Plain Choice (The Plain Fame Series Book 5)

by Price, Sarah

  “Oh?” She shut the magazine, leaving it on her seat as she stood up. “Whatever for?”

  “He’s meeting with some journalists. He asked me to walk you over to the Meet and Greet area. Said he’d find you there.”

  Amanda stared at him, wondering if he was telling the truth. There were half a dozen people that Alejandro would have sent over to escort her to the Meet and Greet. She highly doubted Enrique was one of them. Alejandro knew how she felt about him. She made a mental note to ask Alejandro about it later.

  “Danke, Enrique, but don’t bother yourself,” she said in as friendly a tone as she could muster. She wanted to love her neighbor, to see something redeeming in Enrique, but she felt blind to anything that might change her opinion. “I see Geoffrey over there. I’m sure he can take me.”

  Without giving Enrique a chance to respond, she called out to Geoffrey and began walking toward him.

  She couldn’t wait to return to Los Angeles after the show that night, even if it was only for four days. She wanted some time away from the crew and the fans, the music and the interviews. While Alejandro worked, she could catch up on some quiet time for herself. And when they flew to Paris on Thursday, Celinda would be waiting there, and Amanda certainly welcomed some female companionship while on the tour.

  She slipped through the curtain at the back of the room where the Meet and Greet was taking place. Normally, she waited for Alejandro so that Viper and his Princesa could enter together, but the crew member Geoffrey had asked to escort her to the room was unaware of that. And because Enrique had mentioned that Alejandro would meet her there, Amanda wasn’t certain if her husband had already arrived.

  There was a moment’s pause as the people waiting to meet Viper realized that Amanda had entered the room. Quietly, Amanda began to approach the fans, smiling as recognition slowly crossed their faces and their questioning expressions turned to enthusiastic joy.

  “Hello,” she said to a girl in her late teens. “I’m Amanda.”

  The girl grinned. “Oh, we know who you are!”

  Amanda gave a small laugh at herself. “I reckon that’s true. I don’t always remember that.”

  As she circulated the room, meeting the people and taking photos with them, she suddenly realized that, in many ways, this was her God-assigned ministry. In an industry where sex, alcohol, and drugs were so prominent, Amanda represented the other side, a godly righteousness that was clearly a better role model for the fans. By taming Viper and by remaining true to herself, Amanda was working God’s plan to help show people that they could live any lifestyle and still honor him. That realization made her even more determined to focus on exhibiting as much patience as she could when it came to Enrique.

  The people in the room were so focused on her, their eyes wide and bright with smiles plastered on their faces, that no one realized that Alejandro had entered the room. Amanda saw him first, standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest and an amused smile on his lips. She stopped and turned toward him, waiting in deference for the fans to observe that their beloved Viper had arrived. When no one noticed his entrance, Amanda quickly crossed the room to join him. Immediately, the crowd followed her, Viper’s staff directing them to stand single file in a line to take a photograph with him.

  Alejandro lifted his sunglasses and watched Amanda, his eyes bright and full of mischief, as she stood by his side. “Ah, mi Princesa,” he said and leaned over to kiss her cheek. Removing the sunglasses, he slid them into the front pocket of his black trousers. “They are here to see you, not me, sí?”

  While Amanda still didn’t understand the public’s fascination with her, she also never wanted Alejandro to feel that she garnered too much attention from the fans. If Alejandro’s goal was to be the top entertainer in the world, hers was to support his efforts in achieving that goal.

  “I’m so sorry! I thought you were already here when I entered the room!” she gushed in a low voice so that no one could overhear. But Alejandro merely laughed and hugged her to his side.

  “Qué bien,” he whispered into her ear. “You are becoming more comfortable with the fans. Me gusta. Besides, they adore you.” When he released her, he added, “As do I.”

  For the next thirty minutes, Amanda stood by Alejandro’s side as he greeted his fans and posed for the photographers who would later upload the photographs to the Internet for the fans to download. What seemed like such a long time ago, back in Miami, her former dance instructor, Stedman, had taught her to practice her smile and positioning so that in each photo her eyes were open, her smile sincere, and her posture flattering. She had thought it was a silly thing to have to learn, but over time she’d come to appreciate the lessons.

  “I just love you, Princesa,” a teenage girl gushed when it was her turn to pose with the two celebrities. “You inspire me so much.”

  Amanda glanced at Alejandro, worried that so much attention directed toward her and not him would bother him. But she quickly saw that he was more than pleased with the fans fawning over her. “Danke,” she said in a soft voice, uncertain what else to say.

  “I want to move to America and live on an Amish farm one day,” the girl continued. “It would be such an adventure!”

  “Oh help!” Amanda laughed at that comment. “I don’t know about the adventure part. A lot of hard work, though.”

  “You did it. And look at you now.”

  The photographer motioned for them to pose, so Amanda stood next to the girl, her arm lightly around the fan’s waist. Alejandro stood on the other side and gave his “photo smile,” as Amanda had come to call it. When the photographer signaled that he had the photo, one of the crew assigned to help at the Meet and Greets motioned for the girl to move along. But the girl paused and, before Amanda knew it, had wrapped her arms around Amanda in a warm hug.

