I’ve got a brand new book coming in two days, and I can’t WAIT for everyone to read it!
This is my first-ever co-write, and I’m over the moon with how well it turned out! It’s my friend Sadie’s first-ever book, period, so it’s double exciting 🙂
Be sure to grab the whole thing when it comes out Wednesday, but until then, enjoy!
(By the way – there’s also a cover reveal contest on my Facebook page, where you could win a $25 gift card!)
UPDATE: Action is LIVE! Grab it now!
CHAPTER ONE
Emma
The sun hasn’t risen yet, my phone battery is dead, and I think I’m going to be fired. Can you get fired from a job before you even start? I guess I’m going to find out.
I really tried this morning. I woke up at an awful time that started with a “4,” and I got myself showered, dressed, and into my car before the sun even peeked over the hills.
Turns out my phone didn’t charge overnight. It’s pretty old.
I’m not going to let that stop me, I tell myself, trying to stay positive. I thought about this job so much yesterday that I memorized the route, so who needs a phone anyway?
Since this is Southern California, I have to take not one, not two, but six different freeways to get there, so I knew I would need to leave myself plenty of time. That’s why I left before dawn, driving through the traffic by memory, no GPS necessary.
I thought I planned for every contingency. But I didn’t plan for my freeway on-ramp to blink out of existence in the night.
The street cones reflect the streetlights as I drive towards it. Behind the orange tape and traffic cones, the demolition equipment hovers over a pile of rubble. The ramp I take all the time, the ramp I need, is gone. As in, not there.
What? When did they schedule that? When did they do that?
I take a deep breath as I drive past it.
That’s okay, I can handle this.
I just need to drive on to the next on-ramp. I can’t let this stop me, because, if I’m being honest, I really need this job.
I first learned about it last week. I was paying my credit card bill with my other credit card when my friend Jen called me and suggested that I apply. I almost cried. I said yes before she even got the words out.
“Are you sure?” Jen had asked. “It’s not a very good job. You wouldn’t even be the photographer, you’d just be the camera technician.”
“I’m sure,” I’d said.
I’ve been trying to make a living as a photographer for the last year, since I graduated college, and it’s going… not the way I originally hoped. I got to do some family cards around the holidays. And a few months back Jen hired me to take business portrait shots of the folks at her office.
I’m not sure what she does, exactly. Whenever she tries to explain it to me it sounds like nonsense words. Something with “branding.”
What I really want to do is nature photography. But that pays even less.
So I took today’s job, even though it’s only a camera tech position. And even though it’s in Bel Air, and the cost of gas will probably eat up almost half my pay. And even though Jen told me I had to be there at seven in the morning.
I’ll repeat that: seven in the morning.
“Why so early?” I had asked Jen.
“Some Hollywood asshole, some kind of big shot movie producer. He wants to come, see our star photographer.”
I’d just gotten a bill for my car’s registration too, so I took the job.
But aside from desperation, lack of options, and an even more dire lack of funds, mostly I took the job because apparently the photographer at this session has a million followers, a makeup line, a manager, and — for some reason that I’m sure is valid but that I don’t understand — a second manager.
That makes the photographer the rarest kind of photographer: a very rich one.
I want to find out how.
But in order to do that, I have to get there, and that’s proving more difficult than I anticipated. I crawl along the roads, already clogged with traffic, until I get to the next freeway on-ramp. I’m already halfway up the ramp before I see the flashing lights of a police car ahead.
What is it now?
There’s a cop standing in the lane ahead and he’s waving me onto the left branch of the ramp, the one that leads to the southbound lanes.
“That’s the wrong way!” I shout at him through the glass of my car’s window.
He just keeps waving. I look behind me, but I can’t back off the ramp, there are too many cars behind me.
Dammit.
Nothing to do but go where I’m being waved, up and over and back around, until it spits me out on the freeway going in the exact wrong direction.
Dammit!
And, of course, there’s even more traffic going in this direction.
I look at the clock, my palms getting sweaty on the steering wheel. I left my house thirty minutes ago, and I’m even farther away than when I began.
If I’m fired from a job I haven’t even started yet, am I really fired at all?
Is there another word for that?
Un-hired?
We crawl along until I can get off the freeway, and then I take surface roads, avoiding the cursed on-ramps, making up my own route on the fly. I use every trick I’ve learned: cutting through back roads. Avoiding the slow lights. I even drive through a gas station or two to save time, praying the entire way that I don’t get pulled over for it.
My heart is pounding. Every muscle in my body is tense. I feel like a NASCAR driver, even though I’m just trying to get to a job on time.
Finally, I start climbing the green and winding roads of Bel Air, until I reach the address I memorized. I look at the clock.
6:55.
I made it. I can’t believe it. Maybe I won’t be un-hired after all, and a wave of relief washes over me even as perspiration slides down my backbone.
