Unrivaled (13 page)

“H
ow did this happen?”

Madison sat in the passenger seat of a dark-green SUV, tugging at the brim of her worn baseball cap and staring out the windshield at a landscape marred by cargo ships, brightly colored rectangular containers, and tall working cranes. Everything about the meet was designed to go unnoticed. The car was ordinary. The San Pedro port was too busy for anyone to question them, and if they did, Paul had the credentials to make them go away. Then there was Paul himself and his utterly forgettable face. It was one of the things that made him so good at his job: no one ever remembered seeing him, and it was nearly impossible to describe him.

“You told me—no, correction, you
assured
me—that
everything from my past was sealed, locked up tight, and safely stored in a deeply buried vault with no key.”

He nodded, his pale eyes scanning the harbor. “I've recently come to think otherwise.”

She sighed. Sank so low in her seat she could barely see past the dashboard. She had obligations, loads of press, a movie to promote, an impending breakup with Ryan that would inevitably become very public no matter how hard she tried to keep it under wraps. She didn't have time for problems. Not of this magnitude.

“How do you know it's not just another bogus attempt to extort me? You know how fame attracts opportunists.” She studied him closely. The face that had once rescued her, changed her life in ways she could never repay, was now delivering the worst news he possibly could.

“This is different.” He pressed his lips together until they practically disappeared, making her wonder who this moment was harder for, him or her. Paul prided himself on meticulous attention to detail. But if he really did slip, the life Madison had worked so hard to create would burn as quickly as her previous life had.

“How different?” She shifted in her seat, taking in his beige hair, beige skin, thin pale lips, unobtrusive nose, and a small set of milky brown eyes. He certainly lived up to his nickname, the Ghost. Though she mostly called him Paul.

Without a word he handed her a photo of herself as a very young girl.

Madison gripped it by its edges, making a careful study of the tangled hair, the dirt-smudged face, the blaze of defiance burning in those bright, determined eyes. A long-lost
before
picture in a life meticulously cultivated to consist entirely of
afters.

Until now.

Her hands trembled, as she tried to remember who'd taken it—how old she might've been. Talk about a ghost. It'd been years since she'd seen that version of herself.

“I thought everything was burned in the fire.” She turned to him.

It was the tragic explanation used to defend Madison's lack of baby pictures, or any other remnant of a life before her parents' death. The story had been fed to the press so many times it'd become almost mythical. An eight-year-old girl who managed to escape a terrible fire with barely a scar, only to rise from the ashes like a phoenix, reborn, wiped clean, delivered into the next glorious phase of her life.

She absently ran the edge of the photo against the scar on her forearm, remembering that day when she'd grabbed a piece of smoldering wood and held it to her own flesh while Paul looked on in astonishment. “It's to make it more believable,” she'd said, knowing even back then she'd be
playing a part from that moment on.

“Everything
was
burned.” His tone was grim. It was probably the worst thing he could've said.

If someone had pictures of her, there was no telling what else they might have.

“There's no mistaking it's me.” She looked at Paul. For the first time in a long time, she feared for her life.

He sighed, gripped the wheel tighter. “Here's what you're going to do.”

She waited for the formula that would make it go away, willing to do anything to put an end to the nightmare.

“You're going to go about your life, and alert me to the first sign of anything unusual.”

She turned on him. So incensed she thought she might spontaneously combust in her seat. “Nothing about my life is usual. I wouldn't even know how to recognize
un
usual.”

“You know what I mean.”

She frowned. Up to this point, she'd trusted him implicitly, but even the Ghost had his limits. “What I know is I'm not going to sit around and wait for this to destroy me.”

She shook the picture in his face, and he plucked it from her fingertips. “Have I ever failed you?”

She studied him a good long time. “You just did.”

He squinted, stared at the quilt of scars covering his knuckles. “If you're worried about people letting you down, you should take another look at your boyfriend.”

She gazed out the window, watching a crane load a container onto a ship. Maybe she should crawl inside one of those large metal boxes, sail away to some exotic port, start a new life under a new identity, and Madison Brooks would disappear off the face of the earth. She'd already played that card once, and it'd worked out far better than expected. But now, it was just another fantasy that would never be realized. There was nowhere to hide for someone as famous as her.

