Car thief.
Princess.
Corrupt politician.
Whore.
I’ve been them all.
How could I have known that this was the role that would burrow back? The one that would get under my skin, that would play around inside of me and leave me with nothing but nightmares and cold sweats and a feeling of dirtiness I couldn’t wash off for weeks. Months.
When we’d wrapped filming, when I’d taken off the last gorgeous 1950s-era costume and pulled out the last of the pinned-up curls, I’d sworn that that was it. Sworn that I would never be her again.
And yet, here I am. All dressed up with nowhere to go but crazy.
Another knock sounds at the door and this time not-Juliet calls, “Is everything okay, Ms. Romero? Can I get you something?”
How about an evacuation plan?
The question is on the tip of my tongue, but I bite it back like I do so many other things. Funny, isn’t it, how being famous takes away your voice instead of giving you one? How it makes you mute just as it gives you a gigantic platform to scream from…
“Actually, I am just about ready,” I say, striding to the door with shoulders squared and my best smile. As I open it and see not-Juliet’s face, her name suddenly comes back to me. Thank God.
“Thanks so much for all your help today, Jules,” I tell her, pulling her in for a quick one-armed hug. “And I’m sorry about the name confusion earlier. This diet I’m on has me off coffee and I swear the no-caffeine thing has addled my brain.”
“Oh, no problem at all, Ms. Romero.” But she’s grinning hugely, a sure sign that my apology makes her feel a little less erased. I’m glad, because this town does enough of that for the both of us. “I can’t imagine going without my daily espresso.”
“That’s because you’re gorgeous and you don’t have to. For the rest of us mere mortals—” I give an exaggerated shudder. “It’s terrible.”
She’s laughing full-out now. “Somehow, I think you manage all right, Ms. Romero.”
“Call me Veronica. Please.” I give her another quick hug, then turn toward the front parlor, where the photographer, Marc Benneton, has his cameras set up.
Originally, Vanity Fair had wanted Annie Leibovitz for this shoot, but I’d talked them out of it. Annie’s shot me twice before and while the images were astonishing in their lush beauty, I wanted something different—something grittier—for this photo shoot. Something that would contrast with the Belladonna’s beautifully coiffed perfection. Thankfully, the editors had agreed with my vision.
As I walk toward the first location for the shoot, I stop every few steps to introduce myself to a member of the crew and thank them for being here. From the surprised looks on their faces as I do, I get the impression that they aren’t used to that happening.
Sometimes I really hate this town and every power player in it.
Once I’m in my mother’s front parlor—as I’ll always think of it, even though this house and everything in it has been mine for several years now—Marc wastes no time in directing me to where he wants me. In this case, it’s the long, white French Provincial fainting couch my mother picked up in Paris on one of her many whirlwind European shopping trips. I perch on the edge of it, legs crossed and hands clasped in my lap.
Someone rolls in a tea cart with a full service on it and I spend a few minutes dropping sugar cubes in a cup and pouring tea from a gorgeous Royal Copenhagen pot. I pose like the perfect lady I’m not and never will be, looking demure and ladylike and oh-so-precious. At least until Marc shoves his hands in my perfectly coiffed hair and spreads me backward on the divan, with my skirt hiked up, my legs splayed and my hair hanging off the end of the couch, the ends trailing on the floor.
It’s not a comfortable position, but it’s one I’m intimately familiar with. I spent a great many of my teen years playing the disheveled mess before I figured out that cool-and-collected got me so much further than being an emotional wreck would.
At one point he even goes so far as to smudge my lipstick with his thumb and though I stiffen at the touch, the look in his eyes tells me the picture will be worth it.
Through it all, I’m uncomfortably aware that Ian is here, lurking in the background. Watching everything with his too-dark and too-observant eyes. Recording his impressions of me, and this whole process, in the small notebook that he never once puts down.
I concentrate on Marc’s directions and try not to think about what Ian has already written in there about me. I’m sure it’s colorful, considering the complete one-eighty I pulled at the café yesterday. But he’d shaken me up, and my response to being shaken is to fight back any way I have to.