Eric Logan
“By saying that you’ve never touched your stepdaughter inappropriately,” the woman with the stiff hair said, leaning in, “you are, after all, calling her a liar.”
Tennet took a moment to reply. I could almost see him counting “one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three” as I’d advised.
“Breelyn is not a liar,” he said calmly. “She is an eighteen-year-old girl who is as impressionable as any child that age. I think she’s just confused and scared and has been influenced by someone—”
“Meaning your wife, Valentina Doyle!” she interjected. Jacky Tokiwa was the go-to interviewer for all celebrities that needed a high-profile platform for whatever message they were trying to either get out or control.
Again, Tennet took it slow. “I didn’t say that, Jacky. I haven’t talked to Breelyn, not since I got back from location shooting in Perth. I don’t know who has been in her life or what has been—”
“So, your relationship is distant, and not just geographically.”
I saw his brow furrow just a bit. Sydney worriedly gripped my arm. We were watching from a booth in the news studio on the Fox lot as the interview was taped.
“He’s got it, we prepped for this over and over,” I whispered to Sydney, though in reality, I was saying a very desperate Hail Mary.
“Breelyn and I had Skype chats twice a week,” Tennet said. “I never missed one. And neither did she—despite the twenty-one-hour time difference. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a teenager to follow that kind of schedule?”
He asked it with a nice bit of warmth. Jacky almost smiled. He’d nailed it.
I’d spent most of the last forty-eight hours coaching Tennet on how to present himself: what to say, what not to say, how to check his temper, how to deflect, how to subtly suggest that Valentina Doyle was bipolar without coming out and saying it. I’d been impressed at how cooperative and determined he was—not to mention that he’d stuck to his vow to stop drinking. He’d been stone cold sober the entire time.
“You are legendary for having one of the worst tempers in the film business.” Jacky craftily made it a statement, not a question.
Tennet nodded. “My reputation is horrible, and I am ashamed to admit that it is completely just. I do have serious anger issues, and I have no one to blame but myself for the trouble they have caused me. I’m finally getting help, and I just pray that it’s not too late. I owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people. But my stepdaughter is not one of them.”
Forthright, humble, yet strong. I wanted to scream, “Cut, print it!” Sydney was grinning from ear to ear.
“Slam dunk!” he cried out as he gave me five. The booth technicians glanced back at us. We’d have to limit our enthusiasm about our client possibly dodging child abuse charges.
On the set, Tennet and Jacky were making nice now that the interview was over. She’d asked tough questions, and he’d addressed them openly and directly. It was a win-win for both. Ratings were sure to be sky high.
Totally stoked, I turned to Sydney, who suddenly had gone stone-faced. He was staring at one of the monitors that showed what the competition was airing.
On the screen, a good-looking kid—brawny, with hipster facial hair—was being interviewed. The graphic below him said “Omar Sabat, boyfriend of Breelyn Doyle.” He was nodding his head and earnestly saying something. Sydney leaned forward and turned up the volume.
“—I don’t know exactly when it started. Bree never said anything about it to me until—well, I saw what I saw,” Sabat stammered.
“And what did you see?” a female interviewer probed gently, off screen.
Sabat looked troubled and hesitated before answering.
“I came over one night without calling—though I knew it wasn’t cool,” he said. “Bree hadn’t answered her cell in, like, two hours, so I was getting worried. I went around to the back of the house. And then I saw them. They were together in the pool. And he was behind her, pressing up against her. Her father was. And they were…naked.”
As he continued with even more graphic descriptions, the camera cut to the interviewer, a pretty, surprisingly young woman with dark eyes and thick black hair: Kayla Ross.
Chapter 9
Kayla Ross
“I seriously cannot believe we are here! You and me—total nobodies!”
