Typecast (41 page)

“I don’t know. She was engaged to the man of her dreams for all of five minutes before he went postal on her for telling the truth. Her whole life is in shambles because the so-called man who loved her ditched her.” His brother hit the steering wheel, and the car lurched forward the few inches they managed to move in the gridlock.

He sat up in the seat. “She broke our trust. I told her not to go looking. She didn’t come to me.”

“Maybe because she knew what would happen.” Wilson took a breath. “In case it means anything to you, while Ivy freely admitted to doing things she shouldn’t, she never told Giselle what she found out.”

He ground his teeth together. Of course she wouldn’t tell Giselle. She wouldn’t tell anyone. The woman practically threw herself in front of a crazy fan to protect him, and she came to him on the night of her engagement to tell him what she discovered. She never said she was going to tell the world. She only wanted to discuss it with him, which was what he told her to do. “What else?”

“She quit her job two days ago. Right before your engagement piece should have aired. And just so that you can sleep at night knowing your stupid precious little secret is kept safe, Giselle looked at the e-mail after Ivy went to sleep. She point-blank told her boss there was no story beyond what the media already knew, and she failed at her assignment.” Wilson reached into his pocket and tossed a folded piece of paper to him. “Here, she printed it.”

“After tonight, I am changing every password on every account. Nothing is sacred.” He opened the paper and scanned the words. Her loyalty to him dripped off the page. What had he done?

“Now you just committed the same offense Ivy did. Are you going to tell her or hide it?” Wilson spat the words at him. “Better yet, why don’t you just stay gone? She’s better off without you if she has to live in fear that anytime she tells you something you’ll disappear.”

He froze. “I drove away.”

Wilson stared out the windshield.

“I promised her I wouldn’t drive away, and I drove away.” He looked down at the script.

“You suck,” Wilson hissed.

“Will you get to this shindig already?” He pointed ahead.

“What are you going to do?” Once more Wilson glanced at him.

“I have to get to that party and deal with my minions.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Wilson pulled into the emergency lane and sped down the freeway.

“Right now I just need to not be the villain.” He pushed the sunglasses up on his nose and sat back. “I’m not walking the red carpet.”

Alone.

For the first time since she had watched Logan’s taillights take off, Ivy found herself alone in her apartment. It was a strange kind of alone, one she hadn’t felt for a long time. Lately, and most especially since Logan, any alone time was met with a sense of urgency of something she needed to do or anxiety over Logan’s whereabouts. However, this solitude came with nothing, no anticipation, no sense she wouldn’t be alone again sometime soon. Simply nothing.

In a world where she didn’t break into a movie star’s e-mail and was still gainfully employed, she would have been ready to go to the gala and waiting for Logan to do whatever it was he did when he made himself look like a dream.

After admitting she lived in the real world, she took a deep breath and put her dress away on the far side of her closet along with Logan’s clothes, which she promised she would give to Giselle to give to Wilson tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow she would finally accept it was over, down to Logan’s last sock. When their project began, they were only meant to last until this night.

Though she wondered if anyone from Chargge.com went to the gala in her place, and how Logan and all the rest were faring, she promised herself to stay away from any form of media until it was over. She didn’t need Julia flaunting her victory on the step and repeat backdrop with the people she built relationships with. She definitely didn’t need to see Logan in a tuxedo. Acid burned the back of her throat at the thought he might have chosen to bring another date.

In her bathrobe with a diet frozen dinner waiting for her and a stack of DVDs that were not
Hollywood Stardust
, she plopped down on the couch right as a knock came at the door.

Since home cooking was out of the question, hopefully the pizza gods took kindly on her. She forced herself up and made the hike a few feet to the door. A delivery didn’t constitute not being alone. It only made for a brief interruption of her solitude. “Who is it?”

“Isaac.”

A quick glance through the peephole revealed Logan’s friend, and she opened the door. “Hi.” What on earth was he doing here? The anxiety that bubbled just below the surface all day, that nagging ache that told her something was wrong but she couldn’t fix it, amplified and demanded to be heard.

“Did you see today’s
National Reporter
?” He leaned against the doorjamb and held the paper out to her.

She backed up. “Please.”

“I promise, it’s nothing to do with the obvious.”

“Come in.” The magazine had already been turned to the page he wanted her to look at, and she returned to the couch and read the article.

Internet Hookups

Online personality, Julia Davis, has given the world of Internet porn a whole new meaning when it was uncovered that she has slept her way through some of the most successful and most notorious start-ups since Silicon Valley became more than a pinprick on the map. In an exclusive exposé, we have uncovered how she slept with, and blackmailed, some of the digital age’s top executives, amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars only to lose it in the stock market. Ms. Davis secured her job at her latest victim, Chargge.com, through “a connection” with a vice president. Since then, she has earned quite the reputation as being a bully to the other females at the successful Internet portal. We hope this little piece of information will be dealt with quickly at the company headed by one of the youngest and most successful female CEOs in the world. We can only hope the girls gang up and run her out of town. We won’t stand for bullying anymore.

She put the paper down. The story had Logan written all over it. If they were together, she would have scolded him, but it would have gone no further than that because she would have known he did it to protect her.

“Is this why you came here?” In a truth she could admit only to herself, she sort of wished the story would have been about how bad Logan was doing without her.

“No.” He leaned forward and took a breath. “I came to tell you that I am Drew Fulton.”

“I know.” Her heart sped with something other than an ache for her ex. With the two of them alone and with no fear of being barged in on by anyone, she revealed what she’d discovered and looked him right in the eye.

