Once Upon an Ice Queen (Instalove in the City Book 3)

by Maggie Dallen

  He kept nodding. Right. They were right.

  “Are you going to go on auditions?” Yvette asked.

  He stared at her as if this was a weighty question and not the most obvious question in the world. But, to be honest, he’d put off thinking about auditions because the thought of going back to the world of auditioning kind of made him want to vomit.

  He’d be the first to admit that he’d hit pay dirt his first time out. At nineteen he’d only been on a handful of auditions when he’d gotten the dream role—or at least, it was his dream role. A steady acting gig that paid well and ensured that he’d never have to go on any more auditions.

  What were the odds that lightning would strike twice?

  While other young attractive actors had been solidly building up a resume, he had precisely one acting role to his name, and while he was proud of his work on the show, he knew that soap actors weren’t afforded the same respect out in the big, wide world of television and film.

  He’d watched countless co-stars go from being the big fish in their little pond to nobodies in Hollywood. While he’d cheered them on from his cushy spot on daytime TV, he’d always secretly pitied them for having to start from scratch.

  And now here he was. In the same boat. But worse, because he’d gotten so used to his big fish status that he didn’t know if he even had the guts, the talent, or the desire to try his skills anywhere else.

  He’d peaked, he realized with a jolt of sickening sadness. He hadn’t even hit thirty and he’d already peaked in his career.

  He lifted a hand to hail down a waiter for another drink. Maybe some more tequila would help.

  Kat’s hand on his had him looking up into the sympathetic faces of his best friends. “Hey,” she said gently. “Don’t worry, okay? We’ll help you figure this out.”

  He nodded, but even they didn’t seem convinced.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I don’t think I want to keep acting, but I have no other skills. No qualifications. I don’t even know what I want to do.” He squinted into the distance as if maybe the answer was there.

  Nope. There were just some more tables filled with people eating and drinking.

  “You always said you might want to work behind the scenes one day,” Yvette offered. “You’d talked about producing…” She trailed off with a shrug, clearly wanting to help but just as clueless as to how he ought to begin.

  “I don’t even know what producers do.” His voice sounded pathetically glum. “I don’t know what anyone does off set, to be honest.” He scrubbed a hand over his now clean-shaven face. “I should have learned. I should have been paying attention.”

  “It’s never too late to learn,” Yvette, his new cheerleader, said.

  “It’s also never too late for a career change,” Kat added. She gave him a little grin. “This is what I do, remember? I help people find jobs.” Leaning across the table, she squeezed his hand. “We got this. I promise. I’m totally going to help you.”

  Five

  Kennedy watched as Kat dug into her salad with gusto. She didn’t want to be rude but she was still new to her job and she didn’t feel comfortable taking a long lunch break. “Is there something in particular you wanted to discuss, Kat?”

  Her friend looked up with an amused grimace. “Am I that obvious?”

  Kennedy shrugged. Yes. But then, most people were obvious, especially when they wanted something. And Kat clearly wanted something from her.

  Not that she minded. She liked Kat, she always had, even when they’d just been colleagues at the cable news station, which they’d both since left.

  “What can I do for you?” Though that too was pretty obvious, really. Since leaving CRBO, Kat had gone on to start up her own headhunting business, and it seemed like it was doing well. Not surprisingly given Kat’s prowess with people.

  But since Kennedy was a hiring manager, formerly for CRBO, and now for a new television station, she had a hunch where this was going.

  “I have a friend who needs a job,” Kat said.

  And there it was.

  Kennedy folded her hands in her lap. “I appreciate your bluntness,” she said, “especially given our time constraints today.”

  Kat smiled. She was one of few people who never seemed to be turned off by Kennedy’s lack of social niceties. It wasn’t that Kennedy didn’t know how to be charming, she just didn’t see the point. Niceties right now would only take up valuable time. “Who is your friend and what kind of work is he or she qualified for.”

  Kat set down her fork and some of her easygoing demeanor slipped. She looked almost…uncomfortable. That was rare. “That’s the thing, he’s not terribly qualified for anything, really.”

  Kennedy arched a brow. “Is he young?” An idea was already starting to blossom. She liked Kat and she trusted her judgement, and there was that one internship opening up since the college kid who’d originally taken it had proven to be a bust. In short, he’d pilfered and stolen from half the production department and apparently had made quite a killing on eBay.

  “He’s not young, exactly,” Kat said.

  Kennedy narrowed her eyes as she studied her friend, who was shifting and fidgeting in her seat. “So he’s not in college or graduated recently?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  “And he has no experience in television,” she recapped.

  “He has experience… of a sort,” Kat said. Her smile looked strained. “I’m being vague, aren’t I?”

  Kennedy nodded. “But I have to admit, you’re making me curious. What kind of experience does this man have?”

  In lieu of an answer, Kat handed over a piece of paper. A resume.

