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  Taylor dished some salad onto her plate, tilting the bowl to ask Jason if he wanted any. He waved this off, impatient for her to continue.

  “I met him at your party,” she said. “It’s a funny coincidence—we must have been leaving at the same time. Anyway, we hung out for a while, and you know what?—he was actually kind of fun to talk to. And whew—well, let’s just say that he is not exactly tough on the eyes.”

  Taylor looked him over, then pointed with her fork. “He could even give you a run for your money.” With a wink, she took a bite of her salad.

  Jason sat at the counter, speechless. By now, the two of them were supposed to be deep in the throes of I’m-so-glad-you-chose-me-Jason makeup sex.

  He cleared his throat. “So where’s he taking you on Saturday?”

  Taylor waved this off as she took another bite of her salad. “I don’t know, we didn’t talk about that.” She smiled slyly.

  “Besides, as you’ve pointed out several times, it’s Scott Casey. Does it really matter where we go?”

  Jason stood up so quickly the stool banged against the counter. He could not believe the shit she was saying.

  “Seriously, Taylor—do you know who I am?” he demanded.

  She smiled at this. “You celebrities actually say that? That’s cute.”

  Jason raked his fingers through his hair in exasperation. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone. Thoroughly worked up, he glanced around the kitchen. “I need something to drink—why is it so fucking hot in here?”

  He went over to the sink, dumped his wine, and hurriedly filled his glass with water. He gulped the whole thing down, then finally turned back to Taylor.

  She studied him for a long moment, then cocked her head. “Is something wrong, Jason?”

  He was quite certain he detected the faintest trace of a smile on her lips.

  JEREMY WAS DEEP in thought, typing on his computer at a table in the back of Reilly’s Tavern. The bar was quiet and empty, except for the manager, who occasionally wandered out of his office to accept deliveries from beer trucks in the alley.

  The studio that had bought Jeremy’s latest screenplay wanted a “stronger midpoint.” According to the know-it-all development execs assigned to the project, things were proceeding too easily for the hero halfway through the story, and they wanted to shake things up a bit.

  “Maybe there’s some villain who’s been quietly lurking in the shadows, and suddenly he makes a play for the heroine,” one of the studio execs had said. The rest of the suits in the room nodded excitedly in agreement as Jeremy rolled his eyes.

  Fucking Hollywood.

  Jeremy quickly reminded them that this was a serious film about vampire/alien hybrids waging a battle for world domination against an evil zombie/warlock hybrid empire, not some lame-o chick flick.

  But, since nobody was listening to him—which apparently was the theme of the week—Jeremy plodded along, typing in the requested changes to the script.

  When suddenly the door to the bar slammed violently open.

  Startled, Jeremy peered up from his computer and saw Jason standing in the doorway, looking all dark and stormy.

  “You.”

  He pointed accusingly at Jeremy.

  “Did you set this up?”

  Jason furiously walked over to Jeremy’s table. “Fess up, funny boy. Did you set this up?”

  Jeremy stared blankly at him. “Did I set what up?”

  “This thing with Scott Casey.”

  “What thing with Scott Casey?”

  Deciding this could go on all day, Jason changed tactics.

  “Okay, you got me.” He grinned sheepishly. “Ha ha, very funny. When did you and Taylor come up with this . . . what? This little trick to put me in my place?” Ready to be a good sport, Jason wagged a finger at him. “Very clever.”

  Jeremy folded his hands politely on the table.

  “Jason. I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

  Jason’s face fell. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” Jeremy said. “I haven’t seen Taylor since the night of your party.”

  With this news, Jason slumped into the empty chair at Jeremy’s table. He fell silent for a moment, then peered over at his friend in shock. “Then she really does have a date with Scott Casey.”

  Jeremy blinked at this. “Taylor’s dating Scott Casey?” He began to laugh. He held up one hand, clutching his side with the other. “Wait, wait.” He gasped for breath. “This really is too good. I gotta write this down to use one day.”

