“Wrong how?”
Val wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I don’t think you’ve got the stomach for dealing dirty to get to the top. Too sweet, too much sugar.”
What does she mean dealing dirty?
Before I could ask, her phone rang and she gave an agitated sigh. “As you can see, it’s going to be a busy day, so if you could…” She made a shooing motion with her hand and swiveled her chair around as she answered the call.
What just… Did she just… What the hell happened here?
As I walked out of her office, I felt numb. I’d never had her unleash on me before in that way, and it sent my mind whirling.
Was this how business was played? Dirty? She’d just called me out for having a conscience, but how was that a bad thing? Was I supposed to just throw people to the wolves to make a name for myself? Was that what success entailed?
Mulling over those thoughts, I headed to the sanctuary of my office—however temporary that would now be—and as I rounded the corner, someone grabbed my shoulders from behind. I whipped around to see sweet ’n’ petite Jenna standing there with a concerned look on her face.
“You okay? Nicole was trying to get your attention…” She glanced over her shoulder to where Nicole sat with a supremely annoyed expression on her puss as she held up her phone.
“Hel-lo,” she said, and I gathered from her condescending greeting that whatever was about to come wasn’t something I wanted to hear.
Looking at her reminded me that I needed to install a punching bag in my office if I somehow kept my job. Or maybe one of those dartboards. It’d be too obvious if I stuck Nicole’s face on it, but maybe every time I heard her obnoxious laugh from across the office, I’d throw a dart. Good plan.
“You’ve had about ten phone calls already from someone named Mr. Herschman who says it’s urgent, so can you please call him back so he stops tying up the line? Some very important media calls are coming through that I have to take care of.” Nicole flipped her long, dark hair over her shoulder as she spun around to slam down the phone, which promptly began to ring again.
Hold your tongue while you still have a job…
I had to physically bite down on my cheek to resist losing my shit on that sniveling little brat, and luckily Jenna noticed. She pushed me toward my chair and then went to retrieve the messages with the number of Mr. Herschman, whoever that was.
The last thing I felt like doing was dealing with a new client with the mess I had stockpiling in front of me. No, what I needed to do was get in touch with Ace and make him see it wasn’t me and that we’d fix it, some-freaking-how. Any time God wanted to strike me with a brilliant idea on how to do that, it would be great.
Really, anytime now. Won’t hold my breath or anything.
“Jesus, Shayne, it’s him again,” Nicole’s voice rang out, and the sound of her voice made me want to scratch my skin off. Instead of a punching bag or dartboard, maybe I’d just go straight to a voodoo doll. One of my clients made them for scorned lovers, and I could— Oh God, I can’t even believe I’m considering that.
With a sigh, I counted to five and then answered the line. “Shayne Callahan.”
“Hi, this is Roger Herschman. I’m Ace Locke’s personal manager.”
Okay, now that had me sitting up straight.
“Oh…hi, Mr. Herschman. What can I do for you?”
“You can explain to me how the hell Ace is front fucking page news today.”
Shit. I swallowed hard. “I’ve been asking that same question this morning, I assure you.”
“You didn’t go running your mouth to any of those tabloids, did you? Because I will find out, and God help me if it was you—”
“No, sir, I swear I was not the source. I’m just as outraged as you are.”
“I highly doubt that. I’ve got paparazzi already lined up at the goddamn gate, and a client who’s refusing to come out of his bathroom. Lots of bad shit happens in bathrooms, you get my drift? And if any bad shit happens on my watch, I’m taking you and that fucking company down so hard you’ll be shitting last week’s lunch out of your mouth.”
Bloody hell.
“I understand,” I said, sinking into my chair. Sinking. That was an excellent word for how I felt at the moment. “I’m not sure how I can help—”
“You can start by getting over here to explain the situation.”
“Oh…right, of course. I was hoping to speak with Ace anyway, so just let me know where to go,” I said, fumbling through my drawer for a pen. He gave me the address and hung up, and then I grabbed my bag, too nauseated to even think about bringing my still-untouched coffee.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Nicole’s wretched nasal twang rang out, and I answered by slamming the office door shut behind me.
I was a girl on a mission—even if I didn’t have the slightest clue what that mission was.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Does This Beard Make Me Look Fat?
AN HOUR AND forty minutes later, after having taken the train home to get my car, I was pulling up to the gate of Ace’s swanky Beverly Hills neighborhood, and thank God for the security check-in station.
A crowd of paparazzi was gathered on the sidewalks, unable to get in, and they looked my way but lowered their cameras when they caught sight of my car. But as I showed my ID to the guard and passed through, a Jaguar pulled up behind me and the camera flashes went insane. No doubt they were snapping photos of everyone who came and went just in case it was someone they could use for a tabloid story…unless you drove a barely running, decades-old Saturn.
Nerves flooded my stomach as I followed the directions I’d been given. I was trying not to think about the fact that I was mere minutes away from entering a big Hollywood star’s house, but as I passed the ostentatious mansions with their bright green manicured grass and high, moss-covered walls, my heartbeat became erratic, and I was sweating even though I hadn’t turned the heat on and it was freezing outside.