His mouth fell open, and he flopped back on the chair. “You know?”

“I do. I’m sorry.” For the first time since Logan had driven away, she smiled.

He stared at her. “Is it that obvious?”

“No, I figured it out the night of the party, with some words you said and then the way you disappeared the moment Ryder and Erin showed up and—” Tears blurred her vision. Logan had told her he loved her that night.

“What is it?”

She swallowed. “That night when Erin came in she said she thought you would be there. She almost sensed you.”

“She said that?” His tone came out with a twinge of excitement or maybe hope.

“Yes.” With no point fighting the tears, she allowed them to fall. “I don’t know what you do or don’t know about what happened with Logan and me, but I never told anyone I figured it out, not him, not anyone.”

“Ivy.” He moved next to her on the couch, popped a tissue out of the box on the table, and handed it to her. “Will you go to the anniversary gala with me?”

“I can’t.” She shoved the tissue to the corner of her eye.

“You’ll have your story.” He bent down.

“I don’t care about the story. After I fell in love with Logan, I didn’t care at all about the story. I quit my job. Logan was right all along, when he said the story was fine the way it was.” Heat and the sensation of being closed in overtook her and she stood. “I can’t go there.”

“Ivy, I came to tell you who I was because I need to take you to that gala. The minute I walk in with you, there are people who are going to recognize me, and I didn’t want you to be blindsided.” Drew came up behind her.

“You know, I have an entire evening planned.” She tightened her bathrobe around her, ran to the kitchen, and pulled her dinner out of the freezer. The ice-crystal-covered box must have been there for at least a year.

Again, Drew followed her. “Well, if we are going to eat ourselves into oblivion, can we go back to my place? Before I came here, I spent thirty minutes putting away all the food Logan has cooked for you today.”

Thankful for the blast of cold air from the refrigerator, she didn’t move.

“Yep.” He snatched the box out of her hand and shoved it back in the freezer. “Some guys troll for chicks when they’re upset, some play video games, some drink. Logan, he cooks. Normally, I benefit, but he wouldn’t let me touch one bite. Of course, they weren’t my favorites.”

She went to the sink, but forgot what she wanted once she took the two steps to her destination.

“We have pasta sauce, chicken and dumplings, meat loaf, pot roast with those pearl onions that he bitches about peeling the entire time. We even have something like four containers of raspberry sauce he made from scratch. I watched him strain the seeds myself.”

“Do you like raspberries?” She stared down the drain wondering when her life fell in there. All she needed to do was turn on the garbage disposal.

“It’s a give or take. Fruit is not a dessert. Only you and Logan think it can pass.” He made a noise of disgust. “Always been a chocolate man myself. Chocolate and peanut butter. Logan knows this. He likes to swoop in and control things and make things better. I think it comes from lacking control when he needed it most. Sometimes things get out of hand, and you control everything so much that it ends up taking control. I think he found that out after he fell in love with you. Up until then, the whole deal with Ryder and Erin, and even helping keep me under wraps, was no big deal.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him.

“Then he found someone to live for.” He joined her at the sink.

“He drove away. Didn’t let me explain.” She clutched the edge of the counter.

“Yeah, and you pushed his buttons and went for the one thing he didn’t want you to know. He wanted to be perfect for you.”

With someone to finally really talk to who knew Logan maybe even better than her, she let everything out. “I don’t think he really wants me. I’m just easy for him. One day he’ll realize he could’ve had someone else.”

Drew laughed. “Why is it that every woman on the planet thinks that an actor has to be with another actor? Oh, and if it’s a guy, then he must have to be with some sort of model, right?”

She ground her teeth together.

“Well, the stereotype is there for a reason.” He elbowed her. “We all start out thinking we’re going to get these babes dripping off us, and it happens, especially for Logan and Ryder.”

“See.”

“I’m not done. You know, I lecture over at UCLA, and I always tell my students not to interrupt until I’m done with my anecdote.” He opened up a cabinet and took down a glass. “Anyway, for some actors that may work and that’s fine, but I think you’ve forgotten two very important points.”

She watched him return to the sink and fill his glass with water.

“First, Logan isn’t an actor. He hasn’t been for many years, and even if he ever ended up acting again, he’s a businessman. They can get babes too, you know. Women dig money.” He held the glass out for her. “This is for you.”

“Thank you.” She furrowed her brow and took the glass.

“Shh, not done.” He put his finger over his lips. “Second, he loves you. He doesn’t love a model or an actress, or some ideal you have stuck in your head.”

Rather than speak, she took a sip of the tap water and winced. Logan would have never allowed water from the faucet. He would have gotten her a club soda to settle her stomach. She could use some now.

“Oh, it doesn’t have bubbles in it. I apologize for my grave error.” With a bit of sarcasm, he over exaggerated his movements as he put his hand to his chest. “You know, one day he’s going to drive away again. One day when you have a couple of kids, and your house is built around a kitchen in Los Feliz, the two of you are going to get into a tiff, and he’s going to get in his car and drive away. He’s going to wind his way around the streets and probably end up at my house for a few hours. Then he’ll come back, because that’s what he’s going to do. Just like you’re going to peek around and do your research and ask him the tough questions that no one else dares.”

She put the glass down, went to the refrigerator, and got a bottle of club soda she bought herself.

“He needs to know that he could drive away and you’ll come for him.” Drew closed the refrigerator. “You have to go to the gala, because as bad as everything is for you right now, let me tell you that Logan is one hundred times worse.”