Small Town Girl (29 page)

My eyes scanned the document for a
number, and when I finally saw it, it was all I could do not to pass out.
Hudson had spent $50,000 on my ring. Some quick math told me I’d be walking out
of there with $40,000.

“So that will be forty thousand going
back on the Amex,” the salesman said as he began clicking around on the
computer in front of him.

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about
him putting it on his credit card. I supposed that was how big purchases were
made. I had no idea. I’d never made any big purchases before.

“Is…there a problem, ma’am?” he asked. I
was certain he was trying to catch me in some sort of lie. Maybe he was
assuming it was stolen. The way he looked at me with his incredulous, steel
blue eyes made me want to get the hell out of there.

I couldn’t take another second of being
stared at. And it wasn’t just him. It was the entire store. Other patrons.
Staff. I was clearly out of place.

By the time I made it to my car, I
realized I’d left the ring in the store. I thought about going back in there to
retrieve it, but I didn’t have the guts to show my face again after I’d just
run out of there like some lunatic. I wanted to forget the whole thing even
happened.

***

“Where’s your stuff?” Alec asked as I
walked into his condo empty handed.

“Couldn’t get in. Hudson changed the code
on the gate,” I said.

“Really?” Alec scrunched his nose. “That
doesn’t seem very Hudson-like.”

I shrugged. “No comment.”

As we stood in the
entry
way
, I noticed he was all dressed up, messenger bag flung over his
shoulder and keys in hand.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“It’s Tuesday,” he said. “Work.”

“Who are you styling today?” I asked as I
plopped down on his couch and made myself comfortable.

“Mia Sterling,” he said, stifling a huge
smile. “She’s amazing. I love her. You’ll love her. You’re coming with.”

“No, not today,” I said as I nuzzled my
head into a throw pillow.

Mia Sterling was an actress who never
seemed to snag any leading roles. Her signature round face and infectious smile
always seemed to land her supporting actress roles or best friend parts. She
was a great actress though and seemed super nice on T.V. But then again, so did
Ava. They were all a bunch of phonies as far as I was concerned.

“As my assistant, you don’t get a
choice,” he said. He placed on hand on his hip. “As your boss, I’m telling you
you’re going.”

“I don’t have anything to wear, Alec.
You’re forgetting that.”

“Look who you’re talking to. I’ve got a
whole closet full of women’s clothes. Most on loan so don’t you dare spill
anything on them. But I’m sure we can find you something,” he said. “Go.
Shower. Get dressed. I’m going to load the car. I’m giving you thirty minutes.
Don’t wash your hair. You don’t have time.”

I wasted no time in getting my ass to the
shower. I helped myself to Alec’s amazing assortment of high end products that
could easily rival Hudson’s, and showered in a flash. I ransacked the closet in
his guest room and found a pair of jeans to squeeze
myself
into and a plain, fitted t-shirt
. After readjusting my
top knot
and finger-brushing my teeth, I was as ready as I
was going to be.

“This good enough?” I asked Alec after
emerging from the bathroom.

His discerning eyes looked me up and down
before he glanced at his watch.

“We’re running late,” he said. In other
words, he thought I looked like shit.

We drove through crazy, congested traffic
towards the outskirts of Los Angeles and eventually ended up in a gated
community in Calabasas. We pulled up to a home that was probably one of the
more modest ones in the neighborhood, but it still held its own.

“So here we are,” Alec said. He seemed
nervous, which was odd because he never got nervous. “I’m not used to having an
assistant. I usually do everything on my own. I’m sort of a control freak that
way.”

“I know.” I rolled my eyes. It amazed me
that for as long as he’d been in the business, he never had an assistant, but
it was starting to make sense. His business was his baby, and for some crazy
reason he was
trusting
me with it. “I won’t embarrass
you. I promise.”

“It’s not that,” he said.

“Yeah, it is,” I laughed. “You can be
honest.”

“Okay, fine,” he said. “Just don’t act
all starstruck.”

“You’re funny. Let’s go.”

We climbed out of his car and began
unloading his trunk. As he assembled the garment rack, I hung everything up and
grabbed containers of accessories and jewelry.

“Basically you’re just here to be my
second set of hands,” he said as we headed toward the front door. “You don’t
have to talk or give opinions or anything like that.”

He was so nervous
,
it was cute
. I
would never jeopardize his reputation, and I’d gladly keep my opinions to
myself. I still didn’t know the first thing about style or fashion. He’d
forgotten
,
he was the one who styled me. Of course he
liked my style. He gave it to me.

“Hello, hello!” a happy voice greeted us
as the front door swung open. Standing with open arms and her signature
infectious smile was the gregarious and stunning Mia Sterling. “You’ll have to
forgive me. I’ve got a hot date tonight.”

She patted the huge curlers that covered
her head of lush, raven hair.

“A hot date?” Alec asked. “And who might
that be?”

“No one you’d know,” she laughed as she
swatted his arm. “Nosy Rosy here.”

I smiled.
I was mesmerized
by her
. She was so fresh-faced, happy, and normal. God was she normal.
And nice.
I was staring. I was going to embarrass Alec.

“This is my new assistant, Brynn,” Alec
said.

“Hi, Brynn. I’m Mia,” she said with a
gracious smile as she extended her right hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. She had the
softest hands in the entire world.

“Shall we?” she asked as she spun on her
bare heel. She was in jeans and a simple t-shirt. She was already speaking my
language.

“Do you guys want anything to drink?
Soda? Water? Wine?” she offered. She was so sweet.

“We’re good, doll,” Alec said to her.
“We’re just going to get your measurements today and have you try on a few
things. We won’t take up too much of your time.”

