FIFTEEN

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

They were right: the layout in Trend was fantastic. Even though Katie could see everything on the website, Amanda made sure she got a copy of the magazine first thing on the morning it came out, and she paged through it with wobbling fingers, hardly able to believe that she was the woman in those photographs.

The only thing that disappointed her was that it wasn’t Doug who delivered it. It was one of the gofers from Reign, a college-age kid Katie couldn’t remember ever having seen before.

“That’s you, huh?” he said with what looked like curiosity. “In the magazine?”

“Hard to believe?”

She’d expected someone to come over (okay, she’d expected it to be Doug), so she’d gotten up before first light and had spent a while getting ready, trying to look casual but polished. The result, she hoped, looked like the outfit, hair and makeup you’d expect from A Rising Young Star at Home. A million times better than the scruffy condition Doug had found her in at her parents’ place the day of the photo shoot, but there were still light years of difference between this Katie and the one in the pages of Trend.

The kid considered her for a moment, then shrugged expressively. “I guess. I mean, you don’t look like you do on TV, either.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Different, I guess.”

She couldn’t press him any harder than that. Even though he worked for Amanda, she couldn’t imagine he spent much time looking at Trend. The job was probably a fill-in thing between semesters of school. If she had to guess, she’d say his ultimate goal was to work for someone like Hew Hayes, someone he could claim to be buds with. Someone who’d impress his friends and classmates.

“Well,” Katie said. “Thanks for bringing it over.”

“No prob.”

And off he went, leaving Katie to curl up on the couch and page through the magazine, becoming a little more breathless with each new photo she examined. Even before the photo shoot, she’d known Stein was talented, but this layout…

Of the three of them, Ellery had always been The Pretty One. It was a little conceited of her, but Katie couldn’t help thinking that, in these pictures at least, she was suddenly The Beautiful One.

That almost shorted out her brain.

Calls came in from almost everyone who knew her phone number: her parents, her brothers, her friend Denise and several other friends from high school, one of her teachers, people from acting class here in L.A. Only Tony, her favorite scene partner from class, had seen the magazine itself, since it wasn’t available in Twin Falls. Everyone else had seen only the website, and Katie reminded herself to send a stack of copies home to her parents so they could share them with friends.

She wasn’t on the cover, which would make picking up some copies at the nearest newsstand somewhat less embarrassing. Still, she wondered if she could do it without blushing.

Finally, when the phone fell silent, she thought she’d have a little time to herself before the car came to pick her up for the Tonight show, something she still wasn’t prepared for. Being quizzed about that fashion layout by her friends was one thing; it was a whole other thing to be interviewed by the top-rated late-night talk show host, someone she’d admired for years.

Then the phone rang again.

Name Unavailable, it said on the little screen. Even though Katie was careful about giving out this number (she had another phone for business purposes), and the people she gave it to were aware that they should keep it private, every so often a call slipped through.

“Hello?”

“Katie, darlin’. This here is Roy Alan Parkes.”

It definitely was. She’d know that voice anywhere, and her heart jolted in her chest before he’d even finished introducing himself. Almost as quickly, her mind went off the rails and began to squeal at her the way she and Denise used to squeal over the latest pictures of Leo DiCaprio, twenty years ago.

Roy Alan Parkes????

One of the biggest names in Hollywood. Chosen every single year as one of the sexiest guys alive, he’d climbed from doing tiny bit parts in movies and TV to having his own series, and now he was doing movies that were box office gold. He’d left TV in his rearview mirror.

And he was calling her?

“Hi,” she squeaked.

“Saw you in the magazine, there, darlin’. I was havin’ coffee with my manager, and he said, ‘Roy Alan, you gotta see this.’ Gotta say, darlin’, it pretty much blew my socks off.”

“Thank you.” Another squeak.

“Never expected that. I’ve seen you there on your show, with the crazy hair and the little skirts. This here’s a whole other side of you.” Before she could squeak a third time, he went on. “Look here, now. We’ve got a movie lined up for next month. Shoots down in Fort Worth, around that area. Nice little script. I’m thinking we’ve got a part in there that’d be just right for you. What would you say to that?”

 

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

 

“No,” Amanda said.

That was not at all the response Katie had expected. And there wasn’t any wiggle room in it, not even a crack in which Katie could try to insert a protest. It was one of the flattest, most definitive refusals she’d ever heard in her life.

“You want to know why, I suppose.”

“I… yes?”

She supposed she knew why. Roy Alan, in addition to being one of the hottest names in town, was one of the biggest womanizers ever to walk the planet Earth. Every time he hit the red carpet, he had a stunningly beautiful woman on his arm, usually someone half his age. He seemed to be engaged to someone different at least once a year, and while some of that might be a tabloid invention, at least three of those engagements had been for real.

The thing was, none of those women ever had a single bad thing to say about him. Their breakups had all been amicable at worst and ‘He’ll always be one of my best friends’ at best.

“Movie role,” Katie sputtered. “He offered me a movie role. He’s doing a movie in Fort Worth.”

“I’m aware.”

“It could be—”

“This isn’t the role you want. It’s dusty, darling. Gritty. You haven’t earned the right to be gritty yet.”