  Kennedy stared at it for a moment. She’d gone into human resources straight out of college so she’d been at it for a while, but never in her life had she seen a resume so barren. There were metaphorical tumbleweeds blowing through this CV. Her experienced eye took it all in quickly. He’d left college without finishing. Average GPA. No internships, not a member of professional groups, no continued learning, and under the section labeled work history there was one bullet point. One.

  She blinked at that one bullet point. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered.

  “I know how it looks,” Kat started.

  “An actor?” Kennedy’s voice held all the disgust she felt. It wasn’t that she hated all artistic types, just the ones she’d met. In theory she admired the tenacity that working in a creative field required, but in reality she’d never met an artist who’d succeeded. Most people who claimed to be an actor or an artist or a singer or whatever were dreamers with an overinflated sense of self-worth.

  Every actor or TV personality she’d met—and she’d met a lot—had been a giant ego inside a pretty body. Kennedy had been working on the administrative end of television for many years and in her experience, which was vast, those who made it professionally were too conceited to be useful, and those who hadn’t were too useless to be hireable.

  But then, maybe she was just a little jaded.

  Kat seemed to sense her disgust, probably because she’d made zero attempt to hide it, and the pretty blonde launched into a full blown sales pitch. By the time she was done, Kennedy felt like she’d been on a ride—she was dizzy, her head was spinning, and she felt a little sick to her stomach. Though, to be fair, the stomachache probably had more to do with the greasy burger she’d just downed than with Kat’s sales pitch.

  She also had the unshakeable feeling that she’d been defeated. That even though she was the hiring manager and known in the industry as cold and ruthless, she was not leaving this table without at least giving her friend’s friend—she glanced at the resume—she wasn’t leaving here without giving Caleb an interview, at the very least.

  “Okay, you’ve made it clear that he is smart, hard working, blah blah blah. I get it. He’s a modern day renaissance man, he can do it all while juggling knives behind his back,” Kennedy said, her vo
ice filled with resignation.

  Kat pressed her lips together in a clear attempt to keep from laughing. The little witch already knew she’d won.

  Kennedy sighed. “The question is, what does this boy wonder want to do?”

  It was an easy question, but it seemed to stump her friend. Uh oh. “You don’t know, do you?” She crossed her arms. “Let me guess. He doesn’t know.”

  She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead focusing on his resume, searching out the dates for the years he was in college. She did a little mental math and the results made her ill. “Your friend is having a quarter life crisis, isn’t he?”

  Kat’s lips hitched to the side, a clear admission of guilt.

  “He’s a grown man nearing thirty and he still has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Am I right?” There was no hiding her judgyness, but honestly she didn’t care. She felt free to judge those kind of guys. And she’d met more of them than she cared to admit. The city was filled with overgrown man-children who still thought they were going to grow up to be rock stars. They dressed like boys, dated women too young for them, and had terrible credit scores.

  This Caleb was a dime a dozen. She might not know him, but she absolutely knew his type.

  The only problem was, Kat was still giving her that pleading look. Kat, who was a friend. Kat, who would be a formidable ally as her company took off, which it would. Kennedy had no doubt when it came to Kat. The woman was fearless and typically a great judge of character.

  It was that second trait that gave her pause. If Kat was vouching for this guy, maybe he wasn’t all bad.

  This thought made her think of the guy from the other night.

  Oh, who was she kidding? The fries on her plate made her think of the guy from the other night. Thoughts of him had been plaguing her since she’d shut the door in his face.

  She flinched slightly at the memory. Not her finest hour. But then, it wasn’t every night that ended with a kiss with a stranger. She wasn’t too stubborn to admit that she’d panicked. The kiss had been nice.

  Hello, understatement of the century.

  Okay, fine. The kiss had been amazing. Earth-stoppingly great. And when she’d come to her senses, she’d panicked. Why? Because she’d had to come to her senses. Meaning, she’d lost her senses. Finding them again had been a chore. She couldn’t even imagine what a second kiss might have done to her faculties.

  That was dangerous. The nameless guy with the hobo beard was clearly bad for her mental health.

  She eyed Kat now, all thoughts of the actor temporarily pushed to the side as she thought of the sexy stranger who she’d unceremoniously shoved out of the car.

  Kat would know who he was—he’d been at her party and he’d known things about Kat, like her middle name. Kat must know him so surely if she mentioned the insanely hot guy with a beard, Kat would know who she was talking about.

  She tapped her fingers on the resume. As far as Kat knew she was still considering this man-child who needed to get his life straight. That’s who she should be focusing on. She’d already written off the other guy. He’d just been a meaningless encounter while she waited for Patrick to come back.

  She took a deep breath, her mind once again clear and drama free. It was decided. She wouldn’t ask Kat about him; she would forget about him. One day in the not too distant future she would totally forget all about him. Until then, she had her work.

  Taking a sip of her water, she actually did focus on the words in front of her. “Days of Love, huh?”

  “You ever watch it?” Kat asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ve always had a job.”

