Abort! Abort! I really didn’t want Jay to witness my ability to bullshit so thoroughly, but the larger part of me really didn’t want him to meet the perfect Sienna Bailey, who was already straightening in her seat and brushing her long, blonde hair over her shoulder.
‘Ladies, how are we finding everything today?’ Jay flashed the most gorgeous grin, completely disarming any hot-blooded woman within a five-table radius. He had certainly never used it on me before, which was lucky as I already seemed to become a bumbling idiot around him at the best of times.
‘Amazing,’ Sienna almost purred; I glanced at her half-drunk water and the untouched biscuit and wondered what she had found so amazing. The LA air? That would be a first.
Excellent. Hey, listen, I’m going to send over some champagne. I’m sorry I can’t join, but hey, Abby’ – he turned to me, pointing – ‘we’ll catch up later, okay? And a huge congrats on closing the deal. My lips are sealed, but, man, party at your place,’ he said, with a parting wink.
It was official, Jay had lost his mind, and all I could do was blink, utterly confused, until Billie intervened.
‘Oh my God, you landed a deal? Abby, that is so amazing, congratulations!’
My eyes shifted to hers; had I missed something? Had everybody gone completely bonkers? The moment I turned to Sienna, who was sitting on the edge of her seat, her eyes wild, I realised what was going on.
‘What deal?’ she asked.
An air of satisfaction rolled over me, seeing her so utterly desperate to learn more. But she knew just as much as I did.
‘Look, I’m sworn to secrecy, and at this stage I have literally only just signed on the dotted line, so I’m keeping it on the down-low.’ Lies, lies, lies.
So much for me being all about the truth.
Sienna laughed, almost nervously. ‘Oh, come on, Abby, you can tell me. I am as silent as the grave.’
Suuuure you are.
‘Sienna, I would tell you in a heartbeat, but I’m bound by confidentiality.’
The hole Jay had dug was getting deeper and deeper and, had I not been loving every single minute of watching the secretive deal drive Sienna slowly insane, I would have had some reservations. I could see the cogs turning in her head.
Movie deal, TV deal, book deal? Wouldn’t she like to know.
‘So, who is the gorgeous man?’
‘Oh, that’s Jay, Abby’s special friend,’ Billie added.
My head spun around so fast.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was one thing to get carried away with a little white lie, but let’s not get fucking crazy.
‘Don’t you have work to do?’ I muttered under my breath.
Billie giggled. ‘Yeah, gotta keep the boss happy, hey?’ she grinned. ‘I’ll be back with your meals soon.’
I drew in a huge sigh of relief watching her walk away, but it was short-lived. I turned back to catch Sienna’s manic blue eyes. In four quick shunts, she moved her seat closer to me, leaning in as if to tell me a secret.
‘Oh my God, Abby, you’re doing alright for yourself,’ she said, her eyes shifting to where Jay stood at the cash register, engaged in conversation with the bar manager.
‘A secret deal and a hot man – looks like you’re living the dream.’ She said it in a way that tried to make out that she was happy, but there was a dead look in her eyes. ‘You’re such a surprise package.’ She sat back in her chair, assessing me with amused interest.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, unlike Billie, you’re kind of a closed book; you’re not online very much, you have, what, eighty-one Instagram posts? Your profile page on Facey hardly gets any traction, and have you ever tweeted in your life?’
I felt my spine involuntarily straighten. ‘Well, maybe I’m just a private person.’
Sienna scoffed. ‘Oh, please, Abby, you know that privacy is just for people with low self-esteem – what you’re doing is social suicide.’
I felt my insides twist at her words. What she was saying was every actor’s worst nightmare, the thought of fading into oblivion, of not being relevant anymore. Back home, I was relevant. I was on the cover of magazines, in the gossip columns. In many ways it was a curse, but the one thing it did do, the one thing I really hadn’t appreciated or felt until now, was that it put my name out there. But in LA, I was just one very small fish in a big ocean. Looking at Sienna’s ice-blue eyes, I could see she was the shark.
‘Listen, I’m just giving you some advice,’ she said, as if I should be grateful. ‘I just think if you have something, show, or tell.’ Her eyes once again strayed towards Jay. ‘If I had that I’d be screaming it from the rafters.’
I knew Sienna well enough to know what she was alluding to. All those pap snaps with her and Leon out and about were no accident. And he sure did feature on a few of her three thousand-odd ‘candid’ Insta pics, but that just wasn’t me. Not after what happened. Sure, I could lift my profile if I were to post a few happy snaps with a sexy mystery man abroad, but that wasn’t my style. Even if my eyes were lingering on Jay for a tad longer than I wanted.
Don’t even think about it, Abby – you’re already the scarlet woman.
‘Well, whatever your grand reveal is, make sure the hottie is in on it. He is going to look mighty fine on a red carpet.’
I tried to control the snort that wanted to escape. Jay on a red carpet? He would sooner die, of that I was sure.
Sienna had her head tilted slightly, her eyes still towards the bar. ‘It’s so strange … it’s almost like I know his face.’
I wanted to roll my eyes so bad; of course she would try that. Nothing was sacred. ‘Well, you’re a socialite, you probably crossed paths at some stage.’ Although I seriously doubted it; Jay didn’t exactly mingle with actors.
Sienna seemed troubled, struggling to place him.
‘Maybe he just has one of those faces,’ I said, trying to move the conversation along, wishing that we could just stop talking about him altogether.
‘I don’t think I would forget running into a man like that. It is annoying, he seems familiar but I just can’t put my finger on it.’
Mercifully her trance was broken the minute Billie appeared. ‘Grub’s up! One kale, and one chicken taco,’ she announced, plonking them in front of us. Billie took in our little huddle, Sienna now sitting so close that our elbows were almost touching.
‘Listen, um, Jay says he doesn’t mean to cut your lunch date short, but he has to leave by one,’ Billie said to me. ‘So if you want to get a ride to that thing of yours you’ll have to hurry …’
Billie looked at me intently, trying to communicate with her eyes.
‘That thing?’ I repeated.
She nodded her head slowly and I mirrored the movement, until finally the penny dropped.
‘Oh, right, that thing! Yes, of course, sure,’ I said, wincing and turning my attention to Sienna. ‘Sorry, I really have to eat and run.’
‘Oh, no worries, secret deals and things have to be seen to.’ Her words were laced with sarcasm; my rather intriguing life was simply eating at her insides, and I loved it. Billie was so right bringing me here; instead of going home depressed, I was going to leave so completely smug I could barely stand myself. I glanced at my watch and pretended to be disappointed that one o’clock would allow barely enough time to scoff down my lunch and hear Sienna’s enthralling story about her summer on a yacht off the coast of Croatia.
When Jay appeared at our side, jingling his keys, the relief that washed over me almost numbed the intense case of indigestion that I was battling. ‘You ready to go?’
Hell, yes, I was ready. So ready I was prepared to do a deal with the devil, and be whisked away in the devil’s black Mustang.