I laughed and gave her a little shove toward the door. “Get out of here. I’ll remain fully dressed and I won’t even think sexy thoughts.”
“Babe,” she admonished me, “now I know you’re lying to me.”
“Have a great day!”
“You, too. I guess.” The door to the garage swung shut behind her as she appeared to be thinking way too much about this. Then she popped her head back in. “And don’t take any meetings in his bedroom!”
I almost spilled the latte I was making for myself. “How stupid do you think I am?”
She grinned at me, then left.
I shook my head, laughing under my breath. It wasn’t like she was wrong to be concerned, though. Her brother, my new client, was seriously hot, and I was seriously into that about him, for a long, long time. She and I both knew it. As much as I’d sworn to her up and down over the years that I didn’t like him, she knew I’d had a crush on him, once upon a time. And that I still found him stupidly, annoyingly attractive.
That he was… well, exactly my type. At least, in a fantasy sense.
Maybe I should put on a sweater.
I sipped my latte, marveling over how smoothly that went. I was shocked, actually, that Shayla didn’t have more of a problem with me working with her brother. Her only concern seemed to be about me actually spending time with her brother. Alone time. Wherein I might remember how hot he was and jump his bones.
Nope. Not doing that.
I made the promise to myself and sealed it with a solemn vow to my best friend; I sent her a text in words that I knew would touch her heart.
Chicks before dicks. Always.
Lil Brats Forever.
* * *
After breakfast, I got all set up to work at Shayla’s laptop on the kitchen island. I really did need to go over to the apartment—Flynn’s apartment; it was his apartment now—and get my things. Bring them over here. Unpack. Settle in. Wear something that actually belonged to me.
But first, I needed to start unpacking Johnny’s dumpster fire. Even as successful as he was, something told me there would be a lot to unpack.
Shayla had given me her password to log onto the laptop and I went straight to the internet, logged into my Google account. Step One in my client intake process: educate myself on my client. Only after that could I start putting together a whole PR plan for Johnny and start writing his new story, so to speak.
For now I was calling this storyReinventing Johnny. I opened a new document and typed that into the document title. Had a nice ring to it.
Dude seriously needed a reinvention.
I got to work researching Johnny’s public image. I started searching through all the recent and most popular media topics I could find on him. As it turned out, “Breakneck,” “tattoos,” and “nude” were the hottest web searches associated with the name Johnny O’Reilly. (There were no nude pics, but people were definitely hoping to find them.)
I read through all his career highlights and major reviews of his albums with Breakneck.
While I worked, I checked my phone a thousand times for a message from Johnny. No dice. His words to me last night, just before him and Lamar drove me and Shayla home wereWe’ll get started tomorrow.Then, while Shayla wasn’t looking, he’d had me put my number in his phone—which was challenging since the screen was weirdly smashed to shit—and send a text to myself so I’d have his.
I messaged him mid-morning to let him know I was available anytime, but he hadn’t replied.
After a quick lunch break, I pored over the bio some former publicist of his had written, which was lackluster and generic.No wonder he wanted a new publicist.The bio could’ve been describing any rock star. And Johnny O’Reilly was not any rock star. He had his own thing going on.
We just had to sell that to the world in a way that was a little more… palatable. At least, more palatable than it had been lately.
I searched out those Tweets about Johnny at the fundraiser, the ones Danielle had told me about. I’d avoided doing it so far. My sister had schooled me on ignoring gossip online, even if it was about me. It never was, anyway. I’d had a few cursory mentions here or there, odd times I’d appeared in public with my sister, but nothing that amounted to gossip. Because who was interested in me? It was usually just some photo caption;Elle Delacroix and sister arrive at charity event.That kind of thing. I rarely even got named.
When I found the Tweets, I saw that they focused on Johnny anyway. There were a couple of photos of me and him talking at his table, and they did refer to me as “mystery sweetheart.” But no one had circled back to name me.
I wondered if someone who disliked Brianna had taken the pics? Trying to hurt her or something? Because if it wasn’t for Brianna—or, more likely, her people, since she didn’t even seem to know who the hell I was—complaining to Danielle, I’d never even know about those Tweets.
Then I read through a bunch of articles about the whole Johnny/Brianna/JC scandal. They all regurgitated the same information and the same quotes from some anonymous source.