  Jeremy turned to his computer, reading out loud as he typed. “ ‘And then the evil, arrogant movie star learned that lying does not pay.’ ”

  Jason glared silently as Jeremy leaned back in his chair, still chuckling.

  “Ahhh . . . Scott Casey . . . now that’s classic.”

  “Are you finished?”

  Jeremy peered over innocently. “They say he’s the It Guy, you know.”

  Jason’s eyes narrowed warningly.

  “All right, all right, I’m done,” Jeremy finally acquiesced. “Tell me how this happened.”

  Jason leapt out of his chair. “The hell if I know! Last night, I went over to Taylor’s apartment to tell her about Naomi, but the next thing I know, she’s talking about Scott Casey and how they have some date on Saturday.” Jason pointed. “He picked her up at my party.” Then he punched the air. “I knew I should’ve thrown that little punk out the minute I saw him.”

  “Wow. That’s not exactly how you saw this playing out, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Jason retorted. He paced angrily. “What can she seriously see in that guy? He’s as dull as a lamppost.”

  “A slightly younger lamppost,” Jeremy quipped.

  Jason looked over, stung. That hit below the belt.

  Jeremy immediately held up his hands in contrition. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” He got up and followed Jason over to the pool table. “So what’s your game plan now?” he asked as Jason picked up a cue stick.

  Jason shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t think straight. Something’s off.”

  “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Barely.”

  “Are you mad at Taylor?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  Jeremy leaned against the pool table and lit up a cigarette as Jason racked the balls for a game. “Do you have any right to be?”

  Jason glared at Jeremy for this. But after a moment, his expression softened.

  “Probably not,” he acknowledged.

  Jeremy nodded, rubbing his four-day stubble like a detective on the case.

  “Yep, I’ve seen these symptoms before . . .” he mused. “I believe it’s called ‘jealousy.’ Something common men unlike yourself experience from time to time.”

  “Yeah, well, it sucks,” Jason replied pissily. He aimed his stick at the cue ball and took a shot. He whiffed, missed the ball entirely, and hit the pool table face-first.

  Jeremy barely stifled his smile. Ahhh . . . if only the paparazzi could capture moments like this.

  “So I guess this means you and Taylor are friends now,” he said.

  Jason scoffed emphatically while rubbing his nose. “Please—I’m never just ‘the friend.’ ”

  “Scott Casey might beg to differ with you on that.”

  Jason pointed at him. “You say his name again, and I swear I’ll get you fired off that vampire flick of yours.”

  Jeremy was highly offended by this.

  “Hey—let’s get something straight. It’s a vampire/alien/ zombie/warlock hybrid flick.”

  Nineteen

  AND JUST LIKE that, everything had changed.

  On an impulse after losing three straight games of pool at Reilly’s Tavern, Jason had declared to Jeremy that they were going out for the evening. But now, as he sat in one of the booths at Hyde, he found that his heart just wasn’t into the whole West Hollywood nightclub scene that night.
r />   Because everything had changed.

  The bar was packed. Underneath the candles that hung from the club’s copper ceiling, Jeremy and the other guys they had come with—friends from Around—argued over which Ben Affleck/Michael Bay collaboration ranked higher in the biggest cinematic disasters of all time, Pearl Harbor or Armageddon .

  Jason heard Jeremy’s irate shout over the music, obviously voting for the latter.

  “Come on—that scene with the animal crackers? Are you kidding me with that shit? I almost gagged up my Jujyfruits.”

  Now normally, Jason would have been tempted to enter this fray, especially since he not only enjoyed any opportunity to contradict Jeremy, but also because he personally thought that Pearl Harbor should be placed on the American Medical Association’s list of potential causes of eye cancer.

  But tonight, he found he couldn’t quite muster up the enthusiasm. Tonight, there was no fight left in him.

  She was going out with someone else.

  Scott Casey.

  Jason couldn’t imagine how the situation could possibly get any worse.

  As he took a long sip of his drink, finishing off his fifth Stolichnaya Elit on the rocks that evening, he wondered how, exactly, things had gone so far awry. For the first time in over ten years, he didn’t know what to do.

