Brooklyn Monroe Wants It All by Karen Booth
Chapter Fifteen
Brooklyn woke to a ding.Then another.
“Ugh,” she groaned, slapping her bedside table in search of her phone. Finally, she found it. “Who’s texting me on a Saturday? This is my time to sleep.” She opened one eye, then the other. As the screen came into focus, she saw her sister’s name on the text notifications.
What happened last night?
Can you not go one day without getting into trouble?
“Trouble?” Brooklyn muttered, starting to type out a response, but deciding a text was going to take longer than a real conversation, so she made a call instead, flopping back on the bed when the line began to ring. “Nothing happened last night,” she said when Virginia picked up. “Other than me going to that movie premiere.”
“Google yourself.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
“Fine. Hold on.” She put her sister on speaker and did a search for her name. .00003 seconds later, she had an answer. Baby Lady Steps Out on Lavaman. Brooklyn sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, no.”
“I told you.”
Even worse, that horrendous headline was accompanied by a photo of what Brooklyn guessed would soon be known as the infamous ficus kiss. “Wow.”
“So you go on a date with one guy and end up making out with your ex twenty feet away?”
Brooklyn eyed the photo. She had to admire—silently, and only to herself—the clear evidence that the kiss had been exactly as hot as it had seemed. “He kissed me.”
“You’re practically humping him.”
She expanded the image with her fingers. “I guess I missed that part. It all happened so fast.”
“I can’t believe you would get back together with Alec and not tell me. Why don’t I know about this?”
“We’re not back together. And is that what’s bothering you?”
“To be honest, yes. I feel like you’ve been all over the place since you became famous.”
“I’m not famous. I’m infamous. That’s the way worse version. There’s zero money in it. And believe me, I don’t want anyone to remember me for things like this. I’m going to go down in history as a train wreck.”
“You’re no Eleanor Roosevelt. I’ll tell you that much.”
“Eleanor was no stranger to controversy.” Brooklyn threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, padding into her bathroom to pee. “What do I do about this?” She put her sister on speaker, then muted herself so Virginia didn’t have to listen to her do her business.
“I don’t even know anymore. I mean, the thing is, when you’re in the papers or on TV, it always ends up being good for business. We got a huge spike in subscriptions both times you were on Good Day USA. So maybe you should do nothing.”
Brooklyn was a huge fan of nothing. Nothing she could do. She flushed the toilet and washed her hands.
“But I’m guessing that Alec is going to have something to say about this,” Virginia continued. “And Jason Adams for that matter. You guys kind of made him look like an idiot. He invites a woman to a premiere on national TV, then she makes out with some other guy near a potted plant in the lobby of the theater?”
Brooklyn’s stomach turned. As much as she wanted to, there was no good twist on this, unless she and Alec were going to make up some lame excuse about him giving her mouth-to-mouth. While standing. And not during a medical emergency.
She took her phone off mute and wandered into her living room. It was a gray day, casting a pall over the best feature of her apartment—her view of the Hudson River. She plopped down on her sofa and curled up under a throw blanket. Her instinct right now was to hibernate. She certainly needed the sleep. “I guess that means the two guys who like me the most, which isn’t saying a lot, are both going to be pissed at me.”
“Are you and Alec back together? Is that what’s going on?”
Brooklyn sighed and pulled her knees up to her chest. She wasn’t sure what to do about Alec. In the moment when he’d kissed her, she’d been so into the idea, but that was her sex drive talking. Once her brain got involved, a few red flags had popped up. Or really, only one. The baby flag. “No. He told me he cares about me and thinks we should try again. Which was about the last thing I was expecting.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told him that he needed to spend some time thinking. Because I haven’t changed my mind about having a baby, and he told me that he no longer wants to be a dad.”
“That’s what’s commonly referred to as a hurdle.”
“Tell me about it.” Brooklyn’s other line beeped and of course, it was Alec. It was as if he’d known she was talking about him. “Hey, Virginia. I have to go. Alec’s on the other line. But we should talk later. I offered my doorman a job at Posh Post last night.”
“You offered a job to Cy?”
“Yes. He did warehouse management and logistics in the garment district for more than twenty years. I asked him if he wanted to come and work for us. Oversee operations.”
“I swear to God, I need a scoreboard to keep up with you.” She grumbled, a sure sign that Brooklyn was going to have to sell her sister on this idea. “We can talk about it later. Good luck with Alec. Let me know what happens.”
“Always.” Brooklyn ended that call and accepted Alec’s. She pulled the blanket up around her neck. “On a scale of one to ten, exactly how freaked out are you right now?”
