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The headline on the computer screen spoke for itself: Chiara Feran’s Father Thrown Out of Casino.
Maybe now that he couldn’t gamble because he’d been caught counting cards, Michael Feran would stay out of trouble. But Chiara knew that was wishful thinking.
The public thought she had an enviable life—helped by Odele’s relentless image craftsmanship. But the truth...
She’d never thought of herself as a beauty queen, for one. Oh, sure, she’d been blessed with good genes—a nice face and a fast metabolism that meant it wasn’t impossible to adhere to Hollywood standards of beauty. But she also considered herself an outsider. She’d been raised by an immigrant mother, grown up enduring cold New England winters and would have still been doing theater but for a quirk of fate and Odele risking taking her on as a client.
She liked her privacy, her best friend was a smart-mouthed talent manager ripe for caricature and her sidekick was a doll made of wood. Obviously Todd Jeffers was crazier than she gave him credit for if he couldn’t pick a better-credentialed starlet to stalk. And now she had a rumored boyfriend—a muscle-bound stuntman who looked as if he could enter a triathlon.
She’d already ignored a text from Odele about the latest headline, but Chiara knew her manager was right—they needed a distraction fast...
Her lawyers were due in court in the coming days to get a temporary restraining order—so there’d be more unwanted press attention because of her unpleasant fan.
Still, Rick Serenghetti? Argh.
Her cell phone buzzed again, a telltale ringtone, and this time Chiara knew she couldn’t ignore it. With an apologetic look, she propped Ruby on a chair and took the call. “Hello, Odele.”
“Enjoying your time off?”
“Define enjoy. I’m memorizing my lines.” Among other things. She cast Ruby a hush-hush look.
“Rick needs to move in if we’re going to make this fake relationship work. It’ll help believability.”
“No.” The refusal fell from her lips without thought. Rick in her house? They’d throttle each other...if they weren’t jumping into bed. And the contradiction of trying to make a fake relationship work was apparently lost on her manager.
Odele sighed. “We need to move quickly. I’m going to tell my assistant to break the story on social media accounts so we can control the initial message. I took an amateur shot with my cell phone of you and Rick seemingly engaged in an intimate conversation on the Novatus Studio lot.”
“Of course you did.”
“It looks great. Really like the two of you having a tête-à-tête,” Odele added, warming to her subject and ignoring the sarcasm.
“Did it also look as if I was going to kick him in the shins?”
“And I’ve already set up a print interview for the two of you with a trusted reporter,” Odele went on as if she hadn’t heard.
“I’m not looking for a protector. And have you even done a background check on Rick Serenghetti? Maybe he’s the one I need safeguarding from!”
Rick was dangerous to her tranquility, but she didn’t care to delve into the reasons why. He had a way of looking at her with a lazy, sultry gleam that she found...annoying—yes, definitely annoying.
She’d done a quick search online for him—only for the purpose of satisfying herself that he didn’t have a criminal record, she told herself—and had come up with nothing. She supposed no news was good news.
“Who said anything about a bodyguard?” Odele said innocently. “This is to help everyone believe you two are an item.”
So Rick had backed off the part about offering personal protection? Somehow she had her doubts. “He doesn’t need to move in to do that. What ever happened to dating? We’re going from zero to sixty.”
“It’s Hollywood. Pregnancies last five months, and babies arrive right after the wedding. Everything is fast here.”
Chiara couldn’t argue. Celebrities were well-known for trying to hide their pregnancies from the press until the second trimester or beyond.
“Do I need to resend you the latest headline about Michael Feran?” Odele asked.
“I’ve already read it. I should have taken a different surname when I started my career.”
“Too late now, sweetie. Besides, the media would have found him anyway, and he’d still be giving you trouble.”
“Yes, but it would have made the connection between us seem less close.”
“Well, time to distance yourself by cozying up to a hot stuntman.”
