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Undercover Heat

Page 21

by LaBue, Danielle


  Ty buried his face in his hands and cursed. “Good Lord, Carrie Ann, have I really fallen that far in your eyes? In all the years we were together, did I ever lie to you? Did I ever give you a reason to believe I wasn’t true to you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Then you tell me what am I supposed to make of this? In two weeks I have spoken to you once, and the one time I dare to call you, I get your ex-wife on the phone, who tells me what a wonderful time you two are having together. The next thing I know, I see pictures of you and her together. And then to top it off, you’re caught in some back room with a prostitute? Never mind the whole world now thinks you’re a sex addict who caused me a nervous breakdown.”

  Ty shut his eyes and stuck his hands in his pockets. His chest heaved with a deep breath, before he opened his mouth. “Layla stole my cell phone,” he finally said. “Hell, she probably figured you’d call so she could plant the seed in your head. I’m telling you she’s on a mission. She hired some dumpster diver to dig up dirt, and then she hired a prostitute to seduce me.”

  “And you couldn’t help yourself.”

  “I told you nothing happened!” He cursed and pressed his fingers to his temples. “Damn it, Carrie, I hate fighting with you.”

  “So don’t do it.” She plopped back down on bed, and Ty looked at her a moment, before walking around and gesturing to the space beside her.

  “May I?”

  Carrie scooted over to give him more than enough room. He sat down with his elbows on his knees and scrubbed his face in his hands. “Look, I’m not going to bother giving you lines, because I think you and I are way past that. The truth is, I put myself in some stupid situations that I have no excuse for. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I thought I should warn you.”

  Carrie heard the tremble in his voice. She hated that she wanted to reach out and touch him. Instead she folded her hands and held them in her lap. “Warn me about what?”

  “Layla knows about the baby.”

  Carrie let the words settle around her. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I think her plan is to play this whole thing out in the press so she looks like a victim.”

  “She’s trying to blackmail you. She wants your money.”

  “Part of it. But now I’m beginning to think she’s out to get you. She’s jealous, Carrie. She wants to scare you off.” He slid his hand over her knee and squeezed. “I came back because I wanted to talk to you about this face-to-face.”

  “You know, this is why I left this business in the first place. All the deceit and underhandedness. That’s not me.”

  “I know, and I hate that I exposed you to all this.” He looked back at the closed bedroom door. “I shouldn’t have come up here in the first place. But when I saw you at the studio...”

  She slid off the bed and stood over him with folded arms. “Oh, I get it. This is you letting me down easy.”

  He looked up at her and shook his head. “God darlin’, what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  This was it. It was happening all over again. She allowed herself to go where her feelings took her, and this was where she ended up. “Get out, Ty.”

  “What?”

  “Get out!” she repeated, pulling him off the bed. “I’m not letting you say goodbye this time because I am saying it first.”

  “Carrie I-”

  “I want you to go,” she said on the wave of a breath. “I want you to leave.”

  He stared at her a moment, as if waiting for her to change her mind, but when she didn’t, he turned back for the door. “Listen, Earl has been calling my cell phone. I think this whole thing has him freaked out. But if he or anyone else tries to contact you, you let me handle it. This is my problem so I’ll deal with it. Okay?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. By the time she opened her mouth, he was out the door, his footsteps echoing in her ears.

  In the three days since he left Middle Valley, Ty hadn’t left his New York hotel. He wouldn’t have bothered today but Manny told him Earl needed to see him pronto at Hoggins Diner. So here Ty was, wiping the sleep from his eyes at three in the afternoon, eyeing a breakfast that miraculously included nothing from a vending machine. Across from him, Earl hadn’t touched the cheeseburger and chili fries. Maybe this wasn’t just his usual melodrama.

  “I think I may have done a bad thing.”

  Ty took a gulp of his coffee and studied his former boss. His pudgy cheeks flushed, and his upper lip trembled. “When you say you did something bad,” Manny said, “is this a personal thing, or something that has to do with Ty?”

