The Other Emily, page 14
"Like another woman?"
I sighed. This phone call was a bad idea. "With anyone who might know where he went after leaving Harry's."
"He might have left with Tara, Mitchell's wife. Or maybe both of them. Tara and Mitchell joined us at Harry's after the party." Kaitlyn paused. "I'm pretty sure it was Tara that I saw him talking to by the door. She has brown hair, and I remember seeing him with a brunette. Mitchell was probably with them."
I was beginning to wonder about the sudden connection between Ashton and Mitchell. I was also wondering when Ashton's interest in the movie had begun. Had he sought me out because of my connection to the movie? I thought it had all been happenstance.
"Do you have any idea where they went?" I asked again.
"Well, there was some talk about them going to Ravenswood, that new bar in Beverly Hills. I don't know if that's where they ended up. Sorry."
"It's fine."
"Did Ashton ask you to talk to me?" Kaitlyn asked.
"No, and I'd prefer if you didn't say anything to anyone. He's just trying to find his phone."
"He should be worried about losing his phone. He's a star. If the wrong person gets into his phone, that could be bad. Maybe check with Mitchell or Liam."
Mitchell was the last person I was going to call. "Thanks. I'll let Ashton contact them. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Sure. Hey, Emily, before you go... I've been meaning to talk to you. I know I've only been on the job for three months, but I also know you'll be hiring a crew for Aces High, and I'd love to work on set. What can I do to make that happen? I will do anything. I want to watch you work. You're one of the top rising directors. It would be amazing to see you in action. I know I could learn a lot."
"I'll think about it. Those decisions won't be made for a few weeks. And Mitchell will be directing."
"I know. He's good, too, of course. Anyway, I just wanted to put myself out there. I love working for you, Emily. I'm excited to learn as much as I can."
"I understand. We'll keep talking about it."
"Okay. Good night."
As the call disconnected, I turned to Ethan. "That wasn't very helpful."
"I thought it was interesting," Ethan replied.
"You did? Kaitlyn didn't know much of anything."
"Maybe Ashton and Mitchell are working together. And if Tara has brown hair…"
I sighed. "I have to remind you again that many people look like me. I'm not very special. Brown hair, brown eyes, girl next door. There are millions like me."
He smiled. "You're underrating yourself, Emily. You are not as common as you think."
I gave him a doubtful look. "I have a mirror."
"I don't think you see yourself for who you are when you look at that mirror. In fact, I'm not sure you know who you really are."
"I did know who I was," I contradicted. "I was a hard-working film producer and director who was making movies and moving her way up in the industry, and I was doing it all without lying or scamming or faking it."
"But that's not the girl you see in the mirror, is it?"
His provocative words gave me pause. "Maybe not."
"You've been running away from her for ten years."
"That might be true. But she's catching up fast. And since when did you become a psychoanalyst?"
He shrugged. "Just telling you what I see."
"Is that what you do in front of the jewelry store? Try to predict who might want to lift a thousand-dollar necklace?"
"More like a fifty-thousand-dollar necklace," he corrected. "And, yes, it's part of it."
"Well, instead of analyzing me, I'd rather hear your thoughts about Kaitlyn."
"She wants your job."
"Every assistant I've ever hired has wanted my job, and when I was an assistant, I wanted my boss's job."
"That's fair. But she seems a little over-the-top."
"She isn't afraid to ask for what she wants," I agreed. "I'm going to keep an eye on her. But she's not worrying me as much as Ashton is. I wonder if he has been using me the entire time we've been together. I thought we met by chance at the gym. I dropped my wallet, and he picked it up, and we started talking. I couldn't believe how nice and down-to-earth he was, as well as charming and funny. I was headed to the café for a juice, and he came with me, and then he asked for my number. It felt so much better than swiping on someone's photo online. And he was a celebrity, a TV star. He wasn't like the struggling writers or actors I usually ran into. Nor was he boring or in a job I didn't understand. We had a lot in common. It was easy." My voice trailed away as I realized how foolish I'd been. "It could have been a setup. I saw Jimmy set women up like that a million times. Why didn't I question his sudden interest in me?" I shook my head in annoyance. "I guess I was rusty. I wasn't living on the edge anymore. I didn't have my guard walls up. I was an easy mark."
