The Siren

by Katherine St. John

  Most people blamed the paparazzi for how invasive the press had become, but really, those who courted them were equally to blame. I detested influencers with their instantly targetable audience and guaranteed views. They weren’t actors by trade, but they’d become our competition, their quantifiable numbers of fans trumping our years of training and hard work. I needed another anxiety pill just thinking about it. And now here I was working with one of them. All Madison wanted was to be famous. She wanted it so badly it was written all over her lineless, vapid face.

  Wondering how much work she’d had done to perfect that face, I watched as she snapped a selfie with Cole, then checked the camera and snapped another one, repeating the process ad nauseum until Cole finally put a stop to it. I was simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by how she eagerly invited her fans into every nook and cranny of her life, shamelessly sharing every mundane detail of her day. She was so desperate for attention that she’d do anything for views, and it was obviously working for her. She was a walking, talking advertisement for herself. We were yet to shoot a scene together, and already I was sick of her. But more than that, I hated how much she got under my skin.

  “What’s wrong?” Felicity interrupted my reverie. “You’re frowning. Or trying to.” She laughed.

  “Nothing,” I said, watching Madison toss her wavy black hair in response to something Cole said. She’d be banging him by the end of the week for sure. And I wished to hell it didn’t bother me so much.

  Felicity followed my gaze. “Mmm-hmm. You don’t still have feelings for him, do you?”

  I grimaced. “And here I was, thinking how lovely you were for not prying.”

  She dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  Immediately I regretted jumping on her, especially after earlier. “It’s okay. That was mean of me.”

  “All good.” She forced a smile. “Do you want an A-pill?”

  Of course I wanted one, but would I be able to remember my lines? I was feeling mighty clear now that the S-pill had worn off completely. And mighty sensitive, obviously. Some might even say irritable. Also, I was going to have to do a romantic scene with my ex-husband-turned-employer in five minutes. Screw it. Kara would be there to feed me lines if I needed them. “Yeah,” I said, slowing the swing. She extracted the little blue leather bag she kept my medicine in from her purse and dumped the pill in my hand. I knocked it back dry. “And no, I don’t still have feelings for Cole.”

  “Too bad.” She smiled. “A rumored romance would certainly bring you back into the spotlight.”

  I gripped the ropes of the swing, suddenly dizzy. “You know how much I loathe the spotlight.”

  She laughed. “You know you love it.”

  I wished more than anything she was wrong, that I could simply walk away from fame without a backward glance. But the maddening truth is that once you’ve bathed in the warmth of the limelight, you find you’re damn cold when it no longer shines on you, no matter how you despised its glare.

  Family Ties

  ,

  Most people don’t know that my mother’s name is also Stella. That’s right, she named me after herself, which tells you just about everything you need to know about her. No memoir is complete without a chapter on the mother though, so here goes:

  Stella Rodriguez was born into a wealthy family in Venezuela that lost all their money when they fled to New Jersey when she was a teenager, for reasons I never learned. She was very beautiful though, and quickly married my dad, a successful American businessman fifteen years her senior, when she was twenty, and had me the following year. I remember how grand our gaudy mansion seemed when I was little—white columns, gold lion statues guarding the door, the Aphrodite fountain in the foyer. My mother never worked, but she spent money like it was water—which was fine until my dad got thrown in jail for embezzlement when I was nine.

  They took the house. I remember my mom would be sitting on the overstuffed paisley printed couch that was far too big for our rented apartment, drinking a screwdriver while watching a talk show when I got home from school at three in the afternoon. She was always dressed and made up like she’d gone to lunch somewhere fancy, but I knew she hadn’t. All her old friends had dropped her, the same way mine would years later after my breakdown.

  She said she didn’t speak English well enough to hold a job and told me in no uncertain terms that I had to make money to support us. I had worked as an actress when I was younger, doing commercials and that kind of thing, but had stopped when she no longer wanted to drive me around to auditions all the time. Now we were back on. I can’t say I wasn’t glad. I’d always loved acting, and now I had the chance to do it full-time.

  I booked Meg & Co when I was ten, and we moved to Los Angeles, where she bought a house for us with my money. She was my manager and guardian, so I trusted her to make all the business decisions while I worked hard on the show. Little did I know that right under my nose she was spending every last dime of it on clothes, bags, and cosmetic surgery, not to mention a staff that included a maid, a gardener, a tutor, and a cook.

  When I turned eighteen and learned there was nothing left, I had to start over at ground zero. Well, not exactly ground zero, as I first had to climb out of the hole she’d dug by neglecting to pay my taxes for a couple of years running. My father, who’d been released from jail by this point, tried to talk me into forgiving her, but I suspected all he really cared about was that I continued to support them. So I gave them a choice: I would forgive them and remain in their lives but never give them another dime, or continue to pay for them but never speak to them again.

  I kept my word. I paid for them until my bank account ran dry.

  Taylor

  Thursday, June 20

  The evening of the fourth day of filming, I’d just emerged from a steaming shower when I heard a knock at my bungalow door. I quickly threw on gym shorts and a worn T-shirt without bothering to put on a bra and flung open the door, expecting the fish tacos I’d ordered. Instead I found my personal hero, Rick, holding a conch shell in the soft night air.

