Plain Christmas (Plain Fame Book 6) Page 10

  However, there was one thing Amy said that Amanda disagreed with. If she could have spoken freely, she would have commented about their visit to Michigan and how everyone at that company had seemed relaxed despite their deadlines and the upcoming holidays. Clearly, not every industry valued professional success over personal satisfaction.

  Instead, Amanda responded simply, “Christmas is a busy time of year, for sure and certain.”

  “I imagine you won’t be staying in the city for Christmas, will you?”

  “No, the children are . . .” Amanda had almost slipped and told her that after the Miami concert, the children would join them to celebrate the holidays in Lititz, but she caught herself just in time. Because they lived in a world where the spotlight was always shining on them, both Amanda and Alejandro were protective of their children. Trying to fly into Philadelphia without being recognized would be hard enough. Amanda certainly didn’t want the paparazzi staking out the farm in Lititz and harassing her family. She had put her family through that ordeal once before, a long time ago, and she had sworn never again to expose them to that type of microscopic attention. “They are back in Miami, waiting for us.”

  Amy glanced down at her phone, checking the time before she slid the phone into her back pocket. “I’m surprised they aren’t with you today. With all of the lights and the beautiful tree at Rockefeller Center, they might have enjoyed a visit.”

  “Travel’s too hard on the little ones,” she heard herself reply. What she really meant was that travel was too hard on her and, if he paused long enough to admit it, on Alejandro, too. “Although my older daughter wouldn’t have minded. She loves shopping,” she replied with a faint smile.

  “Ah yes!” Amy gave another little laugh. “Of course! Let me guess—Forever 21?”

  For a moment, Amanda laughed with her. It felt good to have a casual conversation with someone who, like Lisa in Grand Haven, talked to her as if she were a regular person, not an iconic celebrity. For that short period of time, the noise and mayhem that surrounded them disappeared, and Amanda was merely standing to the side and talking with a friend.

  But the moment was quickly over.

  Geoffrey approached them, an exasperated look in his eyes. As he asked them to forgive his interruption, Amy took a step backward and gave her a look of understanding. “It was great to see you again, Amanda,” she said in parting, then walked to the other side of the studio.

  “Amanda, Charlie’s been trying to reach you and says you’re not answering his calls,” Geoffrey told her. “He’s lined up a radio interview for you this afternoon and two other interviews with newspapers before the concert. He needs you to confirm.”

  A small sigh escaped her lips as she turned her phone over in her hand. Sure enough, three missed phone calls and ten text messages from Charlie had magically appeared in just the short time while she had silenced her phone. “Oh help,” she muttered as she quickly glanced through the messages. “I thought he was supposed to meet us here.”

  He reached out and touched her arm. “Mmm, sorry,” he said, his mind clearly on something else. “I gotta run. But can you give him a call, please?” Like everyone else, he was stressed and anxious, rushing to cross off the next most important item on his list of things to do.

  Slipping behind the set and into the privacy of the greenroom, she scanned the text messages from Charlie. They had started out calm and enthusiastic but quickly had become frantic and misspelled. All of this in less than ten minutes!

  The phone rang once and a panic-stricken voice met her reply. “Amanda! Why don’t you answer when I call? Dali is breathing down my neck!”

  She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “I was in the middle of a few things myself.”

  He coughed into the other end of the phone. “Darlin’, I have your schedule, and I know exactly what you are in the middle of doing . . . which should be answering my phone calls and text messages!”

  This time, Amanda did roll her eyes. “Technically, I wasn’t even planning on being here, Charlie. Alejandro asked me to come with him only a month ago.”

  “And your point?” he commented in an exasperated tone of voice. Amanda could clearly hear the clicking sound of call waiting on the other end. No doubt, he was already committing her to more interviews. If he had his way, she would be booked through and including New Year’s!

  She took a deep breath and quickly counted to ten. “Why are you lining up interviews for me, Charlie? It’s the holidays.”

  “Again, your point?”

  Silently admitting defeat, she shut her eyes. Like Dali, her former publicist, Charlie was relentless when it came to scheduling appointments, squeezing the most out of Amanda that he could. She knew there would be no arguing with him. It was what he had been hired for. The two important Ps: Publicity and Promotion. If she had issues with any of it, Amanda should take it up with Alejandro. While very efficient at his work, Charlie never dared contradict anything Viper said. “Where are you anyway, Charlie?”

  “That’s not important. But what is important is where you will be at one o’clock. I’ve already e-mailed you an updated itinerary.” He paused. “E-mail. You know what that is, right?” he asked with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Charlie—” she started, annoyed at his tone.

  “Because I wouldn’t know that you do know what e-mail is, given that you haven’t responded to any of my messages since you left Miami.”

  “I . . .”

  A noise in the background on Charlie’s end interrupted him from continuing. There was a muffled noise, as if he had covered the mouthpiece of the phone for a second. “I have another call coming in. Please, please, Amanda, just promise me you’ll keep checking your e-mail in case I have any changes to your schedule, OK?” he asked in a more considerate tone.

  He didn’t wait for her to answer before she heard him yell to someone as he hung up the phone.

