She turns and walks into the Asian-décor seating pit, plopping onto a sofa. “He is. And I admit it’s tempting.” She gazes around the room, her fingers brushing the soft leather under her hand. “This is tempting. But there are things I don’t want to give up, even for all of this.” I sit opposite her. “I’ve never been able to choose my own direction. My own future. What I wanted was assumed, based on other peoples’ opinions. My dad meant well, but meaning well isn’t really good enough, you know?”
I can’t follow her reasoning about wanting to study theatre instead of becoming a huge film star, but it’s easy enough to understand the motivation to direct her own destiny. “There’s only one problem with making all of your own decisions,” I say, and she waits for me to elaborate. “If you make a mistake, whether career, relationship or wardrobe-related,” I smile and she does, too, “it’s no one’s fault but your own. You take all of the responsibility, all of the consequences.”
She nods. “True.”
“So. Dinner. I vote for trying the chef. Like, soon.”
She laughs. “How can you be hungry enough to think about food again? I’d look like a side of beef if I ate like you do.”
I flex a bicep at her. “Are you saying I don’t look like a side of beef?”
***
The text from Brooke is almost exactly what I thought it would be—photos of her with Graham. But instead of the two of them out together, she’s standing on the stoop at his house, smiling up at him and running her fingers through his hair. And then they go inside. The accompanying article is all conjecture about what they were doing for the three hours and fifteen minutes she was there. There’s a perfect shot of her leaving the apartment with her Cheshire cat smile.
Me: So operation graham went as planned?
Brooke: His kid was there
Me: Um, what
Brooke: Shit
Me: He has a kid??? Calling you.
“Does Emma know? Of course she knows… what the hell, Brooke?” My head is spinning. I’m trying to keep my voice down since Emma is somewhere in the suite with nothing more than my flimsy bedroom door between us, but I’m pacing like crazy.
“Reid, you cannot say anything about this to anyone,” Brooke hisses.
“He knows he can’t keep this a secret right?”
“Of course, but you have to promise me—”
“I’m not going to say anything. He knows about our secret indiscretion, after all. That’s why you told him, isn’t it?” Obviously. It even makes a weird sort of sense. “What about your photographer flunky? No way would she not reveal this.”
She releases a sigh. “She doesn’t know and I’m not telling her—yet. I want the first public photos of Cara to be the three of us, together.”
I come to a solid stop. She has this more intricately planned out than I gave her credit for. “You are beyond frightening. You realize that, right?”
“What do you mean?” She knows exactly what I mean.
“Nothing.” Nothing except I’m glad she’s not manipulating me—without my knowledge. “Emma and I are in San Diego. Next week we do a couple of San Fran stations and Ellen, and the week after that Conan, and then the premiere. She’s a little too comfortable at the moment. I’m going to throw her off balance a bit, make sure she knows I’m still interested.”
“Meaning?”
“Brooke, you know I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Reid—don’t you f—”
Yeah, I don’t really need to hear that tirade.
Chapter 21
Emma
Over grilled ciabatta and brie, Reid asks me about Marcus. I admit that we were dating, and that he was correct in assuming I’d broken things off with him right before the disastrous prom night.
“Why’d you even go with him, then?” He tops off our wine glasses and sets the bottle back into the ice bucket. A chef arrived to make our dinner. She’s in the small gourmet kitchen, so we’re sitting close together on the sofa and talking quietly.
“I felt guilty.”
His mouth turns up on one side and he lowers his chin—a look that would have melted me not so long ago. “Go on.”
I shrug, concentrating on spreading the brie evenly over the surface of the bread. “It’s always hard to break things off with someone.”
He takes the cheese spreader from my hand when I’m done. “Why not wait until after his prom to do it, then? You gave him too much of an opportunity to be an ass**le, and he took it.”
My face warms. “I was worried that he was expecting… things to become more serious.” I glance up to see that he’s mulling over the back and forth that occurred between us. “I thought it was better to be honest up front.”
He laughs softly. “The honesty policy doesn’t always work out so well, huh?”
I purse my lips. “Well, actually, it did. I didn’t feel guilty any more after that. I knew from how he reacted that I’d made the right decision about him, even if it was a wretched night.”
My words apply to him last fall as well as they do to Marcus two weeks ago, and his eyes tell me he knows it.
“I am sorry, you know,” he says. I swallow and ignore it when his gaze dances to my mouth and back.
The server who arrived with the chef exits the kitchen and stops several feet away. “Please excuse me. Dinner is served.” He indicates the small table adorned with linen, china, and a romantic cluster of candles. I worry again that Reid arranged all of this while pretending that production was responsible, and the repetition of his apology from March does nothing to contradict that concern.