Hollywood Dirt (Hollywood Dirt, #1)(15)

“Get him. I don’t care how much money you throw at him, just do it. I want to talk to him today.”

“I’ll send you his contact now, and I’ll have him call you by the end of the day.”

“Let him know we’ll fly him out here. Tomorrow if possible.”

“I’ll try.” An odd response from a man who could do anything. “I’m sending the contact now, but don’t call the office ’til I speak to them.”

“Thanks.” He saw an opening to his turn and took it, the car jumping into action, the blare of a horn sounding as he wedged the exotic car in between two vehicles.

“Meet me at the house.” Cole ended the call and opened Justin’s text, seeing the contact card.

Brad DeLuca. DeLuca Law Firm.

The attorney. He saved the contact and then tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, swerving into the far lane and flooring the gas.





CHAPTER 17


Quincy sat in rocking chairs, on front porches freshly painted, and watched the train wreck of Codia occur. It was beautiful in its disaster, a full explosion decorated with high-def photos, a hundred a week, all spelling out Hollywood Doom in spectacular fashion. I munched on pecan brittle and flipped through the pages of STAR, saw the argument of Cole and Nadia in their driveway, her face striking in its anger, his hands strong and powerful as he spread them in the air and shouted. I poured pancake batter and heard, from the living room TV, the moment that Cole moved into a hotel and Nadia took full control of their ginormous home. I watched Cole’s attorney, a handsome man, his features tight in concentration, discuss the intricacies of intellectual property, while painting my toes on our worn living room sofa.

I couldn’t, from our tiny little cottage in the cotton field, understand why any woman would cheat on Cole Masten. How greedy could a woman be?

“They’re talking about pushing filming back.” Ben stood on my front porch, his shoulder slumped against the door frame, his cell phone hanging limply from his hand. It’d been ten days since the head crack heard ‘round Hollywood.

“What?” I swung the door open wider and waved him in.

“I had to drive all the way over here; my cell isn’t working. Thank God I checked email.”

“That storm last night,” I murmured, helping his dramatic self to a chair before he went full queen and collapsed. “Cell service is always hell after a storm.”

It wasn’t exactly the storm’s fault as much as it was Ned Beternum, who let his goats graze the field he leased to Verizon. Even though the cell giant had threatened legal action several times. Even though his goats loved to chew the juicy wires that magnetized the thing. Heavy rains typically flooded his west acreage, so Ned would move them into the higher field, giving us all weak service until Verizon flew someone in to fix things. We, as a town, didn’t really care. We’d survived without cell phones for thousands of years, didn’t much use them anyway. That was what home phones were for. And if you weren’t home, that was what answering machines were for. No need to fix a system that wasn’t broken. Who wanted to be available twenty-four hours a day?

“September,” Ben wheezed, his hand reaching out, and I grabbed my iced tea from the coffee table and passed it to him. “That’s what they are saying now.”

“September.” I tried to see the reason for Ben’s agony. “That’s good, right? Gives us an extra month.”

“Yeah. Peachy. You’ll have more free time to crack peanuts and crochet mittens.” I hid a smile. “Delays in filming are bad, Summer. Ominous. Expensive.”

“Wait a minute.” I frowned. “That’s not what you said earlier.” I adopted a deeper, yet feminine voice. “The Fortune Bottle isn’t crashing, Summer. Movies don’t fall apart over this.” I mimicked his dramatic hand gestures, and he stared at me, a grimace on his pretty little face.

“Was that supposed to be me?”

“Yes.”

He finished a sip of tea and wiped at his brow with a monogrammed handkerchief. “Please don’t ever do that again.”

I snorted… but I swear it was ladylike. “Ditto.”

He sipped more tea, and I sat on the couch, my bare feet tucked underneath my butt. There was a companionable silence as I relaxed back against the cloth, my eyes closing.

“At least they aren’t talking about the girls.”

I cracked an eye open. “What?”

“Cole’s f*cking his way through half of Hollywood right now. I haven’t seen that hit newsstands yet.” The gossip was delivered in a hushed voice, Ben’s hands happily clapping as if he might be the next stop on the Cole Masten Penis Train.

“Is that newsworthy?” I didn’t know that a newly single actor screwing would be any big surprise to anyone.

“Is any of this newsworthy?” He leaned forward and picked up the closest magazine, an OK! that I bought because it was a dollar cheaper than the others. “Kelli Gifford shares her punch recipe!” he read off the cover in an excited fashion, then tossed it back down. “It’s all crap, and yes, a detailed accounting of Cole Masten’s bedroom activities would certainly be newsworthy. His publicists must be working overtime.”

Ben had a point. I’d certainly pay three bucks to read about Masten’s actions in the sack. Hell, with my level of sexual inactivity, I’d pay three bucks to read about Ben’s actions in the sack. Or even Ned Beternum’s goats. Or… well, I think you get the picture. It’d been a long time. Nobody since Scott. Three long years.