  “Thank you for being there for us,” she said before being escorted to the other side of the room.

  Amanda watched as the girl paused once to stare at her over her shoulder. Amanda smiled at her before turning her attention to the next fan.

  Later, as they walked back through the corridor toward the other side of the arena, Amanda touched Alejandro’s arm. “What did she mean, that girl? That I am there for them?”

  Alejandro kept the same pace, hurrying to change his shirt before the show. With so much activity beforehand, he always liked to put on fresh clothing before going onstage. Besides giving him a moment to decompress from preshow interviews and meeting fans, that time alone in the dressing room was one of the few times of the evening when he was not surrounded by hordes of people. “The social media?” He glanced at his phone to check the time.

  “Social media? You mean the reporters and paparazzi?”

  He shook his head. “You interact with them on social media,” he stated.

  “I do what?”

  Alejandro glanced at her. “Instagram. Twitter. Facebook. All of the social media. You have your own accounts and interact with them.”

  “I do?” She frowned. This was news to her. She wasn’t even familiar with the media he’d mentioned. “Alejandro, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Later, Princesa.” They were just outside of the dressing room. “Remind me on the plane, sí? I want to get changed for the concert.” He raised her hand to his lips, kissed it, and with a quick smile, disappeared into his dressing room.

  When the concert ended and the cheers of the fans still echoed in the arena, Alejandro hurried offstage and, without pausing at the dressing room, hurried over to Amanda.

  “¿Listo, Princesa?”

  Two security guards and Geoffrey approached them, Geoffrey gesturing to the corridor. They wasted no time exiting the arena before the entrance reserved for the crew and talent became a mob scene. Outside there was a car ready to take them to the Birmingham airport, where a private plane waited to take them back to the United States. They would fly to Chicago to refuel and then continue their flight. It would be a lo
ng night, over fifteen hours of travel. By the time they arrived in Los Angeles, it would be six in the morning.

  Amanda tried to figure it out on a piece of paper as they sat in the plane on the tarmac. How was it possible to leave Birmingham, England, at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, travel for fifteen hours, and arrive in Los Angeles at . . . six in the morning?

  Alejandro laughed as she scribbled out her numbers and tried to figure it out once again.

  The flight attendant handed him a drink, and he took a long sip. “You forget the time changes, sí?” he said, pointing to her numbers.

  “Oh, bother!” She pushed the piece of paper away. “And I thought we had it rough growing up with fast time and slow time!”

  He raised an eyebrow, silently questioning her.

  “Amish don’t follow the Englischers’ daylight savings time. So we go to church an hour earlier during fast time, at least if you consider the time change.”

  Shaking his head, he took another sip of his drink. “Sounds confusing.”

  “It was, ja.”

  Just before the door to the plane was about to shut, Carlos hurried on board, followed by Paolo, Andres, and Eddie. The men nodded to Amanda, and as they passed by Alejandro, each slapped his raised hand. Carlos made a comment in Spanish, and Alejandro laughed before the four men took their seats toward the back of the plane. While Amanda wasn’t surprised that Eddie and Andres joined Alejandro on the private plane, she was curious about Paolo and Carlos. Most of the other members of his team had other travel arrangements; however, since she had met them in Miami before the South American tour, they seemed to be regulars in Alejandro’s inner circle.

  Giving up on trying to figure out the time differences, Amanda shoved aside her notepad. After buckling her seat belt, she stared out the window at the darkness that engulfed them. In the distance, she could see the city lights and realized that by the time they arrived in Los Angeles, the people of Birmingham would be enjoying their Sunday off, the concert just a fading memory for most of those who had attended.

  After the plane took off and the pilot reached cruising altitude, Alejandro unfastened his seat belt and stood up. He stretched before walking down the aisle and sitting on the sofa in the center of the plane. “Amanda, you want to go lie down in the back?” he asked her. “It’s going to be a long flight. Sleep makes it go faster, sí?”

  She shook her head, wanting to hold off sleep for a while.

  “Tell me, Alejandro,” she said, moving to join him on the sofa. “What did you mean about the social media?”

  “Ah, sí. Social media.” He put his arm around her neck and pulled her next to him so that her head rested on his shoulder. “Dali has a team of people managing your social media accounts.”

  This was news to her. While she knew what social media was—Alejandro had shown her several of his different accounts—she certainly did not have her own. “What do you mean ‘managing my social media accounts’?”

  If she sounded alarmed, Alejandro made no indication that he noticed. Instead, he responded casually, “She monitors the people who post photos and status updates to your accounts on a daily basis. Sometimes they even reply to your fans.” He glanced over at Geoffrey. “What is her social currency, G?”

  “Five million,” he said.

  Alejandro nodded. “Sí, that’s right. Five million.”

  None of this made any sense to Amanda. “Five million what?”

  “Followers. People who follow you on the different social media applications.”

  “That sounds like a lot of people,” she commented. “I didn’t even know I had any accounts.”

  He laughed at her. “Sí, Princesa, five million is a lot. Especially when you consider that they just started your accounts less than two months ago.”