  Kat let out a little laugh. “Right. They do have these methods for recording TV shows these days,” she teased. “Also, there’s this little thing called the Internet. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but they tend to do this thing called streaming and—”

  “You’re hilarious,” Kennedy interrupted in a flat tone. But her lips were tugging up in a smile. Kat, like Emma, was easy to be around. She didn’t take herself too seriously and she didn’t get weirdly nervous around Kennedy like so many people tended to do.

  You’ve got to learn how to warm up around people. That’s what Patrick had told her once. He’d meant well. He was just trying to help her be a better people-person. What he’d never seemed to understand was that she didn’t particularly want to be a people-person. What would being fakely nice get her except some fake friends?

  No, her demeanor might not be warm and fuzzy like Emma or open and funny like Kat, but at least she knew that the people who were nice to her actually liked her.

  She liked to think of her prickly outer layer as a buffer zone. If people made it through, they were strong enough to earn her respect.

  Kat and Emma had passed. So had Patrick. Her circle of friends might be small but they were tried and true. Her friends were the kind who lasted a lifetime.

  And the sexy guy from the other night? A little voice asked.

  Didn’t matter if he’d gotten through or not. One car ride was not the same as a lifetime.

  “You should check out my friend on the show,” Kat continued. “He’s really good.”

  Kennedy held her tongue. Ye who never watches soap operas shouldn’t judge. Wasn’t that a saying? Probably not.

  She found herself judging anyways and Kat seemed to read her mind.

  “Okay, fine, as far as soap operas go, he does a good job. Or he did, before he got killed off.”

  Kennedy couldn’t help it, the laugh came bubbling out of her. “He got killed off?” For some reason this struck her as absurdly funny. It would have been one thing to learn that he’d quit because he wanted to find a more stable, long-term career, or that the show was coming to an end because, little as she knew about soap operas, she did know that they were a dying breed.

  But no, this poor loser was fired. Canned.

  He was freakin’ killed off.

  Kat watched her laugh with a funny sort of smile. It was tolerant, like she didn’t want to join in at laughing at her friend’s downfall, but she could appreciate the fact that it had struck Kennedy as funny.

  She knew there was a reason she liked Kat.

  “Sorry,” she said as she did her best to go back to her typical sober self. Laughing at a potential hiring candidate was hardly professional and she was nothing if not professional.

  Usually.

  She bit her lip to keep another laugh at bay. “Sorry,” she said again, somber this time. “So, what else should I know about this guy? We don’t have a lot of openings at KidzTV, so if you tell me what you think he might like, what would interest him…”

  Kat’s expression was frighteningly perplexed. Kennedy would go so far as to say she’d stumped the poor girl.

  She started to get suspicious. Kat was a good judge of character, but if this was an old friend, maybe her judgement was clouded.

  “Oh no, is he that dumb?” The blunt question seemed to rouse Kat from her stupor.

  “No!” she said quickly. Maybe too quickly. “He’s not dumb, I swear,” she said. “I mean, he should be, but he’s not.”

  “He should be?” Kennedy repeated.

  Kat grinned. “Oh yeah. You should see how hot this guy is. If all was fair in the world, he would have the IQ of a turnip. No one should be smart and ridiculously attractive.”

  Once again Kennedy’s traitorous mind filled with an image of a chiseled-if-scruffy jawline and startlingly blue eyes. Her one-kiss mystery man had been attractive. Some might even say ridiculously attractive.

  A sick feeling in her gut made her reach for her water again, but this time the feeling had nothing to do with the greasy burger and everything to do with a deep-seated fear that her worlds were about to collide. That her venture to the dark side with Hottie McHotness was about to come back and bite her in the butt. She licked her lips and made sure her voice remained steady as she attempted to delve for the kind of information that wasn’t on a r
esume—like, what did he look like and oh crap, was he the same guy who’d kissed me senseless the other night?

  Instead, she said, “So he’s super attractive, huh? Did you guys ever date or, um…”

  Kat shook her head quickly. “Oh no. Goodness no. Definitely not.”

  “Why not? I mean, if he’s so crazy hot and smart and—”

  “Not my type.” Kat said it firmly. Since Kat was currently dating a super sexy and, some might say, ridiculously attractive billionaire, this didn’t really narrow it down. Maybe by “not her type” she just meant not a billionaire.

  “Not your type how?” she asked.

  “Too attractive.” Kat made a funny face. “Caleb is so crazy hot, I’d go so far to say he’s beautiful. Gorgeous, even, in a super preppy, clean-cut, well-dressed, metrosexual kind of way. I mean, Bryce is hot, obviously, but he’s still a man, you know? He’s…manly.”

  Some of the tension in her gut eased a bit at Kat’s description, which so did not match the scruffy-beard-sporting stud from the cab. “Ah, so this Caleb guy isn’t manly?”

  Kat tilted her head to the side as if weighing that comment. “I wouldn’t say not manly but…” She sighed as if caught red-handed. “Yeah, I guess I’d say he wasn’t very manly.”

  The tension eased further. No one in their right mind would say that the sexy stranger from the other night wasn’t manly.

  “He’s kind of one of the girls when he hangs out with me and our other best friend, Yvette.”

  The tension was nearly gone as it became clