Lost and Found
Taylor Holloway
Contents
Also by Taylor Holloway
Thanks for reading!
Author’s Note
Get a FREE copy of ‘Elegant Fixation’!
Prologue - David
1. Casey
2. David
3. Casey
4. David
5. Casey
6. David
7. Casey
8. David
9. Casey
10. David
11. Casey
12. David
13. Casey
14. David
15. Casey
16. David
17. Casey
18. David
19. Casey
20. David
21. Casey
22. David
23. Casey
24. David
25. Casey
26. David
27. Casey
28. David
29. Casey
30. David
31. Casey
32. David
33. Casey
34. David
35. Casey
36. David
37. Casey
38. David
39. Casey
40. David
41. Casey
42. David
Epilogue - Casey
Exclusive Teaser: ‘Never Say Never’
Teaser: Charlie
Teaser: Eva
Teaser: Charlie
Teaser: Eva
Teaser: Charlie
Also by Taylor Holloway
Also by Taylor Holloway
Prequel to Scions of Sin
Never Say Never - Charlie
Scions of Sin
Bleeding Heart - Alexander
Kiss and Tell - Nathan
Down and Dirty - Nicholas
Lost and Found - David
Thanks for reading!
I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it! I specialize in creating rich, fascinating escapes, where the heroes and heroines bring out the very best and worst in each other, and where the endings are always satisfying. HEA all the way.
‘Like’ my Facebook page and ‘Follow’ me on Instagram!
Visit my home on the interweb:
http://www.taylorholloway.com
Author’s Note
All my novels are set in the same world and share settings, characters, and events. They may be read as totally standalone adventures, or chronologically in the order on my “Also by” page.
Get a FREE copy of ‘Elegant Fixation’!
Click here to sign up for my mailing list and receive a free copy of ‘Elegant Fixation’ delivered straight to your inbox or device!
Prologue - David
I hate monkeys. I hate their grasping, furry hands. I hate their fuzzy, too-human faces. I especially hate the fact that humans like to treat them like cute little babies and not dangerous, wild animals that fling poo and scream like banshees. The moment Victor—the assistant producer—suggested we bring monkeys on the show, I should have known I’d end up having a nervous breakdown on live, national television.
The day didn’t actually start with live monkeys or the professional and personal low point of my life. It started with espresso and my cousin Nicholas Durant.
Nicholas was running for Congress. He’d just announced his candidacy and was making the media rounds. Although he was running in Pennsylvania and my studio audience was Californian, our family has name recognition to spare, and we both thought it would be cool for him to appear on the first episode of my new talk show.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked him at the pre-show coffee buffet in the greenroom. “You can still back out if you want to. I don’t want to jinx your political career if my show bombs.”
He rolled his eyes at me. I could half-imagine what he was thinking. During Nicholas’ involuntary five-year absence from the real world when he was hiding from organized crime, I’d been busy. Restaurants, cookbooks, cooking shows, I’d even launched a brand of mixers. I was an honest-to-goodness celebrity chef. This show was my first foray out of the food realm, but it had seemed like a good idea. My meteoric rise had been so fast and thorough that I’d actually convinced the people around me that I had my shit together. Sometimes I even bought into it myself.
“What are you so nervous about?” Nicholas asked me. He seemed genuinely perplexed.
I hesitated before answering. It was true that this was hardly my first time on television. My cooking shows were wildly successful. But this was different; it was live. The answer spilled out from me in an inarticulate rush.
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know, man. This whole talk show thing has felt cursed from the start. We’ve been through like four different producers, three concepts, and I’ve fired two agents and a lawyer over the past year. I’m just worried it’s become an over-processed, commercialized monster.”
“I’m sure it’s just pre-show jitters,” he said soothingly, and then smirked and parroted my own words back at me. “You can still back out about having me on if you want to. I don’t want to jinx your show if my political career bombs.”
“You’re by far the best guest we’ve got this episode. Because we pushed the release back and it’s a live show, we booked a few bottom-of-the-barrel guests. I had to turn down a literal monkey.”
Nicholas raised his eyebrows and I nodded sadly in confirmation. I wasn’t joking.
“How would you even interview a monkey?” he asked. All I could do was shrug.
“That’s why I had to veto the damn monkeys,” I eventually grumbled. “I swear to god the production and studio people out here in LA treat me like I’m the trained monkey. They’ve been astounded that I have opinions since the very start. You’d think being executive producer of my own show would mean something….”
“Plus, you have that whole thing about monkeys,” he added. “Do you still have that thing about monkeys?”
I’m sure my face said it all. Ever since getting lost near the monkey cage during a kindergarten trip to the zoo, I’d been carrying around a bizarre phobia of primates. I don’t actually remember everything that transpired that day near the monkey enclosure, but it must have been sufficient to scar me for life.
