“What’s going on here?” Marcus had asked, coming upon the embattled trio, just as Serena returned with two beefy security guys. “Benjamin, how’d you get back here?”
“We were just leaving, Sir Troy,” Benjamin said.
“Got what we came for,” Mustache Man announced proudly.
The security guys took them roughly by the arms, but Benjamin and his buddy just giggled. Marcus reached for Mustache Man’s camera, but the photographer pulled it quickly out of reach.
“There’s no point, Marcus,” Mustache Man said. “Camera’s set to upload the pics to a secure server as soon as I shoot ’em.”
“Yep, no use in destroying cameras these days,” Benjamin said, adding, “You don’t want to deal with a harassment suit anyway, do you?”
Marcus pulled back, taking the threat seriously, but said, “It looks like you’re the one doing the harassing here. Are you okay, Ryan?” He had his hand on her elbow, and leaned forward to look in her eyes.
“I’m fine,” Ryan said.
Another flash went off, Mustache Man somehow getting another picture in, despite the fact that one of the security guys had his arm in a tight grip.
“Will you get these two out of here, please?” The guys carted the paparazzi away.
“You sure you’re all right?” he asked her.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Ryan said. “I do hate that little Harry Potter, though.”
Marcus laughed. “You just have to learn to ignore them.”
“Never react,” said Smitty, who’d come to Marcus’s side. “Just swat ’em away like the mosquitoes they are.”
…
At 2:30 a.m., a “photo essay” comprised of Mustache Man’s shots from the evening had appeared on Perez Hilton’s blog. Ryan didn’t regularly visit the page, but she sure knew what it was and how many millions of people viewed it every day. The slide show featured six shots of her, each with captions revealing a surprising amount of information about her: her hometown of Kalispell, MT; her age; her relationship status (“single, but surely not for long”). Also included were several shots of her from Facebook—not from her own profile, which she’d made as private as she could, but from untagged photos of her that she hadn’t even realized existed. In one, of her eighth-grade soccer team, she was only thirteen years old. Benjamin had even found out that “sexy brainiac Evans plans to attend a graduate program in child development at the University of Michigan this fall.” Great, now Ryan’s grad school professors and fellow students were going to get to know this “Ryan Evans” before she even arrived in Ann Arbor.
Also included in the captions, of course, were all the romantic insinuations Benjamin had made when he’d accosted her. Ryan, whom the text referred to as a “hottie,” a “vixennanny” and, worst of all a “crafty opportunist,” was characterized as “a simple Montana girl nine years the sexy Troy’s junior who just might be the next Love of His Life…”
No one will know it’s all made up, Ryan thought. And no one will care. The perception would become the truth.
The first four photos almost looked like glamour shots, a friendly, beaming Ryan betraying nothing at all of the rage that she’d actually felt in the moment she’d posed. Wide awake in her room, between moments of real fury, she grudgingly acknowledged that at least Mustache Man knew what he was doing behind that camera of his (and had thankfully decided not to include the creepy shot of her that he’d taken while on his knees).
But the fifth picture showed her shoving Benjamin, a fierce look on her face, accompanied by the four-word caption, “Ryan likes it rough.” And the final shot, which Ryan was flabbergasted the photographer had even gotten—had he broken away from security for one last, desperate image while Ryan had been too shell-shocked to notice?—showed Marcus gently checking in with her, his fingers perched lightly on her elbow, a sweet look on his face. “Tender Troy,” read the caption.
By 3:15, Ryan decided that the only answer for her, the only way she could keep her sanity, was to quit. By 3:30, she vowed to do just that, first thing in the morning. But by 3:45, she’d reversed course. She couldn’t quit a perfectly good job, one that would be setting up her whole school year so nicely, over the holding of hands, the massaging of feet, and a couple of stupid paparazzi. She was stronger than this; she could rise to the occasion and ignore what people who didn’t even know her thought of her, couldn’t she?
