Glitter on the Web (17 page)

Caz’s words drifted in and out of my ear.

“
If you want to sell this relationship, you’re going to have to go for broke, baby doll. I can smell the neglect all over you
.”

It made my response way more ardent than normal. It was true; I hadn’t really dated in months. It was true that flirting with someone like Caz got the juices flowing a little bit. And, sadly, annoyingly, frustratingly, it was true that I was now coupled with one of the sexiest men in music. The body, the hair, the swagger… he had it all. That meant, to the world all around us at least,
I
had it all.

I knew that it was up to me to act like it.

When I cupped Eli’s notable derriere in both hands, he groaned against me. “Take me home, Carly,” he whispered.

I nodded, and allowed him to rush me from the dance floor. He shielded me from the crowd as we exited the club. His hands and lips were everywhere as we waited for the valet, which sold our show to everyone watching that we couldn’t wait to get home so we could begin our Valentine’s Day celebration in earnest.

I guess I sold it a little too well, because the minute we got into the limo, secured behind the tinted windows, it surprised Eli that I pulled away when he reached for yet another kiss. Instead I poured some champagne, because at this point I needed something a little stronger than pomegranate juice and soda. I handed him a glass. “Our first show. I’d say it was a smashing success.”

I tapped my plastic glass on his before I tipped it and chugged all the effervescent liquid, avoiding his cloudy, darkening gaze as I did so.

All I needed from this Valentine’s Day was a warm bed, some pain killers and nice, uninterrupted sleep. I scooted to my corner of the car and focused on the traffic passing by. It was like I had flipped a switch, which left my date for the evening a little blindsided. “Is this about that guy?” he wanted to know.

I just chuckled. “No. It isn’t about him.”

“Is this because I danced with the girls?”

I turned to him. “You really think I’m jealous?”

“I don’t know what you are,” he murmured as he watched me from where he was slouched in the corner of the limo. “One minute you tell me you hate me. The next you kiss me like you’re going to take me home and fuck my brains out.”

“Isn’t that what you pay me for?” I countered.

“I guess I do,” he muttered before he drained his own glass of booze. He said nothing else until we arrived at the house.

The driver helped me out of the car, and I turned back, expecting Eli would follow behind. Instead he stayed plastered to that corner of the car. “You coming?” I asked.

Those sharp blue eyes caught mine. “Not yet.”

He shut the door and, after an awkward moment, the driver discreetly walked back around to climb in, so that Eli could head to parts unknown.

CHAPTER
TEN

I couldn’t tell you why it was so hard for me to get to sleep that night, even after I had taken my pain pills. I tossed. I turned. I ended up pulling every sharp corner from the crisply made bed, and dumped any extra pillow on the floor beside it. All the commotion drove poor Beau Jangles from the room entirely, though he had long come to share the bed with the both of us. Finally I gave up and hobbled on down to the media room, to overdose on schmaltzy Valentine’s Day programming that included every single romantic movie known to modern cinema.

I didn’t make it back to bed until nearly four o’clock in the morning, where I promptly fell into a fitful sleep that included patchwork dreams induced by the narcotic medication. I dreamt that my relationship with Eli wasn’t fake. Worse, I dreamed that the evening didn’t end with some butt-grabbing at the bar.

Yet, oddly, the night still ended with his leaving to parts unknown and staying out all night. Only in my dream it had crushed me.

I was in and out of sleep until daybreak, when Eli finally dragged back in. I was awake when he staggered into the bedroom, reeking of booze, cigarettes and a woman’s cologne. It was a pungent attack on the senses as he fell onto his side of the bed in a drunken, half-dressed stupor, ignoring me like I wasn’t even there.

I glared at him as he teetered on the edge of passing out completely. He wore a dopey fucking smile on his face that indicated only one of us in this farce of a relationship had gone without this Valentine’s Day.

I got so mad that I shoved him right off the bed. He landed with a thud, chuckling as he did so.

It was that last little part that infuriated me further.

“What’s your problem?” he asked.

“My problem? You come home stinking of booze and other women, climb into bed with me like it’s nothing, and have the nerve to ask me that?”