Mia looked at her watch. “Eh, my date’s
not for another few hours. Take your time.”

Mia lacked an heir of self-importance,
which I loved about her. With every sentence she spoke, I was becoming more and
more in awe of her. She was a true anomaly.

“Brynn, tape measure,” Alec said as he
pointed to one of the containers I’d carried in.

As we stood in Mia’s dressing room, I
tried hard not to stare too much. There were so many pretty things hanging from
the hangers and posy-peach velvet seating and a sparkly, crystal chandelier
hanging from the extra tall ceiling. She had an entire wall of floor to ceiling
shoes and another wall with nothing but purses and bags. For someone with all
this, she was incredibly down to earth.

“So tell me about this hot date,” Alec
said to Mia.

“It’s nobody you’d know,” she said again.
“Trust me.”

“What’s his name?” Alec pried.

An infectious smile spread across her
mouth as she thought about this guy.

“Well, it’s our third date tonight,” she
said.

“So that means you have to sleep with
him,” Alec quipped.

She buried her face in her hands.

“You already slept with him!” Alec said.
“Naughty girl.”

“He’s really nice,” she said. She
practically had stars in her eyes. “His name is Harrison. He’s in law school at
UCLA. I met him out one night. He’s just a nice, normal guy.”

“Aw, how sweet,” Alec said. “Is he hot?”

“Oh, God, yes,” she replied, her eyes
nearly fogging over. “Almost too good looking. But I don’t think he knows it.
And that’s a good thing.”

Mia was like the female version of
Hudson, and I was starting to finally realize what Hudson had seen in me all
along. I was a break from the usual. I was a nice, normal girl. That’s all he
wanted.

Alec shot me a knowing look. He knew
exactly what I was thinking.

“Brynn here is from Iowa,” Alec said,
changing the subject.

“Iowa? Really? I’m from Nebraska,” she
said. “Grew up in Omaha.”

“Small world,” I said.

“I knew you seemed like you weren’t from
around here,” she said, immediately realizing that she may have come off the
wrong way. “I didn’t mean it like that. What I mean is it’s a good thing. It’s
okay to be different out here. It’s okay to be yourself.”

Says the girl living in the mansion and
glossing the covers of magazines, I thought. Still, she was sweet. I couldn’t
help but like her.

Alec shot me a look and mouthed the words
“love her” all excitedly behind her back. He was right. I did love her.

“Why do you look so familiar though?” Mia
asked as she squinted her eyes at me and pursed her lips. “I feel like I’ve
seen you around.”

My cheeks reddened.

“I used to date Hudson Smith,” I said.
“I’ve been in a few tabloids lately.”

“Ah,” she said. “That must be it. You
know, I really hate those things but they draw me in every time. I knew every
word printed in them
are
pure bullshit, but I still
read them anyway. I think of it as fiction. Purely for entertainment.”

“That’s a good way look at it,” I
replied. For once I didn’t feel guilty about my little tabloid infatuation. It
was fun and entertaining, at least when I wasn’t the subject of one of their
snarky articles.

“Didn’t he just break up with Ava Fox?”
Mia asked. “Not too long ago, right?”

Alec made a face as if Mia had spoken of
the devil and she had.

“What?” Mia said, confused, as she looked
at Alec.

“I’ll let her tell you about that one,”
Alec said. He shook his head. He didn’t want to get involved, I’m sure for
professional reasons.

“What? You have to tell me,” Mia said.
She turned to me with the kind of riveted smile I used to see on Piper when I
was about to tell her something really salacious. And then she said the
sweetest words I’d heard all day. “I can’t stand Ava.”

To have gone through the things I’d gone
through with Ava and then to meet someone else who shared my sentiment was
nothing short of miraculous. It’s like it was meant to be, me meeting Mia.

“She’s made my life hell these last few
weeks,” I said. “She broke into Hudson’s house. She and her friends confronted
me at a boutique. She sold fake stories about me to the tabloids.”

Mia placed her hand on her chest and let
out a hearty laugh. “Well she hasn’t changed a bit!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“She’s the craziest person I think I’ve
ever met,” Mia said, her ocean blue eyes wide and serious. “Girl, I can tell
you some stories…”

“How do you know her?” I asked.

“We used to go up for the same parts,”
she said. “A long time ago, when we were first getting into acting. She would
always get the parts. Probably because she was crazy enough to do…which was
literally anything and everything if you catch my drift.”

Mia was too polite to go into details,
but I could only imagine. I’d only met Ava a handful of times, but I’d
witnessed enough to know she was willing to do whatever it took to get what she
wanted.

“We were friends for a while,” Mia added.
“A very short while.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“She stole my boyfriend,” Mia sighed. “In
retrospect it was a good thing. He was an ass. And I think he ended up cheating
on her too. What goes around comes around.”

Alec stood patiently behind Mia with his
tape measure in hand.

“I’m sorry,” Mia said. “We totally got
side tracked.”

Alec whipped his tape measure out and Mia
stood up.

“Brynn, write these down for me,” he said
as he began spouting out Mia’s dimensions. I’d forgotten for a second that I
was there to do work.

As Mia tried on garment after garment and
laughed and joked and flitted about like some giggly girlfriend, I was
enchanted. In another world, we’d have been best friends.

“Thanks so much, Alec,” Mia said as she
simultaneously walked us to the front door and pulled the giant Velcro curlers
from her hair. Each released section bounced perfectly, resting on her lithe
shoulders. “Brynn, it was so nice meeting you. I’d love to get together
sometime and hang out. Maybe we can reminisce about home? Or talk about how
much we can’t stand Ava. Whatever you want.”