Lissa sank back in the seat. She could hear her heart pounding. An interview with Raoul? Her live-in? Why would he say that? Hell. She knew why. That old Hollywood maxim. Any publicity was good publicity.
And the way he’d twisted things. Saying she couldn’t make it in Hollywood. What would people think when they read that? Her career was already underwater…
Oh, God!
Never mind her career. What would Nicholas think? What would he say? And her family.
Lissa groaned.
Her family! Her brothers. Her sisters. Her father. They all thought she was blazing trails in the West, cooking her way towards success…
“Miss?”
“Yes.”
“Where are we going, please?”
Where? Where? To a cave, where she could hide. To Nick, so she could tell him that she wasn’t what Raoul had surely made her out to be. But there weren’t any caves in L.A. and she had no idea where Nick was or if he was all right, and how had she forgotten that what mattered right now was Nick?
“Miss?”
Lissa swallowed hard and gave the cabbie her address.
They drove into town, into the part of Hollywood where Lissa’s apartment complex was located.
“Miss?”
Lissa looked up. The cabbie’s eyes met hers in the mirror.
“You the lady they’re talking about?”
She wanted to make some clever comment about that omnipresent “they,” but she didn’t have the energy.
“No,” she said brightly, “I’m not.”
“The cook? The actor’s, ah, date?”
“I just told you—”
“Fine. OK. Then you won’t mind that crowd over there.”
Lissa looked out the window, then shrank back in her seat. A flotilla of vehicles bearing the logos of what appeared to be every TV station in the Western world was parked outside her apartment building. Reporters and photographers jammed the small courtyard.
“Keep going,” she said quickly. “Don’t even slow down!”
The driver grinned at her in the mirror. “Thought you might be her. Liza something, right?”
She didn’t answer. She was trying to figure out where to go.
Where could she go? She’d really never made any close friends in L.A. It was a town full of transients. People changed jobs, changed living arrangements, changed everything all the time.
A hotel. That was her only option.
Something affordable. Not easy in this town. But she didn’t have to worry about that, not for a few days, at least. Nick had overpaid her and refused to take the money back…
Nick! Was he OK? If the media was all over her, she could only imagine what it was doing to—
Her phone rang. Lissa gave a little a sob of relief, dug it out of her purse and put it to her ear without looking at the screen.