  Earl wiped his brow with his napkin and stared into his coffee. “Well...”

  Ty pulled his cap over his eyes and slumped down in the booth. He didn’t think he could handle anymore bad news. “Come on, Earl, just spill it. Places to see, things to do.”

  “I know all about Carrie.”

  Suddenly engaged, Ty lifted the bill of his cap. “What the hell do you mean 'you know about Carrie’?”

  Earl squeezed his eyes shut, like suddenly struck with pain. “I had this interview with this guy from ‘It’ magazine,” he said. “And he asked me some questions, and I answered them, but I’m not sure I said the right things.”

  “What kinds of things did you say?” Manny asked.

  “Well, he asked me about the gossip about Carrie Ann. Said the magazine was about to break a story about your love child.”

  Ty blinked. “What?”

  Earl made a pass across his forehead with a napkin. “I felt bad. I know how rough the tabloids have been on you two, and I wanted to make sure the stories in the magazines were at least the right ones.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ty lowered his voice, and leaned further over the table. “Earl, how would you even know there was a right story to begin with?”

  His eyes closed again. “Because I overheard it.”

  “Overheard what?”

  “The night you left for LA, I went to visit you at the hotel just to be nice, and I sort of overheard you and Carrie’s father yelling at each other inside. I mean, I had an idea you two were messing around, but I didn’t know-” He picked up a piece of cold bacon and chucked it back on his plate. “Poor thing, how could she just not eat?”

  “Wait a minute,” Manny said. “This guy who interviewed you. What was his name?”

  “That’s the thing.” Earl dug into his pockets, and after producing a stray button and a petrified stick of Trident gum, he found a tattered business card. He looked at it and slid it across the table to Ty. “Harvey Tillman is what it says on the card, but when I called the number, it didn’t exist.”

  Ty wracked his brain, thinking of every word passed between him and the Deacon, and what spin Earl could have possibly applied. He lifted his cap and ran his hand through his hair before replacing it. “Listen Earl, you didn’t spill everything did you?”

  Earl pushed the heels of his hands to his eyes, and groaned. “I’m sorry. I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  Ty felt the grease shift in his gut. If Earl was any other person, Ty would have wrung his neck. But instead he felt sorry for the poor guy. He cared about Carrie almost as much as Ty did. “Look Boss, I know you didn’t mean any harm,” Ty said. “I just don’t want to make things worse for Carrie.”

  “Anybody want more coffee?” Stacy looked at Manny when she asked the question and snapped her gum at Ty with a scowl. It made him like the girl even more to know she was mad at him on Carrie’s behalf.

  “I suppose I should be glad you didn’t spit in mine, huh Stacey.” Ty kidded.

  “I’m not talking to you. And I hope Carrie Ann Langley isn’t, either. Jerk.” She left the pot on the table and marched back to the counter.

  “She a huge fan of Carrie’s.” Ty told the men. He nodded in her direction, just in time to catch her nasty look. “I knew Stacey was a nice girl when I met her. She’s got good t
aste.”

  “And not a bad judge of character either,” Manny said through a mouthful of bagel.

  “I just feel terrible for Carrie,” Earl said. “At least this is good publicity for the show. She’ll benefit from the sales.”

  “Is that all you care about?” Ty asked. “The money?”

  “No, but she does,” Earl said. “She made it pretty clear when she first signed on to do this that she needed the money for that bed and breakfast of hers. Otherwise, I don’t think she would have gone through with it. From what it sounds like to me, she wasn’t wild to see you again.”

  “Yeah, she still isn’t.”

  Manny dumped a pack of sugar in his coffee. “She still hasn’t answered your calls, huh?”

  “Christ, can you blame her? This is all my fault.”

  “How? You can’t control what Layla does.”

  “Well, now that the mess has been made, I want to be the one who cleans it up as best I can. Maybe we should talk about the gala.”