  Yes, call Us Weekly. Call Page Six, the Enquirer, and everyone else.

  Jason Andrews had woman problems.

  “Should I order us another drink?”

  The question came from Jason’s right, from the ravishing blonde with fantastically long legs that sat next to him.

  Hey—he was in a bar and he was Jason Andrews. Of course there was a ravishing blonde with fantastically long legs sitting next to him.

  Jason turned his attention to the girl. He was a wee bit buzzed from the vodka and more than a wee bit melancholy.

  “Do you have goals, Shyla?” He sighed. “Tell me what a woman like you wants to do with her life.”

  “Shay-na,” the blonde corrected him.

  Jason leaned his head back against the booth and closed his eyes. Suddenly, this entire conversation made his head hurt.

  He opened his eyes to find Shayna sitting in his lap, leaning over him. From what Jason could tell, the woman already had two pretty nice assets working for her in life, and the push-up bra she wore shoved them straight into his face.

  She whispered seductively in his ear.

  “My goal is to blow you in your car tonight when you drive me home to fuck me.”

  Jason sighed tiredly. It was always the same thing. Jason, I want to blow you. Jason, let’s go back to my trailer and fuck like wild dogs. Jason, I’ll bring my girlfriend next time, she’s in Cirque du Soleil and can do things to her body you wouldn’t believe. Blah, blah, blah.

  With Shayna’s two ample assets presented right at eye level, Jason tried to muster some interest in her suggestion. But try as he might, it was a different pair of assets—a pair of lively green eyes to be exact—that he couldn’t get out of his mind.

  So he shook his head.

  “Sorry—it’s a guy’s night out tonight.” With that, he scooped the blonde off his lap, stood up, and turned to Jeremy. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Jeremy glanced over at Jason and nodded. He disliked the L.A. club scene even more than the L.A. party scene, so it didn’t take a whole heck of a lot to convince him to leave. Besides, the guys they had came with were total friggin’ morons—one of them had just argued that Armageddon had strong “situational character development.”

  Shayna, on the other hand, was not quite ready to call it an evening. She reached for Jason’s hand.

  “Wait, what’s the problem?” She smiled invitingly. “You’re here with your boys; I’m here with my girls. Why don’t we leave with you and all party together?” She pointed to an attractive redhead seated at a table nearby. “That’s my friend, Eve. She and I love to party together.”

  Jason sighed again. Ho-hum, another threesome. It was all so passé.

  With an apologetic smile, he leaned down to give Shayna a polite kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, darling, I appreciate the offer. But not tonight.”

  Suddenly, there was a voice from behind.

  “Well, well, well . . . what do we have here?”

  Jason closed his eyes. He knew he shouldn’t have come to this fucking club. It was like one big frat party for celebrities, the place they all came together to be misunderstood and put-upon by the exhausting demands of the outside world.

  With great annoyance, Jason turned around.

  Scott Casey stood before him, looking smugly at Jason and the long-legged Shayna. Jason checked out Scott’s entourage and immediately dismissed them all. The only one he even vaguely recognized was that Rob Who-Gives-a-Shit Jeremy had pointed out at the Lakers game several weeks ago.

  “Hello, Scott. Funny seeing you here,” Jason said, keeping his voice calm.

  Scott smiled magnanimously. “I’d just thought I’d say hello—I didn’t get a chance at your party. You may have heard, I was a little busy that night.”

  Jason knew he was being baited. But he was hardly about to let some pretty-boy wanker think he cared one bit about anything that had happened last Saturday or any other day. So his smile remained as smooth and cool as ice.

  “Did I hear you’re chasing after Marty Shepherd these days?” he asked, faux-politely.

  Scott’s smug expression faded just a bit. Then he recovered. “I don’t chase anyone, my friend.” He held his arms out wide.

  “I just wait for them to come to me. Speaking of which . . .”

  Jason looked up at the ceiling, knowing what Scott was about to say before the words even came out.

