Free Starstruck by Lauren Conrad Page A

seasons, and now she just wasn’t pulling her weight.
    The footage from her first day at Lost Paws was perfect—he loved the hissy fit she’d pitched when faced with all those filthy cages—but he couldn’t spin a dramatic and glamorous story out of a starlet’s janitorial duties. Plenty of Fame Game viewers loved to hate Madison Parker, but they weren’t going to stick around to watch her scoop poop for a whole season. Schadenfreude only took you so far before it got boring.
    What he needed most right now was to get to the bottom of the Charlie Wardell story. Madison’s father had been a big part of the first few episodes, and now he was suddenly gone. Trevor could hardly let him vanish without addressing it, which meant that Madison was going to have to talk about what happened to him. On film.
    He got up again and paced the room. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had really happened. He didn’t know the details (even Sophia hadn’t cracked when he tried to pull the truth out of her), but it was obvious to him that Madison was covering for her father in some way. He didn’t know why it wasn’t obvious to everyone else. Then again, he had spent years painting Madison as a spoiled brat. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that people believed it.
    He jotted some notes onto a legal pad. Madison would say that Charlie had “gone away for a while.” Her evasiveness would cause all sorts of speculation among PopTV viewers, which always worked to the show’s advantage. And then, just maybe, he could figure out a way to suggest a connection between Charlie’s disappearance and Madison’s theft. Maybe he’d spin it so that she didn’t seem like a greedy little starlet, but instead, a poor, abandoned daughter. Acting out in her grief and anger.
    No one would ever come out and say there was a definite connection (because no one knew what had been going on in Madison’s head), but through careful editing, he could certainly suggest it....
    He smiled. Yes, this could be something. He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. If one of his stars was going to get arrested and charged with a crime, he was going to find a way to make it work for the show. Find a way to make a thief sympathetic.
    The only problem was Madison herself. Would she do what he wanted? She had gone through a lot to take the fall for Charlie, and she clearly didn’t want the truth to get out. He looked at the clock. Well, he’d have a chance to gauge her reaction in ten, nine, eight …
    Madison opened the door on the count of two. She was immaculately dressed in a chic little navy number with a white collar. She looked, almost, as if she were headed to a courtroom again.
    “Madison,” he said, offering her his biggest smile, “you look like a million bucks.” ( And she’s probably spent close to that to look that way , he thought.)
    “Were you exercising in here?” she asked bluntly.
    Trevor smiled. “What makes you ask that?”
    She wrinkled her nose. “It smells like you were.”
    Trevor made a mental note to throw away the hippie natural deodorant his nutritionist had given him and go back to using Old Spice. “Anyway,” he said. “Nice to see you. How have you been?”
    “I think you can imagine,” she said. “Instead of attending launch parties for Beyoncé’s new perfume, I’m giving flea baths.”
    Trevor chuckled. “Yeah, that’s kind of a bummer, isn’t it? For all of us.”
    Madison raised a freshly plucked eyebrow. “I don’t see how you’re suffering.”
    Trevor picked up his Gripmaster hand exerciser and squeezed it. “Well, I can’t build much of a story around you grooming dogs and cleaning cages, Madison. You look great in a pair of wellies, but custodial work isn’t that exciting to watch.” Plus, Ryan Tucker, the Lost Paws volunteer coordinator, had been downright obstructionist about filming.
    “Yeah, well, it’s not fun to do, either.”
    “It’s too bad you had to go and