It’s not a comfortable position, but it’s one I’m intimately familiar with. I spent a great many of my teen years playing the disheveled mess before I figured out that cool-and-collected got me so much further than being an emotional wreck would.
At one point he even goes so far as to smudge my lipstick with his thumb and though I stiffen at the touch, the look in his eyes tells me the picture will be worth it.
Through it all, I’m uncomfortably aware that Ian is here, lurking in the background. Watching everything with his too-dark and too-observant eyes. Recording his impressions of me, and this whole process, in the small notebook that he never once puts down.
I concentrate on Marc’s directions and try not to think about what Ian has already written in there about me. I’m sure it’s colorful, considering the complete one-eighty I pulled at the café yesterday. But he’d shaken me up, and my response to being shaken is to fight back any way I have to.
It’s a lesson I learned early and well.
“Good, Veronica, darling. That’s perfect,” Marc tells me as he snaps picture after picture. “Now pout a little for me. Yes, yes…a little more. That’s right. Good, good. Can you roll over on your stomach now, darling? Yes, like that. No, no, keep your skirt hiked up. I want to see the top of your stockings. Bend your knees. Good, now maybe kick off one of your shoes—no, no, not completely off. Leave it dangling on your toes like the femme fatale we all know you are. Yes, yes, like that. Can you prop your elbows up now? Rest your chin on your hands. Yes, exactly. Now give me your most demure look—”
“Do you want to fix my lipstick?” Though I haven’t looked in a mirror yet, I’m uncomfortably aware of it smeared on the edge of my cheek. Above my lip. I don’t like the feeling, don’t like anything that doesn’t fit between the lines ascribed to it.
“No, no, I don’t. It’s perfect. You’re perfect, darling. Now smile for me. Smile, smile, smile. Like a predator, love, not the prey. I know you—ah, yes. There it is. There. It. Is. Good, good.”
Through it all the camera continues to click, picture after picture, until finally he calls a break and I end up back in the dressing room getting my hair and makeup redone. This time I’m in a beautiful, vintage, black and white Dior dress with an asymmetrical collar, puffy sleeves that go to my elbow and a thick, black patent leather belt that accentuates my waist. Black gloves and red shoes for a “pop of color” complete the outfit, as does the wide brimmed hat the stylist sticks on my head at the last minute.
They want to photograph this look with me walking up and down the rows of my father’s perfectly landscaped English garden. It was his pride and joy when he was alive and since his death several years ago, my mother and I have made it a point to keep it up. I’m not sure why I bother since it’s one of my least favorite places on the estate, but it’s what he would have wanted so…
Halfway through our time outside, Marc has one of his assistants find me pruning shears and then tells me to go crazy. I know Miguel, my gardener, will kill me if I mess up his plants, but once I cut off the first hibiscus blossom, I’m a little bit of a woman possessed. I start hacking away, cutting a couple flowers of each variety, including the very rare verbascums, and leave them strewn on the path like breadcrumbs for Hansel and Gretel to find.
As I do, I can’t help wishing that they’d been there all those years ago. My younger self could have used them.
We move from the garden to the pool, where I’m in a vintage polka dotted two-piece with a matching towel and beach ball à la Gidget. Then I’m in a red pencil skirt and white blouse in my father’s office—which I haven’t changed at all since he died—playing boss woman with my three thousand dollar shoes kicked up on his desk.
I’m in vintage pedal pushers while I arrange flowers in the kitchen and another Chanel suit—white with elaborate black piping this time—in front of the huge black gate that separates the estate from the people on the street who want to gawk at the movie stars. At me.
At one point Marc shoots me right up against the gate, my gloved hands wrapped around the bars, and I can’t help wondering what it looks like. Can’t help wondering if he’s going for the poor little rich girl vibe, if he’s trying to show just how trapped and isolated it sometimes feels being on this side of the gate.
Then again, maybe I’m overthinking. It’s not that big of a stretch, after all, to want to represent a murderess behind bars.