  Without realizing it, Amanda was counting down the hours until she’d be traveling to Lititz, where people were not so hurried or distracted by the commitments they had made. Commitments that, however important, would not prevent them from just enjoying the moment. She hadn’t realized how much she was looking forward to that week away from all of these people living their lives consumed by stress.

  She only needed to survive the next couple of days. “I can certainly do that,” she said to herself in encouragement. “At least I hope I can.”

  “I noticed something today,” Amanda announced to Alejandro as they sat at a private table at Taos Restaurant in Manhattan.

  After a long day of being chauffeured to different places in Manhattan for interviews and meetings, Amanda was relieved to finally have a chance to sit down with Alejandro, even if it was in a public restaurant. Despite the security lingering nearby, just in case there were any problems, it felt as if they were alone.

  Well, almost alone, she thought as she felt the heat of people staring at them. She tried to ignore them, focusing her attention on Alejandro, but because she never knew when someone might take a photo of them, she had to remain “on.” There was nothing worse for a celebrity than being caught off guard by a photographer and ending up in a tabloid with disheveled hair or wearing a baggy sweat suit. That was one of the reasons why, no matter where he went, Alejandro was always dressed in a properly tailored suit or at least slacks with a collared shirt. That was part of the reason why he always made certain that she, too, had access to a proper wardrobe.

  He swirled the ice in his drink as he casually glanced around the room, noticing several people watching them. “What is that, Princesa?” he asked, slowly returning his eyes to focus on her.

  “Everyone thinks that what they do is the most important thing. But because they are so focused on themselves, they never really notice what anyone else is doing. It’s a little self-serving.”

  He laughed. “Ay, Princesa!”

  She tried to not look offended. “It’s true, though!”

  Sobering
, he leaned forward and, with his free hand, reached out for hers. “I’m sorry, Amanda. Now tell me. I want to know what made you come to this important realization.”

  She shared with him her experiences of the day, starting with her observations of the frenzied activity behind the scenes at The Today Show and then how Charlie had whisked her away to four back-to-back interviews and two meetings in just over five hours.

  “Everyone is always in such a hurry and always full speed ahead. I don’t think any of them take a moment to breathe.”

  He sipped at his drink, trying not to smile. “And your point?”

  “It wasn’t like that in Grand Haven,” she finally said, after thinking for a minute. “In fact, the way the people at Brilliance acted almost reminded me of Lititz. We always worked, but we still enjoyed life. Work did not consume us.”

  “And this makes you upset because . . . ?”

  “I wouldn’t quite call it upset,” she slowly replied. “But, after enjoying our time in Michigan, I realized that it was nice to feel like a real person, even nicer to contribute to a truly philanthropic project and to be surrounded by people who are not constantly rushing around as if on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Is what they do truly so important that they can’t take a moment to simply . . . be?”

  The waiter interrupted their conversation, setting their meals before them. He paused to see if there was anything else that they needed before backing away from the table and then he walked hurriedly back to the bar area to fetch drinks for another couple.

  “See?” she whispered.

  “Pero, Princesa,” he said, teasingly whispering back to her, “he’s working. Trying to earn more tips.”

  She sighed. “That’s exactly my point. Would the world stop if he chatted for a moment with his customers? Wouldn’t he earn larger tips? So what if someone’s drink was delayed another minute or two?” She looked down at the salad on the plate before her. “When did work become so consuming that it takes on a life of its own and people stop being people? Stop noticing other people?”

  With a smile on his lips, he shook his head as if in disbelief. “Ay, Princesa,” he said. “That’s far too complicated a subject for tonight.” Pulling the black linen napkin off the table, he shook it out and laid it on his lap. “Now, let’s talk of things that don’t make my head hurt, sí? Besides”—he picked up his fork and knife, getting ready to cut the veal française on his plate—“I want to get back to the hotel early tonight. We have a long day of work tomorrow. You know”—he winked at her as he teased—“so we can focus on what we do and hope that someone takes a moment to notice it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Amanda kicked off her high heels and crossed the plush white throw rug of her dressing room. Sinking into the cream-colored sofa, she leaned back and sighed, feeling the throbbing of her toes as they nestled into the carpet.

  Three hours earlier, their private jet had landed at Miami International Airport. After a brief hold-up due to traffic, they had arrived at the Miami venue. Within minutes of their arrival, Geoffrey and his team of assistants had pulled Alejandro away from her so that he could attend a quick sound check before the doors opened.

  Likewise, Charlie and two of his staff had greeted Amanda, eager to hurry her along to her own appointments.

  “There you are!” Charlie had exclaimed, as if she were a lost little girl finally found by her parents. “There are so many important people waiting to meet you.” He stressed the word important as if she should be thoroughly impressed with his handiwork. With unspoken urgency, Charlie had ushered her down a corridor of hallways to the dressing room so that she could freshen up before her meeting with several scheduled guests, including the governor’s wife and the media.

  Now, finally, she had a minute to take off her shoes and relax, even if she knew that it would not last long.

