Sweet Little Lies Read online

  “Yes?”

  “Please just trust me this time. If you’re planning to make up with Jesse, don’t tell him I took you home.”

  “Okay,” Jane whispered.

  Later that night—after Braden had dropped Jane off at her apartment and she’d gone straight to bed (alone), and after Jesse had left her twenty voice mails and texts apologizing profusely and telling her how much he loved her, how the thought of her being with Braden (again) had made him temporarily lose his mind—she decided to forgive him. Even though what he had done had been practically unforgivable, she felt she had brought it on herself. And it wasn’t that she shouldn’t have told Jesse about lunch with Braden—she should never have agreed to the lunch in the first place. How would she feel if Jesse had cheated on her with her best friend (Scar? Madison?), and then gone out to lunch with her, just the two of them? As though nothing had happened?

  Especially if Jesse really did have feelings for that best friend—just as Jane had feelings for Braden?

  Jesse was right.

  She was a liar.

  29

  TIME BOMB

  “Come here, doggy. No, stay away from Madison’s shoes! Bad boy!” Jane scolded.

  Madison bit her lip in exasperation as she watched Jane chase after the dog (correction, mutt) that they (correction, Jane) had adopted from the pound yesterday. The little furball was racing around the apartment, chewing on everything in sight, including Madison’s brand-new Manolo snakeskin pumps that had cost a small fortune.

  Why had she agreed to this…animal? When she had suggested to Jane last Saturday that the two of them adopt a puppy together, she had meant the small, fluffy, well-behaved kind that could be carried around in a purse—not some mixed-breed animal on steroids. This was ridiculous. She was just waiting for him to start peeing on Derek’s favorite Persian rug.

  Jane was saying something to her. Madison had no idea what, because the psycho dog was barking loudly at the wall.

  “Whaaaat?” Madison shouted, cupping her hands around her ears.

  “What do you wanna name him?” Jane shouted back.

  “How about Crazy?” Madison suggested.

  “Whaaaat?”

  “Never mind! You name him.”

  “I think he looks like a Tucker!”

  “Sure! Whatever!” Madison watched nervously as Tucker sniffed the white leather couch.

  “Really? You like it? Yay! Come here, Tucker!” Jane got down on her knees. The dog bounded over to her and knocked her down to the floor, covering her face with wet, slurpy, nasty dog kisses. Ew. Jane didn’t swat him away, but instead started giggling happily and speaking to him in some stupid-sounding doggy-speak: “Yesyou’resuchagoodboy! Yesyourmommiesloveyou!”

  Madison rubbed her temples. She needed a couple of Advils and a martini—ASAP. Who cared if it was only 10 a.m.?

  Still, it was kind of a relief to see Jane acting like her old self. When Jane came in on Friday night, she looked like hell, and she had obviously been crying. Madison had tried to find out what was up—maybe she and Jesse had finally had a big falling-out about the boy fight at Teddy’s?—but Jane hadn’t wanted to talk, instead going straight to her room. Madison had emailed Veronica with news of the fight and her immediate reply had been, Tell me something I don’t know. The problem was, Veronica seemed to know everything. Madison had yet to unearth a single newsworthy fact about Jane that hadn’t already been in Gossip.

  Jane had been quiet and pensive yesterday morning, too. It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, when they’d made the excursion to the SPCA and adopted the hound from hell, that Jane had perked up. Actually, “perked up” was an understatement. Madison had never seen her so giddy with happiness.

  Eventually, the thing exhausted himself with all his barking and running around in circles. He curled up in the brown corduroy bed Jane had bought for him at some discount pet store on Santa Monica Boulevard and went to sleep, twitching and thumping his tail. (Madison made a note to herself that she had to replace the bed immediately with something more in keeping with the decor.)

  Jane sank onto the couch next to Madison, beaming. “Isn’t he soooo cute?” she gushed.

  “Hmm.”

  “They said he was, like, part German shepherd and part collie and part something else, right?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Are you hungry? I could make us breakfast. How about some pancakes? My dad always used to make blueberry pancakes on Sunday morning.”

