Handbags & Homicide

by Anne Marie Stoddard

  Tonight, Trace had informed me in the car that he was treating me to dinner at Urasawa, Beverly Hills' most exclusive Japanese eatery. The upscale restaurant was known to be primarily frequented by billionaires and celebrities. Because of this, the parking lot was a feeding frenzy of paparazzi, camping out all evening and jockeying for a position near the entrance, where they could snap the best photos of the evening's patrons. (I knew because I was frequently one of them—the campers not the patrons.) I turned my face away from the parade of cameras as Trace guided me toward the burgundy carpet at the restaurant's entrance.

  We had almost reached the open double doors when one photographer called out to us. Well, more specifically, called out to me.

  "Hey there, Cammy," said a familiar voice. "Give us a smile!"

  "Yeah, pretend like you belong on that red carpet," came a second, almost identical voice.

  I stopped short, letting go of Trace as I turned to glare at the two men pointing their cameras my way.

  Mike and Eddie were twin brothers—and twin pains in my rear end. As the photographers for the Informer's rival paper, Entertainment Daily, it was practically their mission in life to make mine miserable whenever they could. Tonight the bearded brothers were stuffed into matching too-tight black T-shirts, their twin bellies spilling over their wrinkled jeans.

  "Turn back around, sweetheart," Eddie said, flashing me a cheesy grin and drawing a circle in the air with his pointer finger. "We wanna get your good side." His gaze drifted down to my butt, and my face burned. More from anger than embarrassment.

  "Why don't you guys go back to whatever sewer you crawled out of?" I whirled away from them before they could snap any more photos. Felix would not be happy if my face wound up on the pages of ED's next issue.

  "Hey, Trace!" Mike called, not giving up. He used his shirt to wipe Dorito crumbs off his camera lens and then looked up at my boyfriend, a malicious glint in his beady eyes. "Got any big roles coming up?"

  Trace, ever the calm one when it came to the press, opened his mouth to respond.

  But Eddie ran right over him. "Nah, man. You know no one in town will hire Piranha Man."

  Trace shut his mouth with a click as the two brothers gleefully filmed the pained look on his face.

  I winced at the ED brothers' low blow. At his agent's claims that the film would, quote-unquote, "elevate him to Leo DiCaprio status," Trace had signed on as the lead for a superhero project called Piranha Man. In it, he played a young scientist living in the Amazon who was transformed into a mutant human-fish hybrid after being bitten by a radioactive piranha. It had been promoted as the box office blowout of the summer. Unfortunately, when the movie finally hit theaters, it was the box office bomb of the season. So much so that several publications had called Trace's career "dead in the water." (Not the Informer, of course.)

  "Let's go," I urged, trying to steer Trace away from the gruesome twosome.

  But Trace instead shot the two a bright smile. "I'm not here to talk about my career tonight." He pulled me closer. "Tonight all I care about is spending quality time with my leading lady." Trace pivoted on his feet, sliding a hand around my back, and dipped me in a steamy, sweet kiss that made me absolutely weak in the knees. It was so…Hollywood. Dreamy sigh.

  Our lip lock was met with a chorus of whistles and cheers from the other photographers and a couple of boos from Mike and Eddie. And, of course, the all-too-familiar click, click, click of camera shutters sounded all around us. As Trace released me, I straightened, feeling flushed and breathless. Score one for the Hollywood heartthrob.

  "That ought to keep them happy for a while," he whispered to me with a wink as he led me inside.

  I'll say!

  Once inside the restaurant, Trace and I were seated in plush velour seats on opposite sides of a marble-topped table. A server took our drink orders and then hurried away.

  I perused the menu, trying to decide between the California roll and tofu ginger soup. "Everything sounds delicious," I remarked.

  "Order whatever you like." Trace reached across the table to take my hand in his. "Tonight is about making you happy." His eyes sparkled as he lightly stroked my fingers, sending shivers all the way to my toes.

  "In that case," I said, smirking, "I'll have one of everything on the menu."

  Trace didn't flinch. "Sounds great." He pushed his menu aside without even looking at it. "I'll have the same."

  I arched a brow at him. "I was kidding."

  He shrugged. "Like I said—as long as you're happy, I'm happy."

  I narrowed my eyes at him. While the dreamy kiss had been awesome, this line felt out of character. Or maybe I should say it felt more like he was playing a character from one of his romantic comedy flicks. In fact, that line felt eerily like the one that he'd delivered to his high school sweetheart in Only You for Me.

  "What's going on?" I asked. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were buttering me up for something."

  His expression turned to mock innocence. "I don't know what you mean."

  He wasn't that good of an actor.

  But before I could interrogate him, the server returned and set down our bottle of sake. After we'd ordered not quite everything on the menu (though between us, we'd come pretty darn close), Trace met my gaze again. He sucked in a breath and forced it slowly back out. "I've got something I need to talk to you about."

  Oh boy. My stomach clenched. I knew when a guy said he wanted to have a "talk," it was never good. Suddenly I wasn't hungry anymore. "What about?" I asked, trying to keep an even tone. Had we girlfriend-ed too soon? Had Mike & Eddie hit a nerve? Was I yesterday's news already?

  Trace must have seen the apprehension on my face, as he quickly assured me, "It's nothing bad. There's just a career opportunity that's come up, and, well, I think I'm going to take it. But I wanted to talk to you about it first."

