by Jane Porter
And if she did sign the contract to play Wolf’s new love interest, she wouldn’t have to get a roommate, she’d be able to pay the entire rent herself.
Alexandra loved the thought of that.
Since moving to Los Angeles she’d really struggled, both financially and emotionally.
She’d taken a job waitressing and then apart-time job temping for an independent film studio, answering phones, handling mail, playing general office errand girl, which was mainly going to Starbucks and getting everyone’s favorite espresso and latte.
Alex discovered that she liked being useful in the office. She was good in the office—quick, smart, agile, she could multitask and never needed to be told anything twice.
After a year working for the independent film company, she answered a Paradise Pictures ad she saw in Variety and was hired to assist intense, brainy directors and producers with whatever needed to be done.
She’d worked for Paradise for nearly three years now and she thought she’d proven herself on more than one occasion, but the promotion had never come.
Why?
It wasn’t as though she couldn’t handle more responsibility. She actually needed the risk, craved change.
In the kitchen, Alexandra took out the business card Daniel had given her several days ago, the one with Wolf’s private number. She tapped it on the counter, flipped it over to the personal cell number scribbled on the back and tried to imagine the next four weeks.
New clothes. Input from a stylist. Exciting parties.
Smiling nervously, she bit her lip. It’d be scary but also fun.
Then she thought of Wolf Kerrick and the whole concept of fun went out the window, leaving her unsure of herself all over again.
But it’s an opportunity, she reminded herself sternly, and that’s what you want.
Quickly she picked up the phone, dialed Wolf’s number.
“It’s Alexandra Shanahan,” she said when he answered, dispensing with any preamble. “And I’ll do it. But before anything else happens, I want the offer—and the studio’s promise about the assistant director position—in writing.”
“Of course.”
She held the phone tighter. “And working on B-rate flicks doesn’t count. I want to work on major studio films. Bigbudget films.”
“Certainly.”
She folded one arm over her chest and pressed a knuckled fist to her rib cage. “I want to be clear that this is a job, and I’ll treat it like a job. I’ll do what I have to for the cameras, but I won’t do anything inappropriate.”
“And what is inappropriate?”
“Kissing, touching, sex.”
“There’s got to be a certain amount of intimacy for the camera.”
“Only for the camera, then, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Mr. Kerrick.”
“I’ve got it all down, Miss Shanahan. You’ll get the contract tonight. It should be there by seven.”
The contract did arrive at seven. But a courier service didn’t deliver it. Instead Wolf Kerrick brought it himself.
She hadn’t expected Wolf and she’d answered the door in her faded blue sweatpants, cropped yellow T-shirt and bare feet in dire need of a pedicure. Without her contacts, and in her glasses, with her hair in a messy knotted ponytail on top of her head, Alex knew she looked more like a librarian than the sex symbol required.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly, tugging on her ponytail, trying to at least get her hair down even if she couldn’t make the glasses vanish.
“Cleaning house, are you?” he asked.
“I didn’t expect you.”
“Mmm. But maybe I should come in. Two photographers tailed me. Red car on the right and the white car that hopped the curb. They’re taking photos of both of us as we speak.”
Alexandra opened the door so Wolf could enter.
As Wolf glanced around the house, she peeked out the living room curtain, and just as Wolf had said, the red car and the white car were out there, and both drivers held cameras with enormous telephoto lenses. “Those are some huge camera lenses,” she said.
“I learned the hard way that you’ll want to keep your curtains closed. Otherwise they’ll get shots of you walking around.”
She dropped the lace panel and faced him. “How did they know you were coming here?”
“There is always someone tailing me. Has been for years.” He dropped onto her beige couch, extended his denim-clad legs so they rested on her oak coffee table and looked up at her with piercing dark eyes. “How long have you lived here?”
“Almost three years.” The abruptness of his question was less disconcerting than the fact that Wolf Kerrick was stretched out in her living room, looking very relaxed-and comfortable—in a loose gray T-shirt, with his thick black hair tumbling across his forehead. “Why do you ask?”
“There’s not much furniture.”
“My former roommate took it all with her to Boston,” she answered, thinking that even dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt, Wolf looked like a film star. It was his bone structure, coloring, the easy way he carried himself. He was more than beautiful, he was elegant and intense and physical. Sexy.
Alexandra exhaled in a painful rush.
That was really the problem. He was far too sexy for her and had been from the time she first laid eyes on him—which was in a movie, of course—eight years ago. In Age of Valor, just his second film, he’d played a soldier. And while he wasn’t the lead in the film, his performance was so strong, he stole the show. Alexandra remembered sobbing when his character died in the film, dramatically blown to bits just before the movie’s end. She’d liked him—the man, the actor, the character—so much she couldn’t bear for the story to end without him still in it.
She had been fifteen at the time, just starting her sophomore year of high school, and of course she had known it was just a movie and he was just an actor, but she’d never forgotten his face or his name.
Wolf Kerrick.
Amused by the girl she’d once been, Alexandra took a seat on the edge of the coffee table across from him. “Shall I sign the contract?”
