Unforgettable: Book Three (A Hollywood Love Story #3)(71)

“Where are you from?” he asked me, after swallowing a biteful.

A safe enough question. “Boise.”

“Ah, a Midwesterner. I should have known. What brought you to California?”

I cut into my omelet. “FYI, Idaho is not in the Midwest. And the answer to your question is I needed to get out of my shell. And USC has one of the best film and television schools in the country. I won a merit scholarship.”

“Why did you want to get into television?”

“Because I’ve always loved TV. It was my means of escape. I lived a very sheltered life; my overprotective parents homeschooled me.”

Blake took another bite of his eggs. “I’ve never understood people who homeschool their kids.”

“My parents had me late in life. After believing they could never have kids, I was a miracle baby. They wanted to keep me insulated from the world—out of harm’s way.”

“So, no peril or heartbreak for Calamity Jen.”

With a nervous little smile, I moved my omelet around my plate with my fork. “What about you? Where’d you go to school?”

“UCLA.”

“What did you major in?”

He licked his lips. “Anatomy.”

My eyes rounded. “You wanted to be a doctor?”

“No. I wanted to f*ck.”

I flushed with unexpected laughter.

“I was a terrible student, but my female professors liked me and gave me passing grades.”

“Did you screw a few?” I couldn’t believe I was asking my boss such an audacious question.

He grinned wickedly. “I screwed them all.”

My eyes widened, but why should I be surprised? This guy was born a player. He was pure walking sex.

“How come you and your father have different last names?”

“During college, I did some modeling. My agent thought Blake Burns would sell a lot more products than Blake Bernstein. The name stuck.”

My eyes widened again. “You were a male model?”

He nodded sheepishly. “Yeah. My roommate made me try out for one of those I-want-to-be America’s Next Top Model reality series. I did it just to piss off my father because the show was another network. Well, to make a long story short, I won.”

“Wow! Did you like modeling?”

“Just the f*cking supermodels part.”

A nervous little laugh slipped out of my mouth. He was definitely into supermodels. I took a sip of my coffee and probed further.

“So, how did you end up working for your father?”

“I got bored with the modeling pretty quickly. And the acting. But what I discovered was that I liked being behind the camera more than in front of it. And I saw that sex sold. More men than women watched that top model show. It gave me an idea. Why not create a television network that sold sex? Give the Playboy Channel a run for its money.”

“And—”

“So, I pitched the idea to my old man. SIN-TV. The Sex International Network. And he went for it.”

What a great story. Okay, maybe I didn’t agree with all his programming choices, but he was a visionary. I had to admire him.

“What’s it like working for your father?” Saul Bernstein struck me as a warm but very demanding man.

“Better than I thought. It’s made us closer. He’s grooming me to one day run the entire company.”

“Interesting.” So, one day, my boss Blake Burns would be the head of Conquest Broadcasting. I was much more impressed than I let on. Of course, some gorgeous supermodel would be by his side while he ruled the media world. I took another sip of my coffee and inwardly sighed.

We shared a stretch of silence and finished our breakfast. My eyes soaked in the undulating roll of the waves and the surfers who were riding them as well as the close-by seagulls searching for a few breadcrumbs. But mostly, I couldn’t stop staring at Blake as he ate. His sapphire-blue eyes glinted in the sunlight, and his damp dark hair shimmered like satin. Every sculpted muscle was a work of art. He was beautiful. He caught my eyes on him. Setting down his fork, he reached across the table and brushed away a tendril of hair that had fallen onto my face from the ocean breeze. “So, when are you and your fiancé getting married?”

His out-of-the-blue question took me by surprise. I swallowed hard. “We haven’t set a date yet. Maybe in the summer.”


“Are you in love with him?”

I scrunched up my face, but inside my heart rattled. “What kind of question is that? Of course, I’m in love with him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I care about him. I put his needs before mine.”

Blake gazed at me intensely, his eyes like lasers. “And he does the same for you?”

My mouth parted, but words stayed trapped in my throat. The truth: it was mostly about Bradley. His career, his interests, his desires. I was always giving into his ways—eating at vegan restaurants that made me want to puke, attending dental conventions that made me want to fall asleep, and spending the night at his place with its dreary brown wood furniture I wanted to burn. Damn it. I even f*cked him the way he liked it. Always the same old boring way. Missionary.

“Bradley loves me.” My tone was sharp and defensive.

“Is he good in bed?” His deep blue eyes held me fierce. He was unnerving me.