Untangling The Stars (16 page)

The woman standing on her doormat was one of those beautiful women who looked perpetually ready for a photo shoot. She had shiny, platinum blonde and perfectly straightened hair, too much makeup, and an outfit that only a stylist would pick out. She was also wielding what looked like a handheld recorder and was backed by two very tall men who were pointing two very large cameras directly at Andie.

“You’re Alessandra Foxglove. Right? Ms. Foxglove?” Her beautiful smile looked just about as real on the Barbie dolls Andie had played with as a girl.

“Um, yes, “Andie stuttered, her thoughts spinning.
When in doubt, politeness prevails
. “Yes, I am. Dr. Alessandra Foxglove.” She shook her head. “Andie.”

The camera flashed brightly at the exact same second as Barbie said, “Great. Andie, tell me about your relationship with Guy Wilder. We heard the two of you have been getting awfully friendly. Are you dating? Are you—?”

What? Oh no….

Barbie was firing questions as fast as she could breathe them. The camera lights were blinding. Andie couldn’t even catch all the questions Barbie was slinging, let alone focus long enough on one even to think about a suitable answer.

“Is he a good kisser? How is in he in bed? How long have you known each other?”

Andie would have slammed the door in Barbie’s face, but there was no guarantee that she and her camera crew would leave, so she decided to push through. “Excuse me,” she stammered, shoving her body through the three of them and fleeing down the stairs before they could catch her. Luckily, she knew the back way out. She darted across the street and into the narrow passageway between buildings. Barbie might fit, but those huge camera guys would never make it.

What the hell
was
that? Andie’s emotions went from shock, to embarrassment, and finally to fury as she stomped down the sidewalk, going nowhere in particular.
The nerve of those people, showing up at my door and blasting me with such personal questions. Is he a good kisser, is he good in bed—holy hell!
Andie snatched her cell phone out of her back pocket and hit Guy’s number on her recently dialed list. It went straight to voicemail. She tried again. Voicemail again.
Call me ASAP. Reporters.
Her text sent but didn’t deliver. Obviously, Guy’s phone was off.
Great.

Andie was only two blocks away from her designated meeting spot with the Gala Girls when she abruptly changed direction.
If they know where I
live
for crying out loud, then they might know where I’m going.
Her cell still in her hand, she opened a group text message to Tandy and the girls—
”So sorry, something came up. I can’t make today. Meet without me.
” She walked one block east, and then two north, and only started to feel noticeably calmer when she saw the storefront to Scott’s coffee shop—mercifully free of reporters—looming in her view. Andie let out her breath. If there was anyone who would know what to do, it would be Scott.

***

Scott was standing at the counter, wiping down non-existent dust on the shiny slab. Tim lay curled around himself at the front of the counter, chewing languidly on his duck. Andie banged in the doorway. The little bell sounded like it might rip of its nail. Scott looked up, ready to yell at a rude customer, but then softened when he recognized her.

“Hey—oh, hey, Andie. You’re in a rush—hey, what’s wrong?”

Andie didn’t take the time to gage her surroundings. Instead, she made big,
oh-my-gosh
eyes at Scott and waved at him to follow her around the counter and into the small office at the back of the shop. When the three of them were safely inside the room, she gave the front of the café a safety once over with her eyes, and slammed the door marked
Private
behind them. Scott sat in an empty club chair in the office’s corner while Andie shifted from foot to foot above him.

Where do I start? A. A. Milne said to always start at the beginning, so I’ll start there. Where’s the beginning?
She seemed to have lost all sense of time. Scott waited patiently. Tim went back to suckling on his duck. Andie was suddenly grateful these two were both PTSD trained, because she kind of felt like she’d just been through something borderline catastrophic.

“I slept with Guy.” There, that seemed like a start.

“Guy Wilder?” Scott’s mouth hung open, but his eyes flickered. Scott had had a long “bro”-mance with Guy Wilder ever since his Dickey Valentine days. “You go, girl.” He held his hand up for a high five.

Andie ignored him. “No, it gets worse than that. Or better. I don’t know.”

Scott learned forward on his chair, laced one leg over the other, and prompted her to go on.

Beginning
. “Okay, so we went on that date, right? That he asked me on when we were here—you remember?”

“Right. I remember. I was here, too.”

She ignored him. “And nothing happened. We stayed in and had dinner and hung out in his hotel room, but it was totally…” She searched for the word. “Except for a little kissing—a
little kissing—
there was absolutely nothing. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“The next day—yesterday—I went to work as normal. Everything was fine. Well, almost fine. Tandy is all up in arms about—”

“Andie, focus.”

“Right. So I must have fallen asleep in my classroom or something, because next thing I know, Guy is there with coffee—hey, he came here for coffee (Scott nodded)—and we talked for a while, then left. We bumped into a student, but then went back to my place, and—”

The student.
Cody Matthews. Andie suddenly realized what must have happened. Of course, Cody would have run off and told the first person he saw that he just met Guy Wilder, who had been with one of his teachers.
Great
. She groaned and flumped down on the armrest of Scott’s chair. Guy had been right all along. The moment word of her relationship with him got out, they’d be on her like vultures. She was so stupid; she should have listened.

“You went to your place and groaned in despair? You lost me, Andie.”

She stared blankly back at him. She’d probably sob if she weren’t so stunned. “Noooo! We went back to my apartment and it was…it was amazing. He was amazing—is amazing. (She ignored Scott’s gasp.) We woke up this morning and he made breakfast. He just left a little while ago, and I was on my way to a gala meet up, and I opened my door, and
wham!
There were cameras and some woman shooting questions like lightning, and I ran.”

Scott blinked at her. Apparently, shock was contagious. “Whoa, Andie. I’m not sure where to start.”