Wolf’s dark head tipped and his long black lashes dropped, brushing his high, strong cheekbones. “Think you can do this?”
Growing up, she’d been the ultimate tomboy. As the baby of the Shanahan clan, she’d stomped and swaggered around in her cowboy boots. But moving to Southern California had killed her confidence, and she was only just starting to realize how much she missed her old swagger.
She’d once been so brave, so full of bravado.
How had moving to California changed her so much? Was it Hollywood? The movie industry? What had made her feel so small, so insignificant, so less than?
“Yes. I know I can,” she said forcibly, and strangely enough, she meant it. She was the girl who’d roped calves and ridden broncs and jumped off the barn roof just because her brothers said she couldn’t. She was the girl who didn’t take no for an answer. If she could ride a bull, she could date a wolf.
Alexandra’s lips curved at her own feeble joke, but her smile faded as Wolf’s black eyes met hers.
“Think you can handle me?” he murmured.
Her heart stuttered. She knew what he was asking. Like everyone else who read the tabloids, she knew he’d been arrested more than once for fighting and heard it didn’t take much to bring out the street fighter in him.
She also knew that women found him irresistible, and having once been one of those giddy girls who threw themselves at him, knew she’d never behave so recklessly again.
“Yes,” she answered equally firmly, ignoring the cold lash of adrenaline. “You won’t be a problem. You might be a famous actor, but you’re also just a man. Now give me the contract and let’s get this over with.”
He handed her the contract and a pen, and Alex spread the document on the table to read while she tapped the pen against her teeth. The form read correctly, all the terms were there, everything
she asked for given.
With a confident flourish, Alexandra scrawled her name at the space indicated. “There,” she said, lifting her pen and handing the paper back to him. “Signed, sealed, delivered.”
“My little lovebird,” he mocked, taking the paper and folding it up.
Her cheeks heated. Her blue eyes locked with his. Her heart was pounding wildly, but she held his gaze, kept her chin up, refusing to show further weakness. “I won’t be broken, Mr. Kerrick.”
“Is that a challenge, Miss Shanahan?”
“No. I’m just stating a fact. I had some time to think about your offer, to look at the pros and cons, and I’ve agreed to do this not because it helps you but because it helps me. I know now what I want and I know what I need to do to get there. And you won’t keep me from succeeding. There’s too much at stake.” And then she swallowed hard. “For both of us.”
He studied her from across the table, his forearms resting against his knees, his eyebrows black slashes above bold dark eyes. “There will be pressure.”
She rose to her feet. “I anticipate it.”
“The attention will feel intrusive at times.”
“I’ve considered that possibility, as well.”
“You’re truly prepared to take this all the way? Ready for the makeover, the new hair, the wardrobe and revamped image?”
“Yes.”
He stood. “Tomorrow you’ll pay a visit to the Juan Carlos Salon in Beverly Hills. The salon is expecting you. It’ll be a long day. The car will be here at seven.”
“I don’t want a limo, Mr. Kerrick.”
“It’s part of the role, Miss Shanahan. And now that we’ve agreed to this little play, it’s time we dropped the formalities. We’re lovers now.” He slowly moved toward her. “You’re Alexandra and I’m Wolf and we’re a very happy new couple.”
He was standing so close to her now she could hardly breathe. “Right.”
“Just follow my lead,” he said.
“Your lead,” she whispered, feeling the warmth of his body, his strength tangible and real. She tipped her head back, looked up into his face, with the strong cheekbones and high forehead, the piercing dark eyes.
“I’ll make it easy for you.”
“You’re that good an actor?”
“I’m that good a lover.”
She took an involuntary step backward. “You said there’d be no sex—”
“In public, it’s my job to seduce you. To make the photographers sit up, take notice.”
She inhaled hard, thinking he was the devil in the flesh. “In public, yes.”
He leaned down and brushed the briefest kiss across her flushed cheek. “But in private, we’re just friends, remember?”
She felt her stomach fall and her breath catch as his lips touched her cheek. The whisper of his warm breath sent fingers of fire racing through her veins.
Wolf headed for the door. “Don’t forget to set your alarm clock. The limo will be here early.”
Alexandra leaned against the door after Wolf closed it.
Her heart was still pounding and her tummy felt coiled in a new and aching tension.
This was not going to be easy. Pretending to be Wolf’s girlfriend would be the hardest thing she’d ever done.
And then she pulled herself together. No more negative thoughts, she told herself. No more running scared. She’d signed the contract. She had to go for it now.
And she would go for it.
She’d been in Los Angeles four years and she was hungry. Really hungry. Hungry like one living on the streets, digging out of trash cans, looking for something to fill you up, get you by.
Because, God knew, she wanted to go somewhere. She was determined to go all the way, too, all the way up, to the top. Fame, fortune, power. She wanted the whole bit.
It was time to do what she’d left Bozeman, Montana, to do. Time to make Hollywood hers.
CHAPTER THREE
THEY WERE CUTTING HER hair off.
The next morning, covered in plastic drapes, Alexandra stared aghast as Juan Carlos lifted chunks of her waist-length hair and began to chop it off to shoulder length.