  Why hadn’t she known about this? Vaguely, she remembered the one fan who’d asked her for a “follow” on Twitter. At the time, Amanda hadn’t really understood what the fan meant. She suspected it had something to do with the cell phone, and Amanda had merely sidestepped the question by explaining she did not have her phone with her at the moment. Now she was learning that Dali had created accounts for her on the social media sites and had hired other people to manage them?

  “Why am I not managing those accounts?” Amanda asked.

  Alejandro shook his head. “Ay, Princesa! It’s too time-consuming. Let others handle it. They know what they’re doing. It’s their job.” He leaned his head back and shut his eyes. “You have more important things to do.”

  But she wasn’t so certain. If interacting with the fans was part of her brand image, she wasn’t all that comfortable with complete strangers posting on her behalf. She wanted to see these social media applications and understand better what it was that the people posing as her were posting. “I don’t want to sound quarrelsome,” she started, “but I think I should know what this is about, Alejandro.”

  “Sí, sí, if you insist,” he said with a sigh. “When we’re in Los Angeles, Dali can show you, sí?”

  “Dali will be there?”

  He nodded. “I asked her to meet with you and discuss your brand strategy, what you’ll be doing over the next year.”

  Brand strategy? Year? She frowned, trying to understand when, exactly, she had become a product. Was this the way that all celebrities thought? Or did most of them merely morph into the person that the public made them? Either way, she didn’t like it. “This sounds so . . . so cold,” she said. “So detached from reality. I’m a person, Alejandro, not a brand.”

  He held her closer, his arm warm against her skin. “This is true, Amanda, but there’s only so much one person can do when five million people—and counting—want a piece of you.”

  “How many people follow you, Alejandro?”

  “G?” he called out. “Social currency for Viper?”

  “Sixty million,” Geoffrey replied without a moment’s hesitation.

  Amanda caught her breath. “Sixty million! Why, that must be everyone in the country!”

  Both Alejandro and Geoffrey laughed.

  “Ay, Princesa, not by a long shot, I’m afraid. Besides, that’s international, mi amor. When I reach one hundred million”—he pointed his finger in the air as if to punctuate the number—“then I will be happy.”

  Geoffrey moved over to the leather chair and opened a manila folder. “Before you fall asleep, Alejandro . . .” Alejandro groaned. “The label wants the final documents signed for your next album. They’re getting anxious.”

  “Let them get anxious!” But he gently moved Amanda so that he could sit up. She scooted down the sofa and watched as Alejandro got back into business mode. “What is it they want? What’s the sticking point for the delay?”

  Geoffrey glanced at Amanda.

  She took that as a hint that she should leave. Standing up, she placed her hand on Alejandro’s shoulder. “I’ll go into the back room and let you talk,” she said. But before she could withdraw her hand, Alejandro took hold of it. She looked at him, wondering why he wanted her to stay when Geoffrey clearly wanted her to go.

  “You should stay, Amanda,” he said. “You should hear what the label wants.”

  She sat back down, curious as to why she would have any interest—and why he would think she might have interest—in what his record label company wanted.

  Geoffrey began flipping through a pile of papers until he found the document he wanted. “Here it is,” he said and handed it to Alejandro. “The number of promotional interviews, concert appearances, and merchandising points are the main issues right now. Everything else is manageable.”

  Alejandro took the paper and looked it over before handing it to Amanda.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she said, refusing to take the paper. “I don’t even understand what he just said. Besides, it’s your decision.”

  “Not when it’s about you, Amanda.”

  “Me?” She stared at him for a moment and then took the paper from his han
ds. “What on earth?” Her eyes scanned the document and tried to make sense of the information. But there were words she could not understand: points, back end, rights, licensing. She placed the paper on her lap and looked at Alejandro for an explanation.

  “They want to include you in the contract, Amanda,” he said point-blank. “The next album will not be just Viper but will include Princesa.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “For touring and promotions. They also want to license your image for merchandising. T-shirts, jewelry, cups, posters, you name it. If I sign this contract, you would be obligated to show up at every concert and appearance, including any television and interviews that they set up. You’d be given a very specific role, perhaps not onstage this time,” he said in a calm, even tone.

  “What on earth . . . ?” She was stunned and picked up the paper again. “What would my role be, then?”

  This time, Geoffrey spoke up. “Right now, they are exploring options, but they are leaning toward having you be the conduit to Viper.”

  Amanda glanced at Alejandro.

  “Let me explain it to you this way,” Geoffrey said as he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “When the fans line up outside of the hotel or studios or wherever Viper is to attend, you would be the one to meet the fans and pick a few people to give tickets for the show. Front row tickets. At the concerts, your security team would escort you through the crowds, meeting the fans—the very thing you love doing the most, right?—and selecting a few to come backstage with you to meet Viper and watch the concert.”

  “I see.”

  Alejandro touched her knee. When she looked at him, he picked up where Geoffrey left off. “It’s what you like to do, sí? And it will create a new, different level of energy at these events. When people see the Princesa at these events, you’ll be more than just someone who stands next to them and smiles for a camera. You are the doorway to living a dream that so many of them don’t even know to dream.”