By 4 a.m., Ryan realized she wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep, not tonight. Her thoughts continued to collide into each other, jumbled together with images she felt like she’d never be able to stop re-playing: a crowd of thousands cheering at the sound of her name; the endless white light of the Mustache Man’s flash popping in her face; Charlotte’s mischievous expression as she led Ryan to her dad. And, amidst everything, Ryan could not get that catchy song, those passionate lyrics about love, out of her head. If Nick or anybody else had sung those words to her, it wouldn’t have affected her this way—it would have sounded silly. But Marcus seemed to have earned the right—even if she hadn’t already known, she’d be able to tell from the sound of his voice that he’d been hurt before, just like her, maybe even worse—to sing about love in this way. The fact that he’d loved and lost made him so desirable to her. She could imagine caring for a man like that, and letting him care for her. But Ryan didn’t kid herself; she knew as little about Marcus as he knew about her. Could she trust him? Could she allow herself to fall for him?
One thing Ryan was fond of doing sometimes when she found herself at a crossroads like this was to play the scenario out to the fullest, to imagine the two or three or more different ways the story could end. In the same way that others used lists of pros and cons, Ryan would add up the costs of each possible future as if they were math problems, and chart the most sensible course. But she couldn’t see the ending to this story. She couldn’t imagine quitting, not now, and she couldn’t picture what would happen were she to stay. Ryan Evans, possible girlfriend of a rich and famous rock star, mother figure to his children? Ryan Evans, strategic climber, ready to use her nanny job, or anything else at her disposal, to achieve fifteen minutes of Internet fame? Both ideas were so at odds with her image of herself, her family, her values and upbringing, that she dismissed them entirely. So where did that leave her?
At 5 a.m., she fell asleep at last, before reaching anything close to a decision.
Chapter Thirteen
G-Rated Naughtiness
Marcus woke the next morning to the sound of the bedside telephone, the ring clanging in his ear until he had to succumb to the fact that it wasn’t going to stop until he did something about it. He reached over, picked up the receiver, and was about to slam it down when a tiny, insistent voice screamed, “Marcus Troy, do not hang up on me!” He recognized the voice instantly. It was Cynthia Reed, his divorce lawyer.
“Uh oh,” Marcus said, real foreboding in his voice. He liked Cynthia just fine—she was a tough New Yorker he was glad had been on his team and not Bianca’s—but an unexpected call from her was never followed by good news.
Cynthia chuckled, and he could hear the hundred thousand cigarettes she’d smoked in that throaty laugh. “Good morning to you, too, Marcus.”
“Sorry, Cynthia, you know how it is,” he said. “What can I do for you today?” His tone of voice was approximately that of a child summoned to the headmaster’s office and awaiting a harsh and long-lasting punishment. He looked at the clock. It read 6:45, which meant that, in Manhattan, Cynthia had already been at work for a couple hours. She probably thought she was being polite, having waited to call for nearly an hour––an eternity to a high-powered divorce attorney.
“Marcus, what am I going to do with you?”
“I don’t know, Cynthia. But I do know you’re going to keep on cashing those enormous checks I send you. How much has this call cost me so far?”
“The call’s on the house, but we may have some real work ahead of us this week.”
“Yeah? How so?
”
“Well, I heard from Bianca’s counsel last night. Actually, this morning. Three thirty my time, to be exact. I’m not in love with getting voice mails in the middle of the night, of course, but the sick part of me really admires this guy’s twenty-four/seven availability.”
“Dear God,” Marcus said. “What’s Bianca trying to pull now?”
“Honestly, what were you thinking?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a photo op with the week-old nanny, Marcus. You probably remember her? The twenty-five-year-old young lady who’s supposedly caring for your children?”
“What?” Marcus sat up in bed and pulled an iPad toward him. “What photo op?” He’d seen the photographer with Benjamin, but he’d assumed he’d intercepted the two papps before they’d gotten anything of value.
“She’s very cute, Marcus. Wholesome-looking, too. I have to compliment you on your taste.”
