Page 21 of My Sexy Rival (Stars In Their Eyes 2)
“You don’t know that,” I pointed out.
“I’ll take my chances. But look, it was nice doing business with you. And hey, my hat’s off to you. You played it well. You thought you had me. But in the end, Jess, we both get to walk away having gotten what we wanted. I guess you are a girl after my own black and twisted heart. We’re just a couple of players in Hollywood after all. Here’s to dealmaking.”
He hung up first, and I stared at the phone, my head pounding with the anger of having been played. I pushed my hair out of my face, blowing a frustrated sigh across my lips.
“Heads up.”
I turned around in time to press myself against a tree to let a group of pink shorts–wearing middle-aged women run past me. They must be a running group, training for a breast cancer run together, because they were led by a younger woman, who was cheering them on and shouting motivational phrases.
A personal trainer.
As I let them pass, I flashed back on the image of Nick Ballast and his trainer from earlier in the week, recalling that they ran not far from here. Excitement flared in me, the daring possibility that I could make things right. That I could fix my mistake by telling the one person who could do something about this whole mess I’d made.
Nick.
Because this was my real trump card—not photos, but encyclopedic knowledge of celebrities’ whereabouts. I knew where stars hung out. I had studied them, memorized their routines, and committed their every habit to memory.
Turning around, I ran as fast as I could back to my scooter. I yanked on my helmet and sped off to the parking lot at the trailhead where Nick had been seen running the other day. Nick Ballast was an early morning exercise junkie, and I hoped against hope that I’d catch him. I’d screwed him over and I couldn’t just let that lie. Especially since the news had probably broken by now. When I parked at the trails, a quick check of my email revealed a Hollywood Breakdown news alert. I read the item and it was like a hard kick in the stomach with the heel of a sharp boot: Nick Ballast Booted from The Weekenders, Replaced by Jenner Davies.
The news my dad had first heard from my makeup artist mom’s friend had made it into print a mere hour later. That’s how it worked in Tinsel Town. That’s why you had to move quickly if you wanted to make a living reporting, shooting, or following the famous faces that speckled the canvas of Southern California.
The lot was empty, so I stretched and waited. After thirty minutes, Nick pulled up and emerged from the passenger side of a brown Mercedes, sunglasses on. His goateed trainer got out of the driver’s side, a Bluetooth tucked on his ear. Nick was laughing and smiling, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He and his trainer headed for the path.
I called out. “Hey, Nick.”
The look on his face had turned veiled, unreadable. “Hey,” he said. He probably thought I was a fan but couldn’t be sure.
“I’m a photographer,” I said quickly, and with those words the trainer grabbed the sleeve of Nick’s T-shirt and nodded to the path. Because photographers were the bad guys. Nick and his trainer began to jog, but I kept pace as I began my confessional. “I don’t have a camera with me now. I’m not here to take a picture. I’m here because I know that Jenner bribed Avery Brock to get your role on The Weekenders. He bribed him using photos I took. But I had no idea they were going to be used that way. And if I had, I wouldn’t have taken them.”
He stopped running. He didn’t seem surprised that I’d mentioned the photos of Avery. He seemed intrigued. “But what did you think they were going to be used for?”
His response threw me off. I figured he’d want to know more about the pictures and that he could use my information to get his job back. But instead, his question was inquisitive, it was lawyerly, and it cut me to the core.
“I just thought they’d be used—” I started, but then I stopped. I thought they’d be used on a website or a magazine. I thought they’d be used to titillate the public who craved sordid stories just like I did.
“You thought they’d be used on some gossip site, right?” he fired back. “Whatever these pictures were. You thought they’d just go up online? Just like the pictures of me eating in my car. Did you take those pictures, too?”
I might as well be in the witness box because I was getting a grilling before the jury and I was sure that no twelve people would sympathize with a paparazzo.
