by Mimi Strong
Starlight, Peaches Monroe #2
(Sequel to Stardust, Peaches Monroe #1)
A NOVEL
© 2013 Mimi Strong
Genre: Contemporary Romance / Erotic Romantic Comedy
Length: Full-length novel of 88,000 words.
Due to sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 17.
CHAPTER 1
My heart got slammed pretty hard, but it wasn’t broken. When you've got as much sass as me, you don’t crumble easily.
However, nothing knocks you over quite like having a complete stranger notice your pain. For me, it was the photographer’s assistant, a very nice, very gay young man named Mitchell.
(Not Mitch. Mitchell.)
I was getting ready to mainline three espresso shots when Not-Mitch Mitchell came up to me, tipped his immaculately-groomed face to the side, and said, “Two things: may I call you Peaches, and may I offer you a hug?”
I held him back with a raised palm. “Don’t you dare be nice to me. I am just barely hanging on by a thread.”
We were alone in the swanky kitchen at the photography studio. Mitchell, compact and blond with an angelic face that made his age difficult to guess, looked around furtively, then whispered, “Did you have a fight with your boyfriend? With Dalton Deangelo? We’ve never met, but of course I love him to pieces. That face. Those green eyes.” He fanned himself with one hand. “But if you want me to, I’ll start hating him immediately.”
I wrapped the pristine white terry cloth robe tighter around myself, keenly aware that the bits of fabric I was modeling that day were underwear and not the parts of a swimsuit. I’d said to my father it was basically the same thing—underwear, bikini, whatever. But it was NOT basically the same thing.
Just like how dating someone because you like them is NOT basically the same thing as dating them as research for an acting role.
I’d been up past four o’clock that morning wrestling with the horrifying realization that Dalton Deangelo, the super-hot actor you know and love as vampire Drake Cheshire, had been dating me the last two weeks as research.
He’d been in my hometown shooting an indie movie in which his good-looking, successful character dates a chubby girl. I happen to be a chubby girl (just one of my many awesome attributes), so you can see how I made that leap of logic.
I tossed back three tiny cups of espresso and tightened my robe again.
Mitchell swatted my hand. “Not too tight, or you’ll give yourself red wrinkle lines on your skin.”
“So? Won’t they just airbrush that out?”
Mitchell laughed. “My boss doesn’t allow airbrushing of his photos.”
“No airbrushing?”
He gave me a sympathetic look. “The lighting is very bright.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of!”
Another sympathetic look. “Do you want that hug now? It will help. I give excellent hugs.”
“Fine, but stop being so damn nice to me. Treat me bad. I think a little abuse brings out my strength.”
“I can be butch,” he said, frowning.
“You’re wearing a lavender turtleneck and what smells like Chanel No. 5.”
He frowned and joked, “Shut up. I’m going to be all forceful and hug you now and you’re going to like it.”
Mitchell was already blushing with embarrassment as he came in to give me a hug, so I squished my boobs against him harder, then murmured in his ear, “Pull my hair.”
Bless his heart, he reached up and gingerly gave my teased-out blond locks a tug.
“You animal!” I howled, laughing.
He stepped back from the embrace, grinning. “My hugs are good, right?”
I kept laughing, and then I remembered the words I’d read in Dalton’s movie script the night before. His character told a friend that maybe fucking a fat girl wasn’t so bad after all. That if he closed his eyes, there was so much of her, it was like having a threesome.
And then I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was sniffing back tears, barely hanging on, and poor Mitchell scurried around apologizing and handing me tissues.
Thanks to Mitchell, I got through the morning’s photo shoot. The photographer seemed both disgusted and fascinated by me, if that makes sense.
He’d say things like, “Interesting,” as he looked at one of my curves or creases, and I didn’t want to know what he meant. I had two days of photographs, and I just had to get through it, one minute at a time, the same way you get over heartbreak.
Whenever I got flustered, mixing up my right arm with my left arm and nearly knocking over lights instead of looking fetching, Mitchell caught my eye.
“Don’t make me pull your hair,” he’d whisper in his trying-to-be-butch voice.
I wanted to fold him up and take him back home to Beaverdale in my luggage.
I told him about my souvenir plans when we took a lunch break, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Your town is called Beaverdale? Oh, no. That’s all wrong. In case you haven’t guessed by the summer-weight cashmere mock-turtleneck, I’m not into beaver.”
We were standing under the awning of a food truck, eating salad wraps with rice noodles, prawns, and peanut sauce. The day was overcast just enough that Washington didn’t seem so far away from LA.
“Oh, no,” Mitchell moaned, staring past me.
I turned and followed his gaze.
“Hold me back before I embarrass myself,” I muttered under my breath.
The shirtless man approaching us was all meat, no filler. His six-pack was so defined, he made Dalton Deangelo look like the Before picture in a gym advertisement. Oh, and he had a face of some sort, too. Not that I saw it for the first minute or so when he came up to us and greeted Mitchell by name.
They talked while I jammed the noodle wrap into my mouth to keep myself from saying something ridiculous. I don’t think of myself as being a very fun or outgoing person, but my mouth thinks it’s fun. My mouth says a lot of things, not necessarily endorsed by me or my brain.
