Step Wilde: A Stepbrother Romance (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

WILDER

"Dude, you could have put a shirt on," Josh said to me. "I feel like between living with you for five years along with all of the photos my sister sends me of you on the front page of TMZ I've seen more of your body than I've seen of mine. Fucking put some clothes on, dude.”

I was laying in my bed with all the lights off. I was relieved to be back in my own space in the penthouse. It was like Hailey had never been here; even the lemon-infused, dusty odor of cat litter had been miraculously scrubbed from my bedroom.

Only the glow from my Macbook Pro illuminated my body. Josh was onscreen, sitting on the bottom of a bunk bed wearing an orange anorak.

"And you could have fucking bathed," I retorted to his heavily bearded face.

He looked tired but happy. I felt my body get lighter just from seeing his face. It was good to have someone to ground me to reality after the last week of pure chaos.

"How are things at the bottom of Earth?" I asked.

"Freezing my tits off, but hey, you do what you gotta do to save the world," he said with a smile.

"Documentaries don't save the world," I replied. "Al Gore beat you to discovering global warming. I wouldn't hold out for an Oscar."

"Oh, but I'm sure
Naked and Shooting Guns Part Six
is definitely going to get you your first nod," Josh shot back at me.

We were both still grinning.

"It's good to see you, man," I said.

"It's good to see you, too. So what's this I hear about you fucking the coffee girl and giving her a starring role in your new movie?"

I sighed. "How the fuck do you know about that?"

Josh shrugged. "It was too windy to film today so we mostly just tried to get our satellite Internet connection to work."

The screen flickered and his face became a Picasso-like arrangement of too few pixels for several moments, his voice garbled. "...engaged to the singer?" was all that came through.

I got the gist of what he was saying. "We weren’t…really engaged. It was just Hailey being Hailey. And I'm not fucking Olivia."

Josh came back into crisp focus. He shrugged. "Not fucking her yet, but isn't she the one who got away?"

I considered lying to him but knew that wouldn't work too well. Josh knew me better than anyone. "The one who fucking cut the line herself, you mean."

Josh laughed. “She is the
one
girl who broke up with you before you could do it yourself. Did you apologize to her yet for humiliating her?”

I shook my head. “No, but she did bring it up.”

I scratched at my hair.

“Dude, you are the
worst
actor sometimes. I know you feel terrible about it, and you obviously still want her. Just say you’re sorry. What’s wrong with you?”

It was my turn to shrug, but I knew I wasn't fooling him. Hell, after the last few days, my performance right now wouldn't fool anyone.

Josh rolled his eyes. “You are a stubborn bastard; you know that? Fuck, when I met Amy she could have broken my heart a billion times and I would come crawling back a billion and one more.”

A noise sounded from the background. It seemed like a door was opening.

"Speaking of which..." he said, turning around and kissing the gorgeous, petite Korean woman who had just appeared in the frame of the camera.

She was wearing orange snow pants and a long-sleeved black shirt. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek bun. She waved at me.

"Hey there, Wilde," she said.

"Hey Amy," I replied with a smile. "You keeping this asshole in line?"

"I have to, I'm his boss," she replied.

Amy was an award-winning documentary director. As much of a good-natured ribbing I'd given Josh earlier in the call, she really had changed the world with her movies.

"Hey, I've got something for you," she said, rummaging in her pockets.

"Is it a baby penguin?" I asked in a mock-hopeful voice.

"Better," she replied, pulling out her iPhone and tapping it a few times. Sound came out of it. She held it closer to the computer speakers.

Hailey's voice came through the computer. "Don't trust a star fucker…”

Amy and Josh were mouthing along, playing air guitar.

Josh was laughing so hard I thought he was going to break his ribs.

"Your girlfriend's pretty quick with the material, I have to give her that," Amy replied. "Even if she is a world-class high maintenance bi-"

Josh cut her off. “We were able to piece together most of the story through TMZ, but I want to hear the Wilde-certified version.”

I sighed. “She joined the movie without me being notified. She was fucking terrible by the way. God-awful acting. Wooden, over-acting-“

Amy looked confused. “She’s great in her music videos, though.”

I nodded. “She was blackmailing me. Wanted me to fake propose to her for a publicity stunt for her album. I agreed, because, well. She’s Hailey and I need this movie to work. The next day it was like she’d spent a year at Juilliard. And then the photo of me in the gym broke.”

Amy held her hand up. “Was it your new co-star? The new girl. Olivia? The one you had sex with in the theater.”

I glared at Josh. “Man code broken once again. Not cool.” But I laughed as I said it, and so did Josh.

He pulled Amy close to him and kissed her cheek. “She knows
everything
about you that I know, dude. You should know that by now.”

Amy cut across him. “So? Was it Olivia?”

I put my hands over my eyes. “Yes,” I mumbled.

I looked at the screen and saw Amy holding her hand out to Josh, who fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill.

“You were betting on that?” I yelled, good-naturedly.

Amy laughed. “Yep!”

“Wait, why the hell are you carrying around a hundred-dollar bill in fucking Antarctica?”

“We get bored here. It’s the same one we keep passing around betting on various shit,” Josh explained. “Okay, so – presumably Hailey saw the photo on the Internet. What did she do?”

I exhaled loudly. “That’s the thing. She wouldn’t talk to me…come to think of it, she wouldn’t talk to me right after I got back to the gym.” I rubbed my forehead, trying to think. “I still don’t know who took the photo. We were alone in there.”

Something was tickling at my brain but it wasn’t coming together. Maybe Hailey was right; I
was
pickling my brain with alcohol.

“So she came to the set the next day and reverted to terrible acting. Fox lost his shit and fired her. Then he turned around and hired Olivia out of nowhere,” I finished.

“Wait, wait-
you
didn’t choose her? Why did Fox?” Amy asked, looking confused.

“Apparently the first day on set he saw me staring at her…I actually interrupted the very first take when I saw her.” I shrugged sheepishly. I felt fucking ridiculous.

Amy cackled uproariously. “Oh, Wilde. You are in
deep
.”

At that moment, an alarm sounded somewhere on their end. Amy picked her phone up and showed it to Josh.

Josh nodded in recognition. "Hey man, we gotta go. It's our night to make dinner for the staff here."

"One more thing," I said, holding up my hand. "It's weird, right? For Hailey to release that song?"

Amy looked at Josh and splayed her hands out with excitement.

"
What
did I tell you earlier, Josh?" she said excitedly. Then she looked at the computer. "He never takes me seriously with this stuff. I said the same thing. That if she wanted revenge, this is not the Hailey way to do it."

I nodded. "Yeah, because her releasing this song is only going to be good for the film. It creates a sub-storyline for the audience. Everyone who didn't give two fucks about the picture will come see it to figure out-"

"If you both really
were
fucking each other on the side. Yeah. Like-"

"Brad and Angie in
Mr. And Mrs. Smith
," I finished for Amy.

She shrieked in agreement.

Josh looked at me and shook his head. "Do you two need a moment alone together?" he asked, grinning. "Finishing each other's damn sentences. I'm shutting this thing off before my wife leaves me for Roman fucking Wilder."

I laughed. "Talk to you both later.”

I held up my hand and splayed out my thumb and pinky finger to mime a phone and mouthed 'Call me' to Amy with an exaggerated wink.

She laughed. "In your dreams, Wilde. And look out for Hailey. She'll be coming for you. This was the Trojan horse."

I signed off and shut the lid of my laptop, plunging the bedroom into darkness. I laid on my back with my eyes closed, my mind swimming with thoughts of Hailey and Olivia and what Amy had said.

That night my dreams were filled with giant, wheeled, wooden penguins pulled up to the front doors of the hotel.

I tried to get the door man to not let it inside, but he did. When it had magically wheeled itself into the lobby, Olivia appeared in front of it.

I tried to scream at her to not touch it, but my voice was gone. She reached forward and opened a secret panel in its stomach.