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Emily. Obviously, Ashton is a good actor. And maybe it's not so cut-and-dried. He could have learned about the movie after you got together and was afraid to show you how much he wanted it because he didn't want it to get in the way of your relationship."
"Now you're a relationship counselor?"
He grinned. "Definitely not that. Forget everything I just said. I have no idea if he used you or not. I was just trying to make you feel better."
"Then tell me what you really think."
"He sounds like a self-absorbed actor. Whether he was using you from the beginning or not, who knows? But I think it's strange he's been very out of touch since you got mugged, and also odd that you don't seem to feel the need to tell him what's going on."
"I didn't have a chance," I said again.
"Maybe on this last phone call. But you weren't eager to tell him about your problems before this."
"I told you why—I didn't want to get into my past with him. Our relationship was too new, and I didn't want to complicate the situation."
"Then maybe you're both to blame."
"That's not what I wanted to hear."
He laughed again. "Well, I rarely tell anyone what they want to hear."
"You just like to speak the truth."
"That usually keeps my life simpler." He got to his feet. "I'm going to take off. Lock the door after me. Call me if you have any more problems."
I stood up, feeling a little panicked at the idea of being alone, but I couldn't ask Ethan to stay. I'd already asked far too much of him already. "When—when will I talk to you again?" I asked, hating the needy note in my voice, but I couldn't hide it.
"Well, I'll be on the sidewalk tomorrow, so I won't be hard to find," he drawled.
"That's true."
"Oh, wait. Sophia wanted to look at your laptop computer. Can you give it to me now? I can drop it off to her tomorrow morning. Or do you need it tonight?"
"Um…" I hesitated. I had work to do, but was I really going to do it? I felt suddenly exhausted. "I guess I don't need it. I'll get it for you." I walked over to the dining room table and unplugged it, then brought it back to Ethan. "How long do you think she'll need it?"
"No longer than a day. I'll make sure you get it back tomorrow night. So I guess I'll see you then."
"Good," I said, liking the fact that we now had a plan. "Thank you, Ethan, for everything you've done for me. And if you have a name of a private investigator, I will reach out tomorrow."
"I'll check with him in the morning and text you." He paused. "I wish I could help you more."
"You've done a lot already, and none of this is your problem. Well, maybe the car is your problem. I'll pay to get those scratches painted over."
"We'll worry about that later."
He opened the door, then paused. "You can always call me, Emily. Even if you just wake up in the middle of the night and hear a noise and start spinning out. I'm reachable."
He was starting to know me a little too well, and I felt incredibly touched by his offer. "Why are you being so nice to me?" I asked, genuinely curious. "I've caused you nothing but trouble."
He gave a helpless shrug. "When I figure it out, I'll let you know."
Chapter Fifteen
Somehow, I managed to sleep on Sunday night, which seemed like a miracle considering how many things were running through my mind. I woke up Monday morning feeling better than I had the day before. One thing I knew was that I had to go on the attack. I couldn't keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I had my list of suspects. At the very least, I needed to check some of them off the list.
I got my first chance when I arrived at work. Kaitlyn brought me a coffee and joined me for our standard Monday morning meeting where we planned out the week.
As we sat down in my office together, I noticed more similarities between us than I had before. We didn't look alike, but we matched up in the things someone might notice: The color of our hair and the length of it. We were about the same height. I was probably a few pounds heavier than her, but not noticeably. However, Kaitlyn had blue eyes and mine were brown. You couldn't miss that. However, from a distance and from the back, no one would know that.
