“Jesus fucking Christ.” I watch all the assholes crowding the gate with their cameras flashing at the tinted windows waiting for their money shot. I have no intention of giving them one. “How did they know, Gordy?”
My manager straightens, tugging at the t-shirt with my name across the chest. “I don’t know.”
The thing about Gordon Fuller is that he’s a terrible liar. But the son of a bitch is my oldest friend, so I won’t fire him even if I’m tempted to sometimes. “How. Did. They. Know?”
He visibly swallows, yanking at the collar of the tee again before wincing at the pointed glare I cast in his direction. “Don’t be angry. I’m only doing what Mia—”
“Mia?” Fucking hell. “What exactly did my sister tell you to do?”
His hesitation as the driver gets through the gates that the paparazzi are trying to break past has me closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose. I don’t know what my devil worshipper of a sister told him, but I know it had to be good for him to go behind my back. “When she called about the rumors that you were coming to visit, she made me talk. Said it was about time you came home.”
Closing my eyes, I lean back against the leather seat and hold in the string of creative curses. Leave it to Mia Casanova, formally known as Pop Princess Mia Bishop before marrying Dylan Casanova, to make a scene. I haven’t been to the Hills since I left almost three years ago. This shit show, the one of strangers yelling my name and questions outside the property, reminds me why.
“I’m sorry,” my best friend says. “You know your sister terrifies me. She said she’d find inventive ways to castrate me if I didn’t confirm your arrival, and your mother wasn’t speaking up about it when Mia asked her.”
“And I suppose Harry wouldn’t even return her call,” I pry, referring to our father. It would be a cold day in hell before I’d call him one. We’ve been on a first name basis since he sold me off as a child star and took all the money I made to put toward my “future” as a national singing sensation like he was doing me a favor. It isn’t like I hated the job. Singing feels freeing, strumming my acoustic is a passion, and seeing people sing along to every song fills my chest with a hell of a lot more love than Harry Bishop could manage. Our biggest problem is that he never saw me as a son—simply an employee. Someone to make him money, and I learned a long time ago to stop expecting anything different.
As suspected, Gordy clears his throat and rubs the back of his neck as the car parks in front of the massive stonewashed mansion that’s five times too big for my sister, her husband, and our mother that moved in with them last year. Then again, if what the tabloids are saying is true, I’m going to be an uncle soon. Not that a baby, three adults, and two annoying as fuck corgis need a 9,000 square foot house.
“She didn’t say,” admits my clammy friend. He wipes his palms down his thighs, letting the denim absorb the sweat that he’s producing in record-breaking time. People told me not to hire him to manage me, but I ignored them. He knows his shit, and better, he knows me. That comes in handy when he’s brokering deals on my behalf. “I have to warn you, though. Mia mentioned that she had a surprise for you. I know you’re not a fan of—”
“A surprise?” I groan, palming my face. The last time Mia surprised me it was a going away party I strictly told her not to throw. She decided to invite all my “friends” who actually hated my guts after I spilled some gossip to a few reporters. I still don’t feel bad about it considering they fucking started it. You can’t sleep with another guy’s girl and expect him to be cool with it.
“If it makes you feel better, she said you’d like it. I couldn’t press her for any details, not that she’d give me them anyway.”
He’s got that right. I love my egotistical big sister. She’s the only one who stands up to my father for me and encourages me to do whatever the hell I want. When she found out that I was leaving California and