He leaned on the bed, wearing that self-satisfied smirk I swore one day I’d remove with a jackhammer. “Why, lamby love. Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

I snorted in derision. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s a matter of respect.”

He shrugged. “If I was getting some action at home, maybe I wouldn’t need to go prowling the streets like an alley cat, now would I?”

I glared at him. “Seriously? You’re going to blame me for your lack of human decency?”

He shrugged as he pulled himself back on the bed. “I blame you for a lot of things, Carly Reynolds. That is not one of them.”

I was aghast. “Blame me? For what?”

He stretched out on the bed. “For how hard you’re making everything. We could be having a perfectly nice time, but you want to make everything some goddamned battle. Which is stupid considering we both know you’re going to give it up to me before this year is over anyway.”

“Fuck you,” I hissed.

He began unbutton his shirt. “Anytime, sweetheart. Although it’s been quite an active night already. You may have to give me a few minutes. I tell you what. You get started, and I’ll jump in.”

Again I shoved him right off the bed. Again he landed with a thud and more laughter. “Hit a nerve, did I?”

“You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn,” I shot back.

He climbed back on the bed, crawling on his hands and knees until he was poised over me. “Think your new little fuck buddy for hire is any different?”

“You’re such a pig,” I muttered, pushing him away. He, however, was undaunted, positioning himself over me.

“Tell me the truth. If I go through your phone, is there a call to the great Caz Bixby, to ride to your rescue with multiple orgasms, just to make it a little more bearable that I’m out fucking someone else?” His eyes traveled over my body. “It could have been you. Just saying.”

I shoved him again. “Get off of me!”

He laughed as he complied. “Wow, I did hit a nerve. That means I must be right.”

He pulled himself off of the bed, glancing around until he spotted my clutch purse on the dresser. He sent me a grin before he went for it. I practically tackled him mid-air, aching ankle and all.

It didn’t matter. He was stronger than me, even while stone-faced drunk. He held the purse out of my reach as he searched for my phone. Instead, he found Caz’s distinctive black card, which he waved in his hand victoriously. “Would you look at that? Lady Chatterley takes a lover.”

“Not yet,” I spat. “But I might need to.” I spun away from him. “For your information he saw right through our phony baloney relationship. He could tell just by looking at me there was nothing between us.”

“I did offer,” Eli noted before he landed back on the bed with a bounce. “Not my fault you want to play hard to get.”

Hard to get??
Hard to get
?!

“Nothing is ever your fault, is it, Eli?”

“Not usually,” he commented, even more annoyingly flippant than usual.

“I’m not playing hard to get. I don’t like you. I find you repugnant and vile. The last thing I want to do—
ever
—is sleep with you. The list goes root canal,” I said, using my hand to indicate a lower ranking option, “mud wrestling with Ron Jeremy,” I said, moving my hand a little higher, “and fucking you,” I concluded, lifting my hand way up high over my head.

“Keep telling yourself that, darlin’,” he quipped. “But I was there when we kissed. You’ve got a hunger, one that your good-time gigolo won’t be able to satisfy. And you know it. That’s why you’re so mad. You hate me, but you still want to fuck me. What’s a good time girl to do?”

“It’s called acting,” I gritted between clenched teeth.

“You’re not that good of an actress,” he shot back before laying back on the pillows. “There’s no faking it with me, babe. You’ll see,” he promised. He was snoring within seconds.

The next morning he found me in the kitchen, putting different items into a blender—including some of the sardines that he kept on hand to spoil Beau Jangles.

He made an instant face. “What the fuck are you making?”

“You were pretty wasted when you got home this morning,” I shrugged, cracking an egg into the mix. “I figured you might need a little pick-me-up, Texas style.” I added some liberal shots of hot sauce.

He grimaced. “No thanks.” Then he cradled his head, which I knew had to be pounding. I hit the button on the blender to mix all the ingredients together. He held his head in both hands.

