Chapter 16
COLE LENNOX SPOTS THE MAN with the fancy Nikon camera just as he ducks behind the dumpster. Six-two, fit, tanned, dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans with short blond hair—he might actually have been good-looking if he weren’t such a leech.
“It’s too early, Asher.” She slips on her Celine sunglasses with a sigh. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”
As she starts walking down Queen Street, she takes a sip from her reusable tumbler and grimaces.
It’s criminal that Starbucks just charged her eight dollars for a venti triple-shot latte with soy milk, and yet it still tastes burnt.
Of course she could have saved herself a few bucks and stayed home, where a commercial-grade Jura coffee machine is sitting right on the kitchen counter.
The problem is, neither she nor Jordan ever bothered to learn how to use it—that was always Stefano’s job, but Jordan had to let go of their personal chef when his bank accounts were frozen.
With everything going on, Cole’s best move is to live her life normally and be seen doing it.
Quan is paying close attention to everything she does, and contract negotiations for next season are starting soon.
She desperately needs the gig. Trophy Wives has been the launchpad for everything she’s built, from her brand partnerships to her spray tan line to that small role in a horror movie nobody watched. Without the show, she’ll go back to being a nobody.
And it’s really hard to be a nobody once you’ve been somebody.
Hoisting her Chanel tote higher over her shoulder, Cole picks up the pace as Asher’s flash bursts at the side of her face from about ten feet away.
“How about one without the sunglasses, gorgeous?” he asks.
“How about you get hit by a streetcar and die, asshole?” she replies.
The photographer raises an eyebrow. “Somebody didn’t sleep well last night. What’s the matter, Cole? Jordan’s criminal activities keeping you up at night?”
She doesn’t answer.
Asher leaps in front of her, careful to maintain his distance. If he bumps into her, she can have him arrested, and he knows that. “I know you’re waist deep in a scandal, babe, but how about a smile?”
“Don’t call me babe.”
“I warned you about him, didn’t I? I told you years ago he’d fuck you over, and now he has. I always sensed something about him was shady.”
Cole maintains her pace, the heels of her Gucci boots clicking on the sidewalk.
It’s pretentious, she knows, to think of her clothes by their designers’ names, and she tries to remember exactly when she picked up this pompous habit.
It might have been around the time she met Jordan’s parents for the first time.
When he arrived to pick her up, he looked her up and down and said, “Don’t you have anything else to wear? ”
She was so offended. Her dress was from Banana Republic, and it was brand-new, and a splurge.
But he’d insisted on stopping at Holt Renfrew on the way to the country club, and by the time she found herself shaking hands with Jordan’s intimidating father, she was dressed head to toe in Dolce she just had no desire to make it easy for him.
“One shot,” she warns him. He snaps two, like she knew he would.
They pass a bus stop, where the three people sitting on the bench watch them curiously as they walk by, Cole going forward, Asher going backward.
She hears someone say her name, but it sounds more like a question.
Cole Lennox? She doesn’t acknowledge it.
Just because someone recognizes her doesn’t mean they’re a fan.
Despite an online poll suggesting that 50 percent of television viewers watch at least one hour of reality television per week, people are just as likely to hate Cole as love her.
Hell, she’d hate herself, too, if she were actually the person she pretended to be on TV.
Anyway, it’s not supposed to matter if people like her, as long as they watch.
All Quan cares about are the subscription numbers.
Cole might be starring on the streaming service’s number one reality show, but ultimately she’s nothing more than a metric.
Her fame determines her value, and whether she likes it or not, Asher’s photos keep her relevant.
“We’re all dispensable, darling,” her costar Cecily Monaco had told her years ago. They were at brunch celebrating Cole signing her first contract. “You must never get comfortable. Just like in soaps, your storyline is all that matters, and there’s no such thing as too much drama.”
Cecily would know. The retired actress had starred on Sunrise, Sunset for nearly thirty years and was the one who’d pitched Cole on doing the new Toronto-based reality show that Quan was developing.
Cecily was married to a Canadian whose family owned the largest chain of grocery stores in the country, and the two women had floated in the same social circles ever since Cole married Jordan.
They started season one together as friends.
By season two, they’d had a falling-out.
By season three, they’d reconciled, and it was Cole who’d stood steadfast by her friend’s side when grainy long-lens photos of Cecily frolicking naked in her pool with her handyman went public.
The shocking affair ended the older woman’s marriage, and of course it all played out in sordid detail on Trophy Wives.
Cecily was roasted, vilified, and shamed.
But it did result in her signing the first seven-figure contract for any reality star on Quan for the following season. Cecily’s scandal earned her a raise, and Cole is praying that will be true for her as well.
