Cameron whispering to me how thankful he was to have me in his life was the last thing I heard before sleep took over.
I had to be in the office much earlier than him so I snuck out of the house as quietly as possible. I didn’t begrudge him the extra couple hours of sleep because soon enough he’d be up before me for early morning call times and late nights filming while I’d be the one at home relaxing.
I carried my triple grande cappuccino and Broderick’s extra hot black coffee into his office and was surprised to see he’d made it in before me since I was usually the first one in the office, even on days when he had early meetings. I set the drink down and turned to walk back to my cube when he stopped me.
“Hey Sarah. You got a minute?”
“Sure.” I plunked my ass down in the leather chair across from him while he took a deep, fortifying drink of his coffee and looked around the room before bringing his eyes back to me. He looked uncomfortable which made me uncomfortable.
“Soooooo,” he drew the word out into one long sound that had my knee bobbing up and down nervously in front of me. “How come you didn’t tell me about Cameron?”
I recalled the conversation we’d had the week prior. I’d been evasive at best and had lied outright at worst. It just depended on your perspective. “I did.”
“Right. You said you knew him. You didn’t say you were in a relationship with the guy.”
Shit.
“It was complicated. We weren’t exactly talking at the time.”
“And yet he was hanging out in the parking lot on Friday night waiting for you. That doesn’t sound to me like someone you weren’t speaking to.”
“Yeah, we weren’t talking before then. He came to apologize on Friday and we made up.” Not that it was any of his business.
“And now?”
“And now?” I both knew and didn’t know what he was trying to get me to say and didn’t know why I was being so evasive. I’d just admitted that we’d made up and if he’d bothered to look at my hand he’d see the damn ring. I think I avoided answering outright because there was something about the way he framed the questions that put me off.
“What’s the status of your relationship now? And I’ll warn you, before you decide to give me some half-truth, know that I’ve heard a lot of different stories about you two this weekend.”
Sighing, I capitulated. After all, I had no reason to give Broderick any sort of half-truth or cockamamie version of our story. There was nothing for me to be ashamed of. Cameron had been my best friend, we had fought, made up, and now he was mine. Besides, it wasn’t like our engagement was some big secret. We’d just had a party to tell everyone we knew.
“We’re engaged.” I held up my hand to show him the ring he’d obviously missed and he laughed, a mirthless sound, and I knew whatever he was going to say next would prove very problematic.
“Who knows?”
Ah, fuck. I could guess exactly where this was going. I’d been in this city too damn long not to. It’s what I’d been worried about from the very beginning.
“Why does it matter?” If he was going to do this to me, I was going to force him to say it out loud. If he thought I’d danced around some truths before, that’s exactly what he was doing to me now.
“You’re not that naïve, Sarah.” He grabbed a pen and scribbled something in his notebook. “We’ve got the publicity team coming in this afternoon and since Cameron’s a relative unknown, you and I both know they are going to recommend one of two ways to boost his star power.” He dropped his pen and stared at me. “The first option they’ll present will be to set him up with someone like Giulliana Howth or Deanna Ragnon. Having already cleared it with both parties’ agents, by 7 p.m. tomorrow night he’ll be photographed having an intimate dinner over candlelight with one of them.”
Shit. So Cameron’s agent Julie had already given the green light. I wondered if she’d told him already. Is that what had prompted him to rush back to his apartment yesterday morning and get the ring? Did he know this was coming and not say anything to me?
Broderick didn’t have to tell me what option number two looked like or how easy it would be to pull off since they wouldn’t have to involve any outside parties. So I said it for him. “Or they’ll fabricate a relationship between Cameron and Jillian because that’ll be easier to manage.” My voice shook with each word I spoke. “They’ll leak pics from the set of them hanging out together, laughing, going sight-seeing all over Vancouver. They won’t care that I’ll have been right there the entire time. They won’t care that if they bothered to pay even a modicum of attention they’d see Cameron spending more time with me than anyone else. They’ll find a way to make it look like he and Jillian are off in their own little world, so caught up in one another they don’t even notice the paparazzi lurking in the bushes.”
I groaned, closed my eyes, and leaned my head back against the chair in defeat.
“Look Sarah, I know this is shit timing for you but this is the nature of the business. We can’t have millions of women lusting after some dude with a new wife. Cameron is going to have to agree to one of these scenarios so you need to tell me which one hurts you less.”
Maybe I should have been grateful he was giving me an opportunity to provide input, but the truth was both scenarios would hurt me. Terribly. I could have said neither option was acceptable, put up a fight, but the reality staring me in the face was that me being on Cameron’s arm wasn’t the best thing for his career right now. The moment he’d been cast he’d effectively given up control over his public persona. This was his shot at the big time and he needed to take it. I could swallow my pride if it meant never having to worry about his next job.
I brought my head up and stared at Broderick across his desk. Option number two required his other star to go along with the ploy. “What does Jillian say?”