Or was there?

“Ryan's stepping out with a girl named Aster Amirpour.” He reached into the backseat and handed over a fat dossier, detailing nearly everything about the poor dumb girl's life.

“I know all about it.” Madison shrugged. Suddenly feeling sorry there wasn't a single person she could trust. “You're not the only one on my payroll,” she said, reading the surprised look on his face.

She opened the door and started to head back to her car, when Paul called her by the name her parents had given her.

“Be careful out there.”

She frowned, shaken by the sound of that name on his lips. “Just do your job and I won't have to,” she said, slipping behind the wheel and driving away.

                 
BEAUTIFUL IDOLS

                 
Heartbreaker

                 
So you know that beautiful, truly sensitive soul* we all fell for in last month's ten-hankie weeper? Turns out, he's an idiot. I know, I'm just as shocked as you. At this very moment I'm ripping his posters off my bedroom walls, and when I'm done burning the pillowcase with his face on it, I'm changing my Twitter icon back to a pic of my cat. Maybe after reading this, you'll consider doing the same.

                 
In a recent interview with a splashy mag this blogger
j'adores
, this is how Prince Not-So-Charming described his idea of the perfect girl:

                 
“A girl who will watch you play video games for four hours, and then have incredible sex with you—that's the girl you should date.”

                 
For those of you thrilled to just sit back and watch while your boy fiddles with his joystick for hours on end, I've got just the guy for you!

                 
For the rest of us with a brain, standards, and a desire to play our own game, let's all take a vow to stop making dumb people famous, k?

                 
*The first ten peeps who correctly guess the name of this week's horny but clueless celebutard win a place on the guest list at Jewel this coming weekend. Spill it in the comments!

Layla frowned as she skimmed her post. The story was secondhand, gleaned from a fashion mag. Not the kind of writing she envisioned when she'd decided to strike out on her own. But how was she supposed to go after the celebrities who'd started frequenting Jewel? Now that she was writing for her own blog, she couldn't exactly trash them when she needed them to help her stay in the game.

As for the exposé she promised Mateo—the sordid nightclub scene he'd warned her about proved to be nothing more than a bunch of kids, some famous, some not, all trying to enjoy their weekends and have a good time. Not exactly a crime.

Her phone chimed as Mateo's gorgeous face appeared on the screen.

“Y'almostdone?” He spoke so quickly the words ran together.

“Still working.” She sipped her latte and scowled at her laptop.

“We need to be at the restaurant in twenty.”

Layla squinted, having no idea what he was talking about.

“Valentina's birthday,” he said, addressing her silence. “I guess you forgot.”

She closed her eyes. Guilty as charged.

When she failed to confirm either way, he said, “You're still going, right?”

She sighed, hating what she was about to say. “You know I have to be at Jewel.”

“What I know is you promised Valentina you'd go to her party.”

Had she really done that? Probably. From the moment she'd gotten drunk and kissed Tommy, she'd agreed to almost everything having to do with Mateo or his family.

“That was back when I thought I was getting fired,” she admitted.

“Well, you explain that to Valentina. She's going to be crushed.”

Layla rolled her eyes. She was getting tired of his guilt
trips. “Laying it on a little thick, don't you think? All her friends will be there—she won't even notice I'm missing.”

“I'll notice. My mom will notice. And in case
you
haven't noticed, my sister idolizes you.”

“Well, maybe that's her first mistake.” Layla angrily crushed the sides of her still-half-full cup. She should apologize. Take it all back. But part of her was daring Mateo to call her on her crap. She certainly deserved it for bailing on Valentina, never mind for the things he didn't know about.

“You know, you're only a couple weeks into this job and it's already happening—you're changing and you can't even see it.”

She frowned. “Pretty sure the blog I just wrote proves I'm hardly the celebrity worshipper you accuse me of being.”

“Maybe not, but you're so focused on that world, you're losing sight of the people who matter.”

“That's not true, I . . .”

