by Lissa Bilyk
Did I love him? It was hard to think straight with him pressed all up against me, warm and smelling delicious.
He kissed my jaw. “You don’t have to say it,” he murmured. “I just want you to know.”
“I do,” I said, everything becoming clearer now. He had turned over a new leaf, and this selfless Cameron was the one I had fallen head over heels for without even noticing – hidden as it was behind my tangle of emotional baggage. “I do love you, Cam.”
He looked into my eyes, and kissed me once more, and I was certain. I knew it. As different as we were, I was in love.
That night the play opened to rapturous applause and a full house. Cameron and Juliet posed for publicity photos with John while I hung in the background, pride blossoming through me. Not only was I part of this team putting on this wonderful play, but I had slept with Cameron Campbell, the hottest guy in the world, the guy girls lined up in snowy streets for – not only had I done that, but he wanted to do it again tonight, he’d said he loved me, and I was his girlfriend.
We made eye contact over the photographers and he smiled at me and winked. My heart felt fit to bursting with a strange kind of smug happiness. This beautiful man, this cute chubby kid turned amazing golden sex god, this man that everyone was going nuts over in the frigid November air was my friend, my boyfriend, my lover.
We were from two different worlds, he and I, but against all the odds our worlds had collided. It looked like they were staying that way.
END
Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
Lissa Bilyk graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in English Literature and Film.
She currently lives in the Australia with her husband and three wonderful witch cats.
Her first novel The Edge of Darkness is also available on Kindle, along with Tina Storm: Demon Hunter, the prequel to Demon’s Blood, and a short story collection, The Archive of Lost Dreams.
Connect online:
Blog http://www.lissawrites.wordpress.com
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/lissawrites
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/lissawrites
If you enjoyed this book we would love it if you could leave a review on any of the major book sites, or leave a comment on Lissa’s blog.
Read on for a sneak peek at
Centre Stage: Lies for a Living Book #2
* * * * *
Coming soon:
Centre Stage
The second book in the Lies for a Living series by Belle Divine
Chapter One
When I left the office it was already dark, the mid-February sun long since eaten by a haze of London smog, cloud and starlight. Across the street a silver Jaguar waited for me, at the wheel a beautiful golden man that for the last twelve weeks I’d called my boyfriend: Cameron Campbell. The West End run of Wuthering Heights had ended yesterday after full houses and standing ovations every night, and now that he was between gigs – or ‘unemployed’ as us regular non-actors called it – he’d decided to pick me up after work.
By day I worked as superstar director/producer John Wood’s personal assistant. During productions that meant as his lackey and general run-around, but when John was also between gigs it meant as his actual office personal assistant, fielding phone calls and filing and organising meetings for his next project and making sure he’d eaten something that day.
“Hi gorgeous,” I said as I got in the car. “Sleep well?” I’d left him sleeping this morning in his Notting Hill apartment as I caught the Tube to work.
He took my face in his hands, leaned over, and kissed me long and deep, as if he hadn’t seen me in weeks. “I missed you.”
“I was only at work,” I said, patting his leg. Since John had directed Wuthering Heights, he – and therefore I – was no longer needed once the production was underway. John was already working on putting on his newest production, a brief run of The Glass Menagerie.
“You shouldn’t have to go,” he said. “You should stay home with me.”
“And do what?” I laughed. “I have to work. I have rent to pay.”
“You don’t have to work if you don’t want to. I’ll look after you.”
I looked at him closer. “You want me to just quit my job and hang around waiting for you to come home?”
“I earn enough to look after you, Tori, and I fucking missed you today. I’ve missed you this whole damn run. We don’t get enough time together.”
It was true that even though we split our time between his luxurious apartment and my tiny one, that even though he’d come crawling into bed after midnight and we’d make love for hours, that we didn’t get to spend enough time together. We lived on different schedules – mine was nine-to-five and his had been afternoon-to-midnight.
And we still hadn’t gone public.
He said it was because he wanted to protect me from the media. “The tabloids can be cruel, the gossip magazines even worse,” he’d said at the start of our relationship. “I just want to shield you from that for as long as I can.”
I tried not to think about that time someone told me the average relationship only lasts three months.
“I’ll think about it,” I promised him, even though I’d already decided: I would not quit my job just because his timetable was suddenly open.
“In the meantime,” he said, starting the car and pulling into the street, “why don’t you think about the possibility of bringing Bronte to live with me?”
I snorted in an un-lady-like manner. “But Bronte hates you.” Bronte was my cat, a brown domestic long-hair I’d adopted after starting work for John. She was about two years old, didn’t much like strangers, and had never adjusted to Cameron traipsing in and out of our apartment and disrupting her schedule.
“Bronte does not hate me,” he said. “And if we got to spend more time together, maybe she’ll let me pat her.”
“And I’ll what, go home to an empty apartment?”
He shook his head and gave me a pointed look. “No. The way I see it, the only reason you keep going home is to look after Bronte. So I figure if Bronte moves into my apartment, that means you can, too.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment, but conflicting feelings of warmth and shock trundled through my body. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”
“Yes.”
I hesitated, wishing he wasn’t driving so I could look at him properly, read his face and body language. “But we haven’t gone public yet.”
“There are no rules as far as I’m concerned. Even when I was doing the run I didn’t like you going back to your place. We never knew what time I’d be in, but I hated coming home to a cold house, a cold bed. My bed misses you, Tori. You don’t spend enough time in it, or with me.”
“But you’ll get another job,” I pointed out, unsure of why I was resisting the idea so much. “And then I’ll be all alone in your apartment.”
“Isn’t it better than being all alone in yours?” he said, and I tried not to feel the sting in his words. True, my apartment was so small it fit into his living room. I didn’t have a television or a phone and wouldn’t take money from Cameron, so I constantly worried about whether I could afford the winter gas bill.
“Can I think about this, too?” I said. “It’s a big decision to make.”
“Sure,” he said, though I didn’t believe him. At the same time, I wasn’t sure why I was hesitating. The gorgeous guy I’d been sleeping with for the past three months, the beautiful man beside me who’d given me a key to his apartment and a pass card for the exclusive elevator in the complex, the man who said he loved me and called me his girlfriend and who’d taken my virginity, had just asked me to move in.
Why wasn’t “Yes!” my immediate answer?
Because it can’t last, and you know it, a small voice said to me. You know this is only temporary, and when he tires of you you’ll be stuck with nowhere to go. When he finds out you’re not as interesting o
r as beautiful as he thinks you are, he’ll go for the next girl lined up for his bed, and you’ll be alone with no one.
Like always.