“She has a long-term boyfriend who lives in London no one seems to know about so it’s not an imposition for her to continue keeping him a secret. Apparently he’s a big time chef so he’s too busy to be bothered by what she does on a movie set.” Did I imagine the sneer on his lips when he’d shared that detail? Or was I projecting my own disbelief that someone could be with someone for years and not care what happened on set? “Keeping him away from Cameron and Jillian won’t be a problem.”
I groaned. Why’d he have to go and use that word? “Is that what I am Broderick, a problem?” I tried to keep the hurt from my voice but failed.
He scoffed and brushed his hand in front of him. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“No, it might not be what you meant, but it’s the truth, isn’t it?” I’m a thorn in your side you didn’t anticipate dealing with, aren’t I?”
He squared his shoulders before responding, his body no longer quite so relaxed in his seat. “Look, I’ll be honest with you. It’s not ideal.” Running his hand over the scruff of his beard, he added, “I like you, Sarah. My wife loves you and that makes you practically family. I don’t want to see you get hurt but this is my movie and I can’t have your personal life fucking things up. We have to do this.”
“I know.” The admission came out as a whisper.
“Can you get Cameron go along with it?”
Of course. They needed me to convince him to pretend we weren’t together, that he hadn’t just put his ring on my finger. If he went into the meeting with PR later today without me talking to him and they threw this out, he would be furious. I imagined him telling the ice-cold blonde running the account to go fuck herself and I smiled inwardly, wishing it could happen but knowing that I couldn’t let it. They’d fire him and he’d be back to square one. Worse, he’d be the guy who’d been fired before the movie even started, and that’d make him un-hirable in the future.
Resignedly, I said, “I’ll talk to him.”
***
I’d convinced Cameron to show up an hour early for a pre-meeting meeting with me by letting him know if he didn’t he wasn’t g
oing to like how his afternoon with the publicity team played out. While I waited for him, I paced the hallway, wearing a trail in the gray industrial carpet. Silently, I seethed, wanting nothing more than to tell Broderick to take his plan and shove it up his ass but the decision wasn’t mine alone. And even though it would be career suicide, deep down I hoped Cameron would tell them to take a flying leap off a tall building. I mean, what woman doesn’t want her man to fight for her? For their relationships?
“Sarah baby, what’s wrong?” I turned around to see Cameron walking toward me, his face a mask of concern.
“Come with me.” I walked out the door toward the parking lot, not stopping to see if he followed. I climbed into my car, the only place I could think of where we wouldn’t be observed or overheard, and gripping the steering wheel, let my head fall forward.
Cameron climbed in next to me and when he closed the door, the world fell away. “Talk to me Sarah. You’re scaring me.”
When I turned to face him, I wondered if this was the moment when I’d lose him. “I’m going to tell you something and you have to promise me that you won’t freak out.”
“You’re already freaking me out.” And then eyes going wide, he blurted, “Are you pregnant?”
I glared at him, gave him a real proper side-eye. “No I’m not pregnant!” Scowling, I asked, “How can you even ask that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because all you’ve said is that I shouldn’t freak out while you’re sitting here freaking out,” he shot back. “It’s the only thing I can think of that would have you panicking like this.”
“Trust me Cameron, if I were pregnant I would not tell you in my car in the middle of a parking lot at work. And I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t tell you not to freak out. I’d be telling you it was absolutely time to freak the fuck out because that is not something either of us needs right now.” I’d been harsher than I probably should have and as the words left my mouth, Cameron’s face fell.
“Would it be so bad?” His voice dropped to a whisper and I knew my callous remark had hurt him. He wanted that for us. He’d told me as much himself only a handful of days ago, hadn’t he?
I squeezed his thigh. “No Cameron, it wouldn’t be so bad. Some day I’ll to give you a whole gaggle of kids with red hair and blue eyes, but right now I’m not ready for that and neither are you.” Fuck. When he heard what I was about to say I wasn’t sure he’d still want to be my husband, much less have me be the mother of his children.
“I know you’re right, but goddamn it Sarah, I want that.” He sighed wistfully and added, “I want it bad.”
“I know you do.” At 33, I was no spring chicken. The reality was we’d have to get started on our baby making sooner rather than later. I’d said neither of us was ready, and while I believed that, my body was more than ready; it was past its prime. Rubbing my forehead to ease the ache that’d sprouted in the last hour, I whispered, “But you might not want me anymore after I tell you what’s going to go down in that meeting.”
He looked at me sharply, my foreboding causing his brows to furrow in suspicion. “What are you telling me?”
“It’s not me Cameron. If it were up to me, I’d tell everyone in that room to take their offer and shove it, but it’s not my life we’re talking about.”
“Sarah …” The warning in his voice let me know he fast reaching the end of his patience.