  Relief washed over me. "That's great," I told him, meaning it. Any opportunity to cleanse the public's palate of Piranha Man was a good one. "Is it an action flick? Comedy?" I paused. "Romance?" I silently prayed not the last. Trace had been engaged to his last romantic co-star, an A-list Hollywood starlet. It was when their relationship had suddenly ended that he'd confessed his attraction to me. I'd hardly been able to believe it then. I still sometimes pinched myself, sure I'd wake up any minute to find our whole romance was just a dream produced by falling asleep on my couch after drinking too much Chardonnay while watching his film You've Got Email. But the idea of him being with another hot leading lady in intimate scenes didn't fill me with a lot of happy thoughts.

  Luckily, Trace shook his head. "No, it's…it's not a feature. It's TV."

  "That's new. So, what's the role?" I asked, swirling sake in my tiny glass.

  Trace cleared his throat. He looked down at his napkin. He sucked in a deep breath. All of which made a small red flag start to rise in the back of my mind.

  "Trace?"

  "The role is a man whose relationship is in trouble."

  "That sounds like ninety-nine percent of all relationship movies." I thought for a moment. "So I'm guessing more of a drama?"

  "Oh, I expect drama alright." I noticed Trace still wasn't making eye contact.

  That tiny red flag began waving in the back of my mind. "Who's the lead actress?"

  "That's the part I want to talk to you about," he said, eyes still on the napkin, voice low, perfectly white teeth nibbling his perfectly plump bottom lip.

  I took a mental deep breath. "Okay. Who?" I asked, bracing myself for the worst. Busty Sophia Vergara? Flirty Emma Stone? Seductive Jennifer Lawrence?

  Trace finally lifted his eyes to meet mine. "It's you, Cam."

  "Me?" I blinked at him. "I-I don't understand. I'm not an actress," I said, pointing out the obvious.

  Trace darted a look around the room. "As you may have noticed, I'm not exactly anyone's first pick for all the top roles lately. Or any roles, for that matter." He gave a self-deprecating chuckle before clearing
his throat again. "Anyway, my agent called this morning with an opportunity. You've seen that show Celebrity Relationship Rehab, right?"

  Celebrity Relationship Rehab was pretty much every woman in America's guilty pleasure—including mine. Tina and I cleared our schedules every Tuesday night at nine to sit on my couch, sharing takeout and a bottle of wine as we watched doomed celebrity couples endure group therapy sessions with the renowned marriage counselors and real-life couple, Doctors William and Georgia Meriwether. Couples talked about their feelings and competed against other famous duos in ridiculous trust-building exercises. Each episode was chock full o' drama, catfights, and those awkward confessionals where each star gossips about the other contestants behind their backs. I absolutely ate it up.

  I nodded. "Of course. Who hasn't?" I felt my mental hamster slowing turning on his wheel as it sunk in what Trace was getting at. "Wait a minute…don't tell me…"

  "It's just for a week."

  "No way!" I shook my head so hard that the restaurant wobbled in my vision.

  "My agent says it'll be a piece of cake. We'll only be filming a couple hours a day."

  "No."

  "The rest of the time it will be like we're on vacation."

  I gave him a get real look. "Have you seen the show, Trace? Those couples are a train wreck."

  He at least had the decency to look guilty. "Just one week," he repeated. "It'll be over before you know it. We do a few silly drills, talk about our relationship, and—bam!—it's over."

  Another thought occurred to me. "What will we be saying about our relationship?"

  He gave me a blank look.

  "It is relationship rehab," I emphasized. Okay, so maybe things between Trace and I hadn't been ideal lately, what with the stress of his career teetering on the edge and my odd hours at the Informer, but I hadn't thought we needed rehab.

  Doubt crept into my belly. Did we? Admittedly we came from different sides of the tracks…or freeways, as the case might be in LA. He was VIP, and I was behind the velvet rope.

  Trace studied me for a moment, his expression unreadable. Finally, that boyish grin pulled his lips up at the corners. "Don't be silly," he said, reaching out to cup my chin in the palm of his hand. "We're fine. We're more than fine." He quirked an eyebrow. "You know those shows are completely staged, right? All the arguments between the couples—it's fake. It's just to raise the ratings. People tune in to see who's going to try to rip whose hair out or which couple is going to finally call it quits." He rolled his eyes. "For some reason, people seem to love that kind of crap."

  My cheeks colored. Clearly Trace didn't know about my reality TV habit. "Right. So, what does that mean? We just stage a few fights?"

  He shrugged. "All the couples do. It's not that hard." He leaned in. "Please. My agent thinks it might be the opportunity I've been waiting for to win back my audience after The Film That Must Not Be Named."

  I took a deep breath. I had a bad feeling I was going to live to regret this…

  "If you honestly think it will help, I'll do it."

  "Really?" Hope lit up his eyes, and my heart melted a little.

  "Really," I sighed. Okay, so spending a week with Trace didn't sound all that bad. We'd finally have some time to reconnect. Felix was probably going to flip, but if I promised it would be a week-long working vacation full of awkward celebrity photo ops, maybe I could smooth things over. If the show was anything like last season, there was bound to be at least a couple alcoholic starlets, a few Botoxed beauty queens, and maybe even a member or two of a Hollywood royal family—like the Kardashians.

  "But you owe me one," I cautioned him.

  Trace grinned. "I promise I'll find a way to make it up to you."

  "Oh, yeah?" I raised a playful eyebrow at him. "Starting tonight?"

  "Anything you want."

  "In that case," I said, leaning forward, "have the server box up our food, and let's take this party to your place."

  Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all…

  HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE

  available now!