I stop at the gate of a guard house. Not only is this place in Bel Air, it’s got its own gate and security. How fancy is this? I look down at my clothes, my old shorts and t-shirt.
Great clothes, very practical for working outdoors. But here?
I feel like an intruder. They’re probably going to take one look at me and kick me right out.
I pull up to the guard house and wind down my window to talk to the guard.
“I’m here to see, uh, Kitty?”
The guard frowns at me.
“Who?”
“Kitty?”
My heart does a quick somersault that I’ve got the wrong place. I think that’s the name of the celebrity photographer, but saying it out loud to the guy in the guard shack, I’m suddenly less sure. Is Kitty even a name that people go by?
“That’s what she goes by online. I’m not sure what her real name is,” I tell him, trying to give him a charming smile.
He disappears back into the guardhouse. Minutes tick by, and my insides feel like someone’s taken an eggbeater to them.
Finally, he reappears.
“What did you say her name was again?”
“Kitty.”
That can’t possibly be her real name. Did you even ask what her real name is?
He disappears again.
Nothing happens.
I crane my head and see him tapping at a keyboard, talking to someone on the phone. Confused. Finally, he sticks his head out once more.
“You said your name is Kitty?”
I keep my face as neutral as I can. My dashboard clock reads 7:01, making me one minute late, and I can’t even get past security.
“No, my name is Emma,” I say, taking a breath. “I’m here to see Kitty.”
“Oh.”
He pulls himself inside his hut, and at last the metal gate before me slides open. I rush through before the guard can change his mind, driving as quickly as I can up the curvy hillside road until I reach the address Jen gave me.
It’s huge.
A wardrobe truck is opened up and racks of clothes are spread out. Lighting umbrellas flank the lawn. There’s Jen, standing in the middle of the madness.
And over it all looms an enormous house that looks like something from a science fiction movie, all white stone and reflective glass. It’s so big that I can hardly believe it’s a house and not a hotel, or courthouse, or something.
Seeing the mansion, and the crew setting up on the lawn, I start to feel self-conscious. I was in such a hurry to leave this morning, I didn’t notice until right now that I’m wearing an old shirt that lost its shape and stretch years ago. But no time to dwell on that. I grab my camera bag and hop out of the car.
I’ve no sooner closed the door and taken my first step onto the lawn when I’m stopped in my tracks by a pair of shocking gray eyes. They’re almost clear, like looking to the bottom of a cool pool on a hot summer’s day, and without warning I’m drowning in them.
I stand there, blinking, mouth slightly open for far longer than I should.
Finally, the owner of the eyes clears his throat slightly, and I snap out of it.
He’s tall, standing with his hands in the pockets of his impeccably tailored suit as if he finds nothing more relaxing than standing amidst a pile of half-assembled lighting rigs and shade tents at seven in the morning.
Along with the eyes, he has powerful cheekbones, a hell of a jaw, muscles that are hard and obvious even through his suit jacket and he’s looking right at me.
I feel like all words have left my brain, and all I’ve got left are pictures. Namely, pictures of what this steel-eyed Viking might look like out of that suit, maybe bending over me as he whispers dirty nothings in my ear…
I shake my head, telling myself to snap out of it. I don’t usually have explicit fantasies about strangers, so it must be the stress and the early morning.
Too late, I realize that I’m standing still, speechless, staring at him, and he’s staring back.
“Well,” a high-pitched voice trills out behind me, “if we’re not shooting, I guess I don’t need to be here, do I?”
A waif in a nearly see-through dress marches past me, climbs up the lawn and through the door of the big house. I turn my head to watch her, not quite sure what’s going, who she is, or why she’s so pissed.
I snap back to reality and look around. The crew is standing around.
The gray-eyed man in the suit is gone, and despite my panic at everything else, there’s a flutter of disappointment in my chest.
Everyone looks pissed as I venture up the lawn, trying to find someone who can tell me what to do.
“You’re late,” mutters the lighting guy as he fiddles with a white umbrella.
“Sorry,” I say, pushing through to Jen.
I grab her and pull her aside.
“I’m here. What’s going on?”
“Kitty got frustrated that you weren’t here at seven and threw a fit,” Jen says.
My heart freezes in my chest, even as I pull out my phone and glance at the time.
It’s 7:02. Come on.
Jen doesn’t say anything else, but she’s annoyed with me.
The sun is barely up, and I’m already pissing off this internet star I haven’t even met yet.
I force a smile, because I need this job. I already spent the gas money on it, and that was money I don’t have.
“That’s okay. I’ll explain what happened. Where is she?” I ask, trying to sound as cheerful as I can.
Jen points to the driveway. A bright red SUV bounces over the curb and into the street.
In the driver seat sits Kitty, glaring at us out the window as she whips the car around the narrow curve, down the hill, and out of sight.
Damn.