“I’m Keith,” he said, offering me his hand. “We’ll be shooting together this afternoon.”
I shook his hand gingerly. “Nope. You couldn’t be more wrong.”
He laughed. “You’re Peaches Monroe, right? Yes, I assure you. We are shooting together this afternoon.”
I turned to Mitchell. “It’s true,” he said, offering me another of his sympathetic looks.
Keith ordered a salad wrap and leaned back against the food truck, his shirtless torso on display. My gaze drifted up to his face. I’d already had a gander at everything around, above, and below his gray jogging shorts, but my eyes had saved the best for last. His face had a sexy Clark Kent vibe, with a square jaw, smirking lips, and a swirl of curly dark hair falling down over his forehead. The only flaw keeping him from being SuperMan’s alter ego was that his eyes were a golden brown, not blue. He wore nerdy black-framed glasses, which, combined with his bare chest, caused a few circuits in my brain to over-fire and burn out. The result was a shocking five seconds of silence before my mouth got moving again.
“Nice glasses,” I said. “Are you a part-time model and a part-time accountant? Do you get changed in a phone booth?”
Keith leaned back against the food truck, his abdominal muscles gleaming like six tiny little glazed hams. “Sure. Give me your number, and I’ll do your taxes.” He took a bite of his wrap and chewed slowly. “What are you doing after the shoot?”
“Hands off, Mr. Greedyfingers,” Mitchell said with sharp authority. “She’s Dalton Deangelo’s girlfriend, and
if anything of yours touches her inappropriately this afternoon, I’ll use my taser on the offending appendage.”
Keith held his hands up, chuckling. “Easy, Mitch.”
“Mitchell.”
Keith turned to me, his dazzling, rich mahogany brown eyes gently removing the zip-up hoodie I was wearing over my fancy-pants bra.
“So,” he said. “This your first shoot working with another model. Don’t be scared. I’m big and strong. Find something you like and grab on.”
Mitchell rolled his eyes. “Peaches, just ignore him. He’s disgusting. They’re all disgusting.”
My eyes wandered over to Keith’s nipples and skipped around those pink circles like they were merry-go-rounds at the Model Keith Amusement Park. My brain dug up something I’d read somewhere about male models: they ice the nipples during the photo shoot, so they aren’t puffy. Keith’s nips looked great exactly how they were.
“Come on,” Mitchell said, tugging my hand.
I wanted to stay and gaze at the scenery, but Mitchell led us back to the crosswalk to return to the photo studio.
Once we’d left the cute model boy behind, I asked, “What makes you say that cute guy is disgusting?”
“I don’t like how they flirt with the girl models. But if I’m being perfectly honest, it works. He’s going to be a big star soon.”
“He’s kind of a big deal?”
“Keith Raven? Oh, I guess you wouldn’t have heard of him, since you’re new to the business.” We stood for a few minutes in silence, waiting for the light to change and stop the endless flow of LA cars. “Keith Raven is up and coming. Today’s shoot can make or break a modeling career, for both of you.”
“No pressure,” I said with a snort.
“He likes you.”
“Sure, he does,” I said sarcastically. “All the hottest guys just can’t get enough of my peaches. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”
“Sweetie.” Mitchell reached out to grab my hand in his to give it a squeeze. “You’ve got something people want. You have a spark. You know who you are. People will always be attracted to that.”
“Plus there’s my awesome personality.”
“Mmm.” He looked down at the pavement, then we both cracked up laughing.
“Flirt with Keith Raven,” Mitchell said. “Let him think he’s getting somewhere with you. The magic will come out on the film. Don’t worry, because you’re in a safe space. I won’t let things get too far on the set.”
“You mean suck in my gut, take all the complicated posing directions, and grope some hot male model, all at the same time?”
“It’s like you’ve done this before!”
We got back into the studio, where they touched up my hair and makeup again. They actually put makeup on way more than my face and neck. The makeup girl went through a full tube. My pale Washington skin had never looked better.*
*There was one time I’d gotten into self-tanning products, but the change had been too transfixing. I was working in a clothing store at the time, and the manager pulled me aside to have an intervention about the amount of time I was spending admiring myself in the shop’s many mirrors. I was so humiliated, I never self-tanned again.
Because my skin looked so radiant once more, I thought to myself, Hey, maybe this underwear photo shoot with flirty Keith Raven won’t be so bad.
Never before has someone tempted fate so flagrantly.
My round bits got shoveled/nestled into a sky-blue bra and panties set, and I was under the hot lights on set once again. I think I know why movie stars are called stars. The constant bright lights are so intense, the rays burrow their way into your skin and make you glow in the dark.
Mitchell put on the music, which wasn’t so much music as it was a curious soundscape, from wind chimes to people whispering, plus what sounded like hair being cut—that shirr-shirr sound. The sounds rolled up into my brain and set off little starbursts of pleasure, making me feel calm and relaxed for the shots.
The photographer, a scrawny, bearded fellow who had a weird name I can neither pronounce nor spell, said, “Like this, yes. Just like this. Yes. Gaze down. Gently up. Softness. Softness. Gaze up. Softness. Stargaze. Like this, yes.”