  “No, thanks,” Madison replied. “I’m trying to lose a few pounds.” And you could stand to lose more than a few pounds, she thought, eyeing Jane’s figure. “Soooo. How are you doing?”

  “I’m good.”

  Madison decided to press. Maybe Jane was finally ready to talk about whatever had gone down on Friday night. “Everything okay between you and Jesse?” she said gently.

  Jane reached up and tugged at a lock of her hair. “Um…well…you know.”

  Good. It was an opening. “He’s still pretty mad about Teddy’s, huh?” Madison guessed. “I can’t believe Braden had the nerve to show up.”

  Jane bit her lip. “Yeah, well, Braden didn’t know Jesse and I were gonna be there.”

  Madison raised her eyebrows. “Braden tell you that?”

  “Yeah, at lunch.”

  “Lunch?” This was getting better and better. And was something Veronica didn’t know.

  “Yeah. We had lunch on Friday. It was Braden’s idea.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Greengrass.”

  “You met him at Barneys?”

  Jane shrugged. “I didn’t want…you know, photographers around.”

  “Got it. So why did Braden wanna meet you?”

  “He wanted to apologize for what happened at Teddy’s. Plus, you know, he wanted to catch up and stuff. His show fell through, so he’s, uh, back in L.A.,” Jane said casually, then looked away.

  Madison couldn’t believe it. Jane was still hung up on Braden. This was…awesome. This was exactly the kind of dirt Veronica wanted. This was also the ammunition she needed to pry Jane away from Jesse. If they broke up, Jane would have a lot more free time to spend with her. Madison could envision entire L.A. Candy episodes devoted to their girls’ nights out, intimate talks, and more. Or maybe Madison would get a (disposable) boyfriend. Then she would have the main relationship on the show. She began to imagine crazy first dates, romantic vacations spent entirely in a bikini, and a dramatic, over-the-top breakup. The season one finale was coming up, so there weren’t many episodes left. But there was sure to be a season two, right? Although Trevor still hadn’t mentioned anything about that.

  But first things first. “Did you tell Jesse about your lunch date?” Madison asked Jane.

  Jane’s expression darkened. “Well, it wasn’t a date. But yes, that night, at Katsuya. He didn’t take it too well.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry,” Madison said, her voice oozing with faux sympathy. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. We got into a fight. I told him it was just lunch, and Braden was just apologizing about everything. But he wouldn’t believe me. It was pretty bad….” Jane stopped.

  Madison tried to hide her excitement. She couldn’t make this stuff up. Wait’ll Veronica hears about this, she thought. She’s gonna do a huge spread about me, just me. No “Jane Roberts’s friend and confidante” bullshit.

  She leaned over and squeezed Jane’s arm. “Sweetie, I know you don’t want to hear this. But that’s the real Jesse. He’s a total time bomb. You should get out while you can.”

  “No, no, I’m not gonna break up with him!” Jane protested. “I love him. And he loves me. Besides, it’s my fault he’s acting like this. I cheated on him with his best friend. This is on me.”

  “Okay. But he has to get over what happened between you and Braden. He can’t go on punching people in clubs and stuff.”

  “Yeah.” Jane looked like she was only half listening now.
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  Maybe she’s starting to see the light about Jesse, Madison thought.

  “Everything was going so well.” Jane sighed, and Madison wondered if she had meant to add, before Braden came back. “Seriously, like, even you and Jesse were starting to get along better. Hey, I keep meaning to ask you—what did you say to him at Teddy’s, anyway? I asked Jesse, and he said you apologized?”

  “Oh, you know. I just worked my amazing charm on him. I told him I was sorry for any misunderstandings between us and could we be friends and blah, blah, blah.”

  “Wow. You’re good!”

  “Hey, I would do anything for you. You know that, right?”

  Jane smiled gratefully. “Thanks. That means a lot.”

