How to Sleep with a Movie Star

  “Uh, okay,” Victoria said. Destiny looked uncomfortable. This wasn’t going well. “Could you tell me how you feel the roles fit you, then?”

  That was good. A nice open-ended question.

  Kylie finally looked up, but again, she didn’t meet anyone’s eye.

  “I can fit any role,” she said, her voice full of boredom. She flicked a piece of imaginary lint from her jeans, staring at the ceiling. She pushed a stray ringlet behind her ear and went back to examining her nails. “That’s what talented actors do.”

  I heard Victoria growl softly next to me, and I felt like laughing. This was such an exercise in futility.

  I raised my hand, and Destiny pointed at me.

  “Claire Reilly from Mod,” I said quickly. I looked at Kylie. “How do you feel, then, about the example you’re setting for young women?” I asked her. Destiny raised an eyebrow, and Victoria snickered next to me. I knew I sounded snide, but I didn’t care. “I mean, are you concerned that they’ll think it’s okay for women to just be saved rather than saving themselves?”

  “It is okay,” said Kylie. She sighed and rolled her eyes. I raised an eyebrow.

  “So you’re saying it’s okay for women to just sit around and wait for men to come rescue them?” I prodded.

  “That’s what I said.” She sighed again and looked over at Destiny. “This topic is boring me,” she said. “Can we move on?”

  I sat back in my chair and stared at her in amazement. How could this be the woman Cole liked? Who he’d been linked with? Who he was pulling close to him in the Tattletale photo with such obvious adoration? What was wrong with men?

  Then again, it was Kylie Dane who was winning the hearts of thousands of men. I, on the other hand, had lost the only one I’d managed to attract. Perhaps I should take her advice and just sit back, waiting to be rescued by some Prince Charming. It seemed to be working for her. However, Kylie Dane had a few more men throwing themselves at her than I did, which increased her odds of finding that prince among the frogs. I, on the other hand, was just putting together a frog-kissing track record that would make Miss Piggy blush.

  The press conference went on like it always did, and I dutifully took notes that suspiciously resembled those of every other movie press conference I’d been to: canned statements galore, zealous praise for the director, demure commentary about how lovely it would be to win an Oscar, and vague references to plot twists the media hadn’t been clued in about. I had almost tuned out—it was easy to scribble down quotes without really listening, if you’d been doing this long enough—when a question from the Teen People reporter caught my attention.

  “Kylie, who is your favorite actor you’ve ever worked with?” she asked, breathless, young, and excited to be talking to such a big star. She grinned as she waited for an answer, not seeming to realize that Kylie was too aloof to even meet her eye.

  I held my breath. Don’t say Cole Brannon. Don’t say Cole Brannon.

  “Cole Brannon,” Kylie said after a brief pause. Wally looked surprised, and she shot him a look. “And Wally Joiner, of course,” she recovered quickly. But the damage was done.

  “Not your own husband, Patrick O’Hara?” asked Ashley Tedder from In Style.

  “Oh, well, of course Patrick,” Kylie said, fixing Ashley with a glare. Excellent, she finally realized we were all out here and made eye contact with someone.

  “So does that mean the rumors about you and Cole Brannon are true?” I heard myself ask. I immediately reddened. Kylie’s glare was now fully focused on me. Why had I said that? My self-control button had obviously been deactivated.

  “Cole Brannon,” she said through gritted teeth, although I couldn’t help but notice she looked secretly pleased, “is a very, very good friend. A close friend. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.” She batted her eyelashes, and a few reporters laughed. I turned red.

  Kylie’s attention had shifted back to the ceiling, which was good, because I was fixing her with a death stare. She’d leave the rest up to my imagination? What was that supposed to mean?

  Obviously, that she was having wild, passionate sex with Cole Brannon.

  How could they? What was he thinking?

  More important, why did I care? Kylie Dane was beautiful, glamorous, perfect, glowing. I was probably fixed in Cole’s mind as short, clunky, pathetic, and covered in tequila-laced vomit.

  Not quite the image of loveliness his leading ladies lived up to.