Wincing, I spilled my guts in a torrent of words. “I’m not right for you.” Before he could interrupt me, I held up my hand up to forestall his contradiction. “No, let me finish. I’m not right for your career. You’re a big star now and even though you don’t want to talk about what that means for us, Broderick and the publicity team have thought about it plenty and what they’ve concluded is you need to up your profile by hitching your star to someone as equally hot. You’re not some young kid straight out of the Disney machine. You are a ridiculously attractive guy in your mid-30s, like no one else in Hollywood right now …” I paused and sucked in a deep breath, hoping it would ease the ache that had taken hold of my chest. “You need someone US Weekly and TMZ want to photograph. You need—”
“Don’t you dare say one more fucking word Sarah.” Cameron went still, his fists clenched on his thighs, knuckles white from the strain. When he turned in his seat to look at me, my breath stopped short. The anger I saw there broke my heart. “I can’t believe you would ask me to do that,” he whispered.
“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m telling you what’s already been decided. When you walk into that meeting you’ll be presented with two choices and acknowledging our relationship is not on one of them.”
“I won’t do it.”
I appreciated his vehement denial, but I knew he couldn’t fight the inevitability of it. If he wanted this movie, he’d have to. Tears welled in my eyes and my throat ached with the pain of it. “If you don’t agree, they’ll replace you. Broderick told me that as much as he likes me he won’t have my relationship with you fucking up his movie.”
“Fuck him!” He moved to jump out of the car but I couldn’t let him go. If he left me, I was sure he’d march straight into Broderick’s office and punch the man.
“Cameron, no! Please, don’t.” He stopped but kept his hand on the door handle, ready to bolt. “It kills me to say this but I can’t let you give up your chance at stardom. You’ve wanted this for too long, you’ve worked too hard for it.”
“I want you more.”
“You’ll have me. We just have to keep it a secret for awhile.”
“How long?” he bit out?
“I don’t know. I’m sure that’s what they’re going to tell you during the meeting.”
“Fuck.”
That one word pretty much summed up the situation. Fuck, indeed.
“I need to talk to Julie,” he said, pulling out his phone and texting his agent. “She’ll know what to do.”
“She already knows, Cameron. She signed off on the idea yesterday. She’s ready to go along with whatever the studio lays out.”
When his shoulders slumped in defeat, I felt terrible for him. He’d been betrayed by his agent, someone who’d looked out for him all these years – someone, I amended, who’d looked out for his career – and he’d been blindsided by his girlfriend. It was a lot to take in.
I brought him up to speed on what the suits upstairs intended. “They’re going to present two options. The first is they’ll set you up with some beautiful blonde ten years younger who’s in the prime and her career and you’ll go on a series of romantic, intimate dates while the paparazzi follow. By week’s end, those pictures will be on the cover of every entertainment gossip site.” I paused to let the scenario settle in his mind while he considered whether he could bring himself to do that. As he thought it over, I realized while he might be able to do it, I didn’t think I could stomach it. I gripped the steering wheel and pushed against it, banged my open palm against the center of it setting off my horn. “Fuck!” I screamed.
He snickered cynically. “Nice to see you’re at least sickened by the idea as much as I am. Maybe you want to fight for us after all.”
That was no less than I deserved, but there was no way he could he hold me responsible for this situation any more than I could him. “It’s not my fault and you know it.”
“No, you’re just doing your boss’s dirty work,” he seethed and I wished I’d let Broderick fill him in on their plan for him. At least then Cameron wouldn’t have hated me as well. But no, I had to go and make it easy on them. He’d used me; Broderick had known I’d want to spare Cameron.
“You may not see it now, but I’m only trying to help,” I whispered. I expected he’d have a snide comment to that, but he stayed quiet so I continued. “The second option, the one I could maybe stomach, is the easier of the two, logistically speaking. They want to leak that you and Jillian have amazing chemistry that couldn’t be contained to just your characters. Broderick will hire his own paparazzo to take picture
s of you and she hanging out here in L.A. and then growing closer once we’re all up in Vancouver.”
“And how is that better?” he shot back angrily.
“Because Jillian has her own relationship and won’t get any ideas about your “relationship” being more than it really is. And by keeping the ruse contained to the movie, I’ll be there beside you the whole time. Look Cameron, I’ve done nothing but think about this since Broderick told me what was going to happen.”
And then I explained how it could work. “Jillian can hang out with us making it easy for the photographers to have access to you as a “couple.” As soon as they get their staged photos, the three of us can go back to acting normal. We won’t be able to hold hands or kiss or anything in public”— He scoffed; we’d done a piss poor job of that so far— “But once the photos surface, the fandom will draw their own conclusions and blogs will start reporting how the two of you fell instantly, madly in love. It’s actually the better option for Broderick because it sets up a love story as amazing as Xander and Arabella’s.”
“Hardly,” he sneered. “He’s been in love with her since she was a little girl. Me falling in love with Jillian over our scripts is so fucking trite.” He shook his head.
“Fine, it’s not the same, but they can milk it as if it were.”
“It’s crazy Sarah. I can’t pretend to be in love with Jillian, especially with you right there.”
“You’re an actor, Cameron, and you’re going to spend every day for the next several months pretending to be in love with if not her, then the character she’s playing. You’re going to have to kiss her and you’re going to have to simulate sex with her on camera. Consider this an extension of the role.”
Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story Page 14
