I was going to try my best to lie to myself and think he wasn’t already under there.
“There’s a hot man downstairs who looks pissed off,” Andre declared, walking back into my room after he’d left me to get ready. I’d heard him shouting from his “office” next to my bedroom. He must have been canceling photoshoots, ad campaigns, and whatever else I’d committed to for the next few months. “And I’ll say, he wears pissed off well.”
My stomach dropped. This was real, this was happening.
Of course, it started getting real the second I watched Salvador die.
But there was something final about the neatly packed bags on the ottoman at the end of my bed.
“Okay, I’ll be right down,” I told Andre, who, without asking, grabbed the bags.
Yet another thing the man was not paid for and had refused to do. He gave me a sad smile and left the room.
I turned to regard my reflection in the mirror. My hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of my neck, making my sharp cheekbones more prominent. I’d done my makeup out of habit more than anything. My natural freckles were covered with layers of La Mer foundation. My signature wing lined my eyes, and a vibrant red, which almost matched my hair, was slathered on my lips.
Despite what many publications said, it was my natural color. It was a random thing to be so controversial, but I was well known for refusing to cut or dye my hair for a role. I’d lose weight. Gain it—though not many directors had asked for that. Apparently, “no one wants to see a fat woman on screen. If they do, they’ve got those Bridget Jones movies,” a direct quote from one of the owners of the biggest studio in Hollywood. Yeah, men were assholes. But we knew that already.
This legend of my hair was tied to many reports of me being “difficult” or a “diva”—the two D words that men loved to paint on women who didn’t blindly take their orders. I had a few choice D words of my own for those men.
There were never any reports of the fact I’d happily worn wigs for various roles. Wigs that itched, made me break out in rashes and sweat profusely. Arguably much more uncomfortable than sitting in a hairdresser’s chair for a few hours.
But people didn’t want that story.
They wanted the bitch.
On the flip side, my hair was one of my signatures, the bright, thick waves something that had been replicated countless times over.
I hadn’t kept it to start a trend or various rumors.
I kept it because that bright red hair was the only thing I had in common with my father. My one and only tie to him.
Not what I said in interviews, of course.
My hands—nails painted in that same bright red—smoothed down my cashmere turtleneck. I hadn’t known the dress code for being spirited away to an unknown location so I wasn’t murdered before testifying in open court, but I figured all black was a safe bet. My cigarette pants were close cut, elegant, and comfortable for traveling.
The six-inch pointed black heels with the red bottom were not comfortable for traveling but you wouldn’t catch me in a flat shoe unless I was in a gym.
Most people would call that high maintenance, that I didn’t leave the house unless I was in one-thousand-dollar shoes.
But I didn’t care about the shoes themselves—okay, I cared a little, I was a woman.
I liked towering over the men who “directed” me. I was already tall and the extra six inches gave me an edge. Men didn’t like their women like that—they liked them small and vulnerable—which was why my romantic interest in every movie was usually on a step and creative camera work made me seem a lot smaller than I was.
People always commented on my height whenever they saw me in person.
In addition to the extra height from the heels, I liked the pain. It was a reminder. Kept me grounded—pardon the pun—so I hurt just like everyone else. That my position gave me nothing but more money and more people who knew my name. It seemed like a stupid thing to a regular person. But fame did something to you. When you had enough people treating you like a goddess, you couldn’t help but believe it, even a little. Sure, there were many celebrities with a core group of friends, family, and good values that managed to stay kind and humble. But those were few.
I didn’t have friends or family.
I had heels by Christian Louboutin.
They clicked against my marble floors as I made my way into the foyer. I hated it. Large. Echoing. Cold. Expensive.
It looked great in photos for Vogue, though.
Duke was standing with his back to me, staring at the large painting on the wall. It was the one rebellion in this place. The one thing that my expensive decorator had not picked out.
It wasn’t by a dead, famous artist. It wasn’t worth millions. It was a print that I’d found online. I’d had my assistant track down the artist and pay them to create it in a large canvas.
It was a woman in the ocean, wearing nothing but panties and a tee pulled over her head so her boobs were almost showing. Her face was covered and she was flipping off the camera.
I didn’t know why, but this woman hit me. She leapt off the canvas and commanded your attention. You couldn’t see her face. She didn’t want you to see that. She didn’t want you to see anything she didn’t. She was confident in herself. She was sexual without showing parts of herself that would’ve made this erotic.
I wanted to be this woman more than anything. And I’d never wanted to be anyone else before. Of course I couldn’t be this. But I could pay thousands for the art. I could look at her every day, reminding me what I was and what I’d never be.
It felt incredibly strange having a man like Duke stare at the painting so intensely. No, not a man like Duke. Just Duke.
The man who’d crept into my dreams every now and then.
The man who’d also appeared in my mind when it was late and I opened the top drawer of my nightstand to find some relief.
He turned around with the click of my heels. His eyes flickered over my body. There was no appreciation there, only a cold indifference that I pretended I didn’t see, didn’t feel all the way into my bones.
My eyes flickered over his body too. I did my best to mimic his expression—that’s what I was paid the big bucks for, after all—but I feared I fell short.
Because there was nothing cold nor indifferent in what I felt about the man in the tight white tee and faded jeans, with piercing blue eyes, perfect blond hair, and the square jawline that every actor in the industry would be jealous of.
This was man pure and simple.
And my body reacted violently, even in the midst of the drama.
“You good?” he asked, voice clipped.
Good?
I was about to leave everything I knew, my lavish life, my full schedule, my trainers, stylists, assistants and ever-present paparazzi. I was about to put my life in the hands of a man who made no effort to hide his dislike of me.
“I’m ready to go, if that’s what you mean,” I said, making sure to make my voice sharp. Bitchy. That was the only way I’d survive this thing with Duke.
His jaw ticked. I shouldn’t have noticed such subtleties in a man who was employed to protect me, but I did.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Sorry if I don’t lay out the red carpet.” His tone was mild, but it still hit its mark.