Andie exhaled loudly.
Tell me about it.

“Okay.” Scott straightened up, patting Andie’s knee. Tim dropped his duck and cocked his head as if he, too, were paying close attention to the conversation. “So, things with you and Guy are good? I mean, he made breakfast.” That was dude code for sticking around, apparently.

“They’re great,” she confirmed.

“Like, thanks for a great night great or great, let’s do it again.”

Andie felt herself blush a tiny bit. “Great, like, let’s do it again tomorrow.”

Scott sucked his chin under and gave her big, approving eyes. “
Well
, Missus Foxglove. Aren’t you a feisty little thing? Okay, so things are ‘great’ and then he leaves, and you go to leave later, and paparazzi are at your door. Right?”

She mentally double-checked the sequence in his sentence. “Right.”

“And I’m assuming that your earlier groan meant you solved the riddle and figured out it was the student who saw you two who managed to alert the presses?”

“Yep.”

“So have you tried to call Guy?”

Andie waved her phone in the air. “Straight to voicemail.”

“Try again.”

She did. Voicemail again.

Scott sighed and checked his watch. “Okay. So, let’s close up shop. You’ve still got a spare outfit at my place, from that time we all went skiing at Keystone and you left your bag in the car. So, you’ll stay hidden at my place tonight, and eventually you’ll get hold of Guy and figure out what to do.” He stood, pulling up Andie with him. He peered at her with dark, espresso bean eyes. “It’s a respite, Andie. You’ll talk to Guy and all this can settle down.”

She met Scott’s eyes, nodded. All she needed was somewhere to lay low until she could talk to Guy. Lay low. It was almost exactly what Guy had said to her the first day they had met.
Oh, the irony
. Tim brushed against her leg. “Okay. Let’s go.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Guy’s phone went straight to voicemail for the next several hours. Andie huddled under a blanket on Scott’s sofa. She wasn’t sure whether to be mad, upset, scared, startled, proud, worried… Honestly, it felt like she was cycling through emotions like some kind of multi-personality maniac. The fact that she’d been basically pushing Guy’s number on redial for the past four hours straight was not helping her mood. Her emotions finally landed on sick. Just sick. Like, lock herself in her room in self-induced quarantine sick. Andie pulled the blanket over her face and moaned into the fabric.
Where the hell is Guy, and why isn’t he answering me?

Poor Scott had made half a dozen noble attempts at conversation since they’d arrived back at his small house, but every time she opened her mouth to respond, she had the distinct sensation of vomit rising up the back of throat. Eventually he’d given up, patted her head in a brotherly way, and retired to his well-worn desk chair to work on photo editing on his giant iMac.

“How you doing over there, champ?” Scott’s voice sounded on autopilot. Andie had been moaning a lot.

She made some disgruntled noise as a response. Her phone buzzed and she checked it, groaned again, and jabbed the red button to send the caller to voicemail. Every time she hit that button, Andie couldn't help but wonder if Guy was doing the exact same thing to her calls wherever he was hiding out. It was Tandy calling again. It had been Tandy the eleven times previous, too. Elizabeth, Melody, and Denise—the rest of the literacy troupe—had also found their way into her voicemail, along with a handful of students, and her mother.
My mother!
The girls were probably just calling to see why she hadn’t made their meeting. Students probably had questions on whatever their next due assignment was. And her mom…probably wanted to talk about a new rice cooker or something. Andie’s attempts to logically redirect the intent of their calls were useless. Worst case scenario, whatever Barbie was hunting for this morning by now as probably flying around the Internet—and probably with Andie’s name scrawled all over it. Oh, the glory of the Internet Age. Didn’t even have to wait for the printing presses to warm up. There was no way Andie was going anywhere near Wi-Fi.

“This is torture! I don’t know whether to stay in hiding and keep calling Guy’s voicemail like some pathetic idiot or go out and face the music. Yes, world, I slept with Guy Wilder!” She crossed her arms defiantly over her chest. It wasn’t like it was a bad thing, just humiliating—like the housekeeper rifling through your underwear drawer. “I should get an award.”

Scott laughed and swiveled in his chair, his eyebrow arched. Andie wanted to keep her sulking face on, but that eyebrow did her over and she laughed. She was genuinely glad to have Scott in her life.
Why didn’t I end up with Scott, anyway? He’s nice, and handsome, and a great guy…but he’s no Guy Wilder. Groannn.

“So, what’s it going to be then?”

Andie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, tried to center herself. Perhaps she had overreacted just a tad. It was, after all,
one
reporter. How much damage could
one
reporter do? And seriously, she wasn’t the only girl who’d ever spent the night with a famous dude. This was more about Guy than her. She was a nobody, forgettable.

“I’ll call one more time, and if he answers, fine. If no one answers, then that’s fine, too. I’ll turn my phone off, we’ll order pizza and watch a movie, and tomorrow life goes on.”

“You got yourself a deal, little lady.”

Andie pushed redial on Guy’s number, fully expecting to hear his generic voicemail (“you’ve reached the voice mail box for 555…”) again. To her surprise, someone picked up on the second ring—but it was not
the
someone whose voice she’d hoped to hear.

“Hello.”

It was a woman’s voice, high, brisk, and sounding vaguely irritated. Andie knew the voice but couldn’t place it. She double-checked her phone screen just to be sure she hadn’t touched the wrong number on her phone screen and called Tandy instead. Nope.

“Hello?” The irritation in the woman’s voice was less vague.

Andie’s mouth rose up the same way it did when she smelled something bad. Finally, she said, “Hello?” She hadn’t meant it to come with a question mark ending. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry; I was trying to reach Guy.”