Accidental It Girl (14 page)

No. It couldn't be. This is way too deranged, even for him. If nothing else, it's far too dangerous. If he got caught the story would be twenty times juicier than the one about him cheating with his alleged girlfriend's sister. No. Impossible.

“We're talking
heavy
clout,” Todd emphasizes for effect. “So trusted they wouldn't doubt it…reliable…
credible—”

“Where are you going with this, Todd?” I ask.

“Like, Duncan Stoke's manager, maybe?” he suggests, wide-eyed—accusing me.

Dear God, I'm surrounded by the mentally ill.

“Todd, I want you to listen carefully. I am not dating Duncan Stoke. It's a lie. Got me?”

“Fine,” he says with a huff.

“No, not fine.
Lie.
”

“Got it,” Todd replies with a roll of his eyes.

I know he's not convinced, but at this point I don't really care.

The whole group meanders to the living room as Todd regales us with more details of his investigation. He tells me his friends only knew that the source of my burrito picture was someone who could pull strings, but they couldn't say who.

“Couldn't say who because they were protecting a source? Or couldn't say who because they didn't know?” Luke asks.

“Arnie, the editor over there that I play poker with, he tried to play it off like he didn't want me to poach his source, but my gut tells me
he
doesn't even know who the guy is. He just knows that this guy gives solid information. That's why they printed it.”

“Did you tell him it was completely untrue?” I try.

Todd nods his head yes, then adds sullenly, “He didn't believe me.”

“Unbelievable,” I gripe. “Did you give him the description of the weird guy with the beard who was following me?” I ask, grasping at straws.

“Yeah, but that's just it, Sadie. Nobody's even laid eyes on the guy. He's a ghost,” Todd replies. Why do I suddenly get the feeling that Todd fancies himself the hero in a Dan Brown novel? “Oh, and there's something else, Sadie,” Todd adds gravely.

“Great!” I snap sarcastically. “Go ahead, hit me.”

“
Celeb
,
Star
, and
Us Weekly
all have plans to run more photos next week.”

I rub my bloodshot eyes with the palms of my hands. I can't believe this is happening. It's just so completely absurd.

I hear my new cell phone tolling its factory-issued ring in the bedroom.

“You want me to get that? Shut it off?” Brooke asks thoughtfully.

“No, thanks,” I say, slowly limping my way toward the bedroom. “Maybe it's Diane Sawyer and I can get this whole thing sorted out in a matter of minutes.”

If only.

I release the phone from its charger. The face of the phone blinks a number I don't recognize. Maybe it's someone with some information…or maybe Paige went out and bought one of those anonymous disposable cell phones that criminals use….

I'll just have to take my chances. “Hello?”

“I see you got another cell phone,” comes a distinctive, irritatingly familiar male voice. A veritable swarm of butterflies begins flapping somewhere between my stomach and my chest. “I guess that explains why my calls to Thailand didn't go through.”

“You better mean Thai
food,
Wyatt. If there is a single charge to Thailand on my bill, my lawyers will eat you alive.” I think I said that pretty convincingly for a person without so much as a paralegal. (Well, I do know a guy, who is friends with a guy who played a lawyer once on
Monk
. That count?)

“Please do, I'll have them discuss that little incident at blé with
my
lawyers.”

Oh, right—
that
. The butterflies threaten to burst free through my belly button.

“Is that it, Wyatt? Is that all you called for?” I ask sternly.

“No, actually. I picked up a copy of
Celeb
today—to catch up on what I've been doing lately—and who should I see there…”

It is everything I can do not to scream bloody murder and throw my brand-new phone against the wall.

Ethan continues, “I never would have pegged you as the beefcake, glossy, metrosexual type. I mean, Duncan's so
shiny
. How can you stand it?”

How dare he insult my fake boyfriend! “Oh, you're one to talk. Maya Dunn glows so much she's practically radioactive.” I promise, in my head that sounded a lot more like an insult.