The only thing an audience loves more than a downfall is a comeback.
From somewhere inside her tote, her phone pings.
The sound is different from her usual notifications, but this is not the time or place to check the text.
Quan’s Toronto studios are just up ahead, and once she enters the building, security will prevent the paparazzo from following her inside.
Then she’ll have all the privacy she needs, at least until Jana Jones starts asking her questions she’d rather not answer.
“Hey, Cole, hang on a minute,” Asher says, just as she’s reaching the lobby doors.
The photographer’s somber tone catches her off guard, and she turns around to face him. There was a time in his life when he hadn’t always been a leech. If the circumstances were different, maybe they’d be friends. They do have one important thing in common.
They both have to be assholes to do their job well.
“We’ve known each other a long time, and so I thought you should know.” Asher’s camera is down at his side, and he looks uncomfortable. “There are photos of Jordan being shopped around to all the sites.”
“So?” She waits.
“The new photos have nothing to do with the money scandal.” Asher’s voice drops low, even though there’s nobody else around. He’s so close she can smell the laundry detergent from his clothes. “He’s cheating on you, Cole. The photos are of him with another woman.”
Cole is grateful she’s wearing sunglasses that cover half her face. It takes a huge amount of effort not to react. “Those rumors have been around for years. I’ve learned to ignore them.”
“They’re not rumors this time.”
“Oh yeah? What does she look like?”
“Late twenties. Blonde.”
“That describes half the administrative staff at his company.” Cole’s voice remains cool. “I’m not worried about it.”
Asher pulls out his phone. After tapping on the screen a few times, he hands it to her.
The photo was taken with a long lens through a window, showing the slightly blurry image of a man and woman standing inside a hotel room with drinks in their hands.
Though Jordan’s face isn’t clear, there’s no mistaking that it’s him.
Cole would know the lines and build of her husband’s body anywhere.
She knows the amber liquid in his glass is Macallan 25.
The woman’s face, however, isn’t visible. Whatever she’s drinking is pink.
“Where was this?” Cole asks, even though she already knows. Jordan did leave earlier in the week, though he never told her where he was going. And when he returned home after being gone all night, she didn’t ask.
They don’t do that anymore.
“A hotel on Wellington,” Asher says. “Couple of days ago.”
“He had a work thing,” Cole says. “There are probably other people in that suite, too.”
“Swipe left.”
She swipes, and her breath catches in her throat. In this photo, Jordan and the blonde are locked in a tight embrace. While they’re not kissing, it’s certainly inappropriate physical contact between a married man and someone who isn’t his wife.
There’s one woman Cole knows with hair that particular shade of platinum blond, who always drinks cosmopolitans that particular shade of pink.
“A friendly business meeting.” She hands the phone back to Asher. “But thanks for trying to upset me right before my interview.”
“I wasn’t trying—” Asher says.
“These are your photos, aren’t they? You’re the one shopping them around?
” When the photographer doesn’t answer, Cole barks a humorless laugh.
“God, Asher, you’re such a dick. You think all you do is take pictures for a living, but what you actually do is ruin lives.
You thrive on the misery of people like me who’ve done nothing whatsoever to hurt you. ”
From somewhere inside her tote bag, her phone pings again and she winces. What’s in her phone will hurt her more than Asher’s photos ever could.
“Don’t act like you don’t understand how the ecosystem works.
” Asher’s cheeks flush slightly. “You think anyone would give a shit about you if not for ‘people like me’ pumping your face into those tabloids you pretend to hate so much? And it’s not like I was randomly walking by this hotel, Cole.
I could never get that lucky. Someone called in a tip.
Whoever is out to ‘hurt’ you, it isn’t me. ”
“Oh, go to hell.” Cole pulls open the door and steps into the lobby of Quan’s studios. By the time she chances a look back through the glass, Asher is gone. She exhales.
The security guard sitting behind the lobby desk looks concerned. “You okay, Mrs. Lennox? Was that the same pap that was bothering you the last time?”
“Comes with the job, unfortunately. I’m all good, Terrence, thanks.”
Cole takes the elevator. When the doors open on the fifth floor, she veers in the opposite direction of her assigned dressing room.
Locking herself into a bathroom stall, she pulls out the small half-finished bottle of Irish cream whiskey she stashed in her bag before she left home.
She pours a generous amount into her tumbler, mixing it with the remainder of her coffee, and then takes a long, long swig.
It’s not even nine a.m.
She tells herself it’s just for today, because there’s no way in hell she can do this interview for Criminal Confessions sober. She’ll stop drinking next week.
For sure this time.