“I’m not cowering.” She was totally cowering. “But what kind of rumors are we talking about? Stuff that’s worse than the truth?”
“Oh, the usual celebrity stuff. That you’re in rehab. You’re off getting breast implants to show off in the next video. That kind of thing. Sorry, Lane.” Her sister had a habit of apologizing for things without actually sounding the least bit sorry. “You might want to shut down your Facebook account, though,” Melody added.
“Why? What’s on there?” She seized the computer again and her fingers flew over the keyboard, bringing up her page.
“Just stupid stuff,” Melody answered. “Mean stuff. It’s just the haters being ignorant.”
Delaney gasped as she saw the screen. Post after post of comments filled it, some with still shots of Delaney leaning over Boyd’s lap. The images were blurry, so blurry you could hardly see her face, and if not for the quarter-sized hummingbird tattoo on her shoulder blade, she might have doubted it was her. But it was her.
Who says it’s hard to get a-head in Hollywood?
Why master-bate when you can Masterson?
Delaney Masterson sure knows how to pop rocks off.
“Oh, my God, Mel. These are awful.” Delaney’s eyes began to water.
“I told you not to look, Lane. Just delete the whole page.”
“But even if I delete it, these pictures are still out there.” Her lungs felt full of sharp rocks as she tried to breathe. “Why are people so mean?”
“They’re just jealous,” Melody answered.
“Nobody is jealous of me for having a sex tape.”
“No, but they’re jealous because of who our parents are and because we have a TV show. People think we have it easy because now we’re getting famous. They don’t understand the struggle is real.”
Delaney set the laptop next to her and punched at the pillow behind her, trying to get comfortable although dread made that impossible. “It’s so unfair. We agreed to live our lives out in the open for the sole purpose of entertaining people and then they turn on us.”
“I know, but unfortunately, in the absence of any defense from you, the trolls will keep attacking. If you came home, head held high—uh, sorry. I mean, well you know what I mean. Stand up for yourself.”
“I am standing up for myself by choosing to not add more fuel to Boyd’s infamy. As soon as this is no longer news, I’ll come home.”
“In that case, you’d better get more yarn, because you’ll have plenty of time to make baby hats.”
“Don’t count on it. Knitting is way harder than it looks, but honestly, even if I wanted to come home, I’m stuck here under an avalanche of sno—”
The lamp next to her bed flickered and went out, leaving her in the gray shadows of the room. “Shoot. My light just burned out. I’ll call you back later. I have to figure out if there are any extra light bulbs in this place.”
“Do you know how to change a light bulb?” Melody’s familiar teasing made Delaney more homesick than ever.
“No, but maybe there’s an app for that. I’ll call you later.”
She set the phone back on the table and got off the bed. It was getting dark outside, the sky a hazy, deepening gray. Just light enough to see that it was snowing. Still snowing. Always, always snowing.
Delaney walked into the kitchen and flipped the switch. Nothing. No lights. Somehow she must have blown a fuse. She’d seen the electrical box in the basement when Donna Beckett was showing her around. Hopefully there was an app to explain to her what to do with it, because it was getting darker by the minute.
She opened the door to the dank, cobweb-filled basement, but before her slipper-clad foot hit the first step, the muffler of her decrepit car rumbled outside the kitchen window and relief was like a warm blanket tossed around her shoulders. Grant was back. Feminism notwithstanding, she was clueless when it came to home maintenance, and sending him down into the basement seemed like a much better idea than going down there herself.
She was waiting in the kitchen in the dim light when he stepped inside, and she nearly yelped in surprise. Because the Grant Connelly who walked into her kitchen just then was not the same one who’d left earlier that day. His hair was cut short, very short, and the beard, the Scruffy McScruff rattiness that had been the one thing tempering her temptation, was gone. Completely gone.
What remained was one fine, fine-looking man.
Chapter 6
“HI,” HE SAID, STOPPING SHORT when he saw her.
Probably because she was standing right in his way, mouth gaping.
It’s not as if she’d never seen a good-looking man before. Of course she had. Beautiful men were everywhere in Beverly Hills, but who would’ve thought such a remarkable specimen had lurked beneath Grant Connelly’s junglemania facial fur?
“You cut your hair.”
Grant smiled and Delaney felt her lashes batting in Pavlovian response. There were dimples. Faint ones, but dimples just the same.