Finding Mr. Right (19 page)

Blake and I ordered our coffees, but then the cashier waved her hands when we asked what the cost was. She beamed at me and whispered, “There’s no way I could charge you, Mrs. Cooper.” She winked at me, and I smiled weakly, glad that Blake hadn’t heard.

“Oh, thanks.”

I walked away to join Blake, and she called out to me in a singsong voice, “Please just let him know I’m his biggest fan.”

“Will do.” I smiled back at her and kept my eyes averted from Blake’s. Okay, I knew I was in trouble, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it. Somehow, half of England thought I was married to Bradley Cooper, and it wasn’t in my dreams.

Dear Diary,

I have had to take drastic measures. I’ve gone and dyed my hair blonde. And well, I quite like it. They say blondes have more fun, and I’m hoping that will turn out to be true. I am planning on a big fancy dinner with Blake and then a night of seduction, which I hope finally seals the deal. I’m also planning on singing to him, a la Marilyn Monroe and her Happy Birthday song to JFK. I’m still trying to decide if it should be in the hotel or at the restaurant. I just want to make sure that Blake’s focus is 100% on me and not the celebrity whores who might hound us because I’m fake-married to Bradley Cooper.

I bought two boxes of L’Oreal dye to make sure the blonde took to my hair. I’d tried to go red a couple of years ago, and my dark hair hadn’t changed at all. I had been so disappointed and frustrated because I had told a guy I’d met online that I had red hair and I didn’t want him to think I was a liar. It turned out that I didn’t care that I had shown up on the first date with my regular dark brown hair, because he was a weirdo who thought he was the second coming of Bozo the Clown. He even wore a red nose on our date. At the time, I thought I was in a Stephen King novel and about to die.

So this time I resolved that I was going to make sure that my hair went blonde. I needed it to; this was going to be my foolproof way of making sure no one recognized me. I’m not even sure how Madeline or her mom had gotten the photo of me, but it was quite uncomplimentary, with big, bushy brown hair. No one would think I was Maggie Cooper if I had long blonde tresses. I sat in the bathroom doing my nails while I waited for the dye to take to my hair. I had poured both bottles into my hair and done an extra layer of streaks to give myself a more sun-kissed look. My scalp was starting to itch and burn, and I bit my lip. I didn’t remember it burning before, but maybe that was because I did it wrong. Halfway through, I decided to pour some bleach I found in the bathroom on my hair as well, just in case the dye didn’t work. I knew for a fact that bleach lightened things. I had plenty of colored clothes with white spots, thanks to me throwing them in a whitewash.

I waited another 15 minutes before jumping into the shower. My scalp had really started stinging, and I just couldn’t take the pain anymore. I guessed I could be a dark blonde for now; I didn’t need to have the white-blond hair of Daenerys Targaryen from ‘Game of Thrones.’ I conditioned my hair and sang some of my favorite tunes while imagining Blake’s jaw dropping when he saw me later in the evening. I giggled to myself as I pictured myself as the slinky—well, somewhat slinky—blonde bombshell crooning to my man. I was busy laughing to myself as I got out of the shower and started drying myself. And then I looked in the mirror and screamed bloody murder.

“Oh, my gosh!!!” I screamed again, blinking rapidly, hoping that something was wrong with my vision. For there, reflecting back at me, was a monster with green hair and white blotches. My hair looked like the skin of an anemic alien that had chicken pox.

“Oh, my God, Oh my God!” I jumped back into the shower and grabbed the bottle of shampoo and poured half of it on top of my head and started scrubbing. It didn’t help that my poor scalp cried out in pain as my fingers scrubbed. I didn’t care. I just needed the green to be gone. After about 15 minutes of hardcore scrubbing, I got out of the shower with my eyes closed, too scared to look in the mirror.

“Ok, count down to one, Maggie,” I said to myself, trying to remain calm. “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5.” I opened my eyes quickly, too impatient to wait until I got to zero, and started screaming again. If anything, my hair looked worse. The green reminded me of some sort of mutant vile fluorescent green, and I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t in a dream. I dragged my clothes on and ran to the bedroom, panicking.

“Maggie, you there?” I heard Blake’s voice through the door as he knocked on it.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Can I come in for a moment?”

“ Um, just a sec.” I ran to the bathroom and wrapped the towel around my head. “Coming.” I walked to the door slowly and opened in casually. “What’s up?” I said as I popped my head out the door.

“Can I come in, Maggie?” He raised an eyebrow at me, and I opened the door widely.

“Well of course, you can come in anytime you want.”

“Thanks.” He looked at me oddly, and I stopped pacing around like a crazy person. “So what are you up to?”

“Just relaxing,” I smiled at him brightly and sat down on the edge of the bed. He came and sat next to me and took my hand.

