Beautiful Liars (3 page)

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Authors: Kylie Adams

BOOK: Beautiful Liars
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Emma grabbed her BlackBerry and dashed downstairs to the newsstand on the corner. The teaser headline
ONE SWEET LITTLE MELON
made her stomach do a revolution as she pushed a dollar into the attendant's hand and walked away, lost in the business of tearing through the smelly newsprint for the actual story.
And there it was. Dean Paul on a stretch of beach in the Hamptons, his body impossibly toned and cut as he cradled Cantaloupe in both arms while a bikini-clad Tilly looked on adoringly.
The impact of the image hit her like a shot to the solar plexus. It was as if someone had stolen the life she always dreamed about, then staged a photograph just to torturously twist the knife.
Her BlackBerry vibrated, followed by the chime of an incominge-mail. She glanced down to see a message from her agent, Adam Moss. Finally,
The Beehive
deal was negotiated. Contracts were being drawn up. A show prep package would be sent by messenger tonight. She was due on the set tomorrowmorning.
A terribly nervous feeling swamped over Emma as she meandered back to her Upper East Side apartment by muscle memory alone. It was the weirdest sensation. She felt estranged from her own life, detached from almost everything.
When she got back, Garrison was in the same position—marooned on her Ralph Lauren mahogany sleigh bed like a beached whale.
“It's official,” Emma said quietly. “I'll be cohosting
The Beehive
.”
Garrison glanced up at her curiously. “You sound surprised.”
“It's strange,” Emma murmured. “Part of me was hoping the negotiations would fall apart. If this doesn't work, I'll be lucky to end up on
Dancing with the Stars
.”
“The show's going to be a hit,” Garrison assured her beforeturning his attention back to the Wall Street talk on CNBC.
She gave him a probing look.
“What?”
“I'm concerned about Sutton.”
“We've been over this,” Garrison said impatiently. “The tabloids are bullshit. I didn't break up with her by FedEx letter.We ended things on good terms.”
His assurance mollified her to a degree.
“But she's difficult as hell on her best day,” Garrison went on. “And she might decide to act like a cunt just because you're with me now.”
Emma admonished him with narrowed eyes. “I don't like that word.”
“Cunt? It's a great word.”
“It's offensive.”
“Depends on the context,” Garrison argued. “If I was fucking you and told you how much I loved your cunt, I bet you'd love the sound of the word.”
Emma shook her head. “You're disgusting.”
Garrison reached out for her arm and pulled her toward him. “Am I? Fix me another bourbon and come back to bed. I'll show you how disgusting I can be.”
Emma went through the motions. She played barmaid. She submitted to his lusty kisses and passionate embraces. But her heart was simply not into it. She wondered if it ever would be again ... with him ... or with anyone else.
THE IT PARADE
BY
J
INX
W
IATT
 
