embarrassment. Protecting our show from scandal. Protecting all of us from the hot, flaming mess that I know these things become.
My thoughts are whirling and none of them are coming out of my mouth, so Cooper tries again. “It says there was an investigation,” he says with a lot more gentleness than I probably deserve. “What were the findings?”
“I don’t know.” I realize I’m grinding my teeth and order myself to stop. “I haven’t called the AICPA yet. I wanted to meet with Lana first. See if we need to get lawyers involved before we go that route.”
Cooper shakes his head slowly but doesn’t say anything.
“What?”
“Let me ask you again,” he says slowly. “You think she did this?”
I think about Vanessa. How kind and good and brave she is. How she rescued a scared dog and handled that banker’s meltdown with grace and compassion. How she loves her sister and endures her mother and, above all, remains the most caring person I’ve ever met.
“No,” I say slowly. “No. I guess not.”
“You guess not?” Cooper shakes his head slowly. “There’s a fucking vote of confidence.”
I throw up my hands. “What do you want me to say? It’s irrelevant what I think. The important thing is to protect her from bullshit like this.”
“That is not the important thing.” Cooper sinks into the cushy leather chair in the corner and shakes his head. “Jesus, Dean.”
“What?” I know I sound dumb, but I honestly don’t get it. “How many times have we seen shit like this pop up? Someone blackmailing you over a DUI or going public with my text breakup or saying they’ve hacked Lauren’s phone for nude photos?”
I’m still furious over that last one. Over all of it, really. Celebrities are prime targets for threats like this, and if there’s one thing that makes me rage, it’s assholes terrorizing the people I love.
And I do love Vanessa. More than anything, I wish I’d told her that. Maybe it would make a difference.
Or maybe not, based on how Cooper’s glaring at me. “Can you take just a second to pull your head out of your ass and think about how this looks from Vanessa’s perspective?”
“What do you mean?”
He sighs and tips back in his chair. “You get this anonymous email. This message saying she did some horrible thing that’s obviously going to push all your buttons. Cheating, for Christ’s sake, right?”
“Right,” I say slowly, still not grasping what he’s driving at.
Cooper softens his tone. “Anyone who knows you has a damn good idea that cheating is a deal breaker for you. That’s the best way to rile you, to leave you questioning the woman you love.”
I nod slowly, unsurprised Cooper guessed how I feel before I figured it out myself. “She didn’t do it.” The fierceness in my words takes me by surprise. “Of course she didn’t cheat.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” He grabs up a Rubik’s cube off his shelf, twisting it to mix up the colors. “Did you tell her that? Did you say ‘Vanessa, I trust you, I don’t believe this bullshit, let’s solve this together?’”
“No.” Though now that he’s saying it, I can see how that might have been a smart approach. “I wanted to shield her from shit like this. I honestly didn’t think about the allegation at all. It seemed smarter to gather our resources. Talk to lawyers, get Lana ready to fight this. Nip the whole thing in the bud before it has a chance to hurt her.”
Cooper shakes his head a little sadly, twisting the rows of Rubik’s cube colors without looking. “You’re thinking like a jaded Hollywood asshole.” He gives a wry grin. “I know that since I am one. But that’s not how Vanessa thinks.”
I sink down into his desk chair. It bounces a little beneath me, and the arms are weirdly out of whack with one adjusted higher than the other. Leave it to Cooper to have the world’s most uneven desk chair in an office filled with brand new furniture. “So now you’re the expert on how Vanessa thinks?”
“No, asshole.” He twists the Rubik’s cube again, aligning a neat row of blue squares. “But I am an expert on being judged without all the facts. On what it feels like to be presumed guilty every fucking time.”
I stare at him, letting my brother’s words sink in.
My God.
Is that what I’ve done? Is that how I made Vanessa feel? There’s a sinking in my gut that tells me I’ve screwed this up way worse