  “Oh, hi,” I said.

  My surprise must have shown in my face because he chuckled. “Expecting someone else?”

  “Room service,” I explained. “It’s been a long day.”

  “How’s the shoot going?”

  “Surprisingly well,” I said. It was true: the weather had behaved, we’d run largely on time, and after all her demands the first morning, Stella had actually turned in a fantastic performance thus far, while Cole and Jackson had managed to mostly be civil to each other—a win all around.

  “Good,” he said. Behind him I spotted the room service guy pushing his cart up the torchlit pier and waved. “I won’t stay,” he added. “Just wanted to check on you.”

  “It’s fine,” I said quickly. I knew better than to read into his impromptu visit, but I couldn’t help it. I was flattered this tall, dark, and handsome stranger had stopped by, and I didn’t want him to go yet. “Do you wanna come in and chill with me while I eat dinner? I have extra fries and a minibar. Sorry, is it rude of me to ask you to watch me eat?”

  An unhurried smile spread across his face. “No. I already ate, anyway. But I’ll have a beer.”

  I signed for the room service, and we settled into two cushioned loungers on the over-water porch, facing the horizon. The heat of the day had dissipated, leaving a balmy breeze in its wake. A half-moon shone overhead, reflecting on the calm sea, and lights beneath the cabin illuminated the water, making it appear an unearthly blue-green.

  “What’s that?” I asked, indicating the shell.

  “This is for you.” He handed me the perfectly formed conch. Delighted, I turned it over in my hands, noticing for the first time the almost erotic appearance of its rosy, smooth flared lip. “I found it this afternoon.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “It’s beautiful.” I held it to my ear and listened to the distant sound of the ocean inside.

  �
��Conch shells are symbols of spiritual awakening and strength,” he said. “It goes deeper than that, but I don’t know all of it.”

  “Wow, spiritual awakening and strength…I could use both of those.”

  He held my eye a moment too long before he took a sip of his beer, and my stomach did a somersault. I turned my attention to my fries, reminding myself not to misread it. He was just one of those guys who was so comfortable in his own skin, he didn’t mind holding someone’s eye longer than usual, or gifting them symbols of spiritual awakening.

  “So, Taylor.” That gaze again. My God. Like some kind of a big cat. I’d read about guys with a “glacier-melting gaze” in my romance novels, of course, had even occasionally come across them in real life, but that gaze had never been directed at me. I was the friend, just one of the guys—the cool chick they told about their exploits and shared bawdy jokes with, who they might hook up with but we’d both know it was only that and things would never get mushy. Even with Rory, it was never romantic. My therapist said because my father had never shown me love, I didn’t think I deserved it, so I chose unavailable men and lived vicariously through my romance novels rather than risking putting my heart out there. I argued that I simply didn’t have time for romance and I wasn’t a sentimental person. But maybe she was right, because Rick looked at me like I was a woman and suddenly I was a freaking puddle. “Tell me something about you, besides that you don’t read warning signs,” he teased.

  I giggled like a fool. “Actually, that says a lot about me. What do you want to know?”

  “Where are you from?”

  It had to be just the way he looked at people because there it was again. Hypnotic. Focus, Taylor. He asked you a question. “LA, born and raised. You?”

  “Here. Well, there”—he pointed toward the horizon on our right, where lights of the main island twinkled in the dark. “Saint Ann.”

  It was my turn. I could do this. Carry on a conversation like a normal woman. “You have a big family?” I asked.

  He nodded. “My parents and four sisters, three married with kids around here and one at medical school in Miami.”

  “Wow, four sisters. You must know a lot about women.”

  He laughed. “Not really. You have siblings?”

  I shook my head. “Only child. My parents divorced when I was four.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Oh, it was for the best. My dad’s a total asshole.”

  He raised a single eyebrow. Why had I said that? Talking about my dad was a surefire way to douse any interest he might have in me.

  “You don’t wanna know,” I said.

  “Try me.” His eyes danced in the reflection off the water. “Unless you don’t want to talk about it. I don’t mean to pry. I’m just interested.”

  Why? I wanted to ask, suddenly defensive. But I stopped myself. It wasn’t his fault my dad was a scumbag. “It’s okay.” I sighed, crashing back down to earth. Despite my momentary fantasy of falling into his arms in the light of this beautiful moon and letting him ravage me while the ocean rolled beneath us, this wasn’t a romance novel. I was me. There was no escaping it; I might as well be honest. “My dad’s a studio exec. He’s a total stereotype—the Hollywood shark, always wheeling and dealing, screwing people.” I focused on the glimmering lights of a cruise ship way out at sea. “I took a job working for him right out of college—I’d only really spent brief amounts of time with him, so I had this convoluted idea of who he was and thought it would be amazing to work with him. I mean, I’d heard he was a dick, but surely he wouldn’t be a dick to me.”