“Whoa, dial it back. There’s no ‘taste’ involved here. We’re not together, and I didn’t hire her because she was cute. I hired her because she came highly recommended.”
“Fine. But she is lovely to look at, and you’ve been in this business long enough to know that people are going to come to their own conclusions.”
“Hold on a minute,” Marcus said brusquely. He found the images Cynthia was referring to, the one where he was barely touching her in the most non-sexual way, and the ridiculous caption that accompanied it. How had Benjamin and that other twerp gotten past security? He was going to kill Alex.
“So what? There’s no scandal here. What does Bianca plan to do with these?” Even Marcus recognized how naive he sounded. “They prove nothing.”
“You and I have agreed that shared custody is our long-term goal, have we not?”
“We have.”
“And you also remember how difficult it was for you to get the kids for the entirety of the tour, yes?”
“Of course.” Marcus still recalled the endless revisions to the legal agreement, and the nearly six-figure invoice from Cynthia’s office that had accompanied it. “Just spit it out, please. What’s she after?”
“She wants the kids off the tour. She wants to come get them now, and she wants a custody hearing.”
“Another one?” Their last hearing had been just four months before. “On what grounds?”
“On the grounds of your intimacy with this hot young thing who is supposedly caring for her children, Marcus.”
“Our children.”
“Yes, your collective children.” She clucked her tongue. “You have to admit, it’s a pretty damning picture. And the captions…”
“Pure fiction.”
“Maybe so, but she can and will get a California State hearing based on this. You must know that.”
“But I’m in the middle of a tour. She knows that.” Marcus knew what was beyond this: nothing more than jealousy. He wanted to pick up the phone and call Bianca directly, let her know that nothing was going on between him and Ryan, nothing at all. But he knew his ex well enough to know that, if her state of mind had allowed her to place a midnight call to her attorney, she wasn’t going to recognize what he told her as the truth.
“Yes, she knows it very well. And she also knows that demanding full custody is the best way to get to you.”
“Full custody?” Marcus’s heart sank. Losing the children altogether would destroy him. “No.”
“I’m sorry, but I think we need to prepare for the worst. Get ready for a real battle.”
“Okay,” Marcus said. He wanted to scream, or cry, or both. “What’s the strategy?”
After he and Cynthia had hung up, Marcus logged into his Twitter account and read a few dozen laments from fans and enemies alike:
@BWilliams: “The nanny? Say it ain’t so. You can do better, @marcustroy.”
@RFerry08: “I used to look up to @marcustroy. Not anymore. #sexualharrassment.”
@CherylJamesish: “Don’t shit where you eat, @marcustroy. It’ll come back to haunt you.”
@DestroyerLoad: “I say #marcustroysnanny is a serious piece of ass. Congrats to you, Sir Troy!”
Marcus wanted to tweet back, “I’m not married anymore, and all I’ve done is hold her hand and massage her foot and lightly touch her elbow!” (Was that 140 characters or fewer?) He also wanted to stop reading all this trivial nonsense; even after more than a decade of rock stardom, he couldn’t believe that people cared enough about his private activities to waste a single moment of their time tweeting or blogging or Facebooking about them. He knew he’d never understand the fascination with the private lives of strangers, but sometimes he couldn’t help it. At times like this, he wished he were still back with Smitty in 1998, driving that ambulance around Seattle, writing songs, dreaming, becoming. And doing all of it with his privacy still intact.
Marcus knew he should quit Twitter—permanently, not just today—but he kept reading. Finally, he found a couple of tweets from fans who actuall stood up for him. When he read @VMarks’s comment, “Get a life, people, and let Marcus live the way he wants to!” he wanted to reach through the tablet screen to give him or her a hug, a high-five…something.
But before he started to actually embrace his iPad, Charlotte opened the door between their rooms and walked over to his bed. She looked anxious.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” He felt very much not okay, himself.