“I wanted to let you know how happy I am that you came on this trip with me, Maggie.” Blake stared into my eyes, and I felt my heart starting to melt. “It means a lot to me that you trust me so much, and I know I’ve been busy and preoccupied lately, but I wanted you to know how happy I am to call you my girlfriend.”

“Really?” I looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were fed up with me.”

“What?” he laughed. “Well, it would be hard to not be fed up with you and your antics every once in a while, but that’s part of the reason why I like you so much, Mags. Life is never dull with you around.”

“I guess not.” I stared at his lips and decided to lean over and kiss him. He tasted sweet and I found myself licking his lips. “Did you just have jellybeans?”

He laughed. “Yeah. Good taste buds.” We fell back onto the bed, and I felt his arms go around me.
OMG, this is it,
I thought.
We are finally going to consummate this relationship.
I closed my eyes and was leaning into him, waiting for him to ravish me, when I felt the towel fall off of my head and then heard Blake swear. I opened my eyes and looked up to see Blake in convulsions of laughter.

“What happened to your hair, Maggie?” he gasped out between his laughs.

“What do you mean?” I sat up and frowned at him. It certainly wasn’t a chivalrous of him to take this much delight in my hair.

“I don’t know if you knew this, Maggie, but your hair is green.”

“It’s meant to be blonde,” I sighed.

“What?” He cocked his head at me. “Did you read the box wrong?”

“No, but I think there may have been something wrong with the dye.” I paused. “Maybe we should sue.”

Blake looked at me seriously. “Do you really think it was an issue with the dye, Mags?”

I looked at him carefully and thought for a moment before answering softly, “Maybe not.” I sighed. “I guess it was user error.”

“Oh, Maggie.” Blake burst out laughing again and took out his phone.

“What are you doing?” I looked at him suspiciously.

“I’m taking a photo.” He grinned as he clicked the shot. “This is too precious a moment to not be photographed.”

“No, Blake, no,” I groaned and reached for the phone. He pulled it away from me, and I scrambled over him, trying to get the phone from his hands. “Blake, delete that photo now!”

“Or what?” He pinned me down to the bed so
I couldn’t move, and I wriggled against him.

“I’ll get you back,” I snarled at him as my cheeks flushed at being so close to him.

“Yeah?” He wriggled his eyebrows at me and leaned down to kiss me. “You and what army?”

“Hmm,” I sighed with bliss as he continued kissing me and I felt him lift my T-shirt off.

“That’s what I thought.” He grinned down at me as I pulled his T-shirt off.

Then Blake proceeded to have his wicked way with me. I lay there afterwards in his arms feeling content and happy. Then I wailed, “I wanted to look like a blonde bombshell for our first time.”

“Does it make you feel better to know that you are the bomb?” Blake smiled at me.

“Huh?” I looked over at him in confusion.

“You just rocked my world like only a bomb could do.”

“You are soo corny, William Blake Connor.” I hit him in the shoulder and smiled as I relaxed into his arms once again. I was happy and content, and my Bradley Cooper drama was the furthest thing from my mind.

Dear Diary,

Something big is going down. And it’s not big as in there was a coup in some western country or big like someone nominated me for a Nobel Peace Prize, though I expect that to happen at some point in my life. It’s big as in I am in a hell of a lot of trouble, and I’m not sure how to get out of it.

I woke up feeling satiated and happy. Blake had been everything I could have hoped for and more in the bedroom. I stretched and realized that Blake wasn’t there and grabbed a sheet over me and walked to the bathroom to see if he was showering. He wasn’t there, and I wondered where he was. He hadn’t dined and dashed with me being the juicy meal, had he? I shook my head; that wasn’t Blake. He would never do something like that to me. I waited with my sexiest pose in the bed for about 15 minutes before I realized that he wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Maybe he’d gone to get me breakfast in bed and had gotten distracted by a call from work.

I decided to go and shower and frowned at my reflection in the mirror. My hair looked a hideous mess. I definitely had to go to the hairdresser. I was drying off when I heard Blake coming back into the room. I ran out in my towel and stopped at the look on his face. He looked madder than I had ever seen him in my life. And he was holding a paper in his hands. I swallowed hard.
Please, God, don’t let that be what I think it is. Please please.
I walked over to him slowly and tried to smile at him but he was looking at me with murder in his eyes.

“Maggie Lane, do you know what I saw in the papers this morning?”

“A good story?” I smiled at him winningly. He didn’t smile back.

“I saw a very interesting article.” He paused. “And did you know, your name was mentioned. And get this, there was also a photograph.”

“Oh.” I felt the color leave my face. I was in for it.

