Finding Chris Evans: The Hollywood Edition (3 page)

Beside her, Ellie bounced on the balls of her feet, craning her neck to see how far the line extended in front of them as they shuffled forward. She was genuinely beautiful—in a wholesome Midwestern way, all bright eyes and shining blonde hair. And she seemed sweet. Considerate. Nurturing.
Was
she Chris’s soulmate? Would he take one look at her and feel his heart thud the same way Trina’s had the first time she’d seen that damn lopsided grin? Was Trina going to be forced to watch the father of her child fall in love with another woman before her eyes?

No. She was being ridiculous. She didn’t believe in fortune tellers. But ever since she’d gotten pregnant—even before she’d known she was—all of her emotions had seemed amplified beyond rational levels. Jealousy. Fear. All of them so big she could barely breathe through them.

They rounded the corner of the building and she could finally see the tent in front of them—and a new emotion spiked into the insane cocktail rushing through her bloodstream. Excitement. She might really get to see him. Would he remember her? She had to believe he would. The best night of her life couldn’t have been nothing to him—could it? Just another Friday?

The line moved ahead of them, mall personnel counting bodies until a security guard stepped in front of Ellie, stopping her. “Wait here please.”

The fans in front of them filtered toward the small blue tent that had been set up to one side of the stage.

Ellie caught her hand suddenly, squeezing it tight. “This could really be it. My Chris Evans.”

“Yay,” Trina mumbled, hoping she wasn’t about to puke on her new friend’s shoes from the nerves twisting her stomach into knots as she watched their turn get closer and closer.

The security guard blocking their path lifted a hand to his ear, listening to something over his earpiece. His mouth tightened slightly and Trina knew what was coming even before he lifted his arms to quiet the crowd and called out over it.

“I’m sorry, ladies. That’s it for today. Mr. Evans has a plane to catch. Better luck next time.”

Better luck next time.

“Crap,” Ellie murmured.

No.

Trina couldn’t afford a next time. He didn’t have another appearance for weeks and that one was some kind of black tie thing with four hundred dollar tickets. Her budget was already stretched past the breaking point to squeeze in this trip. Flying to Vegas for a fundraiser was going to mean no food next semester. Or no tuition. She already didn’t know what she was going to do about school. Who had a baby in the middle of medical school? By herself?

She could do it. She could be a single mom. Her mother had been a single mom and she’d been amazing, but all they’d had was one another and when her mother had gotten cancer it was like Trina’s entire world had been yanked out from under her. She never wanted her child to feel as alone as she’d felt since she lost her mother. Her daughter. Because she pictured the tiny fetus inside her as a sweet little baby girl, even though it was too early to know for sure.

“Please,” she said to the security guard, feeling the horrible press of tears filling her eyes, knowing she was fighting a losing battle.
Keep it together, Trina
. “You don’t understand. I have to see him today.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. We have to cut it off.”

She was going to have to do this alone. Figure it all out alone. Somehow support her child alone. How was she going to stay in school?

A vision rose up in her mind’s eye, so vivid it seemed to block out the heat of the outdoor mall around her—or maybe she was having heat stroke. She saw herself seven months from now, a giant belly distended in front of her, in a labor and delivery room in some distant hospital when some helpful nurse put the Addition Magician on the television to calm her down. That was as close as she was going to get to having her child’s father with her for the birth—and it would be the only way her baby was going to know her daddy.

No.

Trina burst into tears. Loud, sloppy tears. Later, she would blame it on the pregnancy hormones, but in the moment all she felt was a crushing sense of loss, of failure, of isolation. “Oh God!” she wailed. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this alone.”

“Hey.” Ellie wrapped an arm around her and guided her away from the security guard who was visually measured her for a straightjacket. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t. I can’t do it, Ellie. I can’t have this baby by myself.”

“Oh wow.” Realization crashed over Ellie’s face. “I knew there was more going on than you were letting on. It’s his?” She nodded toward the blue tent where security guards formed an impenetrable wall.

