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But he wasn’t succeeding, at calming down or feeling better. Every time he thought of Gail and that rape
charge, he wanted to put his fist through a wall. And although beer sometimes
helped with a hangover, it didn’t seem to be doing much today. His head pounded
as though it might explode.
    What he needed was sleep. He hadn’t slept well in weeks. But
nothing he did, short of pills, made sleep possible.
    “This is what you come to me with?” he asked Ian. “ This is how you plan to prove your worth?”
    Surprisingly, his manager—possibly ex-manager; Simon was still
trying to decide—didn’t back down. He was completely convinced he had the answer
to all of Simon’s problems. “Yes. It’s brilliant.”
    “It’s crazy!” He winced. Raising his voice had been a mistake.
“There’s got to be another way out of the mess I’m in,” he added more calmly.
“I’ve got more money than I know what to do with. Let’s put it to good use.”
    Ian shook his head. “Money’s not enough this time, Simon. You
need a more drastic solution.”
    “This is drastic, all right,” he responded with a humorless
chuckle. “Are you listening to yourself? You’re suggesting I pay Gail DeMarco, a
woman I don’t even like, to be my wife.”
    “She’s a PR professional, the best in the business. We can’t
expect her to give up two years of her life for free.”
    “Two years? ” The sour taste of the
beer was making his stomach queasy. He should’ve eaten something.
    “You’ve got to create a track record of stability, give her
time to build the illusion of peace and happiness, a life in control.”
    Simon said nothing. He was too busy trying to subdue his
nausea. Maybe he didn’t want to admit it to Ian, but he knew one thing—he
couldn’t go on like this. He’d known that for a while.
    “Think about it,” Ian said. “You won’t have much to do with
her. It’s mainly for appearances. You get married, you lie low, you get Ty back
and then you part amicably. This is a PR campaign, not a marriage in the normal
sense. You’re taking it way too seriously.”
    “Then you marry her.”
    “I would if it’d help.”
    Simon tried to picture Gail as his wife and couldn’t. They’d
worked together too long in carefully defined roles that rarely crossed into
their personal lives. And what he’d seen of her on a personal basis hadn’t
impressed him. Talk about a straight arrow. Could he tolerate having this person
in his life on a day-to-day basis? “Who picked the length of time?”
    “She did. But it’s a worst-case scenario. If our plan works
sooner than expected, we can make adjustments.”
    He sure as hell hoped it wouldn’t take two years. At the
moment, Bella had full custody of their son and, thanks to a hard-ass judge
who’d ranted on about his “moral corruption,” she’d managed to deny him
visitation rights. Yet she was leaving Ty with one nanny after another while she
had surgery to fix cosmetic flaws that didn’t exist, took expensive trips with
men she’d barely met and tried too hard to be seen, to be part of the Hollywood
“in” crowd, as if she wanted to be famous herself. After his mother died, Simon
had been raised by nannies. He didn’t want that for his son.
    “It beats rehab,” Ian murmured when Simon didn’t respond.
“Something has to be done.”
    Surely marriage would do more for public perception than a
rehab program. But it would only work if he could get his drinking under
control.
    He turned his beer around and around in its holder. “How much
is she charging?”
    “The price of the wedding photos. Whatever we sell them for,
that’s what she’ll get. She’ll even negotiate the sale and handpick the
placement so we get maximum publicity.”
    “ People magazine will want them.
And they’ll pay a couple mil, at least.”
    “That’s a lot, but it’s money you wouldn’t have without her, so
she’s essentially paying for herself, right?”
    He didn’t care about