Untangling The Stars (20 page)

A shadow washed over Guy’s face and for a moment, Andie thought he was going to be angry with her, but he shook his head and wrapped his fingers tightly around her arms.

“Don’t ever say that again. If the stars are crossed, we will uncross them.”

“But what if it’s true? Everything seems poised against us. What if it’s just not meant to be, or what if we’re in this for the wrong reasons?”

“What would those wrong reasons possibly be?”

“I don’t know, it just seems too complicated to work itself out—like no matter what, this is bound for some tragic end no matter how much we fight it. It’s like we’re in some lab to see how this whole thing unfolds. Seriously, look at us—you couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect pair of opposites. What if it’s nothing more than a bad romance?”

Guy opened his mouth to speak and then stopped and raised an eyebrow at her. “Is that a Lady Gaga reference?”

Andie laughed. She hadn’t meant it to be, but it worked. The song lyrics flowed through her mind. It was about the intense attraction to individuals for whom romance never works, even though trying feels so good. “Maybe.”

“Well in that case…” Guy pushed his hands up through Andie’s hair and pulled her toward him. He paused when their lips were a breath away from touching. Every one of her senses lit up with the sight, the touch, the smell of him. “I want it all, so long as it means I get to keep you, too. I want the drama. I want you by my side in bed at night even if it means we wake up to photos some jerk paparazzi took of us kissing somewhere we probably shouldn’t have been kissing. I want to have to work through the kinks. I want the bad romance.”

He held her there, the heat rising in Andie’s body as Guy’s words landed on her waiting lips. As she stared into Guy’s piercing blue eyes and finished Lady’s Gaga’s
Bad Romance
lyrics in her mind, she found more meaning in the words than she ever had. Whatever this was—no matter how bad, how toxic, how diseased—there was nothing she wanted more than this romance with Guy. Come what may, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

“We’ll uncross them, then—untangle the stars.”

“Uncross them, yes. But I don’t know so much about untangling.” Guy dropped his hands to her waist and flipped them together back onto the bed, Andie once more staring up at him through a curtain of fallen hair and warm desire stirring in her belly. “I’m much better at tangling.”

***

Andie had no idea what possessed to her to answer the unknown number ringing on her phone. She’d managed to evade a herd of very nosy students and ignore the disdainful glares of some of her peers as she retreated to her classroom. It actually hadn’t bothered her as much as she worried it would. Their kissing selfie seemed to have turned the tables a little bit on the more accusatory headlines, and now most of the questions were more of the “What is Guy Wilder like when he’s not being Silas Dove?” gamut rather than the “Did you really break up Guy Wilder and Ginifer Stamos?” one, which was monumentally more unflattering. Curiosity she could handle; accusations were a whole different ball game.

Of course, Tandy was still making a pointed effort to stay away from her, but that was fine. It was going to take a while to let that boiling kettle cool down enough even to think about touching it.

“Alessandra Foxglove.” It wasn’t a question. The woman’s voice on the other end of the phone line was cold, sharp, and slightly threatening. If the woman on the other end looked anything at all like her voice suggested, Andie imagined it might be something along the lines of a Doberman with an angled bob haircut and blood-red lipstick—like Sarah Palin meets Edna Mode from
The Incredibles
.

“Yes? This is Andie.”

“Of course is it. Dr. Foxglove, this is Madeline Mann. I represent some of Hollywood’s most dashing, devilish, and
difficult
stars—one of which is Guy Wilder.”

Andie recognized the name, though she knew it better as “The Mad Man.” Guy hadn’t told her
she
was the unhappy agent on his case about his off-screen romance, but so much seemed to make sense now—including that call that he’d taken a few nights ago in her classroom. The woman was reportedly a beast, a notoriously shrewd and cutthroat agent, and on a bullshit acceptance scale of 1-10, the woman had track record of operating somewhere around the negative 50s. This obviously wasn’t a social call.

“What started out as a rumor mill linking a few blurry photos of some nameless girl to TV’s most ineligible bachelor has evolved into an Internet sensation thanks to an Instagram selfie with him professing that he’s in love with you. Since Guy hasn’t deemed it important enough to return my calls, I thought I’d get to straight to the point and give you a call myself, and chat this out woman to woman.”