Trina nodded, sniffling as the first blast of tears dried. There was something unbelievably comforting about telling someone. Her mom had always been her best friend and since she’d died Trina hadn’t known who to confide in. Her friends from undergrad were all back in Seattle, wrapped up in their own lives. They were more acquaintances than BFFs anyway.

It was part of why that night with Chris in Chicago had been such heady stuff—he’d made her feel like she never had to be alone again. And now here she was.

Alone. Pregnant. Such a freaking cliché.

Tears pricked at her eyes again.

“Okay.” Ellie eyed the tent with its impressive security force, determination firming her expression. “Come on.”

“What are you doing?” Trina asked as Ellie tugged her around behind the stage.

“Creating a diversion.”

Chapter Two

“Ready to go, rock star?”

Chris worked his jaw, trying to release the muscles in his cheeks that had begun to cramp after two consecutive hours of smiling for the camera. “Is that the last of them?”

“The last we have time for today,” his manager, Marty, explained. “We need to get you to your flight. You need your beauty rest before the morning shows tomorrow.”

Chris grimaced, feeling his cheek muscles pull. He loved his job. He wasn’t going to complain about smiling for the screaming fans or jetting off for an early morning television appearance, but there were days his life didn’t feel like
his
life.

He was always going where they told him, doing what they told him, always
on
, always the Addition Magician, and so rarely allowed to just be Chris anymore. But he’d wanted this. It was the dream.

“We’ll just give security a few minutes to clear a path to the town car and then we’ll be ready to roll,” Marty went on, his attention locked on his iPhone as he managed Chris’s world with seamless efficiency. “While I’ve got you here, I was hoping to find a minute to talk to you about your image.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Chris worked the kinks out of his neck and shoulders. For the moment, they were alone inside the tent and he could relax. Marty’s words didn’t alarm him—Marty was always trying to fix this or tweak that to make him more marketable.

“Nothing is wrong with it! Your image is perfect! We love your image!” Marty gushed, looking up from his phone. “We just need to be careful right now.”

“Careful how?”

“We have to walk a tightrope with you—you need to be a sex symbol, but a family friendly one.”

“Meaning?”

Marty grimaced. “I’ve been looking at your ratings over the last few years—while you were with Daniella there was a noticeable drop. Your fans don’t like to think of you as taken. But when that woman in Tulsa claimed she was having your baby—”

“That was a hoax. I never even slept with her.”

“I know. But it still sent your ratings into the shitter for three weeks. If you’re too much of a dog, your fans hate that even more than when you’re off the market. So you can’t be hooking up with a new girl in every port.”

“I haven’t been.” He hadn’t been with anyone since Chicago two months ago. He hadn’t had the time, the energy, or the interest.

“I know—you’ve been great, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt for you to know what the stakes are, just in case you’re feeling frisky.”

Chris cringed at the word frisky—and the idea that his manager was now managing his sex life. Did that mean he’d definitively
made it
?

“No random hook ups and no long term commitments that make you unavailable,” Marty went on. “This is a pivotal moment for us. Until we negotiate this new contract with the network, you have to be squeaky clean, but also fantasy bait.”

“So everyone has to want to sleep with me, but I’m not allowed to sleep with anyone.”

Marty smiled, oblivious to his sarcasm. “Precisely.”

“Lovely.”

Chris couldn’t really be annoyed with Marty for micromanaging his relationships. He’d chosen this life.

When he’d gone on
Romancing Miss Right
in order to build his platform and get the funding for
The Addition Magician
, he’d made his love life fair game. He was a contractor, but he knew he owed his fame and his success more to his sex appeal than his skills with a hammer.

His image could have a huge impact on his career and if that meant he had to be visibly available but practically chaste until the new contracts were signed, then he could keep it in his pants. It wasn’t like there was anyone he was interested in anyway. Not since Trina.