It had taken me all morning to figure out when he said “Like this” he didn’t mean for me to stop and stare dumbly at him for an example of what to do. What he meant was “Like that,” and someone needed to correct his grammar, but he was the professional and I was the amateur, so I didn’t say shit. Being in LA had shushed me, in a way.
Keith walked onto the set wearing nothing but a shiny pair of sky-blue pocket briefs, slung extremely low—so low I could see curly-yet-trimmed pubes popping out.
He gave me a toss of his hair as greeting and said, “Hey Peaches, how do you like these apples?” He twirled around to reveal round, tanned butt cleavage. Then he made his butt cleavage dance with a series of muscle pulses.
Mitchell leaped into action, jumping between us with a towel held up to cover the dancing butt cleavage.
“Too late,” I said, giggling. “That image will never scrub out of my brain.”
The photographer smiled for the first time that day, and the half-dozen other people on the set also perked up. Keith brought an earthy, feel-good energy with him. Even the air had a zing to it, like a summer night right before lightning strikes.
Keith adjusted the only things he could, his black-rimmed accountant glasses and his underwear, pulling them up to the nearly-decent level, and we got started.
“Just relax,” he murmured to me as he moved in closer.
“I’m totally relaxed.”
He looked down, his gaze licking all over my bare skin like a giant tongue. “Then why are your knuckles white?”
I unclenched my hands and shook them out. “Just practicing my grip for when I grab onto you. You did invite me to grab onto whatever I like, right?”
He raised his dark eyebrows high over the plastic-framed glasses that made him look nerdy-cute. “Be my guest.”
I reached up. I was going to pretend to tweak his nipple between my bent fingers, but he leaned in at the last second, and I grabbed the pink button of flesh.
He closed his eyes and grinned.
As the flash bulbs pulsed with bursts of light, I stood there with his nipple pinched between my fingers.
“Yes,” the photographer said. “Just like this. Sensual. Demure. So cheeky.”
Keith leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Chin up. Keep going. Now wrap your right arm around my back. No, not the left, the right. The left one blocks our bodies to the camera. Now look up at me like you want to kiss me.”
At regular volume, I said, “I’m not an actress.”
“All beautiful women are actresses,” he said smoothly. “And there are few as beautiful as you.”
I released the nipple, draped my right arm around his hot, nearly-naked body, and gazed up at him. He’d tricked me with flattery, because now I did actually want to kiss him for being so sweet.
The photographer called for some adjustments to the lighting, but instructed us to keep going, so we did.
I gazed up longingly at Keith, drinking in his beautiful face. Mitchell swooped in and took the nerdy glasses off Keith’s nose, and suddenly he looked so dangerous. I trembled. Just one knee. Just one tremble. But Keith noticed.
He knelt down and swept his fingertips behind my knee. I lifted my leg reflexively, and Keith placed the sole of my foot on top of his thigh. I gulped, the sound of my hard swallow audible over the sibilant soundscape. He brushed his lips across the tip of my knee, and he gazed at Miss Kitty like he was heading there next, diving in lips first.
“Eep!” I exclaimed, which made me feel ever-so professional.
There were people all around us, and cameras, and still he was devouring me with his eyes.
He gazed up through dark eyelashes while the corners of his mouth twitched up in a wicked grin. I remembered what Mitchell had said about flirting w
ith Keith to make sure we got great photos. Dimly, I was aware of photos being taken. I needed to play along, so I lifted one hand up to the corner of my mouth and pretended to nibble my finger.
The soundscape playing over the speakers whispered like wind in willow trees, like secrets being told. Inspired, I moved my finger to the center of my lips, making a shushing gesture.
Keith gazed up with an innocent expression. At the photographer’s suggestion, he stood again. He surprised me by grabbing me roughly by both shoulders.
Naturally, I slapped him across the face.
CHAPTER 2
I'd just slapped the dangerously-cute model after he grabbed my shoulders.
“Sorry,” he stammered, stepping back and looking confused.
Mitchell called out, “Water! Water now!”
I flinched, feeling ashamed of my overreaction and expecting to be hosed down for my bad behavior, but then the hot lights turned off and one of the junior assistants hustled up with a bottle of water.
Keith took the bottle in his hand, hunching over and leaning on Mitchell. With a wince, he cracked the seal to remove the cap. He tipped up the bottle and guzzled a third of the water, then scowled at the bottle as he put the cap back on.
Mitchell asked if he needed a chair or a break, but Keith said he’d be fine in a minute.
“You let yourself get dehydrated,” I said, partly admonishing him and partly soothing him.
Mitchell snapped his fingers and instructed one of the girls to bring a chair.
Keith’s eyebrows knitted together, and he sat down in a folding chair being quickly set up behind him.
“Is this normal?” I asked Mitchell.
Mitchell nodded, then signaled that he had to do something, but would be back in a few minutes.
Keith looked up at me from where he sat recovering in the chair. “I scared you.”
“Pfft. I don’t scare that easy. Sorry I slapped you.”
“I took the usual diuretics, but last night’s party put me over. I had one beer, and it tasted like another. You know how that is.”