“Your headache is about to get a whole lot worse,” I commented as I scooted my phone over to him. It was already open to the latest from gossip guru, Miles O'Rourke, whose news hounds had sniffed out some of Eli’s after-hours escapades the night before. He had been photographed going into one of the West L.A. apartment buildings where one of his exes lived, an older actress whose relationship with Eli had been well-publicized thanks to the differences in their ages. It was ridiculous, because she was only about seven years older. But that was the media. They were endlessly fascinated by anyone who would think an aging actress was attractive. It turned them all into virtual bloodhounds to sniff out any clue, verifying this anomaly. As a result, there was a time-stamp on the photo of Eli leaving a few hours later, with his clothes askew.

“
IS THE HONEYMOON OVER
?” the headline asked. The body of the article wasn’t much better.

“
Pop star Eli Blake was seen making a late night visit to the penthouse of Olivia Guest, his notable ex. Sources tell me that there might have been a kerfuffle at FFF, the plus-size club where Eli and his new big-girl girlfriend, Carly Reynolds, were said to have spent their first Valentine’s Day. He was making time with some girls on the dance floor, which sent Carly into the arms of Caz Bixby, L.A.’s most eligible gigolo. This apparently made for an awkward car ride home. According to these time-stamped photos, home is where Eli left his new lady love, before taking off to lick his wounds with his svelte ex. Trouble in paradise? Or is the house of cards finally unraveling
?
It would seem a picture really is worth a thousand words.”

“What the fuckety fuck?” he muttered, before thrusting the phone away.

“Oh, nothing much. Just you, not being at fault for anything,” I said as I poured him a glass of the dark, thick, putrid liquid. He glared at me before he grabbed the drink to take a defiant sip.

One sip was all it took to send him running for the bathroom. I dumped out the rest of my hangover cure, which was basically anything gross I could fit into a blender, out into the sink. “Cheat on me again, motherfucker,” I grinned to myself.

Frank, however, was far less entertained. He bellowed at both of us through the phone, threatening me with an interview to sell our bogus relationship to the masses.

“Hey, it’s not my fault he can’t keep it in his pants,” I said. “If we neutered him like I suggested we wouldn’t be in this fix right now.”

“You’re such a bitch,” Eli mumbled, still nursing his hangover.

“Aw, I love you too, sugar dumplin’.’”

Frank, however, was over both of us. “I don’t care whose fault it is!” he yelled. “Fix it!”

Unfortunately for me, Eli had a plan to do exactly that. “We need to have a party here at the house. So people can see how crazy you still are for me.”

“I thought you said I wasn’t that good of an actress.”

“Who says you’ll be acting?” he wanted to know.

How I wanted to punch him when he said things like that. And I wasn’t a violent person. I couldn’t even kill bugs, preferring instead to relocate them with the gentle use of tissue paper. Yet one smart remark from Eli and it was like I was starring in my own Quentin Tarrantino movie.

“The Oscars are coming up in a couple of weeks,” he reminded, as if I had forgotten. Eli had helped write one of the songs nominated for an award, and it had been the talk of the office for months. For a guy who normally made pop tunes, his first serious ballad was slated to establish him as a true composer, and everyone knew it. Including me.

“We can do a big party before the ceremony, then, after I win, we can take a trip somewhere to celebrate. This will all blow over by the time we get back.”

His arrogance was staggering. “You have it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Usually,” he commented, before he got on the phone to work his magic.

As it turned out, my best buddy Clementine ended up being his one-stop shop for all things awesome. He called her to get the names of her party planner and her caterer, and she decided to fill the gap FFF had left between Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day with hosting the pre-awards party for us herself.

She was in the house more than usual, and thick as thieves with Eli, who hung on every word she said. I no longer thought that he was being nice to her for fear of his manhood, which I had threatened to sever with a twig trimmer if he mistreated her. He had come to respect Clementine in ways that surprised even me. He hugged her freely and even flirted with her, treating her with every bit as much consideration as he did any other woman he considered worthy of his time and respect. He hired the caterers she suggested, a family full of transplants from Texas. The two couples behind Bravo Catering were all too happy to bring a little Tex-Mex to the party, their mixed heritage adding a little authenticity to the shindig.