Page 65 of You Spin Me Round

‘Oof, Mother Teresa? Not a great example of moral fortitude when you dig down into her. She was far from perfect.’

‘Everyone is, Leigh. That’s whyweexist.’ Alex hung up the phone on her snappy comeback.

Leigh was left the way she always felt after talking to Alex—puzzled, stimulated, on edge, amused, and annoyed. So Alex wanted the name, and she wasn’t going to doanythingdamaging to Erin with it? Could Leigh really believe that? With Isabelle up to her ears in the shit, Alex could certainly do with a hail Mary and getting Amanda’s name would give her an opportunity to talk the woman into a tell-all.

Leigh hadn’t managed to get Amanda to so much as pick up the phone, which should have been some comfort. But Alex was tricksy, to put it mildly. Leigh wouldn’t put it past her to squeeze the goods out of Amanda. And a tell-all from Amanda would offset some of the good that Leigh had managed to achieve with the Selma Haynes interview. It would muddy the waters, at the very least. It was risking a lot to give that name to Alex, simply because she asked for it. The request should have been an easy no.

But it wasn’t. For some god-forsaken reason, Leigh believed Alex when she vowed to use the name only for personal assurance.

Leigh hated that she was even considering this. Alex’s word should have counted for precisely shit. So why didn’t it? Why did Leigh want to give her what she’d asked for? Leigh could be shooting herself in the foot and the torso, possibly the head. It was stupid to even consider it.

But… What if Amandacouldconfirm everything Erin had said? Then Isabelle would lose Alex’s representation. And though there were other PR people out there, Alex was, well, Alex. Without her, Isabelle would feel like something of a lame duck. It might even be newsworthy that she’d been ditched. And when one rat leaves the sinking ship, so might they all. Managers, agents, everyone. It could roll into the kind of thing that might bury Isabelle completely. Leigh didn’t hate that thought.

When Leigh framed it like that, it was practically agoodidea to give her the name.

Still, she needed to be smart about this. She needed to put some caveats in place that would ensure Erin’s protection in all this.

She rang Alex. ‘You can have the name.’

‘Leigh, you won’t regr—’

Leigh cut her off. ‘One thing, though. If you can get her to talk to you, which is a big if, we will see hertogether. Everyone knows everything, or no one knows nothing.’

‘That’s a double negative,’ Alex quipped.

‘Alex!’ Leigh snapped. ‘I’m taking a chance on you.’ Leigh heard her own words and felt immediate embarrassment. ‘On this!’ she added quickly.

‘Sorry. Yeah, that’s a reasonable ask. Fine. So, gimme the name, and I’ll get us that sit down.’

‘You’re confident,’ Leigh noted.

‘That’s how I’ll get her,’ Alex remarked. ‘Confidence is halfway there, almost always.’

That caught Leigh’s attention. ‘So, it’s a scam, then? Your confidence is all for show?’

‘Of course,’ Alex said easily.

Leigh couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Wow. I wish you’d told me that before. I may have played things differently,’ she said, thinking of the last month.

‘Yeah, well, you can’t get someone like you into bed without some smoke and mirrors,’ Alex quipped. Leigh could practically hear the regret down the phone a second later. ‘You didn’t meanthen, did you? You meant with Erin and Isabelle.’ Alex laughed nervously, an uncommon sound coming from her. ‘Can we erase the last ten seconds?’

Leigh wasn’t erasing anything. She’d inadvertently walked into a truth she never expected to get, and she couldn’t have left it alone if she’d wanted to. ‘Smoke and mirrors? That’s what you think it was that night?’

Alex took a pause. ‘I mean, yeah. You wanted someone who knows who they are. I project that.’

Leigh was shocked by how angry that made her. She would not let the misconception stand. ‘Alex, I liked you because I could see under that. You know that, right? You got my attention with confidence, sure. But you kept it by being kind to me. You didn’t shame me or judge me. You listened. I hadn’t had a lot of that. That’s what I wanted from you. The girlunderneaththe razmataz.’

Alex didn’t say anything for what seemed like three hours. And then she said, ‘So, you have that name for me?’

If Alex wanted to move past an honest moment, there wasn’t much Leigh could do about it. She went with the tide of the conversation. ‘Her name is Amanda Bradley. I’ll text you the number.’

‘Thanks, Leigh,’ Alex breathed. She hung up.

Leigh texted her the number.You better not screw me, she wrote underneath.

You wish, Alex texted back, back on her usual form.

Leigh could deal with that. It wasn’t like it could ever be different. This was Alex in a nutshell. Emotional truth was like garlic to a vampire to her. Leigh found herself wishing that weren’t so. She believed that underneath all that bluster, someone special might well lurk. But if she wouldn’t come up for air, then she would suffocate, replaced by Alex’s false confidence.

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