"Are you all right, Emily?" Kaitlyn asked, as I sipped my coffee and stared at her from the other side of my desk. "It seems like something is bothering you. Is it that I asked you for too much last night on the phone? I hung up thinking you were annoyed with me. I was pushing too hard. I can do that sometimes. But I can also back off. I just really want to do well on this job."
There was no mistaking the earnest light in her eyes. I believed she wanted to do well, and she wanted to get ahead. I just didn't know how far she would go to get there. But instead of wondering, maybe it was time to ask her. "Could you close the door?" I asked.
She gave me a surprised look and then got up to shut the door. When she sat back down, there was worry in her eyes. "Now you're making me nervous."
"Did you leave Harry's Bar with Ashton on Friday night?"
"What? No," she said quickly. "I told you he left with another woman, a dark-haired woman…probably Tara, Mitchell's wife."
"Someone else told me he was with a brunette who looked a bit like me."
Kaitlyn stared back at me, a question in her eyes. "Are you saying you think we look alike?"
"From a distance, someone could make that assumption."
"I didn't hook up with Ashton, Emily, if that's what you're asking. I wouldn't do that to you. You're my boss. You're my friend. How could you think that?"
"Well, you've been talking to Ashton more than I knew. You spoke to him about the movie that is under wraps."
"Ashton brought it up to me. He knew everything about the story, and the character he was interested in. I thought you'd spoken to him about it. I didn't know I was telling him a secret. He said you let him read the script."
"I didn't. If he read it in my apartment, it was without my knowledge."
"That's not what he made it sound like. I'm sorry, Emily. I thought you'd talked about it with him. He just wanted to know if I'd read the script and whether I thought he might be good for the role of Dominic. I told him I was a big fan of his and thought he could bring some interesting undertones to that character, because Dominic is darkly funny, and we know Ashton can be funny. I liked the guest appearance he did on that legal show, Courtside, a couple of years ago, where he showed a more serious side." Kaitlyn paused. "How can I make this right?"
"First of all, you need to stop talking so much."
"I can do that."
"And not just to Ashton. You told Mitchell about my lunch with Natasha Rodrigo and Francine, and he showed up to it."
A frown crossed her face. "That was kind of the same thing, Emily. Mitchell said he was supposed to go to lunch with you, but he forgot the name of the restaurant and the time. He wanted to know where to go. That's why I told him. You never said he wasn't invited. He is going to direct the movie, and he's way above my pay grade, so when he asked a question, I felt I had to answer. I didn't want him to miss a meeting."
"You could have told me that he'd asked you for the information."
"It was Friday night. You had already gone home, and, frankly, I forgot about it. I didn't know it was a big deal."
Kaitlyn seemed to have an answer for everything, and I had to admit her reasoning made sense to me. It would have been easy to assume I'd told Ashton about the part and that Mitchell had been invited to lunch. Maybe I was being too hard on her. "Okay," I said. "Let's chalk all this up to a learning curve. But in the future, please don't discuss my meetings with anyone else, even if they're above your pay grade."
"Not even Francine, David, or Curtis?" she queried.
"If they ask you, then say you'll need to speak to me first."
She gave me a doubtful look. "All right. If that's what you want."
"And no more discussions with Ashton about business."
"You're angry with him, aren't you?" Kaitlyn asked. "He said he thought you might not want him to be in the movie because of your personal relationship."
"My relationship with Ashton is not your business," I snapped. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. We have to have boundaries, and my personal life is off-limits."
"I'm sorry. I understand. I won't discuss movie stuff with Ashton. But can I just say one more thing? I told Ashton I didn't know what you would think about him wanting to be in your movie and that he should ask you. And it feels like you should be talking to him right now. He played me for information. It wasn't the other way around."
Kaitlyn had a point. Maybe I was blaming her for Ashton's actions. "I will talk to him. I just want us to be on the same page. We're a team, right?"
"Yes, we are," Kaitlyn assured me. "I want to be the best assistant you've ever had, Emily. I know I sometimes gossip too much. I will watch it."
"Okay. Then let's go over the schedule for this week."