Fill in the Blanks
 
Everybody's heard of the poor little rich girl. Well, what about the poor little rich boy? A certain trust fund baby has been put on notice by his fed-up parents that the open credit line days are over. What's an accomplishedsociety boy and aspiringscreenwriter to do? Go to work! But at the end of the day, his family might have been better off just extendinghis allowance. Why? They prefer a low profile for their “confirmedbachelor” son. But he's scored an attention-getting job that insiders are saying will make him a star. That, coupled with his unlikely new BFF, should make poor little rich boy the talk of the town.
3
Finn
“Her poopie doesn't smell bad at all. Isn't that amazing? I mean, have you ever heard of a baby whose poopie didn't stink?” As she waited for an answer, Tilly Lockhart transferred Cantaloupe to the waiting arms of her Russian-born nanny, Veronika.
Finn Robards just stood there, appreciative of the child's uncanny beauty but not convinced that Jo Malone would somedayconsider concocting a new fragrance based on the baby's shit.
“Well?”Tilly demanded. “Have you ever heard of that?”
“Oh, I thought you were speaking rhetorically,” Finn said. “Am I really supposed to answer?”
Tilly rolled her eyes skyward and focused on the nanny. “Veronika, I think Cantaloupe should spend six minutes in her bouncy seat and then take a nice nap.” Suddenly, she halted, her violet eyes blazing with anger as she leaned in to sniff the immigrant caregiver. “You're still smoking!”
Veronika's face turned pink with embarrassment. “Mrs. Lockhart ... I ... no smoke near—”
Tilly made quite a show out of removing Cantaloupe from the woman's arms. “I told you to quit! I was very clear about that!”
Veronika turned desperately toward Finn, who had no choice but to look away. After all, what say did he have in the matter?
Tilly cradled Cantaloupe close to her chest and instantly recoiled. “Ugh! Now she needs a bath and another outfit! I can smell your icky smoke on her!”
Veronika started to cry.
“Why are
you
crying,Veronika? Cantaloupe smells like an ashtray, and now I have to reschedule my workout with Paul, which he'll still charge me for, by the way. So expect that to be deducted from your salary this week, assuming you last until the end of it.”
“Please, Mrs. Lockart ... no fire me ...”
“I'll have to discuss that with Mr. Lockhart,” Tilly said primly. “But he's going to be very upset about this. Now please go shower in the guest bathroom. I'll find you somethingelse to wear, so you don't reek of lung cancer. But it'll have to be from Mr. Lockhart's closet, because you're much too large to fit into any of
my
clothes. Honestly,Veronika, this is despicable. I can't have a drug addict caring for my little angel.”
Bowing her head in shame,Veronika disappeared from the room.
“Can you believe that?” Tilly hissed. “I think Dean Paul will insist that we fire her.”
Finn fought back a laugh. As long as Veronika had not put out a cigarette in Cantaloupe's eye, then her job was safe where Dean Paul was concerned.
“We probably
should
let her go,”Tilly went on. “Her sister was tricked into becoming a sex slave in Germany, and Veronika spends half her days on the Internet searching for her. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?” She transferredCantaloupe over to Finn. “Go to your Uncle Finn, darling, so Mommy can text Mr. Paul.”
Finn accepted the precious cargo with great ease, his heart big to bursting as Cantaloupe smiled and giggled at him. Kissing the top of her head and cuddling the bundle close, he could smell nothing but the fresh scent of Bulgari baby wash. The little tot carried not so much as a hint of smoke odor.
Tilly's nimble fingers worked over the BlackBerry keypad.“How will I ever get back to my pre-baby weight with these kind of interruptions?”
In response, Finn simply cast a wayward glance. Standing here just six months after Cantaloupe's birth, Tilly was once again a size zero. But she preferred a state of being slightly less than that. To have a size zero garment taken in a bit by a seamstress gave her an incredible sense of pride.
Tilly completed her text and looked up, smiling at the way Cantaloupe was playing with Finn's nose. “She's such a flirt.” One beat. “So did you just stop by to see the most amazing child in the world?”
“That's a bonus.Actually, Dean Paul and I are going to the gym.”
Tilly shook her head. “He's on his way to L.A.”
“They cancelled the story.”
Tilly rolled her eyes. “The wife
is
always the last to know.” “They're slashing the
Hollywood Live
budget left and right. He really sounds worried about his future there.”
Tilly nodded vaguely. “What am I going to do about Veronika?”
Finn scolded himself for raising any subject that did not directly orbit around the life and primary concerns of Tilly Lockhart. “I hear everyone talking about that doctor in Mount Vernon. He's cured smokers with three-pack-a-day habits in just a few sessions. Maybe you should send her to him.”
Tilly waved a hand, dismissing the notion altogether. “Oh, she could never afford that.”
“But you could,” Finn countered. “How badly do you want her to quit?”
Tilly considered the question. “You know my luck with household staff. The second I make that investment, she'll leave us for another family.” Tilly set her jaw in a firm line. “No, she'll just have to do it cold turkey.”
“Good luck with that,” Finn remarked.
Tilly reached out to repossess Cantaloupe just as Dean Paul bounded into the room, dragging wheeled Tumi luggage behind him.
He kissed the top of his daughter's head and gave Tilly a quick, passion-deprived peck on the lips.
“What happened?”Tilly asked, her voice full of faux alarm.
“They cut the on-set story from the budget. The next Angelina Jolie movie!” He shook his head. “This show is fucked.”
“Well, I've got worse news,” Tilly put in. “Veronika is still smoking!”
Dean Paul looked blankly at Tilly, then over to Finn. “Give me a few minutes to change clothes.” He disappeared into the master bedroom.