We drank our coffee in silence for a moment before a production aid fetched me off to makeup.
“Break a leg!” Nicholas called after me. And that was the last pleasant interaction I had with anyone that day. As soon as I sat down in the makeup chair, Casey Morgan—the new producer—materialized in my line of sight.
It certainly wasn’t Casey’s looks that made me frown. She was exceptionally, phenomenally sexy. Frustratingly so. With long wavy blonde hair, long legs, perfect tits, a waspy waist, big chocolate brown eyes, and the sort of pore-less, smooth skin that I thought only existed because of Photoshop, Casey looked like she belonged on the camera and not behind. With her tattooed and edgy fashion vibe, she was LA hot, which is about fifty percent hotter than suburban hot. I had no idea how old she was, but she could easily pass for a college intern and not the ringleader of this entire outfit. The fact that I was intensely attracted to her only made me dislike her more.
For her part, Casey looked no more pleased to be speaking with me than I was to listen to her. “We need to discuss your monologue. The production company has some last-minute changes.”
I groaned and swiveled the chair away from her, but she just stared at me in the mirror until I met her reflected eyes.
“Listen,” she said with a shake of her shiny hair, “I’m only the messenger here. They wa
nt you to omit the material about the President and Brexit. It’s too risqué.”
“People love political jokes. And mine are very tame.”
“Not according to the most recent focus groups. They want you to stay one hundred percent politically neutral, especially with Nicholas Durant appearing later in the program. Here, they gave you some alternate material to consider.” She handed me a piece of paper where the first bullet read ‘Everyone loves food puns’. Ha-ha. Nope.
“Thanks.” I balled it up and threw it across the room where it hit a particularly unpleasant associate producer named Ray. He flipped me off disinterestedly. I’d lost the respect of the crew a while back. Casey had only been on set for a few days, but she’d somehow managed to get most of the mutineers back on track.
“You know what? Fine. Do whatever you want. No wonder you’ve been through so many producers. But throw one more thing at my crew and you’ll be doing your opening in the dark.”
“They aren’t your crew. You’ve been here three days. I’m the executive producer!”
“No, you’re the talent. You know the executive producer thing is a joke, right? It’s an honorary title and doesn’t entitle you to real creative control. You’re a producer of this show in the same way Elton John is a Knight.” She told me this like she was explaining to a child why eating ice cream for dinner was a bad choice. There was a mixture of pity and superiority in her voice that made me want to pull my hair out.
“Yeah, that’s what my attorneys tell me.”
“I hope you listen to them better than you listen to me.”
“Not really.” I smirked at her in the mirror and she shook her head at me.
“Talk to Victor before we go to air. I heard he got some notes from the production company on the guest lineup, but I haven’t had a chance to get them.” She looked exasperated. The woman had been running around all morning trying to put out fires. I didn’t even know half of what she was doing, but it looked important and difficult.
I decided to make it worse.
“What was that? I purposefully wasn’t listening.”
Determined to make her point, Casey picked up a tube of pink lipstick from the makeup artist’s tray and smeared a message on the mirror in front of me: TALK 2 VIC B4 AIR! I stared involuntarily at her ass as she bent forward and the silence when she pulled back at stared at me was honest, appreciative speechlessness.
I blinked.
“I also don’t know how to read,” I told her.
She huffed and stomped off.
“Adult illiteracy is a serious problem!” I yelled after her.
Of all the producers the production company had thrown at me, Casey was probably the smartest, most effective, and most empathetic. Unfortunately for her, I’d been in development hell for so long that I’d stopped seeing producers as people and started seeing them for what they really were—an obstacle between me and what I wanted to do.
Once the little green light in the studio went on and Out to Lunch was live there was nothing that Casey or anyone else could do to prevent me from doing whatever I wanted.
1
Casey
“Welcome to Out to Lunch!” David announced gleefully. He was greeted by thunderous applause, screaming women, and a multicolored balloon drop. He looked totally at home on set, appearing infuriatingly suave and debonair in a tightly fitted, fashionable navy suit. I hated how good he always looked, and the fact that he knew it. “This is our very first show, you are our very first audience, and I already know we’re going to have a great time together.”
He smiled rakishly at the women in the audience, who screamed again as if on cue. He looked like he was having a blast so far. The sarcastic, scowling asshole from a few hours ago was gone. David was commanding the attention of his audience and they were lapping it up like hungry kittens after cream. I’d never been more freaking relieved. Maybe he wasn’t just a pretty face. Maybe he could actually deliver.