“It's amazing how you guys can so completely convince yourselves these things are the truth. You don't actually think I was dating her. Do you? She's totally not my type.” Oh, God. They
weren't
dating. “Lori was all right,” he says in a low voice, as though talking to himself. “But she was a little shiny, too, honestly. This powdery, glittery stuff, fucking
everywhere
. All over my clothes—” He stops suddenly and raises his voice, as though he's just remembered who he's talking to. “Anyway…”

“Is there a point coming anytime soon? Or should I clear my schedule for the next several hours?”

“Oh, let's see,” he says, with a touch of real glee in his voice. “I have your schedule right here.” He goes silent for several moments. “No, looks like you're clear. But I should remind you that you have a bikini wax on Friday at noon.”

Ugh! “I want that phone back!” I shout. My life is on that phone. Every little private thing I do is on that phone. And he has access to all of it!

“And ruin my fun?” he replies smugly.

“Look, it may mean nothing to you, but some of us don't have minions to go around buying cell phones for us every day.”

“You think I have minions? Come on!” he says, aghast. “Do you know how expensive minions are these days?”

“All right, that's enough. Good-bye, Wyatt.”

“See you around, Sadie.” The tone of his voice sends a little shiver up my back. That was one supercharged “See you around.”

Could Ethan Wyatt really be the one behind this? I mean, if I were in his place and I'd just had my life split open and exposed for all the world to see, would I do something like this? Wait a second, I
have
. And I don't really care about exposing whoever did this to me…I'd rather just disembowel them.

But what if it is Ethan Wyatt? What if he's stalking me and trying to make my life miserable because I got that picture of him at blé? Because I may have gone a tiny—a
teensy
tiny—bit over the line?

No, that's insane, even for a phone-stealing maniac. It's too crazy.

 

I limp to the kitchen, fix myself a cup of coffee, and dig out as many chocolate-flavored food items as I can find.

“Hey, Sadie,” pipes Todd from the next room, “you got any idea where Wyatt is?”

“What?” I say, shocked, fearing, if only for a moment, that Todd can read my mind. I clear my throat. “You mean, Ethan Wyatt?”

“Yeah,
Ethan
Wyatt.”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Nobody's seen him since the blé story broke. He's been finding a way out of the hotel—looking at apartments or something—but nobody knows how.”

“Sorry, can't help you,” I say as calmly as I can while my heart begins to tap out the bongo drum line from “Copacabana.”

“Right,” Todd replies glumly.

In a matter of nanoseconds Todd, Luke, and Brooke are back into loquacious nattering, swapping theories about my pursuer and his motives. Brooke and Luke pour through the fresh batch of papers Todd brought while Todd examines Brooke's printouts of the many Internet notices.

From across the room I hear Brooke call out, “Sadie!”

“Yeah,” I reply, before cramming a half-dozen donut holes in my mouth.

She holds up a daily newspaper—oh great, a new picture of me—buying tampons. In it, my eyes are sleepy and puffy, and my hair is a matted clump of strawberry blonde. That's just perfect. Great. It's embarrassing on so many levels—new, as yet undiscovered levels of humiliation. Love that.

“I thought you were PMS-ing a couple of weeks ago?” Brooke asks matter-of-factly.

“No.” I return her leisurely tone, despite the utter humiliation resulting from the question. “Turns out I was just
bitchy
.”

“You don't have to be nasty. I'm just trying to figure this out,” she replies.

Todd pipes up, “She's always a little, you know,
off
when it's that time of the month.”

Luke and Brooke groan and nod their agreement.

“I'm right here!” I exclaim, but they take no notice. They're too engrossed in Todd's latest theory—that I am the dopple-ganger of Duncan Stoke's actual secret girlfriend and the papers have gotten me mixed up with her.

I turn back and ransack the cupboards for more sweets.

“Uh…Sadie?” I hear Luke say, tremulously.

“What?” I reply, immediately turning to him with concern for the peculiar tone in his voice.

His eyes are raised toward the television screen; his index finger points in the same direction.

I follow his gaze—
Entertainment Tonight
.

