Celebrity
Page 16
I watched the crowd for a moment, then turned to Victoria, practically bouncing in my seat. “Can you believe all these people are here to see me?”
“Well, of course,” she said drily. “You are quite a star.” She smiled when she said it, but I didn’t miss the way she watched out the window. Guarded. Wary. And I had a pretty good idea I knew why.
Victoria and I had been stalked by some aggressive paparazzi in Spain. She was probably thinking about how they chased us through the streets of Valencia, right into the lobby of our hotel. But this was different. There were barricades. Guards holding the paparazzi back. And besides, it’s not like they were going to be able to chase after us as we got onto the yacht.
When Magus opened the back door for us, the voices rushed in again. Calling my name. Calling for me. I forgot all about Victoria and her hesitation and stepped out into the warmth of sunlight and admiration.
The crowd pressed forward. My crowd. I waved to them the way I had seen my mom and dad do a million times, pausing to make eye contact with a couple of the photographers long enough to let them get a good shot. Mom always said you had to control your image.
“Right, Miss Diva,” Victoria said. Her smile was a little more relaxed as she slipped her arm through mine and turned me away from the cameras. “Let’s get you on that boat.”
“It’s a yacht,” I sniffed.
She laughed, but really? I was being serious. We were about to be hosted by one of Greece’s biggest movie stars, and the word boat didn’t quite convey the appropriate glamour of the situation. Besides, even yacht was an understatement for the Pandora. She was practically a ship, long and sleek and glistening white against a backdrop of cobalt-blue water. Her name was painted in both Greek and Roman lettering on the bow. A crimson-carpeted gangplank stretched up from the pier to the deck. (Ha. I was right about rolling out the red carpet.) As soon as our backs were turned to the paparazzi, I snuck a quick photo of the Pandora for my blog.
My heart skipped a beat as I let my eyes follow the gangplank’s path to where our movie-star host and his son were waiting to greet us. I’d seen pictures of both of them online, but none of the photos even came close to the real thing.
Nikos Kouropolous—who, from what I had read in his online bio, was only about five months older than me—had heavy Mediterranean brows and thick, dark hair, his short curls ruffling in the breeze.
His father, Constantine Kouropoulos, probably once had the same dark curls as Nikos, but now his hair was streaked with silver. He wore it brushed straight back from his forehead. Very cosmopolitan, even if I thought it was a little severe.
But I wasn’t exactly giving Mr. Kouropolos or his hair much thought at that moment. I poked Victoria. “That’s him!” I whispered. “That’s Nikos.”
ISBN: 978-0-14-241816-1
Cassidy is thrilled when the time comes for her and Logan to start filming publicity spots for their parents’ TV show in Costa Rica. But there’s a damper on her sunshiny outlook when she discovers that someone hacked into her blog and is posting some pretty negative things—jeopardizing her whole role on the show. Can Cassidy enlist Logan’s help and figure out what’s going on—before it’s lights out for Lights, Camera, Cassidy?