Starstruck - Book Four (11 page)

Mia lacked an heir of self-importance, which I loved about
her. With every sentence she spoke, I was becoming more and more in awe of her.
She was a true anomaly.

“Brynn, tape measure,” Alec said as he pointed to one of the
containers I’d carried in.

As we stood in Mia’s dressing room, I tried hard not to
stare too much. There were so many pretty things hanging from the hangers and
posy-peach velvet seating and a sparkly, crystal chandelier hanging from the
extra tall ceiling. She had an entire wall of floor to ceiling shoes and
another wall with nothing but purses and bags. For someone with all this, she
was incredibly down to earth.

“So tell me about this hot date,” Alec said to Mia.

“It’s nobody you’d know,” she said again. “Trust me.”

“What’s his name?” Alec pried.

An infectious smile spread across her mouth as she thought
about this guy.

“Well, it’s our third date tonight,” she said.

“So that means you have to sleep with him,” Alec quipped.

She buried her face in her hands.

“You already slept with him!” Alec said. “Naughty girl.”

“He’s really nice,” she said. She practically had stars in
her eyes. “His name is Harrison. He’s in law school at UCLA. I met him out one
night. He’s just a nice, normal guy.”

“Aw, how sweet,” Alec said. “Is he hot?”

“Oh, God, yes,” she replied, her eyes nearly fogging over.
“Almost too good looking. But I don’t think he knows it. And that’s a good
thing.”

Mia was like the female version of Hudson, and I was
starting to finally realize what Hudson had seen in me all along. I was a break
from the usual. I was a nice, normal girl. That’s all he wanted.

Alec shot me a knowing look. He knew exactly what I was
thinking.

“Brynn here is from Iowa,” Alec said, changing the subject.

“Iowa? Really? I’m from Nebraska,” she said. “Grew up in
Omaha.”

“Small world,” I said.

“I knew you seemed like you weren’t from around here,” she
said, immediately realizing that she may have come off the wrong way. “I didn’t
mean it like that. What I mean is it’s a good thing. It’s okay to be different
out here. It’s okay to be yourself.”

Says the girl living in the mansion and glossing the covers
of magazines, I thought. Still, she was sweet. I couldn’t help but like her.

Alec shot me a look and mouthed the words “love her” all
excitedly behind her back. He was right. I did love her.

“Why do you look so familiar though?” Mia asked as she
squinted her eyes at me and pursed her lips. “I feel like I’ve seen you
around.”

My cheeks reddened.

“I used to date Hudson Smith,” I said. “I’ve been in a few
tabloids lately.”

“Ah,” she said. “That must be it. You know, I really hate
those things but they draw me in every time. I knew every word printed in them
are pure bullshit, but I still read them anyway. I think of it as fiction.
Purely for entertainment.”

“That’s a good way look at it,” I replied. For once I didn’t
feel guilty about my little tabloid infatuation. It was fun and entertaining,
at least when I wasn’t the subject of one of their snarky articles.

“Didn’t he just break up with Ava Fox?” Mia asked. “Not too
long ago, right?”

Alec made a face as if Mia had spoken of the devil and she
had.

“What?” Mia said, confused, as she looked at Alec.

“I’ll let her tell you about that one,” Alec said. He shook
his head. He didn’t want to get involved, I’m sure for professional reasons.

“What? You have to tell me,” Mia said. She turned to me with
the kind of riveted smile I used to see on Piper when I was about to tell her
something really salacious. And then she said the sweetest words I’d heard all
day. “I can’t stand Ava.”

To have gone through the things I’d gone through with Ava
and then to meet someone else who shared my sentiment was nothing short of
miraculous. It’s like it was meant to be, me meeting Mia.

“She’s made my life hell these last few weeks,” I said. “She
broke into Hudson’s house. She and her friends confronted me at a boutique. She
sold fake stories about me to the tabloids.”

Mia placed her hand on her chest and let out a hearty laugh.
“Well she hasn’t changed a bit!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“She’s the craziest person I think I’ve ever met,” Mia said,
her ocean blue eyes wide and serious. “Girl, I can tell you some stories…”

“How do you know her?” I asked.

“We used to go up for the same parts,” she said. “A long
time ago, when we were first getting into acting. She would always get the
parts. Probably because she was crazy enough to do…which was literally anything
and everything if you catch my drift.”

Mia was too polite to go into details, but I could only
imagine. I’d only met Ava a handful of times, but I’d witnessed enough to know
she was willing to do whatever it took to get what she wanted.

“We were friends for a while,” Mia added. “A very short
while.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“She stole my boyfriend,” Mia sighed. “In retrospect it was
a good thing. He was an ass. And I think he ended up cheating on her too. What
goes around comes around.”

Alec stood patiently behind Mia with his tape measure in
hand.

“I’m sorry,” Mia said. “We totally got side tracked.”

Alec whipped his tape measure out and Mia stood up.

“Brynn, write these down for me,” he said as he began
spouting out Mia’s dimensions. I’d forgotten for a second that I was there to
do work.

As Mia tried on garment after garment and laughed and joked
and flitted about like some giggly girlfriend, I was enchanted. In another
world, we’d have been best friends.

“Thanks so much, Alec,” Mia said as she simultaneously
walked us to the front door and pulled the giant Velcro curlers from her hair.
Each released section bounced perfectly, resting on her lithe shoulders.
“Brynn, it was so nice meeting you. I’d love to get together sometime and hang
out. Maybe we can reminisce about home? Or talk about how much we can’t stand
Ava. Whatever you want.”