  “Kylie Dane and Cole Brannon,” Victoria murmured to me after the press conference, as we were gathering up our belongings. I felt numb. I turned to look at her, trying hard to look like I didn’t care. “God, he’s gorgeous,” she bubbled, oblivious to the bizarre expressions surely crossing my face. “What a couple! Figures he’d go for the most beautiful woman in Hollywood.”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling sick. “It figures.”

  The Leading Man

  When I got back to my office, I checked my voice mail and was relieved to see that my luck appeared to be turning around. Not my luck in love, of course. In that area it seemed I was permanently cursed. But at least things were going well professionally. At this point, I’d take what I could get.

  I had gotten a call back from Carol Brown, Julia Stiles’s publicist, telling me cheerfully that she’d be in all afternoon if I’d like to call her with any additional questions, which meant I’d be able to knock out the changes to the cover story by the end of the day. There was also a message from Mandy Moore’s publicist, pitching me a Q & A with her client (which I would push Margaret to accept—our readers loved the multitalented young star), and a message from the publicist for Taryn Joshua, the first celeb I’d chosen to feature in the new up-and-coming stars Q & A that Maite had suggested at Tuesday’s meeting. Taryn would be thrilled to participate, her publicist said. I was to call her tomorrow to schedule a “phoner.” My entire celeb section for next month was falling together perfectly. I could hardly believe it.

  I spent the next hour making notes on questions to ask Carol. Then I took a quick lunch break alone. I bought a skim latte in our building’s lobby on the way back up to my office and spent the next hour transcribing my notes from the morning’s press conference, rolling my eyes childishly every time I heard Kylie’s bored voice. I took another break at 2 p.m. to walk Cole’s flowers down to the Dumpster, despite Wendy’s protests—which, to be honest, weren’t too adamant. The French waiter Jean Michel had presented her with a dozen roses at lunch that day, and I think she was secretly a bit relieved that my flowers, which so profoundly overshadowed hers, were gone.

  Besides, I was able to give her the vase that my flowers had come in. At least the guy who’d brought her flowers hadn’t slept with half of Hollywood. I figured his bouquet deserved the vase more than Cole’s did on that basis alone.

  I’d just gotten off the phone with Carol and was starting to revise my Julia Stiles feature when I heard the closest staffer to the reception door squeal in delight. I looked up in time to see two more editorial assistants leap up in tandem and race around the corner, out of my sight.

  Wendy and I exchanged confused looks as Amber, the magazine’s fact-checker, sprang from her desk and raced toward the door, clapping her hands with glee. More excited squeals emanated from the hallway, just out of our sight, and then Anne Amster raced by us too.

  “You won’t believe who’s here!” she exclaimed as she dashed past. “Courtney at the front desk just called and told me to get out there! C’mon!”

  I looked at Wendy again. She squinted at me.

  “What the hell is going on?” Wendy asked with typical bluntness.

  “I have no idea,” I murmured. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  Not that the women on our staff didn’t act a bit quirky—sometimes downright kooky—on a pretty regular basis. But this display, whatever it was, took the cake.

  Staffer after staffer disappeared around the corner with excited squeals. The growing thron
g, which was now jutting out of the hallway, around the corner, and into the main office, was coming our way. Wendy and I exchanged looks once more and glanced at Maite, who had emerged from her office to watch the frenzy. It was like something from the Discovery Channel. I half expected to see that khakied Australian guy round the corner to tell us about the new Mod mating ritual or something.

  The crowd slowly moved into view. Two interns, clearly starstruck, dropped back from the crowd and looked at each other in excitement, emitting little shrieks before scurrying away. The music editor, Chloe Michael (usually the very embodiment of the word “cool”), was hopping up and down like a little schoolgirl, thrusting a pen and a sheet of paper toward the center of the throng.

  “They’ve all gone crazy,” Wendy confirmed.

  Then he rounded the corner.

  There, in the hallway of Mod magazine—my magazine—thronged by a dozen of my coworkers who had never behaved this way in their lives, was the last person I expected to see in the Mod office, today or ever.