After a year in Los Angeles, Zoe still hadn’t learned to chill. Everything excited her, and when it came to celebrity sightings, there was a good chance she’d pass out. We were going to SoHo House, the most exclusive spot in the city—ground zero for movie stars. She’d been talking about it since before we’d even moved here, and I’d promised that if I ever became a legitimate news reporter it would be the first place we’d go.
On the elevator up to the penthouse suite, I looked at the two women riding with us: effortlessly thin and dressed elegantly in simple cocktail dresses. Right away I saw that Zoe and I had gotten too done up in our secondhand Marc Jacobs formal dresses—we looked like we were going to the Oscars in 2005. The other women didn’t even look at us; they just stared at their phones.
At the dark wood check-in desk in front of the elevator, the supermodel-handsome host asked for their membership number.
“Don’t need one. We’re with Leo’s party,” she said, bored.
Zoe and I turned to each other. “Membership?”
Zoe’s overly made-up face fell. I felt like an idiot for not realizing that “total nobodies” couldn’t expect to just party along with Leo DiCaprio and Bruno Mars. Anxious not to humiliate ourselves further, I pulled her back to the elevator.
“Sorry, Zo,” I whispered. “I had no idea!”
Even her bouncy red hair seemed to deflate at the thought of not getting in when we were this close. Then the elevator doors opened, and out stepped Eric Logan.
I had been seriously pissed when Eric stood me up, but now I couldn’t help smiling at him. He looked ridiculously hot in his black Armani blazer and $1,500 Balmain jeans.
He glanced at me for a beat, and then turned away. Zoe stared after him, open-mouthed. Suddenly, he spun around.
“Kayla!” he cried out. Zoe then turned to stare, openmouthed, at me.
“Hello,” I said as coldly as I could manage. I pressed the elevator button for the lobby.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” he said with what seemed like real disappointment. I started to say we had another function, but Zoe cut me off.
“We can’t get in!” she confided. I could have murdered her.
Logan didn’t smirk, just insisted that we join him as his guests. If not for Zoe I would never have accepted, but it meant so much to her. And, well, I did want to see what it was all about.
Once inside the bar, Logan turned to me.
“I am really sorry about the other night,” he said. “I can’t expect you to believe this, but I absolutely could not contact you. I felt terrible. You have to let me buy you and your friend dinner—and it doesn’t have to be with me. Unless…”
I shrugged and looked around. It was such a beautiful spot. Garden dining with a view of the glittering lights of West Hollywood. While Logan was at the bar ordering us Manhattans, Zoe immediately started to pump me for information about him.
“How exactly do you know the hottest non-celebrity here?” I glared at her with a “Be cool!” look. When he came back, she made up the excuse that she had to use the ladies’ and vanished.
“So, please tell me,” he said over his drink. “How, inside of a week and a half, did you go from paparazzi stalker to network reporter with the best get of the week?”
“‘Get’? Is that LA speak?” I asked sarcastically.
He laughed. “Fine. ‘An exclusive, difficult-to-land interview.’ Isn’t that in Journalism 101?”
I took a sip and tried to be casual. “I had to sell those photos. But I ended up making a deal with the network—a reporter gig and an advance on my salary in exchange for the
pics.” I smiled, a little embarrassed at my bragging.
“And the interview with this Omar Sabat? How’d you land that?”
“‘To reveal a source is to lose it.’ Journalism 102,” I said pointedly. “But I don’t know why I’m lecturing you on that…when you really need Etiquette 101.”
“Oof, direct hit,” he said.
Zoe came back and the three of us had an amazing dinner. Though he texted throughout dinner—always with an apology—Logan was very charming and made sure to ask Zoe a lot of questions, which she barely answered since she was so busy looking out for stars. Toward the end of the meal she hopped up, and a few minutes later I saw her at the bar happily chatting away at Jake Gyllenhaal who—bless his heart—was smiling at her politely.
“So, what do you have against Wayne Tennet?” Logan asked me.
“Nothing!” I replied, a bit sharply.
“Whoa,” he said with his hands up. “No need to get defensive.”