  “. . . I’m going out with someone you know this weekend,” he continued. “A lawyer. Taylor Donovan. She tells me you two are business associates.”

  Jeremy, who had been standing next to Jason during this exchange, whistled low under his breath.

  “Business associates? Ouch. That’s worse than friends.”

  Jason threw him a look. Perhaps they could do without the commentary for a few minutes.

  Overhearing Jeremy, Scott leaned over to Rob and whispered something under his breath. Then he turned back to Jason, eying Shayna, who unfortunately had moved her hand to Jason’s arm.

  Scott smiled. “Well, I’ll be sure to tell Taylor I ran into you and your little friend here. I’m sure she’ll be very interested to hear all about it.”

  Jason’s eyes narrowed at the threat. “Don’t bother, I’ll tell her myself. We’re having dinner this Thursday; didn’t she mention it?”

  As the two men faced off, Jeremy apparently felt it was time to step in. He stood in front of Jason, blocking his view of Scott.

  “Okay, okay,” he said to Jason. “Now that we’ve established that you have the bigger penis, I think we should leave.”

  Since Jeremy had inserted himself into the fray, Scott’s friend Rob now needed to chime in as well. It was part of the sacred celebrity entourage code.

  “Hey—buddy,” he jeered at Jeremy. “Who the hell are you? The comic sidekick?”

  Jeremy turned around to face Rob and coolly looked him up and down.

  “Sidekick? Fuck you, porky.”

  Scott’s entourage gasped. For a sometimes-working Los Angeles actor, there was no greater insult.

  Rob’s face turned bright red. “How many times do I have to tell you people? I’m on hiatus!” he shouted, just before taking a swing at Jeremy.

  And just like that, all hell broke loose.

  “YOU GOT INTO a fight with Scott Casey?”

  The next morning, Jason was in the car the studio provided, being driven to the set. The minute his cell phone had rung and he saw Marty’s name, he knew what was coming.

  “How do you know about that already?” Jason asked. “That only happened like”—he checked his watch—“six hours ago.”

  “How do I know?” Marty shouted across th
e line. “I know because I know everyone, Jason. For chrissakes, you were at Hyde. I’ve got half the staff there on my payroll. You do realize those little coke parties you celebs like to throw in the bathrooms don’t actually go unnoticed, don’t you?”

  Jason leaned back against the seat of the limo and closed his eyes. He had a hangover and was not at all in the mood for a lecture.

  “Then you should check your sources, Marty, because I didn’t get into a fight with anyone last night. I was the one pulling my friend away from that portly D-lister with the serious stick up his ass.”

  Jason could hear Marty barking orders to his secretary on the other end of the line. He could just picture his publicist, storming into the office while on his cell phone, all frantic and “Get me Us Weekly, stat!”-like.

  “I’ve got four eyewitnesses who say that you and Scott Casey exchanged words, Jason.”

  “Yes, well, ‘words’ are still the way human beings communicate, Marty,” Jason threw back at him.

  “Just tell me this—did this alleged fight with Scott Casey have anything to do with Taylor Donovan?”

  Jason bristled at the question. “No, you tell me—does the reason you’re so pissed about this alleged fight have anything to do with the fact that you’re allegedly trying to land Scott Casey as a client?” He paused for a moment to let this sit. “I know everyone, too, Marty.”

  Marty fell quiet for a moment. Jason wasn’t sure if he had lost the connection or if his publicist was simply taking a moment to decide what spin to put on his answer.

  Marty finally answered.

  It had been the latter.

  “Jason, Jason . . .” he oozed soothingly. “You know you are my number one priority. You always have been my number one priority, and you always will be—until the day you either run off to some private island in the Pacific, build a compound, and have fifteen babies with your native housekeeper, or kill me with a heart attack from all the shit you’ll still be getting into when you’re eighty fucking years old.”

  Hearing Jason’s silence, Marty took a breath before continuing.

  “And since you are my number one priority, I would be remiss in my obligations as your publicist if I didn’t speak to you when I sense something at odds with your image. Tremors in the force that is Jason Andrews, if you will.”