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  I eyed him. The rest of the story required me to reveal way more of myself than I felt comfortable with, but what the hell; this guy had already witnessed me at my most vulnerable. “I was wrong. He showed me zero respect, continually promoted men with less experience over me…Bitch of it was, he made me doubt myself so much that I didn’t think I could leave.”

  His gaze was soft. “He sounds like a real asshole.”

  “Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff.” I’d been reluctant to talk about it, but now that I’d started, I felt the weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying begin to lift, and it felt tantalizingly good. “Last year I made a mistake,” I admitted. “I had an affair with a coworker who’d told me he was getting divorced. Only he wasn’t.”

  Rick tipped his beer. “Wow, another asshole.”

  “Oh, my life is full of them.” Something about this honesty felt provocative, like some kind of perverse striptease where every secret I revealed was akin to peeling off a piece of clothing. “Anyway, shortly after I broke it off with Rory, my dad asked me to leak some compromising information on an actress he’d had a relationship with, which had ended badly. When I refused, he blackmailed me.”

  He knit his brow. “With what?”

  I leaned my head back against the cushioned chair, looking up at the glittering sky. Way up high, a tiny plane cut silently through a field of twinkling stars. “Rory and I had traveled together a lot for work the previous year, and I’d stupidly trusted him to submit our expense reports. Turned out he was doctoring the books, using our work trips to embezzle money from the studio and implicating me in the process.”

  “How’d he get away with it?”

  I shrugged. “He took advantage of how complicated the flow of money can be for financing the huge movies we were working on. There were multiple companies involved on each project, which allowed for a good deal of double-dipping—getting reimbursed from more than one company, that kind of thing.”

  He let out a low whistle. “Impressive. And this guy was your boyfriend?”

  Had he been? At first the relationship was casual, but as time passed I’d believed we were only keeping it under the radar because we worked with each other. When I learned he’d reconciled with his wife, I was more hurt than I cared to admit; when I discovered that he’d implicated me in a crime, I was furious. Unfortunately, I was also too mortified to ever confront him.

  But I didn’t feel the need to share this information with Rick. I was exposed enough already. “I have terrible taste in men, obviously.”

  “That’s too bad.” His gaze was steady. “So how did your dad find out about the embezzlement?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. He always likes to have dirt on people and would go digging around sometimes. When he came to me, he’d already decided to fire Rory but offered to keep my name out of it if I’d do as he asked. I didn’t.”

  “Good for you.” He held up his fist, and I half-heartedly bumped it with mine.

  “I guess,” I said. “Hollywood is a hundred percent about optics, so after he fired me, I was screwed. As in, the only person that offered me a job before my savings ran out was Cole.”

  He had no idea I was completely naked in front of him now, and disconcertingly, more turned on than if I’d actually performed a striptease. The mind is a powerful tool. Maybe I needed to spill my secrets more often.

  “Aha,” he said. “I knew there must be a reason you were working for that particular asshole.”

  I laughed, enjoying the pleasure of being seen, the luxury of having someone on my side for once. “So many assholes.” Emboldened, I met his eye. “Are you one?”

  That slow smile. “I’m sure there are one or two people out there who would say so. I’m far from perfect.” He shook his head. “But no. I don’t think I am.”

  I assessed him in the moonlight, and I had to agree. Despite his rippling muscles and tiger gaze, he wasn’t nearly brooding enough to be the romantic hero in one of my bodice rippers—which was a good thing, because despite my performance in the water the other day, I wasn’t nearly helpless enough to be a damsel in distress. But perhaps a fling with a handsome stranger wouldn’t be an entirely bad thing. It could never be serious since we lived in two different countries, but a distraction might do me some good. And he was definitely flirting with me, wasn’t he?


  My phone buzzed, and Price’s number flashed on the screen. I knew he’d be wanting to go over the call sheet for tomorrow before sending it out. Rick noticed me glance at the phone with dismay and laughed. “You need to get that?”

  I frowned. “It’s work. I have to go over—”

  “No worries.” He stood. “I should be getting back to Saint Ann anyway. Thanks for the beer.”

  “Anytime,” I said.

  I walked him to the door, wondering whether he’d make any kind of move or say something about hanging out again, but he didn’t. He simply gave a friendly wave as he strode onto the pier. I closed the door behind him, feeling as though a million tiny lights had flickered to life beneath my skin.

  Once I got off the phone with Price, I grabbed my laptop and hopped in bed to indulge in some light Google stalking. I wanted to hunt down Rick’s profile immediately, but decided to delay that pleasure in favor of exploring what there was to see about one Felicity Fox.

  A search of her name on Facebook pulled up a list of Felicity Foxes all over the world, including three in California. One of the California profiles showed a picture of a smiling Black woman in her thirties, one a plump white woman in her fifties, and the last was a blank icon. Could that be our Felicity? But the page had no friends and didn’t seem to have been used. Thwarted, I checked Instagram, finding again a long list of Felicity Foxes that were not my Felicity Fox. The only possibility was a locked California profile that showed a palm tree, but it had only fifty-three followers. Did anyone her age have only fifty-three followers?