“It’s not me, it’s Miles,” she said. “He’s sick.”
“Sick, how?”
“Like, throw-up sick.”
“Oh boy. Stay here, would you? Don’t go back into your room. Let’s try to keep you from catching this, ’kay? I’m going to get Ryan.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
It wasn’t even 7:15, and the encroaching chaos made Marcus want to dive back under the covers. He threw on some clothes, and jogged to the room next door, wondering just what else might go wrong today.
Chapter Fourteen
Entertainment Tonight
Ryan answered the door to find Marcus in jeans, bare feet, and a shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Her eyes popped. He looked a bit flustered. But good, so good that she forgot she was mad at him for revealing her full identity to the global blogosphere. She wanted to forget about those stupid photographers and the pictures they’d taken. She imagined running her hand over her boss’s smooth, muscled chest, pulling her to him and breathing him in. It was about then that she realized that, having slept so little, she was probably looking a little less than sexy herself.
“Hey,” she said, in as chipper a tone as she could manage. Something told her that if there was a great time to bring up the fact that she seemed to have become a minor Internet celebrity overnight, now was not it. “What’s up?”
“It’s Miles,” Marcus said. “He’s sick.”
“Oh no,” she said.
“Really sick. Like, throw-up sick.”
“Aw, poor baby. I’m sure it’s just the flu, though.”
“Just the flu? Have you seen what the flu can do to a tour?”
Ryan didn’t answer. Obviously she hadn’t, but she had heard about how a stomach virus could decimate an athletic team if it wasn’t contained, and she could see how the traveling circus of a rock ‘n’ roll tour would be just as vulnerable.
“Listen, I don’t want to make it sound like I have no compassion for Miles, or that I’m a terrible dad or anything, but it’s not a good idea for me—for any of the performers—to be around him until he’s a hundred percent better.”
“Gotcha.”
“Neither can Charlotte, Serena, or anybody else I’m in contact with. We need to nip this thing in the bud.”
Ryan understood. If Marcus got sick, and they had to cancel a single date of the tour, thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars could be lost. “We’re going to quarantine your son,” she said. “And I’m going to be his nurse.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not––”
“No, it’s fine. T
his is what you hired me for, after all.”
“You’re not upset?”
“Why would I be upset? This is my job.”
That was the question Ryan would be asking herself for the next few days. Why would I be upset? She was Miles’s nanny, after all, and caring for the boy while he was ill was the least she could do, especially given what she was being paid. But it was a pretty weird feeling to be mistaken for Marcus Troy’s girlfriend one night and then told the very next day that she would be kept as far as possible from the rock star for the foreseeable future.
“Cool, thanks for understanding. I’d give you a hug, but there’s a bug going around.” He smiled, but the joke was lost on her. He blushed slightly, hands in pockets, and said, “I guess I’ll see you…when I see you.”
So Ryan and Miles stayed in Santa Barbara while the rest of the tour went on without them. For the time being, Charlotte had no symptoms, so Marcus was going to take a gamble and bring her along with them. He reasoned that Charlotte could pretty much take care of herself without Ryan, which was probably true. More worryingly, though, Marcus had made a vague comment about the kids’ possibly taking “a little break” from the tour. He didn’t elaborate, and he seemed so harried that Ryan didn’t ask what he meant. But it was hard not to wonder, if the kids weren’t going to be on the tour, what role she could possibly serve.
The first day of the quarantine, Miles had slept nearly the entire day, waking up just long enough, poor little thing, to vomit in a small bucket beside the bed. Ryan was so bored, alternating between reality television and a horribly written romance novel she’d downloaded onto her phone, that she almost looked forward to cleaning up after Miles. Almost.
At about three o’clock, he wandered into the living area of the suite, where Ryan, still in her PJs, was watching the E! Network. She didn’t normally go for entertainment news, but today wasn’t a normal day.
“Can I come in?” Miles asked in a heartbreaking tone.
Love Songs for the Road Page 10
