Page 44 of My Sexy Rival (Stars In Their Eyes 2)
“That was my new lawyer, Clay, and his wife, Julia. I hired him when I started my own production company. He’s the best—he’s all no-nonsense and works like hell to get me everything I could want in a deal,” Riley said, breezily, as she sat down. Sparky McDoodle stayed in her lap, but thumped his tail at me.
“Look! He remembers that you saved his life,” she said, beaming at her little pet as she stroked him between the ears. Unable to resist joining in the Sparky love, I reached over and scratched him on the chin.
“It is so good to see you,” Riley said. “How are you, Jess?”
“Great,” I said, but I don’t think I was very convincing because Riley pushed her red sunglasses on top of her thick brown hair and asked me pointedly. “Really? You don’t sound great. You sound like you’re acting.”
I managed a small laugh. “I guess I’m not a good actress.”
“It’s okay. I like it when people don’t act. What’s wrong?”
“I kind of had a crummy morning,” I admitted, then reined in the truth, as I waved a hand in the air to dismiss the too-honest remark. “But don’t worry about it. How are you? How was the wedding?”
“Amazing,” she said, emphasizing every syllable. “It was so fun, and so silly, and I just got back from Vegas two hours ago, but it was exactly what my sister wanted. Only family, and we had a blast, and went to see one of those really cheesy over-the-top cabarets with showgirls and feathers, and we played poker, and she took off for Tahiti with Bradley this morning.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. Then when she removed her hand, she whispered, “Oh, I’m not supposed to say that. Pretend you don’t know she’s in Tahiti.”
I placed my fingers on my head as if they were brain suckers removing the information. “Gone. Removed. I totally forgot.”
She laughed, and then we both ordered very little food, and after the waiter left, Riley leaned forward and said, “I wish I could do that to totally forget the script to The Weekenders. It starts shooting in a week, and like I told you, it’s a wretched mess. The run-through Friday was a disaster,” she said, picking up the thread of our phone chat about the movie.
“The script’s really that bad?”
“It’s awful. The director changed everything from the original. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing,” Riley said, and she didn’t sound fond of Avery, nor did she seem as if she was talking about a man she was canoodling with on the side.
“What’s he like?” I asked carefully because I was treading on unfamiliar ground. I wasn’t entirely sure of my own motives for asking—angling for info, or having a casual conversation with my dining companion.
“He’s a total dick,” she said, the disdain thick in her voice, and shocking me.
She seemed so into him the other night.
Seemed.
And that’s when I started putting two and two together. Known for his speedy exits, Avery must have already dumped Riley, and now she was ticked at him because she’d been the one spurned. Glancing furtively from side to side, as if she were scanning for spies, she leaned even closer and whispered, “He broke my best friend’s heart.”
Or maybe not. Because the plot was thickening, and now I didn’t question my own motives because they were simple—I was damn curious for curiosity’s sake.
“Who’s that?”
“Andy Blue,” she mouthed, referring to Andromeda Blue, one of the other young actresses on Avery’s list of prior conquests.
“Was she in love with him or something?”
“Completely.”
As I opened my mouth to ask how on earth Riley could be fooling around with him when he’d broken her best friend’s heart, I stopped myself before I said a word—I couldn’t let on that I knew Riley was involved with him. That information wasn’t public knowledge, so I said nothing.
“And because of that, I would so love to take him down,” she added.
I laughed once, because that desire—to take someone down—seemed to be going around. “You want to get him off the picture?” I joked, returning the conversation to The Weekenders.
But she didn’t laugh. She seemed intensely serious as she nodded several times. “He has a no-cheating clause. If he’s caught cheating again, the studio boots him.”
“I’ve never heard of a studio doing that.”
“The studio didn’t do it,” she said, continuing in her I’m-sharing-a-secret-whisper. “His wife did. She made sure it was in his contract. But enough about this sordid business. Tell me more about you.”
The cogs in my brain were already turning, and I rewound to the day I first learned from Keats about the Avery-Riley pairing. My initial instinct had been that Riley was too smart to get involved with her director. Had my instinct been right after all? Because something else was going on behind the scenes. The real story was playing out while no one thought anyone was watching. And the real story was something else entirely—it was subterfuge, it was revenge on behalf of the best friend, it was everyone-has-an-agenda.