Still, I’m disturbed. And because I’m concerned that one of those pictures—me holding on to the bars and looking out—is the one that will make it on the cover, I decide to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Which is why, when they dress me up in the pièce de résistance—an absolutely gorgeous dream of a gown from Christian Dior’s 1955 couture collection that has layers upon layers of scalloped tulle and a sleeveless sweetheart bodice with rose piping—I know I’m running out of time to take matters into my own hands.
My hair is in another elaborate up-do and I’m wearing vintage Harry Winston diamonds that would steal the show if I was wearing anything less than a grown-up princess dress. But I am wearing that dress, and it—combined with the jewels—tells me that this is the look they want to anchor the shoot.
They’re right—I know they’re right—and still the photos of me holding on to those bars haunt me. I need to find a way to move this look from the center spread to the cover. Quickly.
We photograph in the fourth-floor ballroom—of course we do—with its gleaming cherry floors and three hundred and sixty degrees of mirrored walls, only occasionally interrupted by glass doors leading to the small, intimate balconies that overlook much of the estate.
First, I’m dancing under the perfectly polished chandelier, light bouncing off the thousands of crystals and my reflection shining back at me from every direction. Then Marc gets a bunch of shots of me throwing open the gleaming glass doors as I make my escape to the balcony, where I lean against the wrought-iron railings like Juliet waiting for her Romeo.
I take picture after picture, with a vintage champagne glass in my hand or my face buried in a huge bouquet of dahlias. Toward the end, Marc has the stylist and his assistant wrap me up in a long string of artificial belladonna since the real stuff can cause problems if it touches the skin. Then they heap my gloved hands with a mountain of the poisonous black berries and Marc has me hold my hands out to the camera in a deadly macabre offering.
Again and again Marc shoots me like that, taking pictures from every possible angle. On his knees in front of me, looking up. From a ladder above me, looking down. Beside me. Behind me. Across the room. Up close. Again and again he points and clicks. Again and again, I smile and pout and make every other expression he asks for. I even take his suggestion to tilt my head back with my mouth open wide and hold one of the berries between my thumb and index finger as I pretend to be about to drop it in. As I do, I close my eyes and pretend not to be totally icked out.
When I open them two minutes and twenty shots later, the first person I see is Ian. He’s leaning back against one of the mirrored walls and for once his omnipresent notebook is nowhere to be seen. Instead he’s staring straight at me, a half-snarl on his normally calm face and his eyes burning with a mixture of contempt and desire.
It’s the first time I’ve seen anything but pleasant or puzzled interest from him and it has the tiny hairs on the back of my neck standing up. His gaze has ice skating down my spine and a desert taking up residence in my mouth. Because, in that moment, as our eyes lock and his turn impossibly darker, impossibly blacker, I don’t know who he sees. Can’t tell who he wants.
Me or her?
Actress or murderer?
Sentient being or a character he helped create?
It’s just more fuel to add to the fire of my earlier doubts and in that one tense and electric moment, it comes to me. What the cover shot should be.
What I need it to be.
Marc backs off a little, has his assistant come forward with a trash bag fo
r me to throw away the last of the berries and the gloves I’ve been wearing. As she pauses to tie up the bag in front of me, I ask her for a couple wipes.
She quickly returns with a box of baby wipes and I smile my thanks even as Marc instructs me back against the mirror for what he calls “the last series of shots.”
I do as he instructs, but as he’s fiddling with the lighting, I turn toward the mirror and swipe the wipe over the right half of my face.
“What are you doing?” my makeup artist squawks as he comes racing across the room at me.
“Trust me, Dalton,” I tell him as I continue to scrub.
“Stop doing that!” he orders as he grabs on to the end of the wipe and actually tries to wrestle it away from me.
“Just wait,” I instruct, refusing to let go no matter how hard he tugs.