How am I even here? I was an impostor, someone who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, I was just a small-time freaking matchmaker, not someone who knew anything about celebrity cover-ups and scandals and whatnot. This was something Paige could handle, not me. Oh hell, I should’ve called her. She’d know what to do, though I doubted any of her advice would be anything less than X-rated.
My hands were slipping off the steering wheel as I pulled up to the gates of Ace’s estate. If the properties I’d passed along the way were any indication, his house was palatial. My guess was confirmed when I saw the Spanish-tiled roof looming over the gates and extending down…down…down…
Jesus, how far does it go? That’s not intimidating at all.
I stopped at the intercom and wiped my hands off on my slacks before rolling the window down and hitting the button for the speaker. There was a camera set up on top of it, with two more on top of either side of the massive gate.
Maybe I could turn around and—
“Yes?” came a curt voice over the speaker.
“H-hi. Shayne Callahan for—”
A loud buzz and the gates parted. I drove Old Ouiser forward, which was sputtering in protest at the hill it’d just climbed, and I prayed no one would come out and send sniveling glances its way.
Wait. Would a butler or someone come out and valet the car? Did they have those at these types of places? God, that would be exceptionally awful, since I avoided valets like the plague. There was a trick to turning off Old Ouiser that no one else seemed to be able to do, and it was better just to self-park and avoid the embarrassment, if possible. I patted the dash with a soothing hand at the thought.
All right. All I have to do is come up with a solution to save my ass and the company, and offer a helpful solution to Ace’s predicament. No big deal.
An entire car ride over hadn’t given me any bright ideas, but I was pretty good at winging it.
Usually.
Sometimes.
Oh, fuck
it all. I was completely out of my league.
Luckily, no one came out to help me with my car, so I gathered what was left of my wits and headed up to the gargantuan front door. Before I could ring the doorbell, it opened.
“You must be Miss Callahan,” a portly man in a pristine grey suit said, moving to the side for me to enter.
“Shayne is fine.”
“They’re waiting for you in the kitchen.” He led me through the largest foyer I’d ever seen, then past an enormous staircase with a long corridor just behind it. At the end was an expansive, open area with a wall of windows. The left side featured a sitting area with oversized plush couches facing a theatre-sized television, and on the right, Ace on a barstool, slumped over at the island counter in the middle of the kitchen.
Hovering nearby were who I assumed to be his handlers, one almost an exact Olivia Pope replica, even down to the white trench coat, and the other an older man who looked a little red in the face. Had to be Mr. Herschman, the same guy who’d given me a good reaming over the phone. They both cut off abruptly when I entered, and as they went silent, Ace lifted his head. The obvious anger and hurt were there in his eyes, but underneath that was something even worse—despair.
I stayed back, not wanting to get too close and invade his personal space any more than I already had. My mouth opened to say the first thing I’d thought, which was, “I’m glad they talked you out of the bathroom,” but I caught myself before spouting off the insensitive remark and instead said, “I don’t even know what to say other than I’m so sorry about what’s happened.”
“Sorry?” Red Face boomed, and yep, that was definitely Mr. Herschman. “Damn right you’re sorry.”
Trench coat woman put a hand on his arm, and then said, “Thank you for coming, Shayne. I’m Martina Lankshire, Ace’s publicist, and you’ve already spoken with Roger here.”
Roger who was spitting licks of fire out of his eyeballs. Yeah, I know him. Nice guy.
“Any idea who’s pulling this stunt? That boss of yours, maybe? She seems to have quite the mouth on her.”
“It wouldn’t make sense for Val to leak information when it only damages her company,” I said, the words ringing false in my ears.
After confronting Val in her office earlier and what she’d said, I didn’t fully believe she was above tarnishing Ace’s name to get ahead. Didn’t even half believe that. Yeah, it was hovering more in the twenty percent range, and that just made me feel like an asshole. But I didn’t have proof, and I was holding out hope that if the leak had indeed come from HLS, that Nicole was the rat behind it all.
Martina raised an eyebrow. “Bad publicity is still good publicity.”
Val said the same thing. Maybe I’m not cut out for all of this…
“Anything that was said between my boss and I is held in the strictest of confidence out of respect for client confidentiality. I’m hoping, just like you, that we can get to the bottom of all this.”
A grunt came out of Mr. Herschman, but he didn’t comment.
“Let’s worry about damage control first, and then we’ll figure out who’s behind this and sue the pants off them.” Martina flipped open a laptop, and began going over the statement they’d prepared to release to the media, and asked me questions about who I could bring in as Ace’s “girlfriend.”
To that, I had…no answer. I didn’t have celebrity contacts, and I’d need more time to go through client files to find someone trustworthy. But time wasn’t something we had in abundance. All the while, Ace sat on the barstool staring at his hands and not moving, not talking. I didn’t even think he was listening to what was going on around him.
It struck me as strange that all through our interactions, it’d been like Ace wasn’t even in the room. Were his manager and publicist the people who handled the big decisions for him? And why? What’s he thinking? One way to find out.
I cleared my throat. “I was wondering…if maybe I could talk to Ace alone. Please?”