  Earl’s eyes widened as a glob of Ketchup fell from his burger to his lap. “Oh, man, no. Don’t tell me you’re backing out.”

  “Not me. But Carrie should, and I want to make sure she won’t catch any grief about it.”

  “What do you mean? It’s a closed party,” Earl said. “Sure, the press will be outside, but once she's in the hotel, it’ll be fine. Besides, in the message she left me last night--”

  “Wait a minute.” Ty looked at Manny then back at Earl. “Carrie called you? What the hell did she say?”

  “Not much.” He shrugged. “Just that she was looking forward to the gala, and that she’d be bringing her sister and father as her escorts. I made sure her wishes were granted of course. I’m just hoping this ‘It’ Magazine thing doesn’t turn into a fiasco.”

  “Hold on,” Manny said, his eyebrows raised. “If Carrie is going to be there, you want to make sure the attention is off of her, right? Well maybe the best way to do that is to make sure it’s all on you.”

  “It’s on both of us.”

  “Well maybe it doesn’t have to be.”

  Ty watched as Manny motioned for Stacey.

  “Don’t tell me you want me to bring a date?”

  “Why not?” Manny asked. “Right now the public is drooling over Ty Hollister’s love life. Maybe if people think there’s a new woman in the picture, they’ll leave the old one alone. You can suck up the limelight, and Carrie can lurk in the shadows.”

  Earl rubbed his hands together and laughed with a snort. “This will be great. They’ll leave little Carrie alone, and you’ll be on the front page of every rag in this town.”

  Stacey stopped at the table and tossed her long brown ponytail over her shoulder. “What can I do for you guys?

  “What are you doing Saturday night?”

  She looked at Ty then back at Manny. “Why?

  “Ty, here was just saying that you two are old friends. And he was wondering if you wouldn’t mind doing him a favor.” Manny gestured for her to sit down.

  Ty listened as words flew around him. He topped off his coffee and leaned back in his seat, while Manny cleared his throat and presented a pad of paper and pen. “Okay people,” he said. “This is the plan.”

  ***

  “They’re whispering!” Layla hissed, then kicked Harvey under the table. He spit out his coffee and uttered a curse, torn between kicking her back and throwing her on the table and giving it to her like he’d been meaning to.

  “Can you see what they’re saying?”

  “I’m not a fucking lip reader.” He told her. “But if you would shut up, maybe I could hear them.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that you little weasel. You work for me, remember?”

  He wanted to punch her in that hot little mouth of hers. Even smothered in that cheap pink lipstick, it made his cock twitch. He didn’t even mind the new red hair of hers, or the bag lady clothes she wore as a disguise. Hell, he’d still do her. He’d do her good. So hard and fast, she’d be senseless, and that little pink mouth of hers would beg him for more.

  “God damn it, Harvey! Pay attention!”

  The foursome huddled in the booth behind him. They talked softly through the sides of their mouths, and eyes darted in every direction. They were up to something. Making plans. And damn it, she was going to find out what.

  “How dare that man slap me with a lawsuit." Layla grumbled, drumming her long red nails against her arm. “Libel and slander. Do you know he’s asking for an amount more than the damn settlement itself?”

  “You wanted to play dirty.”

  “He can’t sue me for selling stories that are true. At least, I don’t think he can.”

  “He’s Ty, fucking, Hollister. He can do whatever he wants.”

  “Well now it’s about what I want.” She snagged his tie and dragged him halfway across the table, meeting him nose to nose. “Look, money or not, I can still have the satisfaction of wrecking his life. And you’re going to do everything in your power to help me.”

  Harvey eyed her in her purple irises. As much as he wanted her, he was beginning to regret working for her. He’d only seen half the money he had coming, he hadn’t gotten laid, and he was sick of waiting around just so he’d have a chance with this macadamia nut. This lean, blonde, tanned, hot macadamia nut. “Okay,” he croaked and freed himself from her grasp. “So what do you wanna do?”

