Présentation de l'éditeur
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Devil Wears Prada, a compulsively readable novel about a woman whose struggling singer-songwriter husband is catapulted to fame, dragging them both onto the pages of celebrity gossip magazines—and changing their marriage forever.
Brooke loved reading the dishy celebrity gossip rag
Last Night. That is, until her marriage became a weekly headline...
For five years, she’s worked two jobs to support her husband’s dream of making it in the music world. Finally, after countless gigs at Manhattan dive bars and toiling as an A&R intern, the soulful, enigmatic Julian Alter gets signed by Sony, where he logs long hours in the recording studio with no promise of success. But when he is invited to perform on a national late-night talk show, he is catapulted to stardom—literally overnight.
At first the newfound fame is fun—who wouldn’t want to stay at the Chateau Marmont or love being treated like rock royalty? But as Brooke’s sweet husband becomes increasingly absent and tabloid rumors swirl, Brooke begins to question the truth about their marriage and is forced to finally come to terms with what she thinks she wants—and what she actually needs.
Extrait
1Piano Man
WHEN the subway finally screeched into the Franklin Street station, Brooke was nearly sick with anxiety. She checked her watch for the tenth time in as many minutes and tried to remind herself that it wasn’t the end of the world; her best friend, Nola, would forgive her,
had to forgive her, even if she was inexcusably late. She made her way through the rush-hour throngs of commuters toward the door, instinctively holding her breath in the midst of so many bodies, and allowed herself to be pushed toward the stairwell. On autopilot now, Brooke and her fellow riders each pulled their cell phones from their purses and jacket pockets, filed silently into a straight line and, zombielike, marched like choreographed soldiers up the right side of the cement stairs while staring blankly at the tiny screens in their palms.
“Shit!” she heard an overweight woman up ahead call out, and in a moment she knew why. The rain hit her forcefully and without warning the instant she emerged from the stairwell. What had been a chilly but decent enough March evening only twenty minutes earlier had deteriorated into a freezing, thundering misery, where the winds whipped the rain down and made it utterly impossible to stay dry.
“Dammit!” she added to the cacophony of expletives people were shouting all around her as they struggled to pull umbrellas from their briefcases or arrange newspapers over their heads. Since she’d run home to change after work, Brooke had nothing but a tiny (and admittedly cute) silver clutch to shield herself from the onslaught.
Good-bye, hair, she thought as she began to sprint the three blocks to the restaurant.
I’ll miss you, eye makeup. Nice knowing you, gorgeous new suede boots that ate up half my weekly salary.
Brooke was drenched by the time she reached Sotto, the tiny, unpretentious neighborhood joint where she and Nola met two or three times a month. The pasta wasn’t the best in the city—probably not even the best on the block—and the space wasn’t anything all that special, but Sotto had other charms, more important ones: reasonably priced wine by the full carafe, a killer tiramisu, and a downright hot Italian maître d’ who, simply because they’d been coming for so long, always saved Brooke and Nola the most private table in the back.
“Hey, Luca.” Brooke greeted the owner as she shrugged off her wool peacoat, trying not to shake water everywhere. “Is she here yet?”
Luca immediately put his hand over the phone receiver and pointed with a pencil over his shoulder. “The usual. What’s the occasion for the sexy dress,
cara mia? You want to dry off first?”
She smoothed her fitted, short-sleeved black jersey dress with both palms and prayed that Luca was right, that the dress was sexy and
