real friend,” Gillian said, now fully appreciating the difference between friends and fauxs.
Chapter 24
Being fabulous was such hard work, Mildred lamented with a long, heartfelt sigh. She pressed the call button for her butler, James, for the second time. Where the hell was he when she needed him? He knew she was going shopping, and thus, should have expected she’d return with a barrage of shopping bags, therefore he should have been listening in eager anticipation for her arrival. Given the amount of staff she and Nathan employed, there was no reason she should ever be standing in the foyer of her home with armloads of shopping bags. Good help was so hard to find!
When James didn’t materialize immediately, out of sheer frustration she resorted to an old-fashioned communication technique, and simply screamed out his name. “James, where are you?” she demanded, dropping the load of bags and her Birkin croc onto the foyer table and planting her hands on her hips.
Instead of James, Nathan entered the foyer along with a woman whom she didn’t recognize. “Mildred, you have company,” he announced somewhat somberly.
In warp speed Mildred transformed from the spoiled, pissed-off bitch, to the cool and self-composed socialite that the rest of society saw and didn’t necessarily like. “Hi, I’m Mildred Baines-Reynolds, and you are?”
“I’m Lydia, Lydia Patterson.”
Mildred looked the homely woman up and down, deftly noting her Nine West shoes and the deplorable nondesigner suit she wore, stopping just short of turning up her chisled nose. She abhorred tackiness on any level as though it were a contagious, rapidly spreading viral disease for which there was no vaccination or cure. “And what can I do for you?” Mildred fixed her with the same politely disdainful glare that she’d perfected on Paulette for so many years.
Knowing his wife all too well, Nathan interjected on the poor woman’s behalf. “Ms. Patterson is with Celebrity Publishing and she’s writing a book about Gillian and wanted a few quotes from us.”
Lydia had purposefully waited until Mildred left for her shopping excursion and her scout reported that she was twenty minutes away from returning home before knocking on the door, knowing that she’d have a better chance of getting a foot into it if Nathan, rather than his famously prickly wife, answered it.
Mildred’s next impulse was to show the mousy woman to the door, since she’d never thought very highly of Gillian and her kind, and was truly perplexed at how she’d attained such success and married such a very rich husband, when her own, more deserving daughter hadn’t. Not to mention that people of her station in life dared not associate with the entertainment types, though it was different now that Gillian was an Oscar-nominated movie star, not one of those B-listers who showed up everywhere wearing as close to nothing as uncommon decency would allow. Then again, there were those pornographic pictures of her that everyone was talking about. So far, they’d only served to make her even more famous, so perhaps she should not be so hasty in judgment, since her affiliation would give her added cache among her catty friends, and they’d be really envious once she was invited to Vanity Fair’s famous Oscar party. My God, what would she wear? Hmmmm… There was that fabulous beaded gown she left hanging at Ralph Lauren’s on Madison Avenue…
“Mrs. Baines-Reynolds?” Lydia said in an effort to return Mildred to the here and now. In those seconds, she’d gotten an unfiltered look at Mildred’s self-absorption.
She knew that her journalistic skills would really come in handy during this process; in fact, they were part of the reason that she’d been successful as a publicist. Lydia had an uncanny ability to read the subtext in most any circumstance. Irrespective of what someone said, she usually saw the truth beyond the words. It was as clear to her as though teletype were scrolling across their faces. In this
case, the teletype would have revealed Mildred’s thoughts to be: 1) She’s a nobody, maybe I should kick her out of my house; 2) And, she’s writing a book about an actress; that could be tacky; 3) But, the actress is an A-list movie star, so perhaps I should hear her out; 4) Now that I think about it, this could be good for me.
“Yes, of course,” Mildred said, snapping out of her reverie. “Would you care for something to drink?” Part three of her transformation was to that of the gracious hostess.
“I’d love something. Whatever you’re having.” Lydia smiled in her most disarming manner. She’d long figured out that she was far from a world-class beauty; in fact, she knew that looks were not her strong suit. She also knew how to work her unassuming qualities to her ultimate benefit, so she’d strategically left her Jimmy Choos and Armani suit hanging in the hotel room closet and thrown on a pair of just-purchased Nine West shoes, along with a getup she’d found at Ann Taylor. It was quite amazing how beautiful people discounted those who weren’t as attractive, or rich.
Mildred led Lydia into the elegantly appointed sitting room, where James magically appeared. From where, she had no idea. “James, please bring a Glendronach single malt for Mr. Reynolds, and two glasses of the Boekenhoutskloof shiraz for my guest and I.”
James scurried off to do her bidding, while Nathan sat opposite the chairs taken by Lydia and Mildred. Most of his days were excruciatingly boring, so he was very happy to have a splash of excitement in the midst of his normally benign existence.
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