Tilly watched him go. “He never pays attention to anythingI say. It's ridiculous. Sometimes I think I married a twelve-year-old.”
“Have you talked to Simone?” Finn asked, desperate to change the subject. He would be getting an earful from Dean Paul in a matter of moments, and he did not want to endure
Scenes from Another Troubled Lockhart Marriage
in surround sound.
Tilly sighed dramatically. “She kept me on the phone for hours last night fretting about this new girl they've added to your show. What's her name—Elsie?”
“
Emma
,” Finn corrected, giving Tilly a look that let her know the amnesia act was not ready for prime time. He wanted to add, “You remember her. She's your husband's ex-girlfriend.” But he resisted.
“Whatever.Anyway, Simone is a wreck, because she wants to be the only young pretty girl on set, and now she has some competition. I finally hung up on her. I had my own crisis to deal with. Maria did the midweek shopping and brought home produce that was
not
organic. She tries to get away with going to the dodgier market just to escape an extra three blocks of walking. I thought Hispanics had a stronger work ethic than that.”
“Didn't she just have surgery on her hip?” Finn asked.
“A little walking is good for recovery,”Tilly insisted. “That's what my trainer says, and he's also a physical therapist.” She kissed Cantaloupe on the cheek with a loving smack. “It's so hard to find decent staff. Sometimes I think it'd be easier to do everything myself.”
Dean Paul emerged in full workout gear and started for the stairs of the Tribeca triplex that had been a wedding gift from Tilly's parents. “I'll be back in a few hours.”
“Don't forget,” Tilly called out. “We have that thing tonight.”
“What thing?” His tone failed to mask his annoyance.
“The sponsors dinner for the Pompe disease fund-raiser. I'm on the host committee. Remember?”
Finn waved good-bye to Tilly and rushed to catch up with Dean Paul, who had gone bounding out the door, down the sidewalk, and onward to Crunch.
“Wait up!” Finn huffed. “Jesus.”
Dean Paul slowed down just enough for Finn to speed walk to his side.
“You've got problems with your job and your wife,” Finn cracked. “Who would've ever thought you'd end up sharing the life of every middle-class man in America?”
“Shut up, twat.” Dean Paul cracked a faint smile and marched on, saying nothing else, even as he led Finn through a brutal chest and abdominals workout.
When it was over, Dean Paul moodily stripped down to his shorts and made a beeline for the steam room, where he remained silent until an older gentleman exited, leaving them alone, at which point he announced, “It's over, dude.”
Finn glanced up. “The show, the marriage, or both?”
Dean Paul sighed heavily, rearranging his body to lay flat on the tile. “For now, just the show. The numbers suck. Our main New York affiliate just switched our time slot to three o'clock in the goddamn morning.”
Finn was hardly surprised.
Hollywood Live
was a syndicated infotainment program gunning for the same audience as
Entertainment Tonight
,
Access Hollywood
,
The Insider
,
Extra
, and
E! News Daily
. Every media analyst in the business had called this months ago, but Dean Paul never bothered to read the trades, so his own show's failure was breaking news to him.
Dean Paul laughed a little.
“What?” Finn wondered.
“No, it's just ... between us, you're the one with the betterjob now. I never would've called that one.”
“We haven't even seen our first airdate yet.”
“Some success is inevitable, man.”
Finn sat there basking in the wet heat, resting his tight muscles, and hoping like mad that Dean Paul was right. After all, success would mean financial independence. And for once, he needed it.
Since graduating from Brown University, he had been littlemore than a dilettante—a bit of sailing, a stab at modeling, a halfhearted foray into screenwriting. The trust fund from his family's real estate fortune allowed for such indulgences.
But then his parents entered some kind of late-life crisis that prompted them to save the world, or at the very least, Louisiana and Mississippi. Hurricane Katrina conjured up the inner crusading philanthropist dormant within them. The Robards not only donated mountains of money, they also flew to the most heavily damaged sites to make certain that the funds were being spent appropriately.
And then, fearing they might have raised another Hilton sister, his parents zeroed in on their social gadfly son and suddenlyordered him to work for a living. In the beginning, Finn stubbornly insisted that he was a writer. But when his father demanded to read some of his work and Finn could only produce thirty pages of a screenplay that he had been toiling over for years, it became clear to even Finn that he was not, in fact, a writer.
Luckily,
The Beehive
opportunity had come about quite organically. Finn was drunk on frozen Cosmos at G Lounge and holding court on everything from Tom Cruise to George Bush when a man slipped him a business card and said that he could make him the gay Kelly Ripa.
“If that means I get to sleep with Mark Consuelos, then I'm very interested,” Finn had replied. The following morninghe called Jay Lufkin, met with a series of executives over the next several days, and received an offer to join the show before he had even secured professional representation. It was funny. The entire process of landing the job had been easier than not writing a screenplay.
The steam jets hissed into action.
“Have you heard from Lara?” Dean Paul asked.
Finn nodded. “She's doing great.” Lara Ward was a significantex-girlfriend of Dean Paul's, Finn's best friend, and now happily married to a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, where her event planning firm, Regrets Only, was doing blockbuster business. The void of her departure had somehow fused a friendship bond between Finn and Dean Paul that continued to surprise both of them.

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