“I’m not defensive. It’s a hot story and I’m interested in getting the truth out,” I insisted. “What makes you think he’s innocent?”
Logan just looked at me for a moment, then shook his head. “Tennet hasn’t been convicted of anything, and it’s my job to help him promote a positive image to the public. I take no position on his guilt or innocence.”
“Even though he may have raped a minor? And definitely gave her a head wound?” I asked indignantly.
Just then I got a text from Zoe saying she’d gone on to a club with Selena Gomez’s personal assistant and also to “give u space.” For the second time that night, I could have strangled her.
Logan was a gentleman and didn’t give me a hard time at this obvious trick to make him see me home. I said I’d get an Uber ride, but he insisted on driving me.
We left the building and came out into a warm spring night; the scent of night-blooming jasmine was incredibly strong. Logan took my hand in a very natural way as we walked toward his car—a BMW M4, a car my brother would have flipped over—parked in front of a noisy nightclub. As I walked around to the passenger door, he tilted his head toward the club as if to ask if I wanted to go in.
Suddenly, a car came speeding out of nowhere. I barely had time to glance at it when the driver swerved directly toward me. I was so startled I just froze, and the front of the car—a shiny red Jaguar—clipped my arm. My purse—and my entire body—went flying into the oncoming traffic of Sunset Boulevard.
Chapter 10
Kayla Ross
A stab of pain brought it all back.
Every time my arm throbbed, it was as if I was there again, splayed out on Sunset Boulevard. I shook it off and looked in my rearview mirror. The bruise on my right cheek was beginning to heal. The studio had to plaster a ton of base makeup over it the first few days after the accident. My right arm still had flashes of pain, though the doctors said nothing was wrong with it. I seemed to be suffering PTSD from the whole thing.
I sighed and glanced out my car window at my destination. This school sure didn’t look like any school I’d ever gone to—more like a country club, with its white columns and perfectly kept front lawn. I’d called the administration offices and pretended I was a freaked-out new housekeeper who couldn’t remember what time she was supposed to pick up the niña.
At three thirty on the dot, kids starting filing out the front doors.
I got out of the car—ouch, another shot of pain in my arm!—and joined the waiting nannies. At the end of the stream of teens I saw her. Breelyn Doyle.
She was tall and had a serious, oval-shaped face framed by blond-streaked brown hair. I would have given anything for hair like that when I was eighteen. She had a small bandage over her forehead. A gift from Tennet, I thought bitterly. She was with a girl who was probably the best friend, cute but nowhere near as pretty.
When they parted at the front gate, I came up to her with a smile.
“Breelyn? Can I talk to you?”
She looked at me without surprise, like she’d been expecting me. She was both beautiful and sort of strange-looking, like supermodels with their widely spaced eyes and empty expressions. While her face was still that of a teenager, her eyes looked adult; I guessed that came from growing up in Beverly Hills.
“I don’t give interviews without my lawyer present,” she said. Wow, her childhood could not have been more different from mine.
“I don’t have a camera crew,” I said. “I just wanted to talk. If you feel like it.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. She seemed to be thinking it over, and just as she was about to speak, a car screeched to a halt not two feet away from us—a shiny red Jaguar.
I froze. For a second I again saw the glare of headlights from the awful oncoming traffic. As I shook my head to get a grip, a small but curvy auburn-haired woman jumped out of the Jag. I recognized her instantly: Valentina Doyle.
“How dare you!” she screeched as she got between Breelyn and me. I was so surprised by her and her car—and, embarrassingly, also a little starstruck—that I just stood there like a clueless idiot for a moment.
“Miss Doyle—er, Tennet,” I finally stammered. “I’m Kayla Ro—”
“I know exactly who you are!” she seethed. “You broadcast that filthy interview with my daughter’s boyfriend. I hope the ratings you got were worth the humiliation it caused my daughter.”
I could feel the rage coming off her body. She seemed almost violent as she protectively grabbed Breelyn’s shoulders. I took a deep breath.