“We’ve got three guests to grill—I mean greet and get to know—on today’s show. I’m not cooking up anything but trouble on this show. First, we have Eileen Pritchard, actress and celebrity exotic animal trainer. Second, reality star Keefer McGill. And last but not at all least, my very own cousin Nicholas Durant will be joining us. Spoiler alert: he’s running for senate. But first, we’ve got a very wild lady on set. Please welcome our very first guest ever, the actress, naturalist, conservation and animal trainer Eileen Pritchard.”
I exhaled heavily and exchanged a glance with the sound techs in the control booth. He was doing it. He was even making the corny food puns that the production company wanted.
“I’ll be goddamned,” mumbled Ravi, the lead mixer. He shook his head in disbelief. “He’s actually following directions. Casey you really are the asshole whisperer.”
Casey Morgan, professional asshole whisperer. I wouldn’t be putting that on my business card anytime soon. It sounded like a proctologist tag line.
When I first became a producer, back when I was naïve and idealistic, I thought it would be a glamorous job. Three years and four shows later I’d cut my teeth, lost my innocence, and developed the sort of calculated cynicism that made working in reality television halfway bearable. I thought I’d shed enough of my trusting, unsophisticated Southern-ness that I was ready for David Breyer.
The past three days had proved me wrong. I was the rescue producer, called in because no one else at the production company wanted the job and I needed to get away from my last position at Forgotten Extraterrestrials before I lost all faith in humanity. David Breyer might be difficult, I reasoned, and he might have driven off a number of more tenured producers, but could he possibly be worse than interviewing the narcissistic weirdos we paid to ‘believe’ that the pyramids were built by a spacefaring race of human-dinosaur hybrids?
David might not think that Nikola Tesla was being controlled by the space-ghost of Mozart, that Vladimir Putin is from Mars, or that Atlantis is located directly under Disney World, but he harbored an even more unbelievable conviction. He thought he would have total control over everything that happened on his talk show. Not only was that not what the legal documents said, it wasn’t how reality television production worked. This was live television, not the cushy world of cooking shows. Apparently, a born billionaire like David Breyer had some trouble with being told no by the production company. Boo-freakin’-hoo. Life is tough.
His iconoclasm was about to be tested in a big way as his first guest emerged from backstage. My stomach dropped when I saw her.
“Welcome to Out to Lunch, Eileen,” David said solicitously, escorting the woman to his interview desk, “Thank you so much for being our first ever guest!”
Eileen Pritchard was a tall, tan woman in her early thirties with slightly bugged-out blue eyes and a lot of mascara. She had long, dark hair pulled into a bun, and was wearing a fashionable grey dress and a monkey. An actual, live monkey was sitting on her shoulder. I hit a button on the sound system and spoke directly into Victor’s ear.
“Vic why is there a fucking monkey out there? I explicitly told you no monkeys! David told you no monkeys. David hates monkeys!” My voice was shrill and furious even to my own ears, and I could almost hear Victor wincing as he swore.
Victor’s reply was pained. “Shit. Don’t blame me. It was Kyle Anders at corporate. I just got the call this morning that he overrode David’s veto and told Pritchard to bring them.”
I prayed that David had followed my instructions and talked to Victor before we went to air, but by the look on David’s face, he hadn’t. His eyes focused on the monkey nervously, but he recovered quickly and smiled at Eileen.
“My pleasure,” Eileen was saying breathily, looking up at David with obvious nervousness and attraction. “I’m so happy to be meeting you. I’ve read all your cookbooks and I watch your cooking show all the time. I’m a huge fan.”
“Likewise,” David said pleasantly. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which rema
ined riveted on the diaper-wearing monkey. “I absolutely adored your last project. Who would have thought a children’s YouTube show about clowns could be so tragic? And now I understand you have taken up animal training as a method acting technique before your next project. Tell me, who do you have here with you?”
Eileen grinned broadly and reached up to stroke the monkey’s furry little head. The monkey chirped in delighted response. David flinched.
“This here is Bono,” she said with a bright white smile. She was a Hollywood loose cannon with a penchant for bizarre method acting and rivaling Lady Gaga and Bjork for odd fashion choices. “Bono is a twelve-year-old capuchin monkey from Argentina. Would you like to shake hands with him?”
David scowled, and I stabbed at the control board again to get out of Victor’s ear and into David’s.
“Do it. Shake hands with the monkey,” I ordered into his earpiece. “Shake his goddamn monkey paw and get through the segment.”
“Of course, I would,” David said pleasantly. He smiled warmly as if the moment of disgust hadn’t happened and extended a finger to the monkey who shook it with both, furry hands. “Bono, you’re quite a gentleman,” David said to the monkey with a tight-lipped smile.
Lost and Found (Scions of Sin Book 4) Page 1
