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“Then let us go. You know Hunter’s got to be worried sick about his daughter. You have a daughter.” Snow gestured to Hannah, who stiffened. “You know how devastating it would be if she went missing.”
Kassie pushed herself against Snow’s side.
Eloise snarled and disregarded this. “Hannah applied to be the bachelorette, using her father’s last name instead of mine so Hunter wouldn’t suspect.”
“He doesn’t know you have a daughter?” Snow asked.
“No. I managed to get Tys considered as one of the bachelors as well. That way Hannah could pick Tys and they could have the money.”
“But Hannah wasn’t selected,” Kassie said. “Snow was.”
“Snow,” Eloise said with a snarl. “Perfect, innocent, Snow. I started out just like you, you know. In my career, I was a beauty. I was selected to play a few side roles. But I wanted to advance my career. I wanted to do more than be a pretty face for one-time only until the studio moved on to the next beauty.
“I was going to be a full-time, beloved actress, with my face on every magazine. In order to do that, I had to stoop. I had to model, to sell myself, just to make it big. And yet here you are—you’ve never been on anything. You’ve never modeled. You’ve never been in the public eye in any other way than your theatrics, and yet you were accepted and loved instantly for your purity and innocence.” She said these last few words with so much derision.
This was unbelievable. Eloise wasjealousof Snow? “I had no control over the public’s reaction to me,” Snow said. “You can’t hold that against me.” It wasn’t her fault that she was simply a likable person.
Eloise curled her lip over her teeth. “You needed to pay your dues. You and the studio too.”
What did Eloise have against the studio?
“How can you possibly make me do that?” Snow asked. “I’m not going to stoop low. I’m not going to sign any contracts. After this fiasco, I have no desire to be anywhere near the public eye again.” It was true. When she went home, she wanted to curl back into the sidelines of theater production for a good long while. Take up knitting. Or yoga. She’d never done much yoga before.
“I have connections with Webo,” Eloise went on. “They’ve agreed to give me the show I’ve been trying to push Hunter for.”
Webo TV? “What show is that?” And what did this have to do with Snow and Kassie?
Eloise strutted deeper into the room. “A seasoned bachelorette, with men nearer to her in age, who’ve had more experience in life. People will relate more to her. People will celebrate her finding a second chance in life.”
“You mean—you? You would be the seasoned bachelorette?”
“If all goes well. Heartthrob gets all the limelight. They have stock in every situation and a hand in too many departments. Why do you think Hunter was able to swing a billion-dollar prize to you as the winner? He’s too wealthy—and he doesn’t care about the little guys.”
“Like me,” Tys added. Beside him, Hannah nodded her agreement.
Snow had never gotten the impression that Hunter didn’t care about others. What did Tys expect, for Hunter to hand him dollar bills just for existing?
“That’s why we’re sabotaging Heartthrob. Check the footage. We’ve added incriminating evidence that makes it look like Hunter is behind everything. The worst thing he could have done was to start going on your dates with you. He handed himself over the day he started doing that, and he didn’t even realize it.” She laughed.
Snow wasn’t sure what Eloise was talking about—but then again, she hadn’t seen any of the staged footage. Would people really believe that? Would they really believe Hunter had been the one sending notes to his own studio? To Snow?
“Hunter was the one to save me from the pool. Not push me in.”
“We have evidence about that too, proving he hired two lugs to do the dirty work so he could look like the hero,” Tys said.
“No one is going to believe that,” Snow said. Not after she’d gone live and told the public what was going on.
Except…was it possible? Eloise could have manipulated everything. If she had help from someone else in the studio, she could have coordinated footage that would make it look like Hunter had been the one to instigate the attack.
“I’ll testify,” Snow said. “Hunter didn’t do any of those things.” Because the truth was, she’d been painfully aware of everything he’d done. She hadn’t been able to concentrate fully on the men she’d been dating, because Hunter had always seemed to take over her focus.
“Not if you’re not there.” Eloise and Tys exchanged maligned glances. “Not once the men we sold you to arrive.”
Kassie whimpered at this. “I want my daddy.”
Snow’s blood pumped harder. “What are you talking about?”
“Your images have been posted online. Someone has paid a high price for you both, and they’ll be picking you up within the next hour.”
