Hollywood Hit (8 page)

Anything could happen in eighteen months.

“I’ll read it,” Cici said softly. “This will be such a shit-storm for Nikki.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jessica said. “Because the new owner of the script according to Bikram isn’t Jeb’s widow, but is in fact one Miss Nikki Solange.”

Nikki’s decrepit Toyota rattled to a stop in front of Aunt Cici’s security gate. Late last night LiLo was found, car banged into yet another Beverly Hills tree. Finally the paps had dispersed from in front of Aunt Cici’s Bel Air gate and congealed into a giant blob of bulb-flashing humanity in front of the Beverly Hills police department. Now only the celebrity-sighting van cruised by at exactly eleven, one, and three—Nikki could time her arrival and departure around those tourist looky-loos.

The Toyota’s backseat was full of all the itty-bitties and errands Aunt Cici had asked Nikki to take care of. Shoes, gowns, dry cleaning, Kiehl’s, bags, books—the price tag for the merchandise in the backseat of Nikki’s Toyota exceeded the value of the entire car times ten.

Nikki punched in the security code and the gates rumbled to life. She gunned her car up the curling Mount-Olympus-style drive. Her iPhone rang. She already had her earbuds in, so she pressed Call to pick up.

“Nikki, darling, it’s Kiki.”

Nikki’s left shoulder muscle tightened into a hard knot. There couldn’t be any good news coming from Aunt Cici’s publicist, not with Jeb Schmaltzer’s killer still wandering the world and the tabs still sporting front-page shots and interior spreads that included Aunt Cici’s million-dollar mug.

“Hi, Kiki.” Nikki swallowed around the lump in her throat.

“Where are you, darling? You sound like you’re in the Himalayas. You didn’t slip out of town, did you, darling?”

“I’m in Bel Air,” Nikki said. She pulled her beater up beside her aunt’s convertible ice-blue jag.

“Tell your aunt hello from me,” Kiki said and grunted. Probably in the midst of her late-morning rubdown, which, according to Nikki’s aunt and her friends, often led to Kiki’s afternoon lay. Nikki crinkled her nose with the thought of Kiki, the old crone, high and astride some nubile young stud.

“So listen, dear,” Kiki gasped out. “I wanted to let you know
before
you saw the cover of this week’s
People
magazine.”

“I thought they found someone else to bother,” Nikki said. She was tired of the blazing headlines announcing to the world that she and Aunt Cici had been involved in an illicit love triangle with Jeb Schmaltzer.

“Darling, these pictures are new and they’re sans Celeste. They only involve you and one other person.”

Nikki squinted her eyes. Her most interesting thing to date since moving to LA, aside from Jeb’s death, was discovering
Boundless Bound,
and that little treasure wasn’t tab-worthy news. With Jeb dead,
Boundless Bound
wouldn’t be Nikki’s news at all.

“They’re pictures of you and that little rocker you’ve been bedding from Sick Puppy. He’s got some sort of viral sensation going with his latest song. With your rise to celeb status thanks to dead Jeb, the tabs were salivating for the pics,” Kiki said.

Nikki’s head hammered with the realization that this was exactly what Aunt Cici had mentioned in the car the night of Jeb’s death.

“Who sold them?” Nikki asked, her voice weary. She feared she already knew the sad, sick answer to her question.

“Adam,” Kiki said with the most dramatic of sighs. “And I hear the deal was quite lucrative for him.”

*

Nikki parked her car on Franklin, west of the Whitley intersection, and killed the engine. The snake’s tail of traffic that stood still while Nikki parallel parked rushed by her with a handful of angry honks. She looked across the slightly sloped hill toward the front of Adam’s building. A short, squatty woman ambled down the steps with two liver-colored pit bulls that strained at their leashes.

Nikki rested her forehead on the steering wheel and stared at her ragged-edged thumbnail that she’d gnawed on her trek from Bel Air to Hollywood. She ran her pointer fingertip around the rough edge of the nail. Aunt Cici had warned her about Adam. Aunt Cici had warned her about a lot of things. She tilted her head and kept the bridge of her nose plastered to the wheel as she speared her gaze at the front of Adam’s building.