She’d had long hair—really long, down to her butt—since she was a little girl. Being the only daughter, her father had wanted her to be a princess and insisted she leave her hair long. Soon he’d learned her hair was the only thing he could control, as his princess preferred jeans, boots and playing with LEGO, blocks and army trucks.
Alexandra had kept her hair long for her dad and now she found herself fighting tears as it was whacked off.
“It’ll be beautiful. You’ll be beautiful,” Juan Carlos reassured, catching sight of her tear-filmed eyes in his station’s mirror. “Be patient. You’ll see.”
Alexandra wanted to believe him. And it was just hair, nothing more important than that. And if she couldn’t handle getting her hair cut, how would she handle the other changes coming in the next few weeks?
With her long hair in pieces all over the floor, Juan Carlos patted her shoulders. “Now we change the color.”
Thirty minutes later, Alexandra was still trying to get used to the smell of bleach and chemicals from the cream applied to her hair. They were doing a two-color process—overall color and highlights—and the smelly foils on her head made her want to gag. Did some women willingly do this?
Juan Carlos had told her he was giving her warm amber highlights and promised to make her a Hollywood golden girl.
Alex wasn’t so sure about the golden part.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she battled her nerves, drew a deep breath and counted to ten.
At ten, she opened her eyes, caught a glimpse of her silver-wrapped alienlike self in the mirror and closed her eyes again.
This was not going to work.
Back at home five hours later, Alexandra looked in the mirror at the new, improved version of her. Her hair shimmered with a multitude of highlights, precision-cut to fall in thick, sexy waves around her face, playing up her black-lashed blue eyes and the strong cheekbones she didn’t know she had.
The makeup artist had shown her how to use color and liner to subtly darken and define her lips, her brows, her eyes.
And studying the new, improved Alexandra, she thought she looked good. Pretty. Pretty in a way she’d never been before. Feminine but smart. And confident. Strong. And that’s the thing she hadn’t known she could be on the outside. On the inside, she liked to roughhouse with the best of them, riding bareback, helping in the roundups, slinging barbwire along with the ranch hands. She’d learned early that she had to keep up with her brothers or she’d be left behind, relegated to the kitchen and the laundry room at home, and if there was anything Alex didn’t want, it was woman’s work. Housework. Domestic chores that kept her locked inside when the sky was huge and blue beyond the windows of the house, where the land stretched endlessly, waiting for exploration and hours of adventure.
Alex’s lips half curved, and she stared, fascinated, at the face of a woman she realized she barely knew.
She really was pretty, almost pretty like the girls in magazines. And maybe it was makeup and expensive hair color and a professional blow-dry, but she wasn’t the fat girl she’d been at eleven and twelve and fifteen. She wasn’t even the sturdy, healthy nineteen-year-old who’d arrived in Hollywood eager to make movies.
Reaching up, she touched the mirror, touching her reflection, the shimmering tawny lips, the dusty glow of cheeks and eyes that looked midnight-blue in the bathroom lights.
“Be confident,” she whispered. “Be brave.”
And with one last small, uncertain smile, she turned away from the mirror and left the bathroom, hitting the light switch on her way out.
In the living room she turned on the front porch light, and before she could decide if she should turn on the stereo or the TV or pick up a magazine to read, the doorbell rang.
Butterflies danced through her middle, spinning up and into her head.
God, she was nervous. Scared.
Why was she so scared? It wasn’t as though she’d never been out with Wolf before. It’s not as if she hadn’t ever been alone with him either.
Hands pressed to her sides, she took a deep breath and reminded herself of all the reasons why she’d come to L.A. and all the things she wanted to learn, to do, to prove. Maybe Wolf Kerrick was way out of her league and maybe this was going to be a rocky couple of weeks, but doing this, playing this part, would help her succeed.
Wiping her damp hands on the side of her black trousers, she moved to the door and opened it.
And then he was there, even bigger than she remembered, taller, more intimidating. And twice as beautiful.
Maybe that’s the part she found so disconcerting, too. Because she’d been around big men all her life. Brock was six-four, and Cormac a half an inch below that. But her brothers were more rugged—handsome but lacking the dark Latin sensuality that made Wolf’s eyes just a little too dark and his lower lip a little too full and his black lashes a little too long. It’d be one thing if he didn’t know his effect on women, but he did, and it only made him more dangerous. Wolf wasn’t so much charming as lethal.
“I just need to get my purse,” she said, opening the door wider and doing her best to hide her nerves. “Do you want to come in?”
“If you’re just getting your handbag, I can wait here.”
She silently disappeared, legs distinctly trembly as she went to the couch to scoop up the little evening bag she’d laid out earlier. The bag was so pretty, a small, black, handsome couture bag that looked simple but cost a fortune. Alexandra had seen the price tag when the stylist had presented it and gasped. The stylist had merely winked. “It’s covered in your budget,” she’d said.
Now Alexandra clutched the bag beneath her elbow, feeling briefly like a glamorous celebrity herself. She knew it was all hair and makeup and wardrobe, but still, it was such a treat, such a delight to feel genuinely pretty for a change.
