Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(8)

I went to college for child development and took on a teaching position for about five minutes before I was offered a ton of money to watch Jude and Karen McVino’s twin toddlers while they shot a movie in Austin.

When they went back to Hollywood I went with them. I said good-bye to my parents. They got stationed in Argentina while I was gone and after a few phone calls it got too easy to stop talking to them. Then it got hard to pick up the phone.

I was fine. I felt like I had a new family because those kids set a light off in my soul.

Not every child I’ve watched did that. I’ve loved them all, even the most rotten and entitled kids in town. But a few were exceptional.



“Brad Sinclair wants to meet with you,” Laura said on a call the day after the Griffith Park hike. Blakely and I were on the balcony of her cheap Los Feliz rental. She had a beer and a magazine. I had a book and a bottle of water.

“He’s too famous.”

“I told him you’d say that.”

“Do you have anything coming up? Isn’t Ken Braque’s wife pregnant?”

“Three months. You might want to meet with Brad for a consultation. The poor guy’s confused as hell and his parents are going back to Arkansas soon.”

“Tell him how to parent? That never goes well.”

“Just go meet him,” Laura said. “As a favor to me. It’ll look good for the agency.”

“For you,” I said. We said our good-byes and hung up.

Blakely put her foot on the railing. Her big toe poked out of her sock and the brand of beer she was drinking was a dollar a can. When I opened the screen door she held the magazine up.

“What do you think of her nose?”

I looked at the picture of Frida Julian. “Looks like a nose.”

“It used to be huge. I was in acting school with her. Total honker. And she was stunning, even with that thing on her face.”

“You have a nice nose.” I sat on the chair next to her.

“Yeah. But if it were bigger that would be all people would see. I’d be unrecognizable.”

I didn’t feed further into her fantasy. I had to figure out if I wanted to step into Brad Sinclair’s life.

“Maybe she was stunning because of it.” Blakely considered this more to herself than me. I wasn’t even in the room anymore. She needed something to do besides worry and wonder. If she could just get a job, she’d be all right.

I decided to see Sinclair. At the very least, maybe I could help out Blakely.





CHAPTER 5


CARA


The house was ginormous. The kind of house you got just because you could. Everything about this stank to high heaven. Everything about Brad Sinclair was wrong. From his travel schedule, to the way he partied, to the number of women he reportedly bedded weekly.

A guy in a white shirt and black jacket opened the car door. Probably a driver on staff. That was a good sign. But as signs went, the yellow Maserati with the scratched bumper parked by the garage wasn’t as good.

“Thank you,” I said, handing him my keys. I’d been briefed on how well-staffed Brad Sinclair was. So the house valet didn’t surprise me. The guard at the gate didn’t surprise me. The catering truck behind the house was likely some celebrity chef who kept the fridge and pantries stocked when the celebrity in question was home.

Which wasn’t as often as people thought. I’d traveled with the McVinos, and the life they led was unfriendly to keeping a house, a family, or a routine. Unless they took their entire staff with them, a working actor or director spent weeks at a time eating in hotels in the middle of the night after a fifteen-hour day. They picked what they could off craft services tables, and if the film didn’t have a huge budget, the only options on the table were fat, sugar, and salt.

Uncomfortable costumes, exposure to weather, long hours, tons of waiting.

I’d need a staff when I was home too.

The front door opened. I expected a housekeeper or butler, but it was the actor himself.

I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful he was; I’d just chosen not to think about it.

“Ma’am,” he said. Southern boy. Parents together. Christian elementary. Public secondary. Two years at USC Drama. Dates his costars for a month after the wrap party, then moves on. Poring through the trades and making calls, I’d discovered he’d spend at least eight of the next twelve months overseas doing action movies, but most had postproduction in town.

“Mr. Sinclair,” I said, holding my hand out. “Nice to see you outside a bathroom.”

He shook my hand.

I’d shaken plenty of famous hands attached to gorgeous men, but my imagination was sparked by the way his fingers slid against mine to grasp them and the way our palms pressed together. My mind clouded over with ripped sheets, hard muscles, and soft skin.

“Pleasure’s mine,” he said and my brain skipped like a trip on a cracked sidewalk over the word pleasure.

He didn’t give me the oversincere hand-over-clasp to show me how damn happy he was to see me, but there was something intimate about that half a second.

Just a consultation.

I followed him into the house. Dora Donovan had designed it. Looked like her with her faux-midcentury white couch and shag rug. That wasn’t going to work with playdates unless he wanted to keep an upholsterer on staff.