Page 4 of My Sexy Rival (Stars In Their Eyes 2)
“That guy,” J.P. said, gesturing to the older of the small-nosed brothers, “is Jenner Davies’s publicist.”
My eyebrows knit together as I tried to process what he’d just said. “What?”
“Name is Wordsworth Wharton,” J.P. said and laughed loudly, then rolled his eyes. “Can you believe it? What am I going to learn next? That his brother is named Keats?”
It was a rhetorical question. Even so, I whispered yes. But I still didn’t move a muscle; I sat in the rickety wooden chair by his desk, with some kind of strange, unexpected shock on my features. Keats’s older brother was Jenner’s publicist, and the trio of them had seemed immensely pleased. A sense of unease rolled through me, as if the joke was on me, only I had no clue what it was.
J.P. stared hard at me as if I were two puzzle pieces he couldn’t quite align. “Jess, what’s the big deal? Actors have lunch with their publicists all the time.”
Right. I couldn’t let on that Jenner wasn’t just having lunch with his publicist. Jenner Davies was having lunch with his publicist and also his publicist’s younger brother who happened to run a rival photo agency that had happened to contract for shots of a secret tryst between a young actress and a married director. I had inside information, but the information didn’t add up, so I plastered on my best game face as I tried to mentally connect the dots between Jenner and the poetically named pair of brothers. Maybe they were all buddies. Maybe Wordsworth was helping Keats grow his business. Maybe their get-together was simply the next item on Keats’s agenda for the day.
But that moment of laughter when they all seemed to be in on the same joke weighed on me.
Not wanting to be surprised again, I made a mental note to add faces of publicists to my flash cards, because I hadn’t recognized Jenner’s publicist.
I shifted gears. “I’ve got a lead on the wedding. Looks like I might be able to get in,” I told him. I didn’t want to promise too much too soon.
“Tell me more.” J.P. licked his lips in that way he did when he was getting excited for a shot, and the greenbacks it would bring. “Because I heard from someone at WAM that the ceremony starts at two on Saturday,” he said, referring to the biggest talent agency in town that happened to rep Chelsea Knox, Bradley Bowman, and both Veronica and Riley Belle.
His source at WAM had gotten the time right. That was good corroboration. Inadvertent, but good. The fact that his source knew the correct time also meant that details on the wedding were starting to leak out, so I’d need to keep the ones I knew close to the vest. I didn’t tell J.P. where the ceremony was really going to be. J.P. had unleashed what he had presumed was the competition on me earlier in the week in the form of William; I wasn’t going to disclose the most precious detail I possessed, even though J.P. was good to me.
“I know someone on security detail,” I said, once again keeping my cards to myself. “Says he can get me in. All I need is a fake ID. Got any idea where in this town I can get one of those bad boys on short notice?” I asked with a wink.
He held his arms in the air, the sign of victory. “I knew eventually you’d cave, Jess! Damn, I impress myself.”
“Yeah, preen later. Anyway, I need it tomorrow.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Fast turnaround? That’ll cost you double.”
“You’re not honestly going to charge me for a fake ID so I can get into a wedding and deliver you exclusively a shot of the most sought-after photo Hollywood has seen in years?”
“Just kidding.” He rose and walked over to the one plywood wall in his office that didn’t have posters or frames of his greatest photographic hits on it, then yanked down a rolling white blind.
I handed him my camera, stood in front of the blind, and gave a scowl.
“C’mon. Say cheese for the fake DMV.”
“Cheese,” I said as he snapped a picture. Then I remembered a key detail that rendered this photo shoot moot. “Crap. I’m going to wear a wig on Saturday. I can’t use this shot.”
“What color wig?”
“Brunette probably. Why? Got extra in your drawer?”
“Yeah. I make fake IDs,” he said, as if it was obvious to anyone that he’d keep a stash of wigs close at hand. “’Course I have extra.”
I contemplated putting on a wig that someone else had worn. I pictured getting lice. I knew better than to wear someone else’s headgear.
“If I send you a picture later of me in the wig I’m going to wear, can you just Photoshop it in front of the background? I mean, you were just going to Photoshop me anyway in front of the California license background, right?”
