Chapter Five
“Sophia, you have to put down your phone.”
“No.”
Grace Jackson gritted her teeth and held out her hand. “Yes, Sophia. Let me have it.”
Sophia tossed her blond hair, the perfect platinum blond that belonged to innocent young children, and jerked her phone out of Grace’s reach.
Grace struggled for patience. They were in a parked van. How long did Sophia think she could play keep-away with the phone? Sophia had never been easy to deal with, but this phase was particularly trying. At least, Grace hoped it was a phase.
Please, let this be a phase. I can’t survive this much longer.
“Look, Sophie. The firemen are waiting for us over there. They want to show you around.”
“Don’t care.”
Grace felt a little desperate. She thought about grabbing the phone, but taking a hard line with Sophia always backfired. For the past year, she’d been able to manage Sophia by persuading her with rewards. If you do this, you’ll get that thing you want... It was as simple as rewarding a toddler with a lollipop.
If only Sophia were a toddler.
Instead, Grace was trying to reason with a twenty-nine-year-old woman, a professional actress. After a decade of hard work, Sophia was now a genuine movie star. Grace had been her personal assistant through the hard times, the desperate times, the my-dream-will-never-come-true times. For the past two years, Grace had been with her for the even more stressful world of success, both critical and commercial. The world was Sophia’s oyster. And now...
Grace glared at the top of Sophia’s head, which was all she could see as Sophia sat on a bench opposite to her with her nose in her phone’s screen.
And now, there was no way in the world that Grace was going to placidly stand by and watch Sophia destroy her own dreams.
Grace snatched the phone out of Sophia’s hand.
“Hey!”
“I’ll hold it for you. What’s a personal assistant for?” She slid the phone into her tote bag. “The cameras are waiting. Photographers are everywhere out there. Smile.”
Sophie bared her teeth at Grace despite her annoyance; years of habit were hard to break.
“No lipstick on your teeth. No spinach.” Grace reached with two hands to fluff Sophia’s shining waves and used her fingertips to arrange a few naturally wavy tendrils along Sophia’s flawless cheekbones. “Perfect. I see a ton of teenage girls out there. Pose for some selfies with them, okay? A few minutes of smiles, and Sophia Jackson will start trending on Instagram and Twitter again.”
But Sophia didn’t want her lollipop anymore. She didn’t want to be a respected actress with a loyal fan base, not since she’d fallen in with the bad boys of Hollywood. “Let’s skip the squealing mass of girlies. What do I have to do before we can get the hell out of here?”
“Oh, Sophie.” Grace’s heart felt like a stone in her chest. It was a hard thing, very hard, to watch Sophia throw away everything for which she’d worked.
“Don’t start with me. What am I required to do? Tell me the bare minimum. I’m so freaking tired.”
Grace supposed clubbing all night could do that to a girl. Sophie coughed that annoying cough that had started shortly after dating Deezee Kalm, a DJ in Los Angeles. Grace always felt like she was choking on the secondhand smoke at his parties, when she was forced to go. Thankfully, Sophie hadn’t been photographed with a cigarette in her hand yet. Accusations would fly that she was a bad role model. That would tarnish her good-girl image, the very image Grace was trying to save with this trip to Texas.
“This is a really good cause. Texas Rescue and Relief has done so much here in Austin after those terrible flash floods last summer. You’re going to thank the firemen and the—the helicopter people, whatever they’re called—and some doctors, and then you’re going to cut the ribbon to reopen this health clinic.”
“Good God, Grace. Could you have booked anything more stupid?”
The stone in Grace’s chest wasn’t hard enough to deflect that stab of a knife. Don’t confront her. Don’t challenge her. Offer her a lollipop.
“Your hero, Julia, did almost the exact same thing after California’s forest fires. She trended on Twitter. Her visit was covered on all the celebrity gossip TV shows. Now her next movie is already getting award buzz, and it won’t be released for months. Coincidence? No way.”
Grace reached up to touch Sophia’s hair again, a comforting gesture she’d been doing her whole life. After all, she wasn’t just Sophia’s personal assistant. She was her sister.
Grace
