Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(16)

“Yay!” Nicole shouted.

Cara didn’t make eye contact with me. She held her hand out and Nicole hopped off my lap. I gave her back the flowers and they trotted away. A second before they turned the corner to the house, Cara looked back at me and smiled as if she forgave me.

That felt absolutely perfect.





CHAPTER 12


CARA


I’d done a French braid on Nicole for Blueberry’s party, which should have taken three minutes, but she fussed and pulled it out. Brad commented that his daughter’s hair was a mess before I could fix it.

He was trying. I kept telling myself he was trying.

In the hours before Blueberry’s party, the Greydons came by Chez Sinclair for a playdate. They brought their six kids, four nannies, and lunch.

If Brad Sinclair was an A-list actor—and he was—Michael Greydon rose above the alphabet. The A-lister’s A-list. He was such a star he could quit to adopt six children with his wife, a notorious paparazza. I was even a little starstruck, and I was never starstruck. But when he and his wife came for a pre-party iced tea, I noted his low-wattage glow and sane approachability. It was hard not to stare.

The ride to the party pulled up promptly at two. Kids and nannies herded into a shiny black bus lined with video screens and games. Brad, Michael, and Laine went in a separate car. Apparently, our destination didn’t have a helipad.

All four Greydon nannies were from West Side, so they were fit and attractive. Pleated khakis and a white polo couldn’t hide a thing, even in my case, with a shirt that was three sizes too big and a bra that was a cup size too small. The pleats in my chinos seemed designed specifically to create dual pouches over the crotch, and the legs were so long I had to cuff them.

“It’s a thirty-day job,” I said. “Then I’m leaving. So if you hear of anything—”

“You’re leaving? Why would you leave?” Helen interrupted in French. The children were engrossed in a highly anticipated movie that was still two weeks from release. “There’s no wife to judge you all the time. It’s perfect.”

Helen had come from France to au pair five years before and stayed for the sun and easy work. She held the Greydons’ six-month-old while the other nannies entertained the children or gossiped.

“It was always temporary,” I answered in French. “The celebrity lifestyle isn’t for me.”

She tsked. “All the perks! Nice clothes, tags still on. Food from the best restaurants. All the people you meet. You can live the life without having the life. No?”

I just shook my head, but I didn’t tell her the other reason I had to run away as if my shoes were on fire.

I’d had another pool table dream. And another. It was a good thing Paula was my go-between. I was starting to blush whenever I was in the same room with Brad Sinclair and he hadn’t even touched me.





CHAPTER 13


BRAD


Michelle Novatelli held court at Blueberry’s party even though it wasn’t her house.

“Wait until you get to middle school. You’re going to want to put a bullet in your head.”

She put her pointer and her tall finger together and mimicked blowing her brains out. She was straight outta Brooklyn. Worked her way up to studio head at Overland and never looked back, unless she was doing her Bensonhurst schtick. Then her accent got thicker than a brick and she talked faster than a jackrabbit f*cks.

“Five schools. Two events each. Application had essays. Dude. Essays. They know who I am. They know what I make, but I couldn’t get in without essays. Don could buy and sell these *s, but I still had to wear heels to the interview.”

We were surrounded by money and fame, but Michelle just kept on like a middle-class Italian girl shocked at the private school system. Everyone else was amused by the act, agreeing enough to keep her going, nodding because they’d either gone through it or would soon. I should have nodded too. But I wanted to take her two fingers and blow my own brains out.

“And then after she asks a twelve-year-old what she wants to do when she graduates college, (eye roll) she asks her . . . the next question . . . is ‘What do you want to be doing in ten years?’ So my daughter says, ‘Isn’t that kind of the same thing?’ So we crossed that one off the list.”

Laughter.

My glass was empty.

Fuck. I wanted to jump off a tall building. I was supposed to care, but I’d already forgotten what school she was talking about.

I knew these people. I saw them all the time. Ken Braque, my PR guy, was there with his wife. Met her once. Couldn’t dig her name out of my mind. She was five eight with long red hair. Three months pregnant and looked like she’d maybe eaten a big dinner. That was all I knew about her.

But this was who he was. This was what he did with his beautiful wife and his two kids when I wasn’t around. When he was doing family things. He was talking to Michelle Novatelli about middle schools.

I felt like an intruder on the most mind-numbing underground culture ever.

I looked out to the backyard. All the kids were riding ponies and eating sugar. I wanted to ride ponies and eat sugar. Nicole ran across my field of vision, pulling Cara by the hand.

That smoking body in a white polo and pleated chinos. Want to talk about injustice? It was right there. What was wrong with these people? They hid what they couldn’t handle.