That stung as much as if Amanda had reached through the phone and slapped her, and Katie had to blink back tears, glad that this was just a phone call and not an in-person meeting. If Amanda had been standing in the room with her, she wasn’t at all sure she’d be able to maintain her composure.

“Could I at least read the script?” she managed to stammer.

“If you like. I can send it over. But trust me. This isn’t the right time for something like that.”

She could go against Amanda’s wishes, she supposed. All she had to do was call Roy Alan back and set up a meeting. It wasn’t as if Amanda Reign owned her, after all. She had every right to make her own decisions, and Roy Alan’s earthy drawl kept playing in her head as if it were on a continuous loop.

“The Times wants to talk you tomorrow,” Amanda said.

“They… what?”

“An interview. Are you available at eleven? A preliminary phone chat. They’ll schedule a sit-down and some photographs. Feature-length, not one of those little filler pieces.”

“I—I suppose so.”

“Don’t worry about Roy Alan. I’ll talk to him.”

Of course she would. And they’d probably end up having drinks somewhere.

Call him yourself, said the voice in her head. After all, he called you. He didn’t call Amanda.

She could be the one having drinks with him.

Admiring that chiseled jaw and those mischievous eyes, the ones that brought women in to see his movies in droves. She could be enjoying that wry chuckle, and listening to his stories about his childhood in west Texas. Amanda wanted her to be a big name, and wouldn’t she be, if she was Roy Alan’s next girlfriend, the one floating on his arm at the next red carpet event?

Denise would die.

Then she realized what Amanda was saying. You don’t want to be just one more of Roy Alan Parkes’ exes. You don’t want to be just a name on a list, even if it comes after you’ve been the one he wants to look at. The one he wants to kiss.

This stupid town.

“I should get ready,” she told Amanda, glad that there was only a little bit of a wobble in her voice. “The car—”

The car wouldn’t be there for another two hours, but she was anxious to get off the phone. If she was going to be at all coherent for an interview that would be seen by millions of people, she needed to get away from Amanda for a while. Away from any thoughts of Roy Alan Parkes.

She needed to focus. Relax. Breathe.

“I’ve got your best interests at heart, sweetie,” Amanda said in a tone that was, for her, somewhat gentle. “We’re going to find you a movie role that’s the perfect fit. Believe me when I say that.”

“I do.”

“Good. Now, go get a nibble to eat.”

 

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

 

By the time Doug arrived, she wasn’t sure she remembered what being coherent was. She’d spent those couple of hours feeling disappointed, angry, elated, exhausted, relieved, petrified… If there was an emotion human beings could feel, she’d felt it, and then some, and it had left her feeling hollow and uncooperative.

“What went wrong?” Doug asked.

He’d come upstairs to get her, as was his habit. He was too old-school to want her to come down to the car unescorted, he’d told her. This was his job, after all. Looking after her.

“Roy Alan Parkes offered me a part in his movie.”

“I know.”

“Amanda says I can’t do it.”

“I know that too.”

At least he seemed apologetic about it. Nothing in his tone said he felt like her even considering the role was a stupid thing to do. What he thought, or felt, about Roy Alan Parkes, she had no idea, but surely he was aware that millions of people saw those movies.

And… gritty? A character role? A complete 180 from Cassie.

“I want to do it,” she blurted.

Doug hesitated for a moment, looking at Katie’s favorite chair rather than at Katie herself. “No, you don’t,” he said softly. “Amanda’s right: the timing is all wrong. I don’t know that it’ll ever be right.”

“Have you read the script?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it any good?” But that was a stupid question. If Roy Alan was doing the movie, of course the script was good. He might be stunningly handsome, and 0ff-the-charts charismatic, but he had a brain in his head. He didn’t take roles just for the money, or because he was bored with sitting around. “I know it’s good,” Katie insisted. “It’s going to be a good movie. I know that. You know that.”

“I’ll take you to see it when it comes out. To the premiere, if you want.”

“Because Amanda will agree to that.”

“I don’t know that for sure.”

Suddenly angrier than she’d been for a good long while, Katie shook her finger at him as if he were an uncontrollable toddler, then realized what she was doing and jerked her hand back.

“You know, I can make my own decisions.”

He pulled in a deep breath. He looked tired now, and he hadn’t when he came in. “I know it’s frustrating,” he told her. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to have other people tell you what to do all the time. Amanda runs me around like a wind-up doll. I’m on call pretty much 24/7.”

It was that tired look in his eyes that got to her, she would think later on.

“I keep wanting to tell her, ‘You’re not the boss of me,’” she said. “Because she’s not. I mean, I appreciate everything she does for me. I absolutely do. I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am if it weren’t for her. But—”

“You really don’t want to work with Roy Alan Parkes, Katie.”

“But I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Because you want me for yourself?”

That startled him enough that he jerked back a step. He seemed to do that a lot, maybe because she kept surprising him. That gave her a small sense of satisfaction, that although he kept parroting what Amanda wanted him to say, she could still surprise him. Could still create that spark of wonder in his eyes. She saw it again now, and it sent a rush of warmth through her when he didn’t blink it away.

“Because I’m here to take care of you,” he said. He probably intended to sound professional, but it didn’t quite hit the mark.

“Because that’s your job.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Because that’s my job.”