Free These Damn Suspicions by Amy Valenti

 
    THESE DAMN SUSPICIONS
    by Amy Valenti
     
     
    “Are you okay?”
    Something in Alex’s tone wasn’t quite right. It was too careful, too casual. I frowned and leaned against the wall as someone wheeled a rack of costumes down the soundstage hallway. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”
    She sighed. “I take it you haven’t seen the front page of Celebrity News Now! today?”
    I shook my head, then realised she couldn’t see it. “Not really my magazine of choice. Why do you read that stuff? Doesn’t it destroy your soul every time they run a picture of you with an accidental hair out of place?”
    “I’m starting to ask myself the same question,” Alex muttered. “But this isn’t about me—it’s Callum.”
    At the name of my Dom, my focus on the conversation intensified. “What are the paparazzi saying about him now?”
    Alex paused, then said, “They’re reporting that he might be having an affair with Elena Sanders. And they sort of mention you.”
    I laughed; I couldn’t help it. “Oh, God. Is this another one of those stories where they’ve taken a picture of us walking down the street without smiling, and cited that as proof that we’re having relationship problems?” That had happened earlier this year. Callum and I had both found it pretty funny, since the photo had been snapped right before we’d gotten home and done a mind-blowing scene that had made us closer than ever before.
    Instead of laughing with me, Alex said, “Actually, they have a picture of him kissing her forehead. It does look pretty intimate.”
    Despite myself, I flinched. Callum often kissed my forehead just to connect with me, to focus my attention on him. It stung to think of him doing the same to the co-star of the movie he was working on at the moment. I’d met Elena Sanders once, a couple of weeks ago—I’d been allowed onto the lot where he was filming to wait in his trailer for him after a day of filming, and Elena had come in with him for some reason. She hadn’t said anything terrible to me, but she hadn’t been overly friendly, either. And why had she come into Callum’s trailer with him in the first place…?
    “Are you freaking out?” Alex’s concerned voice interrupted my thoughts.
    “No,” I said, shaking myself out of my suspicious thoughts. “God, it’s just tabloid speculation. Callum and I are doing fine.”
    “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have told you over the phone. But I was scared the paparazzi might try to question you about the rumours without you even knowing what was going on. Nothing worse than being blindsided by the press.”
    “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I appreciate the heads-up, really.” If the paparazzi were going to be following me home en masse, I wanted to know about it beforehand. It had only happened once before, but it had been intimidating.
    “If it makes you feel any better, there’s also an article about the patch of leg hair I missed when I was shaving at some point last week…”
    I could imagine Alex’s exaggeratedly tragic expression, and I grinned. “Your career is over.”
    “I may never recover from the scandal,” she agreed wryly. “Text me if you need me, okay? I have to get going; I’m filming my Letterman segment later and I still haven’t decided what to wear.”
    “Nothing that shows your legs,” I teased. “You might offend someone.”
    After we said our goodbyes, I headed back down the hallway to the art department, which was pretty small for this production. My resume wasn’t yet impressive enough that I had underlings scurrying around doing my bidding—just one assistant, who looked halfway to dreamland.
    “If you fall asleep and get drool on my sketches, I’m not gonna be impressed.”
    Tony blinked lethargically up at me. “Sorry. I’m really not on form today. You probably noticed.”
    He’d made a couple of minor screw-ups, but we’d been working on this project together for almost a week and this was the first day