LOL: Laugh Out Loud (After Oscar, #2)(4)

I tried to read his expression to figure out if I was in trouble. “Am I being charged with a crime?” I wasn’t an attorney, but I’d played one on TV plenty of times. I at least knew the lingo.

“No, sir. Not yet.” He gestured to the carriage driver. “Mr. Pinker doesn’t seem inclined to press kidnapping charges at this time, and we remain unsure about whether or not we’re going to charge you with impersonating an officer of the law.”

My eyes bulged. “Wait, what? Kidnapping?” I cried. “Are you crazy? I didn’t kidnap anyone.”

Scotty must have overheard me because I could see him over the cop’s shoulder. He deftly raised one smartly plucked eyebrow at me.

Didn’t you though? the raised brow seemed to ask.

I sighed. “I commandeered a vehicle,” I explained. “There’s a difference.” At least I hoped there was.

Now it was the cop’s eyebrow’s turn to be judgy. “Under what authority?”

“Mine.”

He actually rolled his eyes, muttered something about how he wasn’t even supposed to be on shift today, and shut the cruiser door in my face. Of course the paparazzi had already arrived. I never understood how they did it, but the moment anything salacious happened, they managed to show up practically within the minute, cameras flashing.

They surged around the sidewalk and street, trying to get photos of me in the back of the cop car. I could already see the headline now: Is Casting Roman Burke a Recipe for PR Disaster? My agent would be apoplectic. I sighed and pressed my fingers against my eyes. Filming on the movie was almost wrapped, only a few days left. I’d been so close to making it through without any trouble.

“Directors like working with actors who don’t end up in the news for things like mistaking his wife and his daughter. On the red carpet during premiere night. That kind of press tends to reflect poorly on the movie,” my agent had told me when I’d signed on to my current project. “So maybe try not to cause trouble this time around?”

I’d swallowed a number of choice retorts, knowing it wouldn’t matter what I said. He knew as well as I did that I wasn’t that much of a troublemaker. I just had a penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and putting my foot in my mouth when I got nervous. Somehow the paparazzi always captured it on film. Like the time I accidentally drove the wrong rental car off the lot and was charged with grand theft auto or the time I got seasick all over the president of the Motion Picture Academy during a fund-raising party on a yacht. Then there was the time I thought I was giving money to a single mom, but it turned out she was both a single mom and a high-paid escort.

It had gotten to the point that I was such a magnet for stupid, easily misinterpreted moments that I’d become almost a recluse when I wasn’t actively filming.

And now here I was again.

As the paparazzi swarmed, trying to push around the cop car, I did my best to keep my face scrunched down into the collar of my thick winter coat so they couldn’t get a clear shot of me. No picture, no headline, no scandal. Or so I hoped.

Just in case, I pulled out my phone to dial Oscar. Better he hear it from me than someone else.

He picked up after the first ring. “This better be good. I’m naked and waiting under a sheet for Paulo.”

I double-checked the phone to make sure I’d dialed the right number, even though I recognized Oscar’s voice. “Who the hell is Paulo?”

“My masseuse.”

“Why do you have your phone on the massage table with you?”

“Why are you asking me questions right now?” Oscar countered.

“Oh, right. Well, you see… I might accidentally be in the back of a cop car.” I tried to quickly sum up what had happened.

“Um, Ro-Ro?” Oscar interrupted in a high-pitched voice. He seemed overly concerned.

“Don’t call me that,” I grumbled. “I thought we talked about this.”

“Romaine Lettuce, are you telling me you’re in the back of a paddy wagon right now in custody of the po-po?”

“I’m not sure I know what any of those words mean.”

“Why did you call me instead of your lawyer?” he shouted.

The loud noise made me jump and grab at my chest. “Dammit, Oscar, did you not hear the part about me having a panic attack on the set? Don’t scare me like that.”

“Call my friend James. He’s a lawyer. Oh wait. He’s the money kind.”

“I have money,” I assured him. “That’s not a problem.”

“No, I mean, he lawyers stuff related to money. Or business… or something. I don’t know if he does violent crimes.”

“This isn’t a violent crime,” I snapped. “I just… made a mistake.”

“You know who else says that?” Oscar asked with a sniff. “Violent criminals. Just sayin’.”

I sighed. “Fine. Give me his number.”

“Whose number?”

I hung up on him. Maybe instead of calling the last guy I’d dated, I needed to call my crisis manager instead. I let out a breath and dialed again.

“Why’d you hang up on me?” Oscar asked. “I was trying to help you.”

I reminded myself that despite our disaster of a date, the man was a PR genius.