“So you know.”
“I just got off the phone with Virginia. She told me.”
“Glad I don’t have to get you up to speed. And since you asked, I’m at a twelve.”
It would have been so easy to launch into a tirade against Alec and point out that he was the reason he was freaking out, but Brooklyn didn’t have the desire to hold him over the coals. Of the many peculiar moments Brooklyn had lived through yesterday, the kiss was by far the best. “Talk to me.”
“It’s over. I’m sunk. The network is furious. Georgia Carle wants to pull my interview for the news division. They got my agent out of bed, which is never good.”
“Because of a kiss?”
“Because the network and the film studio are owned by the same corporation. And the guy they’re considering for the news division kissed a woman he interviewed on the network while she was on a date with the star of their hottest film franchise.”
“Oh. Yeah. I can see how that could be bad. I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”
“Me neither. I was too caught up in the moment.”
“It seemed like it came out of nowhere.”
“I guess the threat of Jason Adams was too much for me to take.”
Brooklyn had worried that Alec had only acted on impulse and that he didn’t really have feelings for her. Not anymore. “Threat? You’re the one who was reminding me that he’s just a guy.”
“Funny, but in my head, that argument only goes one way.” Alec let out a sigh that morphed into a low groan. “Maybe this whole thing with the news division isn’t meant to be. Maybe I need to accept that. It would definitely make my life easier if this was over. If I didn’t have to wait anymore to find out my fate.”
Fate.That word had a way of creeping into everything. “You can’t give up on your dream. If you don’t do this interview, you’ll always wonder about what might have been. Then if it doesn’t work out, you’ll at least know that you tried.”
“I don’t know if I’m even going to have that chance. Not anymore.”
Brooklyn wasn’t willing to accept that. “This is ridiculous. It was a kiss. There has to be some way to explain it away.”
“Like what?”
A solution was percolating in Brooklyn’s head. “What if you told Georgia Carle that we’re a couple? You can’t reprimand someone for kissing their significant other, can you?”
“How would that work, exactly?”
“I don’t know, Alec. You tell me. You’re the one who said you wanted to try again.”
He was quiet for a moment, making her wonder what he was thinking. “I said that because I want to. That whole thing about unfinished business, it’s looming over me like a bad hangover. And that kiss last night, Brooklyn. You have to admit it was spectacular.”
Tingles raced over the surface of her skin. But attraction and sexy times weren’t enough for her. Not anymore. “It was. But it doesn’t change what’s standing in the way of us.”
“I know. And as much as I’d love to kiss you again, properly, without interference from movie stars or potted plants, I’m not going to say that I’ve changed my mind when I haven’t.”
Which left them right back at the beginning. Except Alec still had a problem, Brooklyn had a plausible solution, and maybe this would give her a chance to spend more time with him so she could figure out what exactly it was that was going through that head of his. Alec would make an amazing dad, and he’d always wanted her to get serious. Something wasn’t adding up. But she wasn’t sure what. “Just tell Georgia Carle that we’re a couple. It should be enough to get you out of hot water. And frankly, it’ll make a great excuse for me. My recent foray into dating wasn’t great. And I’m tired of random male attention.”
“How do we explain the fact that you were on a date with Jason?”
“The man ambushed me on national television. There was no way I could say no, and something tells me the network already knows that.”
“Okay. I’ll call her and I’ll let you know what she says.”
“Call me right back.” Brooklyn hung up and wandered into the kitchen to make coffee. While it dripped into the carafe, she watered the plants, if only to remind herself that she was capable of taking care of things. Alec turned up on her Caller ID just as she was pouring her first cup of French roast.
“She wants to see us. Both. Together. First thing after I’m done shooting Good Day on Monday.”
“She’s basically daring us to show her that it’s real.”
“Right. Which means we need to decide how far we’re willing to go to make it look legit. Holding hands? Pet names?”
“Well, Mr. PDA, I think that if we’re going to put on a show, we should make it a good one.”
“It would be great if you could give me a few parameters.”
“Just pretend like it’s a year and a half ago and we’re still happy.” Sometimes her mouth was like a sieve. She hoped to hell that wasn’t too harsh. Then again, it was the truth, and right now, she didn’t have much patience for anything less.
“You really know how to put a fine point on things, don’t you?”
“Sorry.”
“No. It’s good. It definitely paints a picture for me. I know exactly what happiness with you looks like.”
Part of her wanted to smile and stare off into space with a wistful expression while she relived their former happiness. The rest of her knew that wasn’t going to fix a thing. “So, Monday morning? At the studio?”
“I’ll meet you at security.”