  It was Cole Brannon.

  My Cole Brannon.

  Okay, well, really Kylie Dane’s Cole Brannon. The Cole Brannon I had totally humiliated myself in front of before realizing he had completely lied to me. The Cole Brannon of coffee-and-croissant fame. The Cole Brannon of embarrassing pity flowers. The Cole Brannon who was way too hot to ever date a girl like me.

  I stared at him as he scanned the room, simultaneously scribbling his autograph on pieces of paper thrust in his direction by women too old to be screaming like teenagers. Finally, Cole’s eyes landed on me, and he grinned over the throng.

  I gave him an involuntary, weak smile in return, then quickly wiped the grin from my face. After all, I wasn’t happy to see him. He was a liar, remember? Who cared that he was gorgeous? Certainly not me.

  “It’s Cole Brannon,” Wendy whispered rather unnecessarily. “In our office.”

  “Yes, it is,” I confirmed flatly. I tried to remind myself that the deep dimples on his tanned face, the sharply defined broad shoulders I had once seen rippling with water droplets, and the perfectly straight, perfectly white smile were totally irrelevant.

  Cole grinned at me again over the heads of the women surrounding him as he inched closer to me. Why did my cheeks feel hot? Was I blushing? That made no sense! I was a professional woman with no feelings for this man. Even if he was heart-stoppingly sexy, it meant nothing. I had no feelings for him whatsoever. I could never feel anything for someone who would lie to me. Someone who would sleep with a married woman. Someone who was that hot and totally unattainable.

  After all, it would be completely stupid and self-destructive to think that someone like him would ever want to go out with someone like me.

  Cole smiled and conversed politely with each of the Mod staffers in the throng. Little by little, the pack thinned as staffers got their autographs and wandered away in stunned excitement. Anne Amster even asked for a hug. Cole smiled and gently acquiesced. It was probably just my imagination that Anne’s hug hadn’t looked as warm, as tight, or as close as the one he’d bestowed upon me.

  “He’s my favorite movie star,” Anne admitted sheepishly as she flounced gleefully past us on her way back to her desk. Two giggling editorial interns scurried by, signed scraps of paper pressed to their chests.

  Finally, Cole had signed his last autograph and was alone—or at least as alone as he could be with an office full of women staring at him. He stood for a moment, looking at me from down the hall. Our eyes locked over the walls of my cubicle. Was it natural for my cheeks to feel like they were melting from sheer heat? And why was my stomach churning, like it wanted to overturn again?

  Suddenly, I was very conscious of how bad this would look. To Maite. To Margaret, if she wandered out. To everyone else in the office. Was Cole Brannon here to see me? Why? Didn’t he have something he had to do with Kylie Dane? I fought sudden nausea as Kylie’s words replayed in my head.

  “I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination,” her disembodied voice sneered. Great, I could imagine plenty.

  Finally, Cole was at the edge of my cubicle, leaning against the doorway and looking as sexy as he had on Sunday morning. His dark brown locks were as tousled as ever, his cheeks were flushed, and his tall, perfectly proportioned frame looked great in a pair of Diesel jeans and a black button-up shirt.

  But I tried to ignore all that. After all, it was beside the point that he was the hottest guy I’d ever seen in the flesh, and that every time I saw him he looked even sexier than before. Totally beside the point.

  “Hi,” he said softly, looking down at me with all the energy and emotion he put into meaningful gazes on-screen. I blushed and reminded myself that he wasn’t really sexy. Liars couldn’t be sexy, could they?

  “Hi,” I echoed, trying to remember that I was supposed to be annoyed at him. For lying. For helping Kylie to cheat on her husband. For screwing Ivana Donatelli. For making me think, even for an instant, that I could compare with those women. That I wasn’t a nobody.

  Okay, that was better. I was starting to feel a bit righteously pissed off instead of just turned on.