Andie felt like a fish out of water: mouth open, close. Well, if this wasn’t an awkward position to be in then she didn’t know what was. She’d barely had two seconds to form a response when Madeline cut in again.

“Of course, as his manager, my main priority is protecting the reputation of my client. I’m sure you can agree that this is important. I had hoped that he would come to his senses and squash this whole thing before it got out of hand, but apparently, he’s taking a more difficult path. You might have heard that Guy threatened to pull out of his contract to protect you in the media. I’ve been handing out bags of diamonds to everyone I have to in order to keep the whole thing from boiling over. But that’s irrelevant now, and I’ve got to head this thing off. I am most interested in meeting the girl he’s willing to risk his career for.”

Again, Andie had little time to form an appropriate response. There was so much swirling around in that brief monologue that she didn’t know where to start. One thing was for certain, though. There was no facetious tone in Mad’s last words. The Mad Man was “most interested” to meet her. Sure, interested in the same way a feral cat was “most interested” in a canary trapped in a birdcage.

“I’ve just landed in Denver and am en route to Boulder now. Meet me at Rao’s for a light lunch. One o’clock, I believe you have a break in your schedule between classes then. And, Ms. Foxglove, please keep in mind that our little lunch date will undoubtedly be a public event, so do try to look your best.” The line went dead.

Andie stared dumbly at the phone.
What. The. Hell.
She hit Guy’s number on speed dial and groaned when it went directly to voicemail. Guy was on a flight back to the city to finish filming the scene he’d walked out on yesterday. And of course, Madeline would have known that. Cunning witch, she’d planned her call perfectly.

She pressed the second button on her speed list and was relieved when Scott picked up on the first ring. “Well, hello, Superstar.”

Andie rolled her eyes. “Don’t start.”

“Just kidding, mama. What’s up? I’ve been worried about you ever since you went back out into the world. How’s it treating you?”

It was nice of him to ask, although Andie knew better than to think Scott was immune to the news floating around about her and Guy. If nothing else, she was sure he’d heard it from Tandy.

“I’ve been better.”

“Keep your chin up, kid. You’ve got this. It takes more than one horse to trap a fox.”

“How many Dobermans does it take?” Andie could still hear Madeline’s voicing chomping at her across the phone line.

“Afraid you lost me there.”

“Guy’s agent called me—Madeline Mann.
The
Madeline Mann. Remember, the terrifying manager I wrote about in that article on the mob mentality of the powers that really run the show in entertainment?”

“I remember.”

“Her, but worse than I thought,
and
she wants to meet me for lunch.”

“Need backup?”

She had to laugh. Trust Scott to have just the right words to take the edge off. Showing up with a mysterious third wheel would make the press go wild, and stick it to Madeline, too. “Probably.”

“Listen, Andie, you got this. Go or don’t go. But if you do go, remember that she’s there because she’s scared of you for some reason. Otherwise, she wouldn’t waste her time. You ask me, it’s probably because of who you are. One search on Google Scholar tells the world you’re an outspoken voice on stripping away the illusion that Hollywood paints on the world. That can’t be good for business—not when you’re going after the newest It Boy. It’s like when George Clooney proposed to Amal Alamuddin and every eligible bachelorette died a little inside.”

It was eerily similar to what Guy had said earlier, but Scott made a good point that she hadn’t thought of before. If there was no reason to worry about the flavor of the week on Guy’s dance card, the Mad Man would never waste a second of her precious time on her—much less fly across the country for lunch.

“And, Andie. I don’t want to be the grumpy old man in the mix, but you’ve got to smooth things over with Tandy. We’re all counting on you, me especially. There’s no way I can walk into that ballroom of hundreds of people and take any footage that doesn't look like it belongs in the next
Blair Witch Project
, snot and all. You’re the marshmallow in this s’more, baby.”

Andie winced. He was right, but she could really only handle one battle at a time. “I know. I’ll fix it.” That sounded familiar.

“Oh hey, Andie.”

“Yeah?”

“Wear something black. Show that bitch you mean business, too.”

