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Lily had lost all her supposed empathy. She leaned forward, hungry now. “And your brothers? Did they cut you off as well?”
Alessandro paused again, long enough for the camera to pull in on his face, which showed absolutely no strain, no care of any kind. “You will have to ask them,” he repeated.
“We did reach out to the Russos,” Lily said to the camera as it switched to her, “but they didn’t return our calls.”
The other camera caught a tight hint of a smile on Alessandro’s face.
“Well,” Lily said, “perhaps they’ll see this and have a change of heart.”
“That is very optimistic of you,” Alessandro said.
“It happens all the time.” Lily waved her pen in the air. “At least you have a new person in your life. Does Megan support you?”
In all the weeks she’d known Alessandro, this was the first time she’d heard her own name come out of the television. The feeling was bizarre.
“Of course.”
“Tell me how you two met. It was right after you broke up with Nicola Kulik, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Megan and I have been friends since before my first movie. We—”
“So she’s not a rebound? How does she feel about Nikki?”
“Like nothing at all, Lily. We are permitted to have previous relationships.”
“Sure, sure,” she said. “But she isn’t used to the celebrity life, is she? Are you facing any tensions with this spotlight aimed right at her? Was it fair to her to bring her into a new relationship this close to the Oscars?”
“You will have to ask Megan, Lily.”
He said it slowly and with his now-trademark smile, but Lily’s impertinent questions had been properly quelled.
“Now, tell me aboutThe Drummer. Perhaps the defining role of last year. What preparation did you do to get into the role?”
The rest of the interview went as scripted, though Megan said, “She knows she’s lost you. She didn’t get what she wanted.” Yasmin was texting thumbs-up emoji to Alessandro before the end credits rolled.
Alessandro stretched and Megan felt the tension leave him. “I think maybe in the future, I will be like DeNiro and never do interviews.”
“He gave that up eventually. And you’ve shown you can control the story.”
Alessandro buried his face in her hair. “The story is still out there. Now people know who my parents are. They will want to know more.”
Megan put her arms around him. “And we’ll figure out a way to make it work for you.”
She couldn’t see his face, just feel his breath on her neck. “We?” he said.
“Of course we. Unless you don’t want me to help.”
His hands tightened around her. “I will always want you to help.”
“Okay, then.” Megan pulled him with her as she lay down on the couch. Helping wasn’t loving, she thought, but she shut it out and focused on the length of his body, his lean, strong legs, and his arms crushing her close.
♦
Chapter 23
The designers Megan liked had been sending racks of clothes for weeks, and another was expected today, so when the doorbell to the house rang a couple days later, Megan said, “I’ll get it!” and checked the camera.
But there wasn’t a sleekly dressed stylist with a van waiting at the door. It was two men, about Megan’s age or a little older. One of them stared into the video camera. “’Ello?” he said.