Kaitlyn was eager to turn to business, and so was I. While I hadn't gotten much information out of her, at least I'd let her know I was aware of her loose talk, and hopefully she'd be more discreet in the future. Whether or not she was involved in trying to ruin my life, I couldn't see the motivation, but I also couldn't check her off the list. Just because she was eager and ambitious didn't mean she was trying to stab me in the back. Although it also didn't mean that she wasn't.
That was a dark thought, and when we'd finished talking about the calendar, I was happy to wave her on her way. I didn't want to distrust the people I worked with, but I couldn't seem to help it, and I felt more alone than I ever had.
Thankfully, Roy's revised script appeared in my inbox, and I settled in to read for the next few hours.
After a quick lunch at my desk, I'd realized three things. The revised script was great. Ashton would probably be good for the role of Dominic, but his backhanded way of going after the role still grated. And, lastly, Mitchell and Roy had had a conversation without me because there were two new scenes listed per Mitchell's request. Not that Mitchell had no right to jump in. He was directing, so he was ultimately in charge. But it just emphasized my new role going forward as basically his assistant, even though I'd been working with Roy since the beginning. Now Roy was answering to Mitchell and not to me. That was a reality I could not ignore.
As I finished putting my notes on the script, Ashton called.
"It's getting worse," he said, barely getting out a hello before he launched into a rant. "They sent me a video, and they want five hundred thousand dollars by tonight, or the photos and video go up online."
"What? That's a lot of money." Ashton was a TV star, so maybe not too much for him to pay, but it seemed ridiculously high to me, especially for photos or a sex tape that might or might not hurt his career.
"They also texted me that you're going to be named as the woman in the video," he added.
"But it's not me, and my face isn't shown, so how could anyone know for sure?"
"The way it's shot, it could have been you."
"But I wasn't there, Ashton. Whoever you had sex with was not me."
"I can't believe I was in any condition to have sex with someone. This only happened because I was drugged."
"Did you get a hold of Liam? Does he know who you left the bar with?"
"He said he didn't see me leave."
"Someone must have seen you. Maybe you should go to Harry's Bar and talk to the people who work there."
"Oh, sure, that won't draw any more attention," he said with an angry, sarcastic snap in his voice.
"Well, I don't see how you're going to find out who did this without talking to someone. I asked Kaitlyn if she saw you leave Harry's, and she mentioned you were talking to Tara, Mitchell's wife. She thought you left with her. That you were all talking about going to Ravenswood."
"I vaguely remember that. I was talking to Mitchell and Tara for a while, but I'm sure I saw them leave the bar before me. I don't know what to do, Emily. Do I pay the blackmailer off?"
"Can you afford to do that? And even if you paid them, how do you know they wouldn't put the video up, anyway? I think you have to ride this out."
"That's easy for you to say. It's not your career on the line. If you'd stayed at the party Friday night, this never would have happened."
His petulant tone annoyed the hell out of me. "And if I'd never met you, maybe it wouldn't have happened, either," I said, feeling an icy chill down deep in my bones. "Was our meeting at the gym a setup, Ashton?"
"What are you talking about? You dropped your wallet. Why would you even say that, Emily?"
"Because I'm beginning to think our entire relationship was about you getting the part of Dominic in Aces High."
"That's insane. I can't believe you would think that."
"Well, you read the script without telling me, spoke to Kaitlyn about it, got me to introduce you to Mitchell, and then you went to a bar with him and his wife and apparently struck up a quick friendship. It feels like I was just a stepping stone for you to become a serious film actor."
"You don't think I could get there without you?" he challenged.
"Actually, I think you could do anything without me. That's what I liked about you, Ashton—that you were successful in your own right, that you didn't need me, and that I didn't have to worry about you using me. But you know how I feel right now? Used." I hadn't really meant to say all that, but it had just come pouring out. "You went behind my back. I didn't leave that script on my table. You had to have gone through my bag to find it and read it."
