Читать книгу A Christmas Affair - Adrianne Byrd, Pamela Yaye - Страница 5

Corona rushed up the stairs to the SoHo apartment in a pair of fresh-out-of-the-box Louboutins. While she went through the fruitless exercise of berating herself for running late, she had long ago accepted the fact that in all likelihood she would be late for her own funeral. It wasn’t that she was lazy or didn’t plan ahead of time—she just had a tardiness gene somewhere in her DNA. At least that was her excuse and she was sticking to it.

“Is everyone still here?” she asked Margo the moment she bolted through the front door.

Relief washed over Margo’s face at the sight of her boss. “Oh, thank God. The film crew has been here for over an hour. They were just talking about doing the interview without you.” She rushed over to help Corona out of her A-line Mischka coat to reveal her snow-white Gucci pantsuit. “Nice,” Margo said, her eyes widening appreciatively at Corona’s immaculate fashion sense.

“Thanks. I can’t have my fiancé show me up. Call me vain.”

“All right, Vain,” Margo said, shooing her toward the living room. “You just get in there before Rowan starts reenacting his Hamlet soliloquies from his Shakespeare in the park days.”

Corona smiled. No one loved a camera more than Rowan James. Heralded as this generation’s most bankable movie star, Rowan lived to be in the public eye. He instinctively knew his best angle and lighting at any given moment. While Corona thought of herself as attractive, she couldn’t say that she and cameras had the same love affair.

Inevitably, her plump apple cheeks would look too big or her doe-shaped eyes would make her look like a deer caught in the headlights. It was the oddest thing. When people met her, they would always toss out the backhanded compliment that she was more beautiful in person.

“Hurry,” Margo kept shooing her. “He’s getting ready to thank God and the Academy.”

Corona laughed, brushed her thick hair behind her ears, and marched into the apartment’s large, open living room with a ready-made smile. “Hello, everyone. I’m so sorry to have kept you all waiting,” she announced, with her voice all syrupy sweet. “Things were crazy at the office.”

Rowan James turned his dark head, and his glowing blue eyes lit up at the sight of her. “There’s my baby now.” He stood up and drew Corona into his arms before brushing a sweetheart kiss against her upturned face. “Glad you could make it. I hope this isn’t a dry run of what you’re planning to do to me at the altar,” he joked with just a tinge of seriousness.

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” Corona joked back with a playful wink.

K. D. Hardaway, a trailblazing celebrity reporter with womanly curves and high volume, corkscrew curls, popped up out of her seat and thrust out her hand. “The lady of the hour. We’re so happy that you could finally join us. I personally have been dying to meet you.”

Corona went to accept the woman’s handshake, but at the last minute, the exuberant woman abandoned the idea and instead threw her arms around her like they were long lost friends.

“You know the whole world is hating on you now, right?” the woman informed her.

Corona didn’t but she supposed that she should be grateful for the update. When she pulled back, K.D. kept a tight hold of her right hand. “Let’s see the rock, honey. Bam!” The reporter dipped her knees and dramatically flung her head back. “Well, all right now! Ha!” She turned toward her lone cameraman. “Ed, we don’t need a close-up on this one. I think the folks down in Texas are busy trying to get the glare of this diamond out of their eyes right now.”

Corona smiled sheepishly while Rowan swung his arm around her shoulders and thrust out his chest. “Nothing but the best for my Chloe.” He pried her hand from the reporter and then pressed a kiss just above her ring. “Honest to God, she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he boasted.

K.D.’s perfectly arched brows damn near stretched to the top of her hairline as she gave them snaps in a Z-formation. “Well, all right now!”

Rowan laughed and pulled Corona even closer.

“So the entertainment world has their new power couple,” K.D. announced, winking into the camera. “It’s all good with me. It’s about time someone knocked Will and Jada off their throne.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Corona said, shaking her head. “My work is behind the cameras.”

“Exactly! That’s where all the power is, girlfriend. Don’t play.” She held up her hand, signaling for a high five.

Corona gave Rowan a look that asked whether this chick was for real or a caricature of every sister-girl role that she had ever seen in rom-com movies rolled into one.

He responded with a quick shrug.

“Don’t leave me hanging, girlfriend.”

Corona finally threw her hand up against K.D.’s which caused her entire arm of silver bracelets to start jiggling like crazy while she cheesed with a smile that could rival The Joker’s.