My lungs empty of air, every muscle turns to jelly.

My face is on
Entertainment Tonight
.

Still shots of me—a little slide show—eating a burrito, drinking coffee, walking to the grocery store.

Holy shit—I've gone omnimedia.

Because the television is on mute, my only clue to the meaning of this horrible new development is the unbelievably unreliable closed-captioning running across the bottom of the screen.

It reads: “Dunkaan Stooke has girlfriend. Sheeis a photo grapher in New York City. Couple sadi to be havin long distinnnce relation ship for &7 seven weeks or moore…”

My mind is cloudy, nothing makes sense. None of this makes sense. I can't process it all. I have never experienced this particular level of chaos. It's beyond raining and pouring now. It might be time to start thinking about an ark.

Todd, Luke, and Brooke stare at me—waiting.

“Okay, help me out here,” I say with an uncontrollable quivering. “Was I just on TV?” Please, tell me I'm hallucinating.

The three of them nod their heads up and down.

“Yeah, I was afraid of that.” I take a breath and clench my fists to keep my hands from shaking. “All right,” I state imperiously. “That's it. This has got to stop.
Now
.”

W
e're now beginning stage three of Operation Condor. Luke chose the name—claimed something about it being a God-given right afforded him by the presence of testosterone in his bloodstream. Brooke wanted to call it Shock and Moi, which, I have to agree with Luke and Todd on this one, does sound more like a Barneys sample sale than a serious covert operation. I thought a simple Find Duncan Stoke would suffice, but I lost that little fracas.

See, while I was watching the second night of
Entertainment Tonight
coverage (that is, after my life stopped flashing before my eyes), it occurred to me that
I
may not be the target of this tabloid assault. I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but it's perfectly obvious—Duncan Stoke is the target. He's the one who has the most to lose in this whole thing, right? I mean, it's his precious image they're tarnishing. Maybe I'm just collateral damage, an innocent bystander. I could have been chosen at random, or…something. In any event, Duncan Stoke will probably know who's behind this.

So far the highlight of Operation Condor is Brooke finding an online poll about me. Apparently, nine out of ten Stoke fans—or I should say, nine out of ten fans that frequent the Duncan Stoke Hottie McHotHot website—believe that I'm not good enough for him. Oh, and that my head is too big for my body. But in a bit of good news, the other 1 percent of fans think that I am, and I quote, “not too terrible.” Things are looking up already.

I know Duncan is in town this week, doing press for the Memorial Day opening of
The Speed of Light
. And we know that he taped Letterman this afternoon. I've tried getting more information from my sources, but I'm not getting anything concrete. The conversations have all degenerated into lame, acrimonious remarks like “What?
You
don't know where he is?” and “It's not
my
problem you can't keep track of your boyfriend.”

Suddenly Luke's voice rings through the apartment at high volume. “Really?” he says excitedly into his cell phone. Instinctively, Todd, Brooke, and I rise from our seats.

Luke begins waving his arm around like he's found something. He continues into the phone, “Every time?…Okay…all right…great, man…. Yeah, thanks.”

Luke snaps his phone shut dramatically. “Got him.”

“When? What? How?” I stutter.

“Stoke apparently worked at a bar on the Upper West Side when he was first starting out—”

“The Lodge,” Brooke says matter-of-factly, as though everyone on the planet knows that random bit of Duncan Stoke trivia.

Luke is a little weirded out, but continues, “Yeah. And, it seems he always—and my source says
always
—goes there when he comes into town.”

“They let him drink for free,” I suggest. The dirty little secret of celebrity millionaires: half the reason they're so rich is that they never have to pay for anything.

“Exactly,” says Luke. “But here's the thing, my guy also says Stoke goes to another place farther up on Ninety-sixth called…”

Luke, Todd, and I all look to Brooke for the answer.

She stares back at us blankly and asks, “What?”

Luke continues, “The Dive Bar.”

“So, he could be at either,” I state.

“Right,” says Luke. “More likely the Lodge, but it might be better to be safe than sorry.”

