Read Spoiled for Free Online Page A

admitted with a grin. “My trainer told me that. But I’m sure it’s true on a deeper
     level. I’ll ask my hypnotherapist.”
    The driver started the car and pulled out of the parking garage, at which point twenty or so photographers descended upon
     the Escalade, yelling and shoving one another.
    “Damn, I thought we’d lost them back on Sunset,” Brick said, shaking his head. “This disguise sucks. I
told
Stan I should wear the headdress.”
    Molly had seen footage of paparazzi scrums on TV, but it was ten times scarier in person. A woman getting her hair pulled
     by a cameraman slammed against the window, begging Brick for “the goods.” The guy closest to Molly, who couldn’t have been
     much older than she was, wore a trucker cap that read PORN STAR IN TRAINING .
    “Molly, open up,” he shouted, jiggling the door handle.
    Molly grabbed the nearest object she could find—which turned out to be an ice bucket—and tried to hide behind it.
    “How do they know who I am?” she gasped.
    “Well, here’s the thing, Sunshine,” Brick began. “There’s going to be a tiny little story in
Hey!
about this. About you, I mean. Being my love child.”
    “What?”
    Molly was reminded of the time she belly flopped off the high dive at the local pool: The wind was knocked out of her, and
     she thought she would drown. The entire student body of both her new
and
her old high school might read some sordid tabloid story about
her
? How was that even possible? She’d only been in Los Angeles fifteen minutes.
    “I’m sorry,” Brick said. “But fear not! It’s not a smear job. Here’s what already ran.”
    Molly scanned the crinkled magazine Brick handed her from his back pocket. The weird breathless feeling eased up when she
     realized the blurb didn’t actually use her name.
    “ ‘Children, like protein shakes, are God’s greatest present’?” she read, trying to sound cheerful. “I’ve never heard that
     one.”
    “Well, protein shakes are delicious,” Brick said. “And they make you a better version of yourself.”
    Molly stared at him. “Okay,” she said, after a beat. “But how did those guys know my name? It’s not in this article.”
    “I almost forgot!” Brick evaded. “I brought you an ice-blended from the Coffee Bean!” He opened a mini cooler set into the
     console at his feet. “I got vanilla. Laurel loved vanilla.”
    Brick handed her the drink. Molly took it silently and cast another uneasy glance out the window as they crept along. A photographer
     was trying to climb up the trunk. The driver finally found a spot of open road and floored it toward the airport exit.
    “Sunshine, this is just how it works around these parts,” Brick said. “Everything gets out eventually, so we decided, hey,
     let’s leak it on our terms. So I’m sure they know your name because of the party.”
    “What party?”
    “Well.
That
is a long story,” Brick said. “Why don’t we talk about it when we get home?”
    “Sure,” Molly said, wanting to seem agreeable. She took a long sip of her drink and privately hoped a crippling brain freeze
     would shove her into a coma before that conversation, or the mysterious party, ever even happened. Suddenly, it seemed awfully
     naive to think she could drop into her world-famous father’s life without anybody caring but him. As if to underline the point,
     they passed a building bearing a giant poster from Brick’s latest movie that read BRICK. BRUCE. BEYONCÉ.
BERGERAC. The shoot-’em-up remake of
Cyrano
made $98 million its first weekend. Molly and Charmaine had seen it twice. For research. Obviously.
    “Oops, almost time for
E! News
,” Brick said.
    He clicked on the TV in the back of the limo and cranked up the volume. In what Molly found was a welcome and pressure-free
     silence—she could let her emotions settledown a notch—they watched a story about Ed Westwick shaving his head to play Howie Mandel in a biopic called
No Deal
, and then a