She flashed her infectious smile once again, and I couldn’t
help but return it. “I’d love to. Alec has my number if you ever want to get a
hold of me.”

“Sounds great,” she said before waving us off and shutting
the door.

“Oh, my God,” I said to Alec when we got back to the car. “I
love her. I’m in love with her. Isn’t she the greatest thing ever?”

“Yeah, you haven’t stopped smiling for the past hour,” he
said. “I knew you’d like her, but sheesh. Didn’t know you’d be that smitten.”

“I’m a smitten kitten,” I joked. “But in a total girl crush,
friend kind of way.”

Alec winked at me. “Mm, hm.”

In the car on the way to his condo, Alec’s phone buzzed.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s Mia,” he said. “She just texted me and told me to give
you her number. She wants to do coffee sometime.”

“Are you serious?!”

“Uh, yeah,” he said as he playfully rolled his eyes and
handed me his phone.

“That was fast,” I said. “She must be smitten with me too.”

I pulled my phone out to start putting her number in, but
the last thing I expected was to see that I had a missed call from Hudson. And
a voicemail. I promptly added Mia to my contact list then shoved the phone back
into my purse.  

The second I had a minute alone at Alec’s place, I whipped
my phone out and listened to the voicemail from Hudson. I wanted to be by
myself when I heard it because it was either going to be really bad or really
good.

“Brynn,” he said, his velvety smooth voice making me melt on
the spot. “Come home. Please.”

I heard him breathing, as if he wanted to say something
more, but he hung up. For once, he wasn’t using his convincing words. He wasn’t
telling me to calm down or that I was overreacting. Most importantly, he wasn’t
giving up on us. Despite everything he still had some fight left in him.

He must be a glutton for punishment, I thought. That or he
must truly be crazy for me.

I dialed him back as quickly as my fingers would let me, and
he answered in the middle of the first ring, just like before.

“Brynn,” he answered.

“Hi,” I replied. I didn’t know where to begin.

“So…” he said.  He must have been waiting for me to make the
first move.

“I got your voicemail,” I said. I probably sounded like a
complete idiot. We’d never had such an awkward conversation before.

“And?” he said.

“I’m just a little confused,” I said.

“About what?”

“You want me to come back and you chased me down earlier
when you saw me, but you changed the code on your gate,” I said. “You locked me
out.”

Hudson let out an indiscernible groan. “Brynn.”

He was clearly frustrated with me.

“What?”

“I changed the code because I didn’t want Ava getting in,”
he said. “I have no idea how she got in the other night, but I wanted to take
all precautions, so I had the code changed to something else. Your birthdate
actually.”

Was this man for real?

“Oh,” I said. I was a total asshole.

“Yeah,” he said, echoing me. “Oh.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I asked.

“When did you give me a chance?” he replied. Match point.
“You get so worked up sometimes, Brynn. It’s like there’s no getting through to
you. Once you get an idea in your head, you’re convinced that it’s a fact when
most of the time it’s fiction.”

“What about you going to Ava’s?” I asked. “I saw you there,
Hudson, with my own eyes. I saw it.”

“Do you know why I went there?” he asked. “I went there to
put an end to all this insanity. I told her if she so much as bothered you one
more time or broke into my house or tried to contact me, she’d be sorry.”

“Hudson,” I sighed. “You’re too nice. I’m sorry, but that
kind of a threat isn’t going to scare someone like her.”

“She knows I could end her career if I wanted to,” he said.
“I have so much dirt on her. I know things. Horrible things. If she bothers you
one more time, she knows her career is over in this town.”

“Doesn’t she have dirt on you too?” I asked, remembering her
words that night by the pool. “She mentioned your deep, dark secrets or
something.”

Hudson laughed. “She’s so dramatic. That was just her trying
to get under your skin. I have no deep, dark secrets. I could run for office,
I’m so clean.”

“Oh,” I said. “How did she know about the ring?”

“That’s a good question,” he said. “Still trying to figure
that out.”

As always, everything he said made perfect sense. We were
headed right back to where we came from.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t want to keep going rounds with you
to prove to you that I really love you, Brynn. I’m not going to keep doing
this. Either you love me or you don’t. Either you want to be with me or you
don’t.”

“I do love you,” I said. “I love you so much it’s scary.”

“And that’s your problem,” Hudson said. “This whole time
you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Guess what? It’s not going to
drop. Stop running away when things get a little tough. It’s you and me, Brynn.
Us against the world.”

My eyes burned hot. I loved him so much, and he was so
right. But he didn’t deserve me. I’d put him through the ringer and we’d only
been together barely a few months. I’d never understand why he fought so hard
for us. All I knew was that he made me feel like the luckiest girl in the
world. I had to stop fighting it and just accept it or we’d never work.

“I’m leaving in a couple hours for New York,” he said. “I’ll
be back on Sunday. Brynn, come home.”

Just like that, he’d reeled me in once again.

Coming back home to Hudson’s was bittersweet. Bitter because
I never should have left him the way I did and sweet because it was good to be
home again. The only thing missing was him, but he’d be back in a few more days.

I typed the code into the box by the gate and smiled at the
fact that he’d made it my birthday. After parking the Mercedes in the garage, I
headed in the back door kitchen entrance. I could hear Flor’s voice. She seemed
to be deep in conversation, so it was no surprise when she didn’t hear me come
in.

“Yes, Ms. Fox,” I heard her say.

What? I mouthed to myself. Was she talking to Ava?!