“But—”
“What are you up to, Veronica?” Marc asks. He sounds more intrigued than annoyed.
“I’ll show you,” I tell him, pushing gently at Dalton’s hand until he finally lets go with a whimper.
And then, with the whole room—including Ian—watching me intently, I wipe the entire half side of my face clean of any and all makeup. I do it carefully, making sure that the line that runs down the center of my face is exact so that both sides are completely symmetrical.
When I’m done, I reach up and take off my right earring and hand it to Dalton who still looks slightly shell-shocked. Then I step back and stare at this new reflection of myself in the mirror.
Half me at my most natural, half her at her most armored, it’s a devastating look. Made even more so by the elaborate fifties makeup Dalton has me in—all red lips and thick black liner and long, long lashes.
There is a difference, I tell myself fiercely as I study myself. I am not her. I will never be her, no matter what it felt like four months ago.
In the background I’m aware of Marc cursing softly, of him snapping picture after picture. I don’t turn around, instead continuing to give him my back so that he gets both me and my reflection in each shot.
“Turn around,” he breathes after he’s taken at least three dozen pictures.
Reluctantly, I do as he requests, then follow his impatient gesture for me to move away from the mirror. I step forward and then the camera starts again, clicking away to get the shot from this angle as well.
At that moment, Ian moves and I make the mistake of glancing his way. Our gazes lock and heat slams through me at the look he’s giving me, has my eyes widening and my lips parting on a gasp as I struggle to draw air into lungs that have abruptly forgotten how to work.
“Fuck,” Marc breathes from where he’s narrowing in on my face. “That’s it. That’s the money shot.”
I drag my eyes away from Ian, but it’s too late. For the first time in a very, very long time, I feel vulnerable. And I hate every second of it.
Chapter 3
She’s beautiful.
I keep trying to get beyond that thought because it’s shallow and because it’s become very obvious very quickly that there’s a lot more to Veronica Romero than what she looks like. And still I can’t help thinking it as I stand here, watching her chat with a couple members of the crew now that the photo shoot is complete.
She’s taken off the other half of her makeup, but left her hair up in its fancy style and the result is more compelling than I ever would have imagined. With nothing to distract from the raw honesty of her features—no makeup, no artfully tousled hair, no glitzy jewelry—she looks sexier than I have ever seen her. And more vulnerable.
One of the crew members, the stylist’s assistant, I think, must crack a joke because she bursts out laughing. She has a good laugh—loud, generous, infectious—and I find myself turned on by the sound of her in that moment. And the look of her, so open, so natural, so—
“Veronica.” Marc calls her name and she turns toward him, eyes sparkling and mouth still stretched in a wide, openhearted grin.
At least until he snaps a series of pictures of her.
She keeps the smile in place, but the honesty of it dwindles to nothing. As does the sparkle.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t regret the loss even as I wonder at what caused it. When she laughs like that, she looks gorgeous and joyous and sexy as fuck—why wouldn’t she want a photographer as talented as Marc to capture that look? Why wouldn’t she expect him to want to capture it when every man in the room, myself included, is spellbound by it? Spellbound by her?
Who is the real Veronica Romero, I ask myself for what feels like the thousandth time in the last twenty-four hours. I want to find her, want to tunnel through the layers of polish and what I’m beginning to think of as deliberate deception, want to brush away at the years of self-protection she’s built around herself until—like an archeologist on a desert dig—I excavate the real woman underneath.
I tell myself it’s because it’s my job to find that woman, to pull her out and examine her and write about her. But the truth is, I don’t actually give a shit about this Vanity Fair article and I never have. Accepting the assignment was just the means for me to get close to her, to see what she knows about William Vargas.
And while that’s still true, it’s very quickly becoming more than that. Though I only met her yesterday, every instinct I have is screaming that there’s a story here. And while I don’t know if it’s connected to Vargas or not, I know that I want to unravel it.
I don’t know why it matters so much, but it does.
