TWO
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Ellery’s Bestie Says YES! New Arrival On The Way!! BF Adam is THRILLED!
“For crying out loud,” Doug Belford muttered.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the guy behind the counter of the mini-mart watching him sleepily. Only the orange polyester vest the guy was wearing over his grungy t-shirt said he actually worked there; for all Doug knew, he might have wandered in off the street and decided to play with the cash register for a while.
‘Play’ being the operative word, since he didn’t seem entirely sure how to ring up Doug’s bottle of iced tea.
“You want that too? That paper?” the guy asked with a sigh.
“No,” Doug said.
“Oh. Thought you did.”
“No.”
“Okay, then.”
The guy pulled in a deep breath that seemed to strain his chest muscles. He did look a little pale, Doug noticed, and he sounded as if his sinuses were mostly plugged. Just a cold, Doug hoped. The flu wasn’t something he wanted any part of, not now that Amanda was finally giving him some responsibilities at the agency that went beyond playing run-and-fetch. Thankfully, the counter put some distance between him and Orange Vest, and Orange Vest hadn’t yet touched the bottle of iced tea.
He was looking at the tabloid, as if he expected Doug to change his mind about buying a copy.
“Just the tea,” Doug said.
“Okay, then.”
They’d probably negotiated the Paris Peace Accords in less time than it had taken him to buy that one bottle of peach tea, Doug thought as he made his escape from the store. It had taken so long that he’d actually been tempted to buy a copy of the tabloid so he could see how the writers had danced around saying straight out that Ellery Cooper was pregnant.
He was pretty sure the ‘new arrival’ the headline was crowing about was another dog—Ellery had two already, and talked about them as if they were her kids—but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure.
Not that he really needed to. Ellery Cooper wasn’t one of Amanda’s clients, although one of her co-stars was. Still, Doug was what Amanda insisted on referring to as a Junior Agent, poised to someday (soon?) become someone who actually negotiated deals and put together talent packages. Knowing all the latest celebrity scuttlebutt would help, he figured, even if it was fabricated.
Even if it bordered on being an outright lie.
He felt bad for Ellery as he strolled back to his car, working the lid off the bottle of tea so he could take a sip. She wasn’t just tabloid fodder; she was someone the paparazzi had started to pursue relentlessly. Which was, of course, supremely annoying to Amanda, because the paps didn’t have nearly as much interest in her client, Katie Dunn. More than a few times, Amanda had had to call in some favors and ask for some new ones so that all three of the stars of Roomies would be photographed and interviewed at red carpet events, not just Ellery.
This town, Doug thought with a groan.
Of the three of them, Dana was supposed to be the best actress, the one who could get a laugh or an ‘Awww!’ just by tweaking her expression or moving her hand. And Katie was genuinely funny, always willing in the classic Lucille Ball sort of way to look foolish if it helped the story. As time went on, Katie had grown more and more confident, and now, near the end of the show’s second season, the writers knew they could call on her to do almost anything.
To Doug’s mind, Ellery was the weak link. But she was the most beautiful of the three, so she got the most attention—which could certainly advance your career, but it was also a royal pain in the neck. He’d discovered that himself a few years ago. Up till then, it had never occurred to him that he resembled not one but four moderately well-known actors, and that he would be mistaken for at least one of them on pretty much a daily basis.
Like right now, for instance.
“DUDE,” said the guy sitting behind the wheel of a convertible parked just outside the store. He’d been focused on his phone, but now his eyes were on Doug, and he was starting to climb out of the car. “Oh, wow! Oh, man!” he gushed, still moving, phone in hand. “I can’t believe this! I love your movies, man. I can’t believe I ran into you like this.”
Almost four years of this, Doug thought.
He’d learned a long time ago that it was almost useless to deny that he was That Actor. He could try, but people generally thought he was just trying to be left alone. Or that he was a total jerk, someone who didn’t appreciate his fans. After being yelled at half a dozen times, he’d decided it was better to play along, to help build a positive reputation for the celebrity in question, even if the celebrity in question actually was kind of a jerk.
He seldom had to sign autographs (which really seemed to be committing a kind of fraud, and always made him wonder if he could be prosecuted for it), thank goodness, but the selfies…
Smiling, he let the guy wrap an arm around him and snap a picture.
“Thanks, man!” the guy said, his day clearly made. “Oh, wow. This is amazing. Wait’ll I tell Jeanine.”
“Tell her I said hi,” Doug replied.
“She’ll go insane. I swear.”
“Hopefully not. Wouldn’t want anybody to get hurt.”