  “Now is the time we use the trump card.” She glanced over her shoulder then back at Harvey. “You have to get us into that gala.”

  “What? How am I supposed to do that?”

  “I have faith in you.” Harvey gulped when he felt her foot wedge itself right in his crotch. Whatever she was doing with her toes, made him way more motivated about the situation. “You game, Harvey?”

  “Huh?” he stammered. ‘Um, what, well yeah.”

  “Perfect.” She gave him a wicked wink. “Then it’s time for a dramatic conclusion, don’t you think?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “How hard can it be to pick out a blue dress?” Carrie mumbled to herself then jumped up on the bed in her Plaza suite. Even from this vantage point, the situation looked hopeless. Discarded dresses, in various shades of blue, covered every available space, and matching shoes had been kicked off in elimination. The bed was the last place she could stand without trampling priceless fabric.

  An aquamarine number lay neatly across the pillow, still on the hanger. Carrie almost felt sorry for it. It looked short and drafty and not at all her style. It would probably meet the same fate as the rest of them, scattered on the bedroom floor. Pulling the dress over her head, she waded through the mess to the full-length mirror. She rolled her eyes before peeling it off and tossing it on top of the pile.

  Nothing like waiting until the last minute. It had been three hours since she had locked herself in here with a rack-full of wardrobe choices for the big gala, that was now half that amount of time away. At least her search was limited to just one color. In every event since the show’s inception, she had worn blue, or a least a variation. Earl said it symbolized cosmic intervention and fate, which inspired him to write “Undercover Heat’ in the first place. Secretly, she thought he just had a fetish for the color on her. Either way, it didn’t bother her. At this moment, it wasn’t the color that was the problem anyway.

  She went back to the rack and pulled out a midnight blue gown that had more fabric than the others put together. Rhinestones adorned the bodice and speckled the full length flowing skirt. She checked the tag and smiled. Oscar de la Renta had always been her favorite designer. She should have tried it on in the first place.

  Her skin chilled with cool friction as the elegant fabric slipped over her. It felt light and sexy, and it hugged her in all the right places. Even the zipper cooperated. She breathed a sigh of relief and stepped in front of the mirror.

  She turned sideways and studied her profile. For days, she ping-ponged between incredible delight in a second chance at
being a mother and scared to death of the repercussions. Keeping it to herself made it seem almost hypothetical. But now she’d see Ty for the first time since finding out, and the world would be watching. Anxiety over the news won out over her elation. A knock on the bedroom door startled her. “Come in,” she called, and smiled when she saw her father gazing at her in the doorway.

  “Darling,” he said with a chuckle in his voice. “You look like a princess.”

  “You think so? I was worried that you’d have a problem with it being strapless.”

  “If you had something to cover you, I’d like it even more. But tonight I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. After all, you are the leading lady.”

  Carrie turned and looked her father in the eyes. They held a softness that normally wasn’t there. A sense of compassion or understanding that compelled Carrie to take his hand. “Is something wrong?” she asked. “You look like you want to tell me something.”

  He looked at her a moment, before sitting down on the bed. His gaze fixed on the floor, and his hands folded in his lap. “Look Carrie Ann, I know how much you’ve been through, and how much you’ve dealt with over the years. I mean your illness and your mother, and of course, him,” he said with a growl. “I just want you to know that I am proud of how you pulled through it.”

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  He took a deep breath and lifted his eyes to hers. “I’m proud of you. And it will be a privilege to be by your side tonight.”

  Carrie sat down next to him and rested her hand on his shoulder. “It means a lot to me to have you there. Really.”

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am, that after tonight this whole nightmare will be over, and we can all go back to our lives.”

  “Yes well-”

  “And we’ll never have to lay eyes on Ty Hollister again.”

  “Excuse me,” Lizzie knocked on the doorframe then stepped into the room with a small briefcase in her hand. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No!” Carrie said, pushing herself off the bed. “Dad and I were just chatting.”

 

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