Hollywood Dirt (Hollywood Dirt, #1)(3)

I would not be my mother. I wanted, in some way, to live my life.





CHAPTER 3


“In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk.”

~ Rita Rudner

Cole Masten walked slowly down the length of the car, an ice-blue Ferrari, his sunglasses tilted off his face enough to hide his features but give him uninterrupted sight.

“It’s a beautiful car,” the salesman before him twittered, making an unnecessary hand gesture that encompassed the car in one pretentious gesture.

Of course it was. For three hundred thousand dollars, it should be. He tilted a head at the suit who stood to the left of the car, giving him a quick nod. Justin, his assistant, stepped forward. “He’ll take it. I can handle the paperwork and payment. If we can just give Mr. Masten the keys…?”

Cole caught the keychain mid-air and slid behind the wheel, the dealership staff scurrying to unlock the large glass doors that made up the right side of the building. Through the glass, along the street, stood the crowds of people. Of women. Of worship. He clenched his jaw and tapped an impatient beat on the gearshift, waiting. The crowd undulated, hands waving, bodies jumping, a living, breathing thing, one that could love as easily as it could hate. When the glass parted, Cole revved the engine and slowly pulled forward, his glasses back in place, nodding to the crowd and smiling that trademark smile, the one he’d perfected a decade earlier.

Smiled.

Waved.

Nodded at one girl in the front who collapsed against the arms of her friends.

Let the flashes pop. The occasion documented, his foot gentle on the gas until he completed the turn onto the asphalt and could floor it.

He’d spent twelve years in this business—should be used to it. Should be appreciative of it. The lights, the attention… it meant that he was still hot, that his publicists and agents were still doing their job. That the ever-present beast was getting fed and wanting more. That he had a little more time before he was forgotten. That didn’t mean he liked it. The invasion. The act.

He took his aggression out on the car, taking the curves of the Hollywood Hills faster than necessary, the Italian car handling the challenge, the back end only skidding a second before gripping the asphalt and tearing off. By the time he came to a stop at the gates of his compound, his heart was beating hard, his mouth stretched in a wide grin. This is what he needed. The risk. The rush. The danger. She’d like it, too. They were cut from the same cloth; one of the things that made them work. He left the car idling in front of the house, and jogged up the steps, his hands in his pockets, a trio of housekeepers passing him, their polite murmurs following up the stairs.

Three years. He’d lived here three years and was still treated like an object. By his staff, by his team. By, at times, his wife. He stepped into the house and saw her, through the back window, at the pool.

A photo shoot. He groaned, wanting some alone time with her, to give her the car, a moment without assistants and cameras, a moment that wasn’t going to happen right now. She stood on a rock he had never seen, one brought into their pool area, her spectacular body on full display under the lights, the suit sheer enough that her nipples were visible, their dark buds causing his eyes to sharpen, to take in every photographer present. All men, one of them laughing into her ear as he spread oil across her shoulders. Her eyes met his across the distance, too far for him to read them, the only indication was her chin coming up slightly, and he raised a hand, a smile crossing her face.

Five weeks together—that was all they had. Then she would be headed to Africa, and he would head to New York. The story of their marriage. Bits of time stolen between lives apart.

Maybe he’d drive some more. Burn off some steam. Because right now, for whatever reason, he was angry. Maybe it was the fact that, after half a year apart, he’d come home to find his wife on display. When all he’d wanted, all he’d been waiting for, was to throw her against the wall and thrust out every latent need and desire he’d had for the last six months. Remind himself of how she tasted. How she moaned. How he could make her moan. Without others around. In an empty house, with no one to watch him reunite. He flung open the front door and jogged back down the steps toward her new car.





CHAPTER 4


Someone knocked on our door. I lifted my head from my book and stared at the front door, its clean white surface giving no hint of the mystery behind it. A knock.

The sound occurred again, causing me to sit up, setting Odd Thomas aside, my curiosity growing. In a town as small as Quincy, one where we didn’t lock our doors, a town where there were no strangers, there were two types of visitors:

1. The type of which is considered family, a close friend who could waltz into a house without introduction. I didn’t have any of those anymore.

2. The type of which an introductory, I’m-calling-to-ask-if-I-can-stop-in was required. There were no pop-ins, no swing-bys, no unknown knocks on doors. That was rude. Unacceptable.

I’d been well trained in the social etiquette; we all had. There were rules in the South for a reason—we didn’t spend the last two hundred years cultivating our society for nothing. I untangled my way from my blanket and moved to the door, pushing aside the lace curtain and staring into the face of a stranger. A smiling, waving energetically, as if he isn’t popping by unannounced, stranger. Fairly handsome, actually. Perfect skin, white teeth, a brilliant blue polo tight enough on his upper body to show some gym-grown masculinity. I opened the door.