The guy blinked at him, baffled. “What? Oh. Yeah, I guess not. Hey, man, thanks. I appreciate it.”
“No problem,” Doug said.
And he thought: Yup. Still not the guy in those movies.
He’d done a few commercials and some background work as an extra, but he certainly was not the star of that superhero franchise. His friend Casey, after peering at him for a while, had agreed, “Yeah, I think I can see it,” but Doug couldn’t accept that he really looked enough like any of those four actors to make people cross a busy street to talk to him. He supposed it was a case of people seeing what they wanted to see—trying to improve a pretty dull day by exchanging a few words with a celebrity, hoping that some of the Hollywood glitter and glamour would rub off on them.
That was kind of sad, really. But in a town like this, you kind of had to take what you could get.
Like being a glorified errand boy at the age of 32.
He was halfway home when he spotted a face he recognized, one that wasn’t a case of mistaken identity, and he hurried his pace a little to catch up with her.
It was Katie Dunn, who lived just a few blocks away, heading back to her car with a small bouquet of flowers in one hand and her keys in the other. She looked amazingly pretty, he thought, with her hair pulled up in a simple ponytail, dressed in jeans and a soft yellow top—completely different from the way she looked on Roomies.
For the show, her hair was always tortured into some ridiculous style, sometimes with streaks of red or purple, and Wardrobe always dressed her like some whacked-out 14-year-old skater girl. That was true to the character, of course, but it had nothing to do with Katie’s actual personality.
“Hey,” he said when he caught up to her. “Katie?”
She frowned a little, and he wondered if she knew who he was. They’d never run into each other out on the street before, just in the office or at some event or other.
Maybe she thought he was one of those actors.
“Doug Belford,” he said. “From Amanda’s office?”
“Oh,” she said, and her voice squeaked a little. “Sure. Okay. I didn’t—I’m sorry. Doug.”
“I get it. I’m not in my natural habitat. Sorry if I scared you.”
Stupid, he thought. Chasing after a woman who was alone, in a town full of freaks and weirdos. It was bad enough when strangers cornered him, and he knew how to defend himself.
Cautiously, he took a step back, putting a little more distance between them. “I just—I wondered if you’d seen—”
“About Ellery?”
“Yeah.”
She groaned and held the flowers a little closer to her chest, as if they’d protect her somehow. “It’s awful. My mother told me about it. I mean, if they knew how much it hurts her, you’d think they’d—” She cut herself off and shook her head, making her ponytail bob back and forth. “But I guess not. It’s all about the money, isn’t it? Selling more copies of their stupid paper, no matter how much they have to lie to do it.”
“It stinks. I know. I thought maybe I’d give you a heads-up, so you wouldn’t be going in to work tomorrow unprepared.”
That wasn’t really the truth.
Doug had met Ellery Cooper only briefly, and while he thought it was pretty heinous of the tabloids to keep inventing things about her, you had to admit it was something that went on all the time. And if you came right down to it, the pregnancy and engagement stories were a lot less offensive than the ones talking about so-and-so’s ‘Painful Last Days’, as if the person in question was on the verge of taking their last breath.
It was all part of life in Hollywood. Had been for a long time.
No, he’d stopped Katie because he wanted a chance to say hello. Wanted a chance, even a brief one, to admire those gorgeous blue eyes and those full lips. The magazine articles all called Ellery the most attractive one of the three Roomies, but as far as Doug was concerned, that title belonged to Katie. Without the weird hairdos and the skater-girl outfits, she was…
Like a field of wildflowers, he thought. Simple and beautiful.
But he’d been warned over and over: No fraternizing with the clients. It complicated things, everyone said, and Amanda had no patience for it. At the agency, they were there to do a job, not to use their position as a way into someone’s bedroom. The most he was allowed to do was chat. Maybe hold someone’s coat and purse while they were being photographed.
Be an errand boy.
“I don’t want to keep you,” he said quietly. “I just wanted to be sure you knew. So you’d be prepared.”
“Thanks.”
She was smiling, but she didn’t look grateful.
“I’ll let you get back to it,” he said. “Sorry if I bothered you. Let me know if there’s anything I—we—you know, anyone at the office can do. If we can help in any way. Ellery’s not our client, but we’re always glad to help. Smooth things over in any way we can.”
You’re babbling.
“Thanks,” Katie said again. “There probably isn’t, but… thanks.”
He stepped back once more and let her walk the rest of the way to her car. Watching her get in made him feel like a creeper, so he quickly turned his back and walked away, with no real idea where he ought to go next.