“Okay,” I say, while wandering around the apartment, following the well-tread path of the crazy old sisters who lived here before us. “Okay, the point is to talk to him, not get his picture. So I'm going to need a plan.”

“
We,
” says Brooke sharply. “
We
are going to need a plan.”

 

The Lodge, as it's so aptly named, is clad in grungy knotty pine and features a rather large, rickety chandelier made entirely of antlers. The tables and booths are heavily carved, not with any decorative motif, but rather with choice hand-hewn phrases like “Tim-bo wuz here” and “Rock On, White Snake.”

Brooke and I couldn't be more conspicuous if we were buck-naked, singing show tunes. Our femaleness is somehow exaggerated by the surroundings and the clientele. It's as if we're wearing neon signs that say “Look here—boobies!”

Adding to our high profile at The Lodge, we've been here far longer than any sane single women would be on any ordinary night. The youngest and most eligible man in the bar is a surly leather-clad biker in his mid- to late-fifties.

I've been trying to act naturally, and have attempted to engage Brooke in casual conversation, but it's not going well. Brooke is beside herself with anticipation. She checks her lipstick—or asks
me
to—every time she takes a sip of beer. She's also been repeatedly smoothing down her hair like someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Brooke has never been a particularly patient person (she's the girl who always gets next-day shipping, regardless of price), but the added excitement of being so very close to her celebrity dream—Duncan Stoke, in the flesh and possibly inebriated—is making her practically vibrate with excitement. I've had to pretend to be engrossed in the copy of
Celeb
I brought along as evidence, so that at least one of us doesn't seem like a jittering, mumbling weirdo.

I feel Brooke's leg flapping away under the table—and then a sharp pain in my shin.

“You need to calm down,” I whisper across the booth.

“I
am
calm. Perfectly, totally calm,” she says, before letting out an eerie, nervous giggle.

“Whoa.”

“No, I'm fine. Really, I'll be fine.”

My phone rings. Brooke jumps—nearly over the table.

“Seriously, breathe or something,” I tell her.

I answer the phone.

Luke's voice rings out. “Just heard from a guy I know at The Palm. He said that Stoke and his entourage—”

“Shit, he has an
entourage
?” I don't know why I'm surprised.

“Three guys, maybe four. Anyway, my guy says they finished eating a few minutes ago, and he heard them say they were heading to The Lodge.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“We'll stay here for a bit, just in case. Then head over.”

“Perfect,” I reply.

I hear some faint crackling and Todd's voice trickles into my ear. “Hey, Sadie?”

“Yeah?”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.” I'm going to need it.

I barely have time to hang up before Brooke starts in. “What? Is he coming?”

“Yes, Duncan's coming.”

“Great. Fine. All right,” she says, as though mentally ticking items off a checklist. “I'm just going to head to the ladies' for a minute. Be right back.”

She slides out of the booth and saunters to the restroom with aplomb—practicing for Duncan, no doubt.

 

Brooke returns from the bathroom in remarkable time. She enters the room a new woman; she is radiant. Her hair flutters behind her like chocolate-colored silk, and as she ambles back to the table her hips sway seductively, as though knocking out the rhythm to David Bowie's “Rebel Rebel.” It's definitely not the fresh coat of lip stain and renewed matte (yet, somehow mysteriously dewy) finish of her skin, but a complete change in her countenance. She is calm, confident. Reaching our booth, she drapes herself on the seat like a silver screen seductress. She is Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, and Greta Garbo combined.

“What did you do in there?” I ask, genuinely perplexed.

“Just freshened up.”

“With
what
?” I find it hard to believe that something that magical is bottled, sold in stores, and I haven't found it yet. “Does it work on cellulite?” I add.

“Really, Sadie.”

Yeah,
really
.

A loud noise at the entrance to the bar jostles me out of my cosmetic inquiry—one boisterous, solid-gold movie star, complete with entourage.

I feel around the booth for my camera. Oh, my God, I'm like Pavlov's freaking dog.

