Page 4 of Every Star that Shines

“Hmph.”

Delanie wasn’t awake enough to come up with a better response than that. She took another sip of coffee, hoping Marie wouldn’t mention the tweets she’d made the night before. Marie had been right about not replying to the Twitter mob, of course. The responses Delanie had received had gone from bad to worse, until she’d thrown her phone across the room and sobbed herself to sleep. Her puffy eyes and crusty face told her she probably looked like death warmed over. She smoothed her tangled hair with her fingers—as though that will make everything better. She snorted at herself.

“What did Josh have to say?” Marie asked.

Delanie cringed. Josh had had a lot to say, but most of it wasn’t something she wanted to tell Marie. It would only justify her friend’s dislike of him more. “He said he would try to smooth things over with the executive team and get back to me. He was optimistic this wouldn’t change anything.”

Marie snorted. “By smooth things over, he means do whatever Crystal McLean tells him to, of course.”

“He’s not like that,” Delanie said, too tired and too annoyed to let it go this time. “You don’t give him enough credit.”

“Don’t I? Do you remember when he told you he knew the director of Skyscraper, and he’d get you onto the set so you could meet Dwayne Johnson? Then he said that they had already finished filming and Dwayne had gone home before he could work something out?”

Delanie narrowed her eyes, not sure if she could handle more negativity right now. “Yeah . . .”

“Well, I have it on good authority he lied. He doesn’t even know Rawson Thurber. He was just saying that to impress you.”

Delanie froze, stunned, then shook her head—whether in disagreement or in denial, she didn’t know. “Well, it worked. And until this moment, the thought that he’d tried made me feel better.”

She glared at Marie over the rim of her mug, and her friend shrugged unapologetically.

Marie cocked her head. “Is that your phone ringing?”

“There’s No Business Like Show Business” pumped through Delanie’s open bedroom door. She had turned up the ringer volume while they were at the restaurant last night, and the phone now blasted loud enough that the neighbours could probably hear it. She dashed into the room and scrambled to retrieve it from behind her dresser, answering just before the call went to voicemail.

“Hi, Josh,” she said.

“You’re out of breath. Are you out running?”

“No, I’m . . .” No way she was going to tell him what had actually happened. Best to change the subject. “Do you have any updates?”

“Yeah, about that . . .”

In the silence, Delanie’s gut tightened into a hard ball.

Josh sighed. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just come right out with it. You’re off the show. The executives don’t want to risk the kind of negative publicity this situation could bring them. Fans of sweet cowboy romances look down on this kind of controversy.”

Shock choked her for several seconds, then dissolved into anger as his words sank in. She was being fired, just like that?

“Well, then,” she spluttered, “maybe the executives should have thought of that before they hired me.” She drew a breath. “They knew I run a YouTube channel satirizing current events all along. Didn’t they realize that’s bound to bring some occasional controversy?”

“Hey, babe, this wasn’t my idea. If it was up to me, you wouldn’t be going anywhere. But you know how Crystal is. When she makes a decision, there’s no changing her mind.”

“Did you even try?” Delanie seethed. She’d never seen Josh stand up to Crystal about anything. “Wait, don’t answer that. You know what? I think Marie was right about you.” Much as she hated to admit it.

“Now wait a second, Delanie—”

“No, you wait a second, Josh. You think because you’re a producer and you gave me a break that I owe you something. Well, I don’t, not if you’re not going to fight for me the instant things get tough. We’re through.”

“But—”

“And you don’t even know Rawson Thurber!”

She mashed her finger on the screen to end the call, hanging up on his protests, and threw the phone down on the bed. When it rang again immediately, she picked it up, rejected the call, and put her phone on vibrate. Turning, she found Marie leaning against her door frame with a sympathetic expression.

“That couldn’t have been easy. I’m sorry, hon.”

Delanie bit her thumbnail and nodded. “Probably for the best. My life just turned into a dumpster fire. If he’s not going to support me, then he’s adding fuel to the flames.”

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