“Terrible threes, am I right?” I glanced at her feet. “I see you got over those swollen ankles you wrote about.”
Leila’s shoulders straightened. Her gaze moved from my face to Melanie Joan’s. Slowly, her expression changed, her eyes hardening, her chin inching forward. A plan formulating in her mind. “Go for it,” Leila said.
Melanie Joan gaped at her. “What?”
“Go ahead and out me.” She turned to me. “If you think Leila Donnelly fans are going to take the word of that washed-up, fossilized hack over me—especially after that fiasco of a TV interview,” she said, “you’re even dumber than you look.”
Melanie Joan’s cheeks flushed. Quickly, she put her sunglasses back on.
“The truth hurts, I know,” Leila said.
“You’re hardly an authority on the truth,” I said.
“Fuck you, Leila,” Melanie Joan said. Her voice cracked. “If anyone’s a hack, it’s you.”
Leila ignored her. She kept talking to me. “Old, bitter, desperate. All her best days behind her. Nobody wants to read her romances anymore, so she decides to write the least relatable memoir ever—and naturally, no one wants to read that, either! You almost can’t blame her for making up such a crazy story about me. I mean…anything to be relevant again.”
Melanie Joan seemed frail and unsteady on her feet, as though all the energy had been yanked out of her. Without saying a word, she turned around and headed back to the car.
I stayed where I was. I wasn’t sure I’d ever hated another person as much as I hated Leila Donnelly. And considering some of the people I’d come in contact with, that was saying a lot.
“They’ll believeme,” I said. Leila started to close the door, but I blocked it with my foot. “When you get a chance, google me. Sunny Randall. You’ll see that I’m pretty trustworthy.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“I never heard of you, either, until today,” I said. “And now you’re just…everywhere. Like a really shitty song that I can’t get out of my head.”
“That’s adorable.”
“It’s accurate,” I said. “Anyway, I can’t wait to contact my friends in the press. Let ’em tell the world about thereal you, so to speak.”
“I don’t…I don’t talk to the press.”
“Ido. And like I said, I’m trustworthy.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
I smiled sweetly at her. “Is that a threat or a challenge?” I said. “Because I react the same to both.”
Leila stared at me, her face growing paler.
“You’re right about one thing,” I said. “The truthdoeshurt. You’ll see.”
The child started screaming again.
“Shut the hell up!”
The scream grew louder, then erupted into sobs.
“You really ought to check on Tommy,” I said. “He doesn’t sound happy.”
Twenty-nine
Back in the car, I told Spike that Book Babe and Leila Donnelly were one and the same.
“That’s nuts!” he said. “Call your editor, Melanie Joan. Tell him to stop the presses. Or start the presses. What’s the right terminology?”
Melanie Joan shrugged. She said nothing. She didn’t pick up her phone.