Hailey popped out, dressed in full red carpet attire but with her hair up in a messy bun and wearing no makeup. She carried her iconic red acoustic guitar. When she strummed it, I couldn't hear the noise it made.

Then she turned the guitar on its side and it turned into a red rifle that she held to Olivia’s face.

My feet were frozen to the ground and my voice was gone.

I was powerless.

When Hailey pulled the trigger, she said two words. "Star fucker."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

OLIVIA

I desperately needed toothpaste.

I picked up the phone, knowing that I could have the concierge deliver me some almost instantly. But then I set it back down again. I'd spent nearly two weeks in Italy and hadn't been anywhere but the set and the hotel.

We would be leaving for Tuscany soon; Janna had arranged the production schedule so Wilder and I were getting a full thirty-six-hour break before leaving Milan.

I had big plans to do tourist things, but I had no idea if I would be able to get away with not being recognized. It seemed like the whole world knew who I was now.

Getting toothpaste would be a good test-run.

I pulled on my sunglasses and a hat, piling my hair underneath it, and took the staircase to the lobby. I was tired of being in the elevator with people who stared and whispered when I stepped into it.

It was starting to feel like a traveling coffin.

The lobby was quiet, with only a few people milling around. A man in a black t-shirt and jeans was sitting in a chair reading that morning's newspaper. I walked briskly past him when he looked up and smiled at me.

I nodded back, pushing through the doors before the doorman could even get them open for me.

I noticed gratefully that the paparazzi seemed to have cleared out from the front entrance. What a relief. I'd been sneaking out the back of the hotel all week and getting into a car with window tints.

The day was warm and sunny. People milled about on their way to errands and social activities. A little boy ran by with a red balloon tied to this finger. I smiled at him, and he waved back happily. He was the perfect age where his legs seemed to be made of rubber. He almost bounced more than he ran.

I turned into the corner pharmacy and strolled down the aisles with a metal basket, perusing all of the Italian labels and feeling the words on my tongue as I said them quietly to myself.

I’d thought I would have had more opportunity to speak Italian while I was here, but the majority of the film crew was Australian or American. Some mornings I called early for housekeeping just so I could converse with Alessa. She was always so nice and told me stories about her grandchildren.

I took a right and found the toothpaste aisle, passing a man wearing black. I did a double-take. It was the same guy I had seen in the lobby.

Or was it?

It was hard to tell. Then I saw the newspaper rolled up in his back pocket and knew it was him. Before I could say anything, he held up his iPhone to my face and started yelling.

"Can you smile again for the camera, Liv? Come on. I'm your friend."

I put my hands up over my face and turned around.

"Was everyone’s favorite Wilde child a good fuck? You’re the mystery woman in the gym, aren’t you? Come on! Smile for me, sweetheart.”

I turned around and cocked my fist, fuming.

"Why don't you-" I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was strong.

I smelled him before I heard him.

"Have a great, wonderful day, Jimmy? Why don't you have a wonderful day," Wilder said from behind me.

He still gripped my shoulder tightly to hold me back. It was a lucky thing, too. I was fucking pissed.

Jimmy smiled. "Two for one. Even better. You two have an awful lot of chemistry. Are you still slipping it to her on the side?"

I stepped forward and grabbed his phone, shattering it on the ground. The look on Jimmy's face alone was worth it.

Much to my surprise, Wilder bent down and sorted through the shards, pulling out the small, plastic-and-metal SIM card and the tiny, round metal drive and pocketing them both.

"Have a great day, Jimmy. Say hi to the kids for me,” he said with a smile.

Wilder steered me around the corner and up to the cashier, where he whipped out a wallet and paid for my toothpaste in basic but cheerful Italian. I stood there, still in shock. When we were out on the street, he pulled me into the alleyway and put me against the wall.

Once again I wanted to fuck him in broad daylight.

"You cannot go out alone like that anymore, Liv. Seriously." He looked over his shoulder. "He'll have a backup phone. More will come, and soon. We've gotta go now."

He took my hand and led me down the street. Sure enough, there were already a half dozen paparazzi assembled at the entrance to the hotel once again. Instead of going around, Wilder pushed past them.