  Madison smiled back. It was easy lying to Jane. The girl was beyond gullible, or maybe she was just desperate for a friend. The truth was, Madison had called Jesse aside at Teddy’s and told him—in a dark corner, with the two of them standing close enough for him to admire the view of her plunging V-neck dress, whispering so their conversation wouldn’t be picked up by the mikes—that she had shown those pictures to him back in December because she had been hopelessly attracted to him and wanted him to break up with Jane. He had been just drunk enough to buy it, and to buy the convoluted story she told him about how, exactly, she had acquired the pictures and why she had tried to get him to take them to Veronica Bliss and how someone else entirely, she wasn’t sure who, had ended up selling them to Veronica—and he was so obviously flattered by her confession to him that he hugged her (and continued hugging her for a second beyond what would be considered friendly), and let her link arms with him as they headed back to Jane and Gaby, joking and laughing. Really, the whole thing was genius. She wasn’t exactly dealing with rocket scientists here, but she was pretty impressed with herself.

  Madison’s self-congratulatory reverie was interrupted by the sound of barking. Ugh. Tucker.

  “Yay, he’s up!” Jane said, suddenly animated again, as if the mutt had barked away her troubles with Jesse. “Hey, you wanna take him over to the dog park? He’d love that, right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Madison said amiably. Jane’s news had put her in such an excellent mood, she didn’t mind humoring her. Besides, long walks often led to long conversations. Maybe she could unearth more useful gossip about Jane’s potentially scandalous lunch date with Braden.

  30

  I DIDN’T MEAN ANY OF IT

  “I wanna surprise Jesse with a minivacation, to cheer him up,” Jane told Hannah. It was Monday morning at the office. The L.A. Candy cameras were there filming, and Jane had just finished telling Hannah all about the recent events at Teddy’s. “Like maybe Jesse and I could drive up the coast? I was thinking of renting a beach house or maybe checking into a cute B and B. It might be good for us to just get away for a few days.”

  Jane was careful to leave out any references to Braden. Yesterday, Trevor had called her in for a meeting to figure out how to handle what had happened at Teddy’s. He said she owed it to viewers to tell as much of the truth as possible, without mentioning Braden’s name. She’d had to tell Hannah things like, “…then the guy I cheated on Jesse with showed up at the club, and things got kinda ugly….” Which was beyond awkward, but it was Trevor’s orders. She was going to have to repeat similar lines when she recorded the voice-overs for future episodes. The whole thing was a mess, especially since he couldn’t actually show Braden’s face in the fight scene at Teddy’s.

  Hannah had been mostly silent, not responding to Jane’s story with her usual sympathetic comments. This had been happening more and more—was Hannah mad at her?

  “Hmmm.” Hannah stared at her computer screen. “Hey, I was looking through those menus for the Valentine’s Day party. They look really good.”

  “Yeah, I agree. So what do you think?”

  “About what? The menus?”

  “No, about the minivacation idea.”

  “Oh!” Hannah glanced quickly at the cameras. “I…uh…” She cut her eyes toward the cameras again, and then at Jane. She looked a little upset.

  “Hannah?” Jane whispered. “You okay?”

  Hannah didn’t say anything, but instead rose from her chair and hurried out the door. What is wrong with her? Jane thought as she ran after her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two camera guys scrambling to follow. She heard one of them swearing as he tripped on a cord, dropping equipment. Jane stepped into the hall and saw Dana. She looked a little frantic, probably wanting to know what the hell was going on.

  Jane saw Hannah rushing into the ladies’ room. Good. The camera guys wouldn’t dare follow them in there. Jane went inside—and found Hannah leaning against the slick black sink in the empty bathroom.

  “Hannah?” Jane’s voice echoed in the bathroom. “Hannah, what’s wrong?”

  “Everything.” Hannah looked at her with tears brimming in her eyes. Jane had never seen her like this. “I’m so sorry, Jane.”

  Jane blinked. “Sorry? About what?”

  Hannah opened her mouth to speak, and then shook her head quickly. She reached into her shirt and extracted the mike taped to the inside of her bra. She unplugged it from the rest of the unit, and motioned for Jane to do the same. Jane reached around to her mike pack and flipped it off. Whatever Hannah had to say, she obviously wanted to say it in private.

  “I have to tell you something,” Hannah began.

  “Sure.”