“So while we still have a few minutes, why don’t you tell our audience how you two met? Was it love or lust at first sight? Give us the dirt.”

Corona opened her mouth to answer, but Rowan quickly cut her off.

“I’m not ashamed to say that I felt something the first time I laid eyes on her. Chloe was like a ray of sunshine, and that’s saying a lot in this business.”

K.D. shifted back to Corona. “Is that how you felt, too? Wait. What am I saying? Who wouldn’t have fallen head over heels for this gorgeous hunk, huh?”

“Well … “ Corona hesitated with a nervous look over at Rowan.

“You got to be kidding me.” K.D.’s traveling brows had now blended into her curly hair.

Corona opened her mouth, only to be cut off once again by her overeager fiancé, who undoubtedly wanted to put a nicer spin on the story.

“Actually, it was probably not one of my best nights when we met,” Rowan laughed and then tossed a wink toward the camera.

“Oh?” The reporter edged closer, sensing a juicy story was coming her way.

“Yeah, I guess you can say that I was being a bit of a bad boy at a bar,” Rowan answered sheepishly. “As everyone out there in TV land knows, I went through quite an ugly breakup last year.”

K.D. nodded her head sympathetically, just like Corona imagined everyone else at home was doing right now. The entertainment world had been riveted for the past two years over Rowan’s love affair with Hollywood’s hottest sex kitten, Danica Foxx. Glossy tabloid magazines had made a fortune planting their faces on every cover in the western hemisphere. But, predictably, with all the media scrutiny, a couple that hot was bound to implode.

And they did. Quite spectacularly. Danica cheated on him. All that was missing was a set of golf clubs and a small library of lurid text messages to complete Rowan’s humiliation. But it was Danica’s announcement two days later that she was engaged to the movie star whom she did the cheating with that crushed Rowan.

“Anyway, I was sort of drowning my sorrows at the bottom of a Jack Daniel’s bottle, tossing back one shot after another when I looked up and there she was.”

Rowan turned and smiled at Corona. “An angel. A vision in white.”

Corona rolled her eyes at the way he was spinning their story.

“Sounds like you made quite an impression,” K.D. said.

“Yea, me.” Corona twirled her finger in the air with a breezy laugh before thinking better of it. Realizing that she needed to clean up her act a bit, she tried to explain. “You don’t understand. By the time me and my assistant, Margo, had made our way to the bar, Rowan and his new buddy Jack Daniels weren’t getting along so well.”

Rowan tossed the camera another wink.

“Our first meeting happened because I felt sorry for him for not being able to sit on a barstool,” Corona continued, finally starting to laugh at the memory. “Margo and I had a fun-filled evening lugging Mr. Blockbuster here back to his hotel. The whole time he kept telling me how perfect I was for a part in his next film. It was so cliché. Trust me.”

“Cliché or not, clearly whatever you did worked,” the reporter concluded.

“Not really,” Rowan laughed. “They dumped me on my bed—”

“More like he passed out,” Corona corrected.

“And when I woke the next morning, I was convinced I’d only dreamt her up.” He laughed and leaned over to give her another kiss. “Imagine my surprise when I saw her on the movie set later that evening talking to another star on the film. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was convinced that it had to be fate.”

“And I thought that I must have made someone mad in a past life,” Corona joked.

K.D. continued to look astonished. “You’re kidding me?”

“See why I’m marrying her? Anyone else in this town would’ve called the tabloids and made a quick buck.”

Sharp as a tack, K.D. cut in, “But it still proved to be beneficial to her. After all, she did sign you to the Banks Artists Agency, did she not?”

“Only after I tracked her down and begged her to represent me,” he said slyly.

“Really?”

“Well, what else could I do? She refused to go out with me.”

The reporter turned her incredulous eyes back toward Corona. “You’re kidding. You actually told the number one box office star in the world that you wouldn’t go out with him?”

Corona’s apple cheeks darkened with embarrassment. “No. I told the drunken guy that threw up in my shoes that I didn’t want to go out with him. I can forgive a lot of things, but ruining a pair of my favorite Jimmy Choos took divine intervention to forgive.”

Rowan smiled. “But the more she resisted, the more I just had to have her.”

“Ahh. So you’re a man who loves a challenge,” K.D. said.

“You can definitely say that,” he said, pressing another kiss to the back of Corona’s hand and then leaning over and stealing a slow kiss for all of America to see. When he finally pulled back, he declared, “I’m the happiest man in the world right now.”