  I snuck another look around the room. Heads peeked out of offices up and down the hall, staring at us. Phones jangled, but no one was answering. I squirmed uncomfortably. I could practically read their minds as they stared, suspecting us of an affair, suspecting me of compromising my ethics. I looked quickly at Wendy, who raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Guess I should have worn the baseball cap, right?” Cole teased, winking at me. I tried to frown at him. “You know,” he said, apparently thinking I was confused about what he meant. “To stay undercover?”

  “I know,” I said softly. I looked back down at my keyboard and wished I could disappear. Or at least that when I looked up again, Cole wouldn’t look so damned gorgeous and irresistible and, well, nice. Because he wasn’t. It was all an illusion. I knew the truth.

  “Claire!” Wendy hissed from the cubicle next to me. I looked up helplessly. She was staring at me with wide eyes, making faces that seemed to indicate I was supposed to do something.

  “Oh,” I said finally. “This is my friend Wendy.” Wendy raised her eyebrows at me, which I knew was her way of telling me that wasn’t what she was getting at. Of course it wasn’t. What she wanted was for me to be polite and flirtatious. But she didn’t look like she minded being introduced as a consolation prize.

  “Oh, so you’re Wendy,” said Cole enthusiastically. “Nice to finally meet you.” He took a step forward and reached out a long arm. Wendy stood and shook his hand, her freckled cheeks flushed with color.

  I tried to shrink into my chair, fiercely hoping that when I looked up again, Cole would be gone. I closed my eyes for a moment. Go away! Go away!

  “Sorry to bother you at work,” Cole said, interrupting my thoughts. I opened my eyes. Evidently, he hadn’t disappeared.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. For an instant, I could have sworn he looked a bit wounded.

  He leaned forward, his voice soft enough not to carry beyond Wendy. The rest of the room strained to hear, but I knew Cole was at least making an attempt to be discreet.

  “I didn’t have your phone number, and I’ve gone by your apartment a few times. You weren’t there, and I was starting to get worried. I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Cole said. He lowered his voice even further. “You know. After . . . everything.”

  My cheeks were on fire. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He’d gone by my apartment to look for me? And now he was so concerned that he’d come by my office?

  “So you came here?” I whispered. Cole shrugged and looked uncomfortable.

  “I was doing a studio shoot in the building for the cover of Mod,” he said. “I figured I would stop by and check on you while I was here.”

  I was flattered for a moment before I remembered the dozens of eyes on us. The warmth inside me quickly turned to humiliation and then anger—illogical as that was
—as a sudden image of Cole and Kylie in the pages of Tattletale sprang to mind.

  “Thanks,” I said, knowing my voice sounded cold. “I appreciate your concern. But I’m fine.” I willed my heart to stop pounding. I wasn’t quite sure why it suddenly felt like I’d gotten an 808 bass system installed in my chest.

  “Oh,” said Cole. He leaned back and studied my face for a moment. Was it my imagination, or did he look disappointed at the less-than-warm reception? “Well, I’m glad. I was worried. I never heard from you after I sent those flowers, so I was a bit concerned.”

  “Thanks for the flowers,” I said stiffly. He looked hurt, and I instantly softened, despite my best intentions. Okay, he was a liar, but he had sent me flowers. Maybe I could be just the teensiest bit nice.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “The flowers were very nice. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m just . . . dealing with a lot here.” Like trying not to hate you for lying about Kylie Dane, said the voice in my head. Like the shame I feel from thinking, even for a moment, that you could be attracted to me. Like the fact that I’m obviously a delusional idiot. Like the realization that I’m probably never going to find anyone who could love me. How’s that?

  “I know,” said Cole, who couldn’t possibly know what was going through my insanely calibrated brain. “I mean, I figured. I just wanted to let you know that if you need any help . . .” He paused and looked at me gently. I could have sworn that his blush had deepened. “Well, I just wanted you to know that you can call me if you need to. Or if you want to talk, or anything.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I snuck a look at Wendy, who looked like she was about to faint. The rest of the room was leaning forward in interest. I suddenly felt exposed, humiliated.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Cole looked concerned.

  “Yes,” I said sharply, refusing to elaborate. The stares around the room were growing more intense and, I thought, less friendly.