She wasn’t surprised Adam had sold the pictures of them together to the highest bidder, she wasn’t even surprised he’d wanted the publicity for himself and for Sick Puppy, but what Nikki was surprised about was that no matter how “casual” she called their f&ff sessions, somewhere inside—in that attached, private place—sadness meandered along with the feeling of being used.

Why did Aunt Cici have to be right? Nikki closed her eyes and shut out the taupe-colored apartment building, the green grass, even the sliver of blue sky that peeked through the front windshield. She exhaled a giant stream of air and pressed out the unwanted chunks of ugly emotion that clustered together and stuck to her insides.

Aunt Cici’s predictions and the predictions of her cadre of friends on the behavior of every inhabitant of La-La Land had been pretty damned accurate. Maybe she should start listening to that cluster of bitches instead of tossing them off with a shake of her head. Aside from Christina, that gaggle seemed to be the only group that knew anything about the words loyalty and trust.

Nikki pulled her head from the steering wheel. She had to see Adam. She had to see Adam and end this, whatever it was, in person. She had to end it now, this instant before she lost her nerve or talked herself out of the righteous indignation that pulsed through her bloodstream. She pushed open her door, and the Toyota’s hinges shrieked in protest. Nikki slammed the car door and walked up the front stairs to Adam’s building. Once inside, the fluorescent bulb in the hall buzzed like an angry wasp. She stepped around an open trash bag toppling over with beer cans. Her hands grasped the metal doorknob, and without a knock she let herself into Adam’s apartment. The front of the apartment was empty of people. Nikki picked her way through the mess of too many people living in too small a space to Adam’s room.

She should have texted. She should have called. She should have pounded on the front door of Adam’s apartment instead of turning the cool knob of his unlocked door because while she was hurt and angry, she wasn’t prepared for the sight before her.

Three girls. And a man. And Adam. Naked. In Adam’s bed.

Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the soot-stained window of Adam’s bedroom. Nikki stood in the doorway and listened to the multi-toned metronomic respiration of five sexy individuals wiped out from an active night. The room smelled like sex and sweat and passion. Tits and cocks lay at odd angles on the king-sized bed.

A queasy, oily feeling settled in Nikki’s stomach. Adam barely washed his clothes; she doubted he washed his sheets. Not long before she had been in that bed. Granted, absent one, two, three, four, people—but she’d been in it.

Nikki glanced into the full-length mirror beside her and peered into her stark, blue-ringed eyes that drooped with fatigue and sadness and even hints of fear. She didn’t have any room left for rage. She couldn’t muster any anger for Adam, but a thin layer of self-loathing filmed her skin. Who was she? What was she doing? Why was she here?

There were no answers in her eyes.

No earth-shaking revelations about herself or what she wanted or why she played like she knew what she was doing with her life. Over her shoulder, on the bed, sun glinted across the blond hair of the girl closest to Adam. Beside her was a lusciously exotic, darker-skinned creature with huge breasts and pierced nipples.

This wasn’t Nikki’s scene. She was wild enough to move halfway across the country, wild enough to believe she knew enough to make movies, but she wasn’t wild enough for the rock star life. She would never pierce her nipples or her pussy. She would never be comfortable with multiple sex partners in one night. And right this moment, standing in the warm room with naked, nubile bodies, she felt certain that she would never be anything but a complete fuckup.

Nikki grasped the doorjamb between the hall and Adam’s room. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to have sex with gangs of people. She didn’t want to have f&ffs with a man who, while good in bed, thought little more of her than one of many holes in which to shove his cock.

The beautiful bodies intertwined perfectly. The light glimmered against different shades of skin. Marks of ink. Arms. Legs. Cocks. Oddly erotic, her gaze followed the flesh where one arm merged with a leg and a leg was slung over a torso and all of it merged into one brilliant picture of naked and perfect twenty-something skin.

No. She didn’t want this. This picture, while beautiful in some weirdly free way, was not for Nikki. She wanted the forever after. She wanted the love story. She wanted the life that included one person—one man on whom she could rely. Even at twenty-two, Nikki knew in her heart that she was looking for something more than Adam could provide.

Nikki turned away from the group on the bed. She hadn’t forgotten anything at Adam’s, had never left anything behind. She picked her way through the skirts, the bras, the panties, and out of Adam’s room and out the front door. Nikki never looked back at anything she left behind.

