Finding Ashley by Danielle Steel (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📗

what to say to her, or how she’d bring up the subject of Melissa, but she was in it up to her neck now, and was determined to follow through.

She tried to reach the second young woman then, whose number had been on the Internet. Her name wasn’t Ashley either. When she got voicemail, Hattie left a message.

She took a cab to the house in Beverly Hills, and arrived on time, and felt as though she were living a movie. It reminded her of her brief stay in L.A. eighteen years before. Heather Jones’s famous rocker boyfriend was lounging at the pool, when a maid opened the door and led Hattie past the pool into the living room, where Heather was on the phone, waiting for her. She ended the call as soon as Hattie walked in, desperately afraid that they would ask her for credentials she didn’t have, but Heather Jones smiled at her and offered her a drink, which Hattie declined. The actress lay down on the couch, and invited Hattie to take a chair facing her.

“You’ll be using existing art?” she asked her blithely. “We just did a PR shoot, my assistant can send you whatever shots you need.”

“That’s perfect, thank you,” Hattie said, feeling dazed. It was all so Hollywood and everything she had run away from. She was a nun, not a reporter, but she reminded herself that she was doing it for her sister. She was trying to think of questions to ask her that teenagers might be interested in. She asked her about her early career, the movies she’d been in, which one meant the most to her, what her dreams were for the future, and what message she might want to send to her teenage fans. The actress loved talking about herself, and it wasn’t difficult to keep her engaged. Then finally, Hattie slipped a pertinent question into the mix at the end.

“How do you think it affected you, knowing that you were adopted? Did you feel closer to your famous mother, or competitive with her?” The actress stared at her for a moment as though Hattie had spoken to her in Chinese.

“Adopted? What are you talking about? I wasn’t adopted. Is that on the Internet?” She looked shocked. “I was born in Italy when my mother took six months off between movies to have me.” And then had obviously come home with a baby, claiming she’d given birth to it abroad, while taking a break in Italy where no one had seen her. She was one of the children who had never been told she was adopted. “I don’t know where you heard that. Everyone says I look like my mother, but we were always very different. As you know, my mother had a terrible substance abuse problem. It made me determined not to be like her. I wanted to have her talent, but not her problems. She died when I was seventeen. She OD’d in our swimming pool. I found her. I’ve never done drugs and I don’t drink because of it. And as you know, Billy Zee, my first husband, had a problem with heroin addiction, which is why I left him. In fact, I’d like to remind your readers never, ever to mess with drugs. I want you to put that in the article. That’s the most important thing I have to say.” She was so earnest that Hattie was touched. She wasn’t a very interesting subject, but she had a poignant naïve quality, despite her striking good looks and the skin-tight white jumpsuit she was wearing.

“Of course, I’ll put that in, in bold type,” Hattie assured her. “I want to thank you for your time, and your message to our young readers,” Hattie said, trying to sound sincere, and feeling slightly guilty.

“When will it run?” Heather asked, standing up.

“I’m not sure. Probably in the next month.” Hattie felt like a supreme liar, and she had stared at Heather Jones throughout the interview. Her birth year was right, and even the month, but Hattie was almost sure that she was no relation to Melissa. She had probably been born at Saint Blaise’s, but to someone else, and never knew she’d been adopted, and never would, with no records now to prove it, and her adopted mother long gone.

Her boyfriend strolled into the room then, put an arm around Heather, pulled her close, and kissed her, as a maid appeared to escort Hattie out. Heather waved with a sensual smile as Hattie made her exit. The maid called a taxi for her and it came within minutes as Hattie waited on the street outside Heather’s house. She felt as though she had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but she didn’t think she’d found Ashley. Nothing about her felt right.

She went back to her hotel and fell asleep again. She awoke to the phone ringing in her room. It was the other young woman she had called earlier, the social worker, who said she had just gotten the message when she got home from work. Hattie was half asleep, still jetlagged, and decided to try the interview ploy again, since it had worked so well the first time. This woman’s name was Michaela Foster, not Ashley. She was the daughter of the famous actress Marla Moore, whom even Hattie knew by name. She told her she was calling for an interview about her humanitarian work with inner-city children.

“I think there’s some mistake,” Michaela Foster said politely. “I don’t do interviews, I’m a social worker. You were probably looking for my mother, Marla Moore. She’s working on a film right now. If you call her PR people at ICM, they’ll set it up when she gets back if she’s interested. She’s on location in Quebec.” She was about to hang up when Hattie stopped her.

“No, we really wanted you. What you do is very interesting. I’m writing an article about the children of famous women and the careers they