LITMIR.BIZ

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magazines fanned across his desk. Again. Each cover line and photo made him clench his jaw a little harder.

       L.A. CANDY STAR

       MORE TART THAN SWEET

       JANE’S BETRAYAL

       IS L.A. CANDY STAR

       PREGNANT

      WITH JESSE’S BABY?

      DID JESSE’S DRUG HABIT DRIVE JANE INTO HIS BEST FRIEND’S BED?

       SEE JANE CHEAT!

      And on and on. Each headline was insulting, attention-grabbing, and sure to sell issues. And sure to cause problems for the show.

      How had everything spun so out of control? With his golden girl at the wheel?

      He might’ve expected trouble from the other girls. Scarlett was stunningly beautiful, but she was way too smart, opinionated, and out-there to appeal to a general audience; Trevor had to edit out most of her real personality just to make her even remotely accessible. Madison was the perfect Hollywood cliché, with her dyed-to-the-max platinum hair and penchant for shopping, partying, and guys. But she was constantly bugging Trevor for more airtime; so far, he’d managed to keep her at bay with carefully worded compliments on the theme of “quality over quantity.” Gaby had proven very entertaining, with her ditzy personality and natural talent for getting just about everything wrong. Sometimes she seemed too over-the-top even for reality television.

      But Jane…Jane was his find of the decade. Sweet, natural, and vulnerable, she was a person everyone could relate to. She was pretty, but not too pretty. She liked to go out, but she didn’t like to get wasted or do drugs. She worked hard. She was loyal to her friends. She came from a close-knit family.

      Even her flaws were relatable. She procrastinated. She made mistakes at her job and got into trouble with her boss. She had arguments with her friends about dumb stuff. She didn’t have the best judgment about guys and went on bad dates once in a while.

      Right after the L.A. Candy series premiere in October, Trevor knew that he had a hit on his hands—and that Jane was largely responsible. Viewers loved her. After a couple of flops (fine, so everyone was sick of listening to amateurs sing Rihanna covers and watching strangers hook up on tropical islands), he was back on top as one of Hollywood’s hottest reality producers.

      Then things went from great to amazing when Jane and Jesse started dating, and with absolutely no intervention from Trevor. He couldn’t have picked a better boyfriend than the bad-boy son of superstar actors Wyatt Edwards and Katarina Miller, who was always in some tabloid with a starlet on his arm. Jesse also liked to party hard. As in, in-and-out-of-rehab hard.

      But Jesse had apparently cleaned up his act when he met Jane. It was love at first sight, and their chemistry was undeniable. Everyone seemed to want to tune in to their romance: Hollywood playboy falls for the girl next door. It was a reality producer’s dream come true.

      Trevor clutched his stress ball tighter. He had known that Jesse would eventually crash and burn. Once an addict, always an addict. But Trevor figured that if and when the time came, he would do some creative editing to make sure Jane and Jesse’s romance continued its course, from breakup to makeup to breakup to makeup, without the unwholesome tarnish of Jesse’s issues. The L.A. Candy cameras never showed Jesse misbehaving at clubs (drinking too much, disappearing to the men’s room to do God knows what), and they never would.

      But Trevor hadn’t seen this coming: It was Jane who had screwed up. Big-time. Virtually overnight, the “reality producer’s dream” had turned into a nightmare. With Jane and Madison gone, the shooting schedule was total chaos. Trevor and Dana were frantically improvising new and interesting ways to film Scarlett and Gaby: Scarlett Christmas shopping…Gaby taking a boot-camp fitness class…Scarlett checking out the spring courses in the USC catalog with a fellow student…Gaby taking her pint-size, overgroomed dog out for a walk. And filming the two girls together was beyond challenging, since most of those scenes consisted of Gaby having one-sided conversations while Scarlett mocked her and made sarcastic remarks under her breath.

      How long would they be able to keep this up? Where the hell was Jane? (She’d been photographed at LAX yesterday, but she didn’t seem to be at her apartment, and she still wasn’t answering his calls. Her parents weren’t answering his calls, either.) And what was he going to do with her when she finally resurfaced? He had a story line on his hands that everyone knew about but that didn’t make sense for the show. There could be no mention of Braden, since he refused to sign a release. Which meant that there could be no mention of Jane cheating on Jesse with Braden. There could be no mention of the Gossip scandal, either. In the L.A. Candy universe, tabloids didn’t exist. And neither did half-naked pictures of a nice girl like Jane.

      “Trevor?”

      He rubbed his eyes and glanced up. Melissa, one of the PopTV publicists, was standing in the doorway. He had ordered his entire team to put in overtime, and many were working today despite the fact that it was Christmas Eve. “Yes? What is it?” he snapped.

      “Yeah, hello to you, too. Listen, you’re gonna be a little nicer to me when you see this.” She held up a file.

      “What is it?”

      “Ratings from the last episode. You know, the episode that aired after those, uh, lovely photos came out?”

      Trevor stared intently at her. “And?” “Our ratings nearly doubled.”

      “Let me see that.”

      Melissa handed the file to Trevor. He opened it and scanned the figures quickly. His pulse quickened, and he sat up straighter. Four-point-six million? Did it really say 4.6 million?

      Trevor’s lips curled up in a slow, satisfied smile. “You just made me a very happy man.”

      “Yeah, yeah. Until the next crisis,” Melissa joked.

      “No, no. The crisis was good. The crisis made our numbers go up.”

      “Any publicity is good publicity, right?”

      “Something like that. Now, go back to your office and break these down some more. I want them within the hour.”

      Melissa peeked at her watch. “It’s almost eight and I’ve got a red-eye to New York to visit my family for Christmas.”

      “Well, you’d better get busy, then.”

      “Whatever you say, boss.”

      As Trevor watched her leave, he closed the file and thought about what this meant. As always, his brain operated simultaneously in two realities: the real reality and the L.A. Candy reality. Trevor realized that at this moment in time, these two realities were actually working in sync and in his favor. The real reality (Jane, Braden, Jesse, the Gossip scandal) boosted and would continue to boost ratings, while the L.A. Candy reality airbrushed—and would continue to airbrush—over any and all the ugliness, painting Jane in the same soft, golden glow that had morphed her into “America’s sweetheart.”

      This was good—all good. Now all he needed was to find Jane. And figure out how to choreograph the next few episodes.

      Trevor picked up the phone and got back to work.

       7 IT’S KINDA COMPLICATED

      Lacie hit the Pause button and pointed to the giant plasma screen. “Oh, yeah, that dude,” she said, cracking up. “Did you ever go out with him again?”

      “He seems like kind of a dork,” Nora piped up. “But he’s H-O-T.”

      Jane sighed and leaned back on the couch, where she was sandwiched between

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