*

The darkness of Dresden1 dulled Nikki’s sense of sight but the pounding bass heightened her hearing. Bodies bounced in unison to the outrageous beat the DJ laid down. Christina was ensconced in the VIP section with Striker Ross, the latest up-and-coming, soon-to-be action star. Striker’s next film would be produced by Lydia. A low-level reality star with a well-known Adderall problem lingered around the edge of the VIP area with her overbleached entourage of hangers-on.

Nikki angled toward Christina. She moved through the low-cut shirts and high-cut skirts that flashed tits and ass. She was nearly to the roped-off area when her eyes latched on to him. And by him she meant a man who grabbed her breath and clutched her heart.

She stopped. A sudden sense of being hunted wafted through Nikki’s limbs. And yet she wanted to be hunted by this man. He was tall and thick with sculpted muscles that his black sweater clung to. A perfectly fitted sweater that skimmed over his body. His eyes were so dark they looked nearly otherworldly, as if they were vacant, all-seeing black holes. His jaw was cut hard and his hair was a deep, dark black.

He leaned against the bar. No glass. No drink. Only him. His eyes held her. Held her still. Pinned her down. Made her squirm and yet nearly pulled her to him. She was entranced by him until her phone rang over and over in her purse. Nikki yanked her gaze from the guy at the bar. “Unknown Number” flashed across the phone’s screen. She pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hello?” Nikki said.

“How you doin’, little girl? How you like Hollywood?”

A chill rushed through Nikki's body with the sound of his voice. She held fast to the gasp of fear that threatened to spill from her lips.

“Wh…what do you want?” Nikki stammered out. Her heart kicked upward and hammered hard against her chest. The club dropped away, the thrashing mass of dancing bodies surrounding her dropped away, even the man standing beside the bar, who had grabbed her with his eyes, dropped away. Fear now gripped her like an iron chain pulled tight around her neck, cuffing her, forcing her to immobility.

“I want to see you, pay you back for all you did.”

Nikki’s eyes scanned the crowd. He couldn’t be here, but even so the fear that thrilled through her forced her to look for the owner of the hard, cold voice.

“You’re not supposed to call me, to contact me, ever,” Nikki said. Her voice was firm and she held tight to the panic clawing up the back of her throat.

“Well, little girl, when you ever known me to follow anyone’s rules?”

There was a click and the mean voice attached to an evil man disappeared. Nikki pulled the phone from her ear. She breathed long, deep breaths.  A chill chased up her spine. He was out there. He was looking for her. Nikki pressed her hand to her mouth. She couldn't tell her aunt.  She couldn't tell anyone. She'd caused enough trouble. She pushed a strand of hair behind her hair and squared her shoulders. She could handle this.

“Nikki!” The sound of Christina’s voice broke through the music. Nikki glanced toward Christina, who was waving and smiling for her to come and join the uber beautiful who inhabited the club. Nikki forced her lips to form a smile. She took a step toward Christina, then stopped and turned back toward the bar, but the black-eyed beautiful man was gone.

Lydia Albright with her billion-dollar box office, high-powered friends, and a career that spanned actress to producer to studio head to producer had seen all that Hollywood had to offer. Yet sitting with her two best and most-trusted friends, she wasn’t certain how to proceed.

“How do we handle this?” Lydia asked. She turned her gaze from Jessica, who sat beside her with a fresh cappuccino, toward Cici, who stood in front of them on her yoga mat and stretched her arms over her head in a sun salutation.

“I think we make the movie,” Jessica said.

Cici bent at her waist and hopped both feet back, then lowered herself into chaturanga. Once flat on her black Manduka mat, Cici stopped her morning asana practice. Her golden mane, pulled tight in a ponytail, settled onto her shoulder.

 “I want this role.” Cici’s eyes sparkled with the hard look of determination. That hard, focused look had managed to make Cici’s own dreams come true and the dreams of a multitude of individuals working in the entertainment business.

Jessica reached for her cappuccino and took a long sip. Neither Jessica nor Lydia had slipped into their yoga clothes for the early morning workout as they were both going to their offices after this morning meeting. Cici would go to the Four Seasons for an all-day press junket for her latest film,
Concession to Her Delight,
which was set for release.