Free How to Sleep with a Movie Star by Kristin Harmel Page B

mental picture of Tom slurping down the lo mein noodles I’d just brought home before I’d even had a chance to wash up.
    “No, not exactly,” I said. Cole shook his head in astonishment as I turned to walk toward the back of the restaurant, where I hoped to find a bathroom—and regain my vanishing sanity.
    I actually did have to go to the ladies’ room, but more than that, I needed a moment away from Cole Brannon. I felt that things were spinning a bit out of control.
    I liked him. I wasn’t supposed to like him. My insides weren’t supposed to tingle when he grinned. I wasn’t supposed to be acting like a smitten teenager.
    There were two things wrong with that. First, obviously, there was Tom. But that wasn’t bothering me too much. I’d never cheated on anyone, nor would I ever. I loved Tom and would never act on my attraction to anyone else.
    What concerned me more was that I was letting my professional objectivity slip. It was fine if I found the people I interviewed to be nice and friendly, but this was different. I found myself talking to Cole like I’d known him for years, and I was more comfortable with him than I was with people I saw every day. It was strange. Although I couldn’t explain why it was happening, I knew it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
    Sure, lots of reporters hooked up with the celebs they interviewed—or at least they aspired to. But I had always vowed to myself that I’d never be that kind of reporter. There were plenty of those kinds of reporters out there, believe me. But once they’d made the decision to cross that line, there was no going back. The world of magazines was possibly the most gossipy one in existence. Within five minutes of a reporter’s stumbling out of a movie star’s hotel suite, editors at
Glamour, Vogue, In Style,
and
People
would be talking. And you’d always be “that reporter who slept with Colin Farrell,” or “that reporter who went down on Chad Pennington.” You never got promoted, people whispered about you in the halls, and even the celebs themselves seemed to have some kind of sex-tips wire service—meaning that a third of the interviews you showed up for from then on would include a slew of sexual innuendos and come-ons designed to get you into bed. And it was hard to do a serious interview when you were fending off lascivious stares and groping hands.
    Eventually you’re forced to quit, because the whole sex stigma affects your work from the bottom up. You can no longer score the best interviews because the publicists all know your reputation. They secretly wish they could be in the position to sleep with movie stars every day, so they’re pissed off at you and refuse to answer your calls. Your editors frown upon the reputation you’re spreading for the magazine. And the movie stars who
don’t
want to sleep with you start the interview off hating you because your exploits make their profession look bad.
    It had happened to Laura Worthington, the girl I’d roomed with the first year I lived in Manhattan. She was an editorial assistant at
Rolling Stone,
and she was frustrated because, as the newbie, she was never sent out on exciting assignments. Once in a blue moon she got to cover a party, but most of the time she was responsible for editing the
Billboard
charts, fact-checking the feature editor’s always-sloppy work, and calling publicists to verify facts and figures. When the features editor was sick one day and Laura was sent out to interview Kirk Bryant, the floppy-haired, tattooed, and not-at-all-good-looking lead singer of an up-and-coming rock band whose single had just broken the
Billboard
Top Ten, she was thrilled and just a bit star-struck. Thirty minutes into the interview, which he’d conveniently moved from the Four Seasons lobby to his suite on the sixth floor, she was naked on his bed. Forty minutes into the interview, he was zipping up his pants and showing her the door. By the time she got back to the office, other