Duncan Stoke bounds into the bar to a hail of hellos and handshakes from the bartenders and some rough-and-tumble types that must be regulars.

He's a little shorter than I thought he'd be, about my height, with dark chiseled features. There's a hint of the exotic about him. It's just enough to give his face a touch of mystery and allure, but not enough to escape the moniker All-American Babe. Duncan Stoke is the captain of the football team, the Home-coming King, the slightly naughty boy next door. He just looks…fresh or…oh, my God, Ethan was right—Duncan Stoke is
shiny
. It's like he's been scrubbed and polished to a high sheen. He's so cleverly fine-tuned that if you flicked him I bet he'd ding like leaded crystal. Man, this guy was
born
to be photographed.

I only recognize one of the guys in Duncan's entourage—Tony Servedio. He's a great, classically trained actor who's gotten typecast as a mobster. He's cute and, I hear, very sweet, but has a real talent for playing shifty and complicated. The other two don't look familiar, but they're not slick enough to be agents or managers. They must be friends from the old days—there's an awful lot of nostalgic backslapping going on. That's good—an agent or manager could have spelled doom for my plan to speak to him.

Duncan and his minions take four seats at the bar. Almost instantly, overflowing pints of beer and shot glasses filled with a brown liquid are plopped in front of them.

Well, no time like the present…

I push myself away from the table and attempt to stand. Brooke quickly slaps a hand on mine. “Let's just observe for a while, shall we?” she says earnestly.

What she means is, let's just sit here and watch him like he's a zoo animal. Although, judging by the look of absolute concentration in Brooke's eyes, I think Duncan may be a little more like prey.

“Sorry,” I say to Brooke, before rising from the table. I don't have time to let her formulate a plan for conquest. I need answers—now.

I grab my copy of
Celeb
and march to the bar.

Standing over his left shoulder, I wait for Duncan Stoke to look up at me.

Duncan, smack in the middle of his three friends, won't even glance in my direction. I can literally
feel
him avoiding eye contact. One of his nonfamous friends sneers at me and says, “He's not giving autographs tonight, sweetheart.” Ah, a tried-and-true intimidation technique—patronizing the “little” woman.

It won't work on me, though, especially since there's no way this guy's a bodyguard. The sneerer in question weighs about a 130 pounds—soaking wet—and there's no way he's packing anything more dangerous than halitosis.

I ignore the overenthusiastic hanger-on and speak directly to Duncan. “We need to talk.”

This sends his three friends, and the bartender, into fits of laughter.

Duncan tries to laugh it off as well, but is visibly unnerved by me. “I'm sorry, do I
know
you?” he asks, with just a dash of arrogance, and more than a smidgen of paranoia.

“Haven't you heard?” I ask tersely. I slap
Celeb
down on the bar. “We're dating.”

Duncan's private peanut gallery goes silent. For his part, Duncan examines me—for signs of homicidal tendencies, I'm sure.

He spins around on his chair, grabs my wrist with one hand and the magazine with the other.

Duncan commands, “Come with me.”

 

Duncan drags me by the hand through a dingy hallway. Three flickering, grime-covered bulbs swing from the low ceiling; it's barely enough light to see the back of Duncan's inhumanly shiny hair. My feet clop and splash in pools of who knows what sort of bar filth.

After a few moments, we pass through a grim, thickly cluttered storage room. With three agile strides, Duncan leads me through a path in the jumble of old bar stools, discarded table-tops, and damaged stemware. He stops when we reach a thick steel door. Duncan flicks a large metal lever and pushes on the door.

I hear the pitter-patter of footsteps behind me. If I'm not mistaken, it sounds like size seven high heels. Hallelujah.

Duncan finally lets go of my wrist as I stumble out of the building and into a grisly, deserted back alley. It's lit by several halogen floodlights, which hang over three unmarked steel doors. Across the alley is a wide truck delivery bay. We are completely alone, save for probably a million huge, disease-ridden rats lurking just outside the random pools of light. I think I can hear them gnashing their pointy little teeth.