Seasoned agents, right! I’m sure the entire thing is just a publicity stunt. But I have to admit the idea is somewhat enticing, especially with the rumors I’ve heard on the circuit that Jeremy is gay. I like knowing the real scoop and this will certainly be the way to find out. Renee doesn’t wait for me to accept. She assumes I will do her bidding and continues talking.
“You’ll be Jeremy’s date for the Oscars and he’ll be yours for CeCe Goldberg’s post-Oscar charity party. That’s your cover, a budding romance and your charity work,” she says. “All the Roses have special charities they support. Yours is the Miller Children’s Home. CeCe Goldberg, as I’m sure you know, is not only a world renowned investigative reporter, she is also director Spiro Goldberg’s wife and quite active with children’s charities. You’ll be the celebrity co-host of the post-Oscar event for a new children’s home attached to Miller Children’s Hospital. Andrea Lowenstein will be the only one who knows your true reason for staying at Paradise Ranch. Jeremy will be only too happy to have you as his guest because he doesn’t want the rumors about his sexuality spreading and destroying his box office appeal. You have both the name and the, er, reputation to dispel any and all doubts the public may have. I’m sure he’ll be only too happy to stick to you like glue and show you all around Paradise Ranch, as well as the rest of L.A.”
I ignore the comment about my reputation and instead roll my eyes at the mention of Jeremy’s estate—Paradise Ranch, how nouveau riche.
“Has he hired extra security?” I ask.
Renee smiles. “You’re catching on, I see. As a matter of fact, he hasn’t. He says he doesn’t want his attacker to think he’s scared.”
Great. A wild-goose chase. But then, who else would get a shot at analyzing Hollywood’s bad boy? Oh, Renee Dalton-Sinclair is good, all right. She doles out just enough information to pique my curiosity and ensure that I am willing to undergo all kinds of crash courses in self-defense and investigation, then turns me loose and says it’s probably nothing at all.
“You know,” she says, “with your almost photographic memory and your graduate level course work in clinical psychology, you could be most useful to the Gotham Roses, should things go well with this assignment.”
Good old Renee, dangling that golden carrot in front of me. I can only become a permanent fixture in her elite undercover organization if I prove to be successful in my mission in Los Angeles. If I wind up blowing it, I’ll be useless to the Roses. Of course, I am not about to blow it; sneaking around spying into the secret lives of my fellow rich and famous sure beats attending boring theory courses in psychology at the New School. This is where the real fun is.
“What about the press?” I ask. “I mean, will they accept that Jeremy and I are an item? We’ve never been seen together in public before now.”
Renee smiles. “Oh, but you have. Andrea and I have taken care of that on both coasts. Just read In The Know. Rubi Cho’s mentioned the two of you at least three times in her gossip column for the New York Reporter this week. And Andrea’s had Jeremy’s publicist vehemently denying any blossoming romance between the two of you. That should be enough right there to spark a paparazzi feeding frenzy.”
When I wake up in the morning, I pack and prepare for the long trip to L.A. and my new action-packed life. As I walk out to Renee’s waiting limo, her fifteen-year-old daughter, Haley, comes running up behind me.
“Hey!” she calls. Then, when I keep walking, she says it again. “Hey!”
I stop and turn to look back over my shoulder, surprised because the little twit’s made a point of ignoring me for the entire time I’ve been a guest in her home. She’s standing there in her school uniform, looking like a runaway Playmate with her long, straight blond hair, her huge, gray eyes and that innocent, pouty mouth older women pay big bucks for at the plastic surgeon’s office.
I think she’s talking to the driver until she zeroes in on me and says, “Mind if I ride along to the airport?”
I figure it’s Marlena who’s garnered her interest so I say, “She bites.”
“What?”
That’s when I realize Haley hasn’t even noticed Marlena wrapped around my neck like a fur scarf.
“You need a ride to school?”
Haley shakes her head and starts walking toward the car like she owns it, which I suppose, technically, she does. She breezes past me, clambers into the back seat of the limo and before I can even sit down says, “Are you really Jeremy Reins’s girlfriend? So, what’s he like in bed?”
“What?”
I look at Renee’s princess daughter and know my mouth is hanging open. I reach forward, hit the button to slide the privacy glass up between us and the driver and then turn to give the little twit a piece of my mind.
“Listen, where I come from we don’t kiss and tell—and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell a kid like you about something like that! What is wrong with you?”
Haley leans back against the seat and looks at me and I realize she’s completely unfazed by my attempt to chastise her.
“You’re a prude, aren’t you?” she says, like it’s a matter-of-fact thing and not a slur on my good name.
“No,” I say, wishing Marlena would wake up and bite the little shit. “I am just wise enough to know when to keep my mouth shut.”
“Oh, come on!” Haley says, pouting.
“Does your mother know where you are?” I say, and immediately want to shoot myself for sounding like my own mother.
“Can I bum a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke,” I say, and realize, too late, that Haley is right in the middle of Mahler’s separation-individuation process and doesn’t really mean what she’s saying. So I remember my training and attempt to be therapeutic; after all, this is the first day of my new life.
“Haley, in order to break away from your mother and become your own person, it is perfectly normal for you to rebel and do things that your mother would disapprove of,” I say. “But smoking will kill you.”
“Oh, blow me!” Haley says. Then she sits up and starts rummaging through the drawers of the wet bar until at last she retrieves a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Don’t even think about lighting one of those things!” I command. “Marlena is allergic to smoke.”
Haley gives Marlena a look, like she’s trying to size her up, and finally tosses the pack of unfiltered cigarettes back into the drawer.
“What is he like?” she asks, reverting to Jeremy.
“Spoiled,” I answer.
“Does he love you?”
I give up and decide to enjoy my new role as Jeremy Reins’s fictitious girlfriend. I smile slyly and raise my eyebrows, and then lean in close, like I’m actually going to share a secret with this hellion.
“He’s mad for me,” I say, and giggle. “He fills my tub every night with champagne heated to a perfect ninety-eight degrees, and then he floats rose petals on the water, and not the red ones, either. He knows I abhor red roses, so he has pale yellow and orange ones flown in from his farm in Florida.”
Haley’s eyes are practically popping out of her head and I continue, completely into the lie now.
“He once took a slim silver dagger and sliced a thin line down the center of his chest. When it bled he looked at me, with tears in his eyes….”
“Because it hurt?” she says, interrupting.
I shake my head. “No, it was the depth of his emotional attachment to me that made