  Travel always made her tired. She had forgotten how exhausting it was to always be “on” for the public: smiling, laughing, posing for photographs. Backstage at concerts, there was a never-ending throng of people, all of them eager to have a moment of her time. Even when she felt exhausted, she needed to make each person feel as if they were the most important person in the world. Amanda worked hard at being genuine when she met people, knowing that each person was important. But it drained her to maintain that level of focus.

  “Mami?”

  Amanda looked up as Isadora peeked through a crack in the opened door of her dressing room. With her big blue eyes shining, Isadora’s excitement exuded from every pore.

  With a weary smile, Amanda beckoned her daughter to enter. After a late night in New York City followed by an early-morning interview at a radio station, Alejandro and Amanda had been shuttled to JFK Airport to fly back to Miami for the concert. Neither one of them had had a moment to go home and freshen up. The days of concerts were always crammed with promotional activities, and Amanda was exhausted. But she always had time for her children.

  “Did you just arrive, Izzie?” she asked, knowing that Geoffrey had arranged for Isadora’s transportation from their house to the arena.

  Isadora stepped into the dressing room, shutting the door behind her. She nodded and tried to mask her excitement. She glanced in the mirror and touched her hair. “Did you see all of those people?” she asked with another poor attempt to act nonchalant. Amanda, however, could see through Isadora, especially as she continued preening in the mirror. When her eyes caught Amanda’s in the reflection, her daughter blushed. “What?”

  Nodding her head, Amanda couldn’t help but laugh. Isadora had attended other concerts and had been backstage in the past. But while there were always a lot of people behind the scenes, both working and lingering, the Jingle Ball was different. Ten headliners in each city meant nine more entourages than usual. And for Isadora, seeing several of her favorite bands and singers in the same place was a teenager’s dream come true.

  Her face shone with joy. Amanda could only imagine how her daughter felt, likening it to when she had first attended Alejandro’s concerts. There was a palpable energy in the air, an excitement that Amanda never could quite describe, even though she had tried to explain it to her sister and mother in the beginning of her relationship with Alejandro. Between the backstage workers rushing around completing last-minute tasks or attending to minor emergencies and the constant background noise of fans cheering, it was exciting to be behind the curtain at concerts. Over the years, Amanda had grown to appreciate that feeling, although she’d never grown completely comfortable with the fans’ adoration of her husband.

  Now, for just a split second, Amanda felt as though she were peering into the future. With a momentary sense of panic, Amanda realized this was the first of many such experiences Isadora would have interacting with celebrities, not as a fan but as a fourteen-year-old with unusual access to them. With her dark coloring and thick black hair, Isadora was turning into a beautiful young woman. And that could attract a lot of unwanted attention.

  “Come sit next to me, Izzie,” Amanda said, patting the seat beside her.

  Isadora hurried over to the sofa and sank into it, curling up next to Amanda and tucking her legs underneath her. She leaned back, her elbow on the back of the sofa so that she could rest her cheek against her hand. “Mami, you’ll never guess who I saw when I arrived! Like literally walked into!” She gave a happy eye roll and lifted her shoulders in a gesture of excitement. “I could just die!”

  “Well, I certainly hope you don’t do that!” Amanda laughed, the moment of anxiety over Isadora’s future dissipating as she found herself caught up in her enthusiasm. “I can’t imagine anyone is that important.”

  Isadora made a face. “Mami! You know what I mean. Now get back to guessing!”

  Amanda reached out and smoothed a stray piece of Isadora’s hair. “Let me see . . .” It wasn’t too hard of a question. After all, Amanda knew Isadora’s favorite performers as well as the scheduled lineup for the show. But she took a moment anywa
y, pretending to think of an answer. “Hmmm. I suspect it was either Victor or that singer from Banff.”

  “Banff?” With an overly dramatic look of surprise, Isadora rolled her eyes. “That band is so not popular anymore!”

  “Really? Wasn’t it only this past summer that you wanted Papi to take you to their concert to meet them?”

  A little blush traveled up the fourteen-year-old’s cheek. “Well, that was almost six months ago,” she said in a tone that indicated she was embarrassed.

  “Oh my,” Amanda teased gently. “And here I thought you were so excited to see them!” But she knew that for a teenage girl, six months felt like a lifetime.

  The dressing room door opened again, and the quiet of the room seemed to explode with noise from outside. Their conversation interrupted, both Amanda and Isadora looked up to see Alejandro walk into the room. Two of his assistants followed him, both bent over their cell phones and frantically responding to text messages. But it wasn’t the assistants that made Amanda catch her breath.

  It was Alejandro.

  He wore a black suit with a red shirt, his hair pushed back with a few loose curls hanging over his forehead. His sunglasses were propped on top of his head, and the hint of a five-o’clock shadow brushed his cheeks.

  When she saw him, it felt as though the years melted away. She could remember everything about their accidental meeting, short courtship, and their first year of marriage: the good and the bad. Even more, she remembered how they had done everything together. Their love had been so strong that being apart from one another felt physically painful. Even when she had left him during that South American tour to take Isadora away from the seedy nature of tour life, she had done it only because God had chosen to put Isadora in their lives. It had been a difficult choice at the time, but Amanda never regretted that decision.