  “I…well…all those things I’ve been saying to you about Jesse? How you should be together? I didn’t mean any of it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Trevor and Dana told me to say that stuff,” Hannah blurted out. “They told me that I should convince you to stay with Jesse. They said that you could be kind of dramatic about your relationships, and that he was actually a great guy.”

  “What?”

  “I’m so sorry!” Hannah cried out. “I went along with it for a while because you seemed really into him. But then I started seeing that maybe he wasn’t so good for you. It seems like he drinks a lot. And Saturday night I ran into him at Crown Bar with this girl.”

  “What?” Jane’s heart dropped. Saturday was the day after she’d told Jesse about her lunch with Braden—and Jesse had almost crashed the Range Rover. “What girl?”

  Jane heard someone opening the bathroom door. She quickly pushed it closed and twisted the lock. She ignored Dana’s muffled voice calling out to her and Hannah from the other side.

  “I think her name was Amber,” Hannah replied. “Maybe it was totally innocent. I mean, I never saw them kissing or anything. But I just got this bad feeling.”

  Jane tried to think. On Saturday afternoon, she and Madison had gotten Tucker at the SPCA shelter. They had stayed in that night to help him settle into his new home. She and Jesse had made up over the phone in the morning, and he had told her that he was going to a Lakers game that night with his friends Howard and Zach.

  “You deserve better,” Hannah said, her voice insistent now. “In the beginning, I didn’t care as much because I didn’t know you. But now I know you, and I feel like we’re friends. Real friends, not just pretend friends for the cameras.” She reached for a tissue and dried the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t know what I was getting into when I signed on to do the show.”

  “How could you have known?” Jane said, resting her head against the door. “It’s not your fault your new job came with a TV show on the side.”

  The way Hannah immediately looked away when Jane tried to smile freaked her out.

  “Hannah, what else aren’t you telling me?” Jane asked. “You were just applying for the job, right?”

  “I met Trevor at Coco de Ville,” Hannah explained, “at a party I helped organize for a magazine launch, when I was working for David Sutton. Trevor asked me what I did, and I don’t know how it happened, but we got to talking and I mentioned that I was looking for another job in event planning. Then one thing led to another, and he s
aid he could probably get me in with Fiona if I wanted because he was friends with her. He also said that it just happened he was looking for another person for his show. Not like a fifth girl or anything, but someone to be in Fiona’s office, sort of hanging out with you.”

  “Soooo…you came here to be on the show and pretend to be my friend,” Jane said slowly.

  “No! I mean, I was just so happy to get this job with Fiona! I liked working with David, but there wasn’t any room for me to move up there. And then here comes this guy out of nowhere, telling me that he could get me an awesome new job plus a part on a cool new TV show. It sounded amazing—at the time.”

  “Yeah.” Jane remembered the night at Les Deux, back in August, when Trevor had made a similar, equally irresistible pitch to her and Scar. He was definitely hard to say no to. And he was definitely a pro at changing people’s lives—and trying to influence people’s lives. No, not influence. More like control.

  Dana’s voice grew louder, and so did her knocks. They both ignored her.

  “If you hate me now, I don’t blame you,” Hannah said miserably. “But I hope you can forgive me. Because I really do consider you a friend.”

  Hannah seemed to be genuinely sorry about it. And she seemed to care about Jane. Which was a rare commodity in Hollywood. Now that Jane and Scar were on the outs, it wasn’t like she had a lot of close friends these days.

  “Yeah, I understand,” Jane said finally.

  Hannah’s face lit up. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  As the two girls hugged, Jane thought about how the day that had started out like any other day had suddenly become really, really difficult. She and Hannah were going to have to face Dana’s wrath once they emerged from the ladies’ room. And, more important, Jane was going to have to have a serious talk with Jesse.

  Late that night, Jane was woken up by a phone call. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, disoriented. The digital clock on her night table read 2:08 a.m. Who on earth could be calling her at this hour? Maybe it’s Jesse, she thought. She had called him earlier, right after work, but she had gotten his voice mail instead. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Hannah had said about seeing him with “Amber.” She knew that he’d had plans to go out with his friends tonight (or she knew that was what he’d told her, anyway) but had hoped he’d answer her call. She still hadn’t seen him since their fight on Friday. Was he avoiding her?