As the Vanity Fair crew works on cleaning up and clearing out, I make my way over to Marc. I met him when he photographed me for Entertainment Weekly about a year ago and we hit it off. We’ve been friends ever since, so I don’t feel like too much of a creep when I ask, “Hey, can I get copies of those last shots?”
“Yeah, of course. The magazine gets copies of all the photos that I’m happy with. I’m sure a few of those will be in the bunch.”
“I don’t mean for the article.” I ignore how fucked up that sounds and just plow ahead. “I mean, for me.”
“Oh right.” He grins, shoots me a look. “It’s like that then, huh? Not turning into one of those weirdos you write about, are you, and building a shrine to her in your bedroom?”
It’s a crude joke, but I know he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just being Marc. But still, the implication makes me more than a little queasy. “I’m not the shrine type,” I tell him in an attempt to play it off. “But seriously, I’m trying to get inside her head, trying to figure out who she really is. It’s hard to do that when she keeps so much of what she’s thinking and feeling hidden.”
“I hear that,” he says with a heartfelt shake of his head. “I fucking pride myself on being able to reveal the real person with my photos. Digging deep is kind of my thing. But Veronica…she’s always been hard, man. This is the fourth time I’ve shot her and I don’t think I’m any closer to understanding her now than I was ten years ago when I did her first cover for Vogue.”
I’m not sure if I’m relieved at his words, or only more frustrated. “So it’s not just me, then? She’s this careful with everyone?”
“Oh yeah. Absolutely. I’ve never seen her lower her guard all the way. Which is why when I get a rare glimpse inside her walls, I try to take it.”
I get what he’s saying—I do—and the artist in me even agrees with him. But I think back to the way her face closed up when he snapped those last pictures, to the way her laughter died like it had never been, and I can’t help wondering if that’s why she is so guarded. Because when she finally lowers the walls a little some asshole she trusted always takes advantage of it.
It’s a thought that hits uncomfortably close to home. After all, isn’t that why I’m here? To probe and dig and use whatever information I glean from her for my own purposes?
When I look at it that way, suddenly this whole thing seems so much more nefarious.
But just because I recognize it, doesn’t mean I plan on backing off.
Instead, I file away his observations so I can pick them apart later. One more piece of information on Veronica Romero. One more thing to understand if I’m going to be the one who finally succeeds in opening her up.
I do my best to ignore the sudden, inappropriate images that bombard me at the thought…getting hard in the middle of a room of people I’m working with is not on my agenda.
“So, when do you fly back to New York?” Marc asks me as he carefully packs up his lenses.
“I’m actually planning on staying in town a few weeks, doing the Southern California thing.” More like following up on some research leads I have for the Vargas book, but I’m not spreading that around. At least not until I suss Veronica out about the subject.
“Oh, yeah? That’s cool. We should grab a beer some night. Or maybe a game. I could get Lakers tickets if you’re up for it.”
“Sure, man. That’d be great.”
“Oh, and I’m having a party next—”
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” The man-slaying smile is in full attendance as Veronica insinuates herself between us. It’s a sensual, well-practiced slide and judging from the look on Marc’s face, I’m not the only one whose mouth goes dry at the move.
Then again, he’s got a reason for it, considering she’s focusing all her attention on him. Her hand is on his chest and she’s stroking her fingers along the buttons of his shirt, playing with the patterned silk as she gazes deep into his eyes. “I’m so sorry to interrupt.”
“You can interrupt me anytime, baby.” His hands come up to rest on her hips and even though I feel like I’m watching a perfectly choreographed dance, a twinge of something uncomfortable flashes through me anyway. I tell myself it’s only because I don’t need to be here for this little seduction, but I don’t buy it even as I’m feeding myself the bullshit.
I think about backing away to give her a little privacy to accomplish whatever it is she came over here for, but the idea doesn’t sit well with me. Especially when one of Marc’s hands starts to migrate from Veronica’s hip to her ass.