Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
But she didn’t give me anything. Not a single phone call under the guise of business. Not a single late-night text.
No, I wasn’t cocky anymore.
I stayed home more that week than I ever had, only going out Tuesday night to meet up with my friends. But on Friday, I didn’t have a choice. It was awards show season, and even if we hadn’t made any Oscar contenders, we had some Golden Globe and critic’s choice nominations.
“It’ll get your mind off the girl,” Garrett advised. He was going, too. His wife was a nominee.
“What girl?” I bared my teeth at him, daring him to say her name.
“Right,” he said dryly and didn’t take me up on it.
I didn’t have a date, but at the last minute, I called up Shelly Monroe, Dana’s fiancé, to see if she wanted to go with me. We’d been friends for longer than she and Dana had been dating. The press generally assumed that it was Shelly and I who were together. Neither of them liked to publicize their personal lives. Hell, Dana had even let our father believe it for a while. He wasn’t exactly the most enlightened guy in town. He’d come around eventually, though.
Shelly was a statuesque model with skin the color of the night sky. So perfect and poreless that magazines didn’t even bother to airbrush her. She’d shaved her head recently, and without hair, the perfection and symmetry of her face was even more stunning.
“I really think we could make this work,” I said when I answered the door and saw her in a white, raw silk shift that glowed against her slender, sculpted limbs. In another century, she would have been a queen instead of a supermodel.
She rolled her mocha-colored eyes up. “No, we couldn’t, Lewis.”
“You like men, too.”
“Yeah, for fun now and then. But you know what I don’t like? Siblings.”
“Fucking Dana,” I sighed.
“My fucking fiancé,” she agreed, wriggling the fingers of her left hand, even though she wasn’t wearing the engagement ring I knew Dana had given her for a third time.
We took a company car to the show, skipping the dog and pony show that was the red carpet. I always walked it a few times a season, but I was skipping it tonight. If Dana didn’t like it, she could fly her ass home from Amsterdam.
The reception area was full of the usual suspects. Most of the A-list, all of the B-list, a few lucky C-listers. Miller was there in an ill-fitting suit, wearing his beat-up Vans like he didn’t give a shit, even though he salivated at the thought of these things. Take away Miller’s soap, his toothbrush, his pretentious, hipster flip phone, but don’t take away his invitations to celebrity suck-up fests. He couldn’t bear it.
“Come on, we have work to do,” I muttered to Shelly. She threaded her arm through mine and let me tow her through the crowd until we reached Miller’s side.
Miller was, as I knew he would be, dazzled by the sight of her. I took advantage of his momentary speechlessness to say, “Hey Miller, where the hell is my raw cut of the trailer?”
“It’s on its way,” he said absently, staring at Shelly.
She smiled her five-million-dollar-toothpaste-brand-ambassador smile, and a dopey, answering grin spread across his own face.
“You know, Miller, I don’t think it is,” I said, dragging his attention back to me. “I don’t see it in my inbox, and you haven’t sent the production assistant over with it.”
I’d have known if he had. I’d given Travis explicit orders to call me wherever I was, no matter what meeting, no matter what time, if Willow Laurier showed up at the office.
“I—yeah, I mean,” he blinked, aggravated at the interruption. Couldn’t I see he was staring at Shelly Monroe, damnit? How often did a man get a chance to gaze upon the number one supermodel in the world in the flesh? With her gazing back?
Shelly’s smile softened, became coaxing. Go on, it said, give him what he wants and maybe you’ll get what you want.
“I’ll send it over on Monday,” Miller said, his voice melting back into dreaminess. “It still needs some work.”
Which I knew meant he’d done jack shit on it, but I also knew it wouldn’t take him much time.
“It better be here by Monday,” I said. “Or else you’re going to have me on location every day until I get it.”
Miller’s worst nightmare.
You could practically see the struggle on his face. Did he tell me to go fuck myself, or did he play nice and hope I wouldn’t take the nice supermodel away? “It’ll be there,” he said finally, the aggravation in his words finally convincing me he meant it.
I took Shelly away anyway after I saw Garrett walk in with his wife, Destiny. After introductions were made–Shelly and Destiny knew of each other but had never met–Garrett and I headed to the bar to grab a drink.