Her voice faded. Madison Brooks had just walked up to the counter and was placing her order.

She'd heard Madison worked out at a nearby gym and often dropped in for a post-workout caffeine hit. Luckily, Layla's decision to change her writing venue and hang around long enough to down three lattes had paid off. It was better than joining the gym and stalking her in a spin class.

“I gotta go,” she mumbled, ending the call as she stared
at the back of Madison's head, knowing she had to act fast.

So far, no one had been able to secure her as a get, mostly because she was so hard to reach. But as Layla watched Madison wait for her order, minus the usual entourage, bodyguards, and overall fuss that usually surrounded her, there was a good chance Layla might change all of that.

She shoved her laptop into her bag and pushed away from the table, watching as the barista called, “Iced skinny latte for Della!” and handed the drink to Madison as though she had no idea who her customer was.

Clutching the drink in one hand, and her wallet and keys in the other, Madison struggled to shoulder the door open as Layla jumped in to help her.

“Here, I got it,” she said, as Madison shot her a cautious look. Her eyes widened in recognition—surprise?—Layla couldn't be sure. “Um—I couldn't help but hear her call you Della.” Layla raced to catch up as Madison darted down the sidewalk. “But you're Madison, right? Madison Brooks?”

Madison shook her head, muttered something unintelligible under her breath.

“I mean, it's cool if you don't want to be noticed. I totally get it. It's just that—” Layla took a deep breath, struggled to keep pace. “I'm a huge fan,” she lied, surprised when Madison stopped and fixed those bright violet eyes right on hers.

“Are you?” she asked, as though she knew better.

Layla watched as a yellow Lab trotted past, pulling a kid with matching hair riding a skateboard with a surfboard tucked under his arm. “Well, yeah.” She cringed, knowing she didn't sound one bit convincing. Desperate to cover the flub, she said, “And I wanted to invite you to a party.”

Madison shook her head, spun on her heel, and stormed down the street.

“Nothing creepy, I swear,” Layla said, which only made it sound even creepier. God, she was totally blowing this. Why was she so freaking inept? “It's at Ira's. Ira Redman's.”

Madison turned to face her. “If Ira wants to invite me to a party, he knows how to reach me.”

Layla raised her hands in surrender. They'd gotten off to a bad start and she wanted, needed, to fix it before it got any worse. “Not at Ira's—at Jewel. One of Ira's clubs. I'm a promoter, and—”

Madison whirled on her, looking extremely annoyed. “Trust me, I know who you are. You're a small-time blogger who makes a living trashing celebrities.” Her voice was raised. People were starting to gather.

“That's not true!” Layla called as Madison started moving again, racing past a succession of parking meters and palm trees, the usual LA landscape. “Well, maybe it's partly true, but—”

“Look—you need to back off!” Madison swung around
just as Layla tripped over an uneven slab of sidewalk, spilling what remained of her coffee down the front of Madison's white tank top.

“What the—” Madison stared down at the mess, then back at Layla, her violet eyes wide, her expression a mixture of disbelief and outrage.

“I'm so sorry— I—” Layla came at her with a crumbled napkin, wanting to help sop up the stain, but someone had already alerted security to the poor A-list celebrity being harassed by the crazy girl who wouldn't back off.

“There a problem here?” A big brick of a cop stepped out of a storefront and inserted himself right between them.

“What? No!” Layla cried.

At the same time, Madison claimed, “Yes. She's been following me for blocks. Won't leave me alone. And when I asked her to back off, she tossed her coffee on me.”

The cop looked between the evidence dripping down the front of Madison's top, to the empty coffee cup in Layla's shaking hand.

“This true?”

“I wasn't stalking her!”

“Who said anything about stalking?” His eyes narrowed, as Layla shook her head and clamped her lips shut, refusing to say anything that might further incriminate her.

“You want to file a report?” The cop looked at Madison.

“Definitely.” She turned those widened eyes on his, as
she clutched her hand to her heart like she somehow feared for her life. “You'll be hearing from my lawyers.”

The cop nodded, watched her walk to her car. Once she was safely inside, he turned to Layla and said, “I'm going to need to see some ID.”