“You don’t seem surprised, Maggie. Why is that?” He walked over to me and held up a cover of the paper. There was a photograph of me under the headline: “Is This the New Mrs. Bradley Cooper?”

“Oh my.” I covered my face with my hands and gulped. I didn’t know what to tell him. I made a mental note of the author of the article, Holly Matthews. I was pretty sure that was Madeline from the plane’s mother.

“Is that all you have to say, Maggie?”

“No.”

“Or are you going to tell me that my girlfriend is actually married to a famous movie star?”

“No.”
At least he still called me his girlfriend,
I thought to myself. I quite liked it when he said that. I didn’t think that this was the time to tell him that, though.

“Is that all you are going to say, Maggie?” He frowned at me. “What is going on? I had a normal life before I met you.”

“It was a mistake.” I made a face at him. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far. I swear.”

“You never mean it.” Blake looked away from me. “I can’t deal with this, Maggie. When are you going to grow up?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I was defensive and scared.

“You act as childish as you did at 14. I can’t date a kid, Maggie.” He sighed. “I can’t keep bailing you out of one outlandish scenario after another.”

“I see.” My voice sounded raspy. I knew tears were about to fall, and there was no way I wanted him to see me crying.

“Do you?” He grabbed my hands and pulled me close to him. His eyes were full of sadness. “You are really special to me, Maggie. I just don’t think I can be your guardian and boyfriend.”

“Who asked you to be my guardian?” My voice rose as my heart started thumping uncontrollably. I could feel impending doom.

“Maggie, I’ve always had to be that person. Whether you asked me or not. Bad dates. Bad bosses. Bad decisions.”

“What bad decisions?”

“Signing up for a marathon?”

“Oh.” I kept my mouth shut. What could I say to all that? It was true. He was right; he had bailed me out on several occasions.

“Maggie, I’ve known you a long time. I want you to be in my life forever.” He paused.

OMG, he’s going to propose,
I thought. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe my luck was really changing.

He continued, “But I don’t know if a relationship is going to work out between us.”

“Yes,” I spat out eagerly. “Wait, what?” I frowned at him and felt my body start to shake. “You want to break up with me?” I cried out.

“I don’t want to, Maggie. I just don’t think you and me is going to work.” His eyes were pleading with me.

“But we just started dating. We just had sex.” I heard the words coming out of my mouth but they didn’t seem like me.

“I’m sorry.” He looked agitated. “I have to do some work, Maggie. I can’t deal with this right now. This is meant to be a business trip for me,” he sighed. “Can we talk about this later?”

“So you are telling me we are not boyfriend and girlfriend anymore?” I ignored his question.

“Well, I don’t generally date married women.” His voice was dry.

“But you know I’m not married,” I cried out.

“But no one else in England does.” He raised his eyebrows and me, and I felt an overwhelming urge to punch him.

“I was tricked.”

“Really?”

“Kind of,” I sighed. In all honesty I had seen something like this coming. I only had myself to blame I guess. “Fine. Go. Do whatever.” I walked away from him.

“I’m not going to hang out, Mags.” He grabbed me and turned me around to face him. “I’m going to work. On a multimillion dollar case. A case that was able to pay for this trip.”

“Oh well thank you, sire.” I curtsied at him.

“Oh, Moo-moo.” He pulled me into his arms and hugged me. “Let’s talk about this later, please?”

“Are we no longer boyfriend and girlfriend?” I asked again, needing to know our ‘official’ status.

He sighed. “I don’t know, Maggie. Give me time to think.”

“Okay.” I bit my lip to stop myself from begging him to give me another chance. I knew that words meant nothing at this time. If anything, he might dump me faster if I seemed too whiney. Typical guy. “Have fun at work.” I beamed at him and walked back to the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

“I’ll see you later, Maggie.” Blake called out to me as he left the hotel room.

“Bye,” I shouted. “Asshole,” I whispered under my breath before I burst into tears and sank to the bathroom floor, leaning back into the door. “I hate you, Holly and Madeline Matthews,” I muttered under my breath, only feeling slightly bad that I was hating a kid. I was only trying to be nice on the plane, and they went and took my kindness and twisted it so that now my boyfriend hated me. After I cried for a good ten minutes, I jumped up, determined to fix the root of the problem. I was mad that Blake was acting so funky towards me, but I was actually motivated by something else. If the tabloids kept it up, I was on my way to being sued for libel, or defamation, or whatever it is big stars sue for when someone lies about them. I didn’t have any money to pay a big lawsuit. Shoot, I barely had enough money to buy the lingerie I likely wouldn’t even get to wear.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and rushed out of the hotel. I needed to find a yellow pages and then I could go from there. I was going to find Holly Matthews and let her know in no uncertain words what would happen to her if she didn’t print a retraction in the newspaper.