“Well, that’s exactly why I’m here,” I said. “I had no idea that Omar would get so graphic. I wanted to cut it, but my producers overruled me. I’m here to apologize. I feel awful about it.”
She looked at me with confusion for a beat. “Where are you from, girl?”
“Omaha.”
She frowned for a moment, then laughed, loudly. “Oh, hell. Wichita, here. I sometimes forget that there are actually people around with manners. I’ve never heard of a journalist apologizing before!”
Now her charm scented the air like perfume. Her whole face changed and she smiled with incredible warmth. I couldn’t believe someone’s mood could change so quickly. Why she didn’t have as many Oscars as Meryl Streep was beyond me.
She held out her hand and I shook it. The whole time, Breelyn was watching her mother, almost studying her.
“Your apology is accepted, Kayla,” she said. “I guess I’m kind of a mama bear. I’ll do anything to protect my baby here. And I have. I turned down the best role I’d ever been offered when she was only six months old. My agents wanted to fire me! But I told them I already had the best role of my life: mother.”
It was all very Joan Crawford, and Breelyn nearly rolled her eyes; she was no Christina Crawford, that’s for sure. But just then I saw Breelyn’s expression change. I turned around and saw Wayne approaching. He was walking very carefully with an unsure smile on his face.
Valentina turned around, too, and—once again—her whole body went rigid. She shoved Breelyn behind her.
“Stop!” she almost screamed, all charm gone in an instant. Now it was pure hatred coming off her. “Come one step closer, Wayne, and I will kill you.”
Tennet stopped and sighed. He started to say something, but Valentina raised her hand.
“Or have you killed.”
Chapter 11
Wayne Tennet
“I am pleased to report that the process worked. Justice has prevailed. My client protested his innocence from the very beginning, and now he has been vindicated.”
Sydney paused dramatically—just long enough for his words to sink in but not so long to give the reporters time to start firing questions.
“Charges have been dropped and he can now return to making millions of people around the world happy through his extraordinary films. Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Wayne Tennet.”
I didn’t know if Sydney was expecting the reporters to clap or cheer or what, so I just sort of stared blankly into th
e camera lights for a moment. He’d called the press conference just half an hour before—we’d hardly had time to put together any kind of statement, and the kid, Logan, was off schmoozing clients.
Finally, a reporter shouted out: “How are you feeling, Mr. Tennet?”
I didn’t know what facial expression would be appropriate. Was I supposed to smile and possibly end up looking cocky? Was I supposed to take a victory lap—and belittle whatever troubles had driven my stepdaughter to make such an outrageous claim?
“Um, I’m just relieved that this horrible nightmare is finally over,” I said, and immediately realized it was the same clichéd statement that every accused person makes when they’ve been vindicated. But it was true. I was just glad it was over, and I was anxious to get back to my life. I wanted peace again. I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since being in Australia; nearly every night I woke up certain that someone was in the house with me, certain I was being stalked. Lately I’d been going to bed with every light in the house on.
“Are you going to make a film about your experience?”
“Ah…I hadn’t thought about it.” I shrugged. “I guess I do have more insight into the legal system now. Though, to tell the truth, I’d rather have stayed in the dark!”
No one laughed and Sydney gave me a wide-eyed “don’t make jokes” grimace. I knew I was sweating, and for the first time in quite a while, I wanted a drink.
“No, in all seriousness, I’m just glad to be cleared of this and I—”
“But you weren’t cleared,” someone—a woman—called out. “You just weren’t prosecuted due to insufficient evidence—which is often difficult to obtain in child molestation cases.”
The whole room went dead quiet for a moment—all eyes were on me to see how I’d react. I tried Logan’s method of slowly counting to three by thousands. I had to stay cool here.
“I can only repeat what I’ve been saying,” I said, knowing my voice sounded strained. “I never touched my stepdaughter in any inappropriate way.”
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