“There’s nothing you could say to him that can’t be said in front of all of—” Roger started, but Martina grabbed his arm.
“Let’s just give them a minute. Smoke break?”
“Ah hell. I need one.”
As they made their way out, I took a seat on a stool adjacent to Ace. There was nothing but silence at first, but before I could speak, Ace said, “I know it wasn’t you.”
Then his eyes met mine, those sad, dark eyes. I didn’t want to ask how he knew or why he trusted me. It was just a comfort that he did.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Then his gaze drifted back down to the table.
Without his minders nearby, the house was deathly quiet. No phone ringing incessantly, no television blaring with the news, no swarms of people inside raising chaos anymore. He’d done exactly what I would’ve in his shoes—turned the outside noise off and unplugged everything.
“What,” he said in a low voice, “do I do now?”
It was then that I realized he wanted someone to tell him what to do. How to fix the mess. This huge hulk of a man was like a little boy lost, and my instinct to protect this person I barely knew rose up inside me.
“Well,” I said slowly, considering the obvious choices. “It seems like you’ve got two options. You can deny everything, or…you could come clean.”
“I can’t…do…that,” he said through clenched teeth, his voice rising. He rubbed his face with his hands. “My terms. This was supposed to be on my terms.”
I wanted to soothe him in some way, but I wasn’t sure what to do here. Not being involved in the entertainment industry in any capacity, I was way out of my depth.
“What have Roger and Martina suggested?”
Ace scoffed. “They care about money. They couldn’t give two fucks about me.”
I bit my lip and looked out the screened glass door to where they were both smoking a few yards away from the house.
“Okay. Um… I guess first, what do you want?”
“I want this to go away.”
“Time travel isn’t in my special skills set, so I’m going to need you to work with me a bit here.”
He sighed and lifted his head.
“What do you want, Ace?” I asked again softly.
“I can’t come out, not officially. It would ruin me.”
It was outrageous to think that his sexual preference would have anything to do with his career, but of course it would. Women wanted the fantasy when they watched his movies, and there was a strong possibility many men would think less of him. Discrimination in any other line of work wouldn’t be stood for, but somehow the court of public opinion weighed heavily in his.
“Then you deny.”
“Right, but that’s not going to carry a whole lot of weight on its own.”
“Is that why you need the…beard?”
He blew out a breath, his palms over his eyes, as if to keep them squeezed shut to block out the world. “Yeah, that could help. But at this point if some random new girl appeared on my arm, it would look mighty suspicious.”
“Do you have any ex-girlfriends you could reach out to?”
He snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past any of them to have leaked it, accidental or otherwise. Models aren’t known for their discretion, so I’ve learned.”
A thought crossed my mind. “What if it was a date?” I said out loud before realizing what I meant.
“If what was a date?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
“Uh.” Ah hell. I decided to keep running with that train of thought. “What if your ties to HLS and Val and me were actually just ties to…me? As in, what if our meeting had actually been a date and not the alleged meeting to unveil your coming out? And um…well, maybe the meeting you had at that restaurant with Val was actually just a dinner because she’s like a mother figure to me and I wanted you guys to…ahh…meet? Or something like that. And I’m sure the paparazzi saw me as I came into your neighborhood, but if I was your girlfriend, it would mak
e sense that I’d be here for you this morning. Right? I think that’s… I mean, that’s plausible, yeah?” When I stopped and took a breath, Ace was frowning at me.
“You’re offering to cover for me?”
Oh hell. Was that what I was doing? “Well, yeah, I guess so.”
Ace stroked his chin as he mulled that over. “Huh.”
Was that a good “huh” or a bad “huh”? And did I just offer to be his girlfriend? Where the bloody hell did that even come from? What did I know about that sort of thing…yet again. This was what rambling did. Got you in trouble and signed up for much more than you bargained for.
“You would really do that?”
Uh…I think so? Maybe? If I need to save my job? “Yes, of course.”
He dropped his hand. “I don’t get it. Why would you do this for me?” There was sorrow in his voice, but it was the hope on his face that almost broke my heart. Ah hell.
“Because I think you’re a good guy. Because it’s wrong what happened, and if I inadvertently played any part in this whole mess, then I’d like a chance to make up for it. I don’t know how any of this stuff works, but…whatever it is you need me to do to help, I’ll do it.”
The fact that maybe it would also help me keep my job for a little longer belatedly entered my brain, but that wasn’t the reason I was doing this. Not at all.
“Are you going for sainthood, Shayne? This shit…it can be a lot. I’d hate for you to get involved.”
“Pretty sure I’m already involved. So now we have to make the best of a bad situation, right?”
He shook his head but said, “Right. It’s not fair, though—”
“Do you have any other suggestions?”
He smiled ruefully. “I guess not.”
“So…we’re dating. Publicly.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t try to sleep with you.”
“See, ordinarily that would bother me if my boyfriend said that to me, but in this case, I think it’s for the best.”
Ace ran a hand over his close-cropped hair and sighed, like an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Thank you, Shayne. This might…will help. A lot.”
Hooker (L.A. Liaisons Book 2) Page 11