It was probably for the best that she’d blown him off when he’d suggested a repeat of their one night in Chicago. They were both too busy for a long-distance relationship anyway. And he was too close to getting the Dream Gig to screw it up now.

He loved his career. He wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize it—but there were times when it was draining. And isolating. He worked with dozens of people every day, but they all depended on his success for their livelihood and that changed the dynamics. He was the talent. The product they were all selling.

When he’d hit it big, he’d suddenly understood why so many successful home improvement shows were hosted by families—cousins, brothers, husbands and wives. You needed that connection to keep you grounded—and to keep the fame from swallowing you whole.

But Chris didn’t have a family. That had been part of what had gotten him the sympathy vote when he’d been on
Romancing Miss Right
—and part of what had made him feel so instantly linked to Trina—the story of the car accident that had taken his parents away from him when he was nineteen.

He missed that connection.

He wanted to have what his parents had with each other—but it could wait. Marty knew his shit. If he said image was everything right now, then image was everything.

The network was thinking of him for a primetime slot. That was huge. Life-changing huge.

“The turnout today was incredible,” Marty went on, tapping at something on his phone. “Your platform is really taking off. When I show the network your public appearance stats in conjunction with these latest ratings, there’s no way they won’t give you the primetime slot.” He looked up then, beaming like a proud parent. “We’ve worked for years to get here, buddy. Just a few more weeks. Don’t screw it up.”

Chris grabbed a water bottle out of the cooler and drained it, unperturbed by Marty’s habitual micromanaging. “I’m not going to screw it up.”

A sudden screech of feedback from the sound system on the stage made them both duck and cringe. Another burst of feedback sounded like, “Chris!”

“What the hell?” Chris moved to the edge of the tent, squinting out into the bright sun to try to see what was going on out there.

He wasn’t sure what he expected, but he was unprepared for the sight of the attractive blonde leading the security on a merry chase as she vaulted over chairs and scrambled around pylons with a microphone clutched in one hand.

Then she spotted him and her face lit as she lifted the microphone to her lips. “Chris! This one’s for you!” she shouted into the mic, loud enough to make everyone in the vicinity wince, before she began belting a distinctly off-key and decidedly cringe-worthy rendition of
Papa Don’t Preach
—though it took him several lines to identify the song thanks to her tone-deaf vocal stylings and the fact that every other phrase was broken off breathlessly as she evaded another security guard.

He had to give her credit, she might not be able to sing to save her life, but the girl could move. The US Olympic hurdles team needed to recruit her.

A dozen members of the crowd that lingered in the courtyard lifted their cell phones to capture the moment. His security was freaking out, but Chris began to laugh. She was obviously harmless, if a little off her rocker, and he had to give her credit for being ballsy as hell.

He didn’t recognize her from the Meet & Greet, but he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t already smiled for a picture with her—there had been several hundred smiling faces whipping past him this afternoon.

He grinned and waved at his ambush karaoke singer.

Then a slim, familiar figure ducked past the distracted security guards—a slim, familiar figure with a face he was
certain
hadn’t whipped past him in the previous hours.

Trina.

The one that got away.

His heart stuttered hard, like an engine backfiring. “Trina?”

“Hi, Chris.” Her eyes were wide, her lips parted—as if she was a shocked to see him as he was to see her.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were in Chicago.”

She wet her lips as several of the camera-wielding bystanders realized Chris had stepped out of his tent and aimed their phones his direction. “I had to see you.”

He took a step toward her, lifting a hand to stop a security guard who had noticed she’d snuck past their line and moved to intercept her. She glanced to the guard, her eyes flaring wide as if she feared she was about to be dragged away. Her gaze swung back to Chris and two little words fell out of her mouth on a rush.

“I’m pregnant.”

Through the sudden ringing in his ears, he somehow clearly heard the soft gasps of the nearby fans—their camera apps capturing the moment for eternity—and Marty’s viciously muttered, “
Fuck
.”

Chapter Three

Two months earlier. Chicago.