***

There was nothing light about Rao’s, either in terms of the family size platters being served or the oppressive mob-like stiffness that hung in the air. Andie half expected to see Al Pacino, tommy gun leaned against his chair, ready and waiting when she walked around the corner.

Madeline was already there by the time Andie arrived, layered in black from the pointed tip of her four-inch stilettos, black A-line dress, blazer, and—just like Andie had imagined—a razor-edged bob. Even the thin wristwatch on her impossibly tiny wrist was black from its band to its face. The only signs of color around Madeline were red lips and the glass of red wine she lifted irritably in the air as a flag to signal Andie’s attention. Even though it had made her late, Andie was glad she’d followed Scott’s advice and made the quick stop at her apartment to change clothes. The side-pleated black frock packed a whole lot more punch that the jeans and university sweatshirt she’d been wearing earlier. She was going to need to come armed and loaded to this sisterly lunch date, and nothing would have been worth giving Madeline ammunition of picking apart her more casually quirky fashion sense.

Madeline gave Andie a quick, unconcerned glance and took another sip of wine. “You look like your pictures, although prettier in person. That fawny, earthy look is very in right now. At least you’ve got that going for you.” Madeline flicked her wrist toward her long, unkempt curls and Andie smiled tightly at the backhanded compliment, smoothed her skirt, and took her seat. So much for dressing the part. It had never occurred to her that she had to fix her hair, too. Oh well. This was a game she was glad she didn’t play very well.

By now, Guy would have already landed in New York and would be on his way to the studio, but Andie hadn’t told him she was meeting Madeline when he’d called to check in on her from the jetway. She wasn’t sure why exactly she’d felt the need to keep it a secret, but she was willing to bet that Madeline had banked on her silence, too. She wasn’t even sure what she was doing here, but at least she had the wits to know this was nothing close to a bonding session with her and Guy’s infamously brutal manager. It was a civil ambush, pure and simple, and Dr. Alessandra Foxglove planned to stand her ground—for herself and for Guy.

Madeline gave Andie a curt smile and snapped her fingers sharply at the waiter, who deposited a glass of red wine in front of Andie. Andie looked from the glass to Madeline. Lunchtime seemed awfully early to start chugging down the wine, but then maybe that was how things worked in New York. Or Los Angeles. Or whatever dark Hollywood underbelly Madeline had slithered out from.

“I’ll just have water, please,” she smiled graciously as told the waiter. Early or not, red wine wasn’t her taste—not to mention the last thing she needed was a photo getting back to Dean Kelley of her sloshing down booze on her lunch break. There wasn’t enough good karma in the world to mend the disappointment her dean would have if she learned that Dr. Andie Foxglove was not only a floozy paparazzi magnet with a questionable taste in men, but also one who didn’t have a problem with lecturing a class while reeking of merlot. Her experience told her that she had to put in at least a good twenty years of teaching before she could get away with both of those in tandem. She hadn’t even earned tenure yet.

“So you’ve seen these, I assume?” Madeline pulled a collated stack of glossy Internet tabloid printouts from her purse and slid them across the table. Many featured one or more photos of Andie or Guy and covered everything from their first kiss in the Four Seasons to their selfie last night. A few even mentioned his tantrum on set and how he was threatening to walk off the show due to “invasion of personal privacy” and “disgust at public interest in his life off screen.”

“
Wilder Gets Wilder
?” Andie quoted off one of the sheets as she leafed through them. The headlines weren’t great, but at least nothing caught her by surprise.

Madeline lifted her wine glass in a mock toast and gave what almost looked like a real smile. “Welcome to the land of cheap puns.”

“And wolves hidden in sheep’s clothing, I suppose. I assume you’ve done your research on me, too, and you already know I’ve built my body of research by studying the players in the entertainment industry, including you. So to what do I owe the pleasure?” Andie had rehearsed the line a thousand times on her walk over, but it still seemed to come out sounding unnatural and staged.

“I like a woman who gets straight to the point.” It almost sounded like a compliment. “Let’s get right to it then, shall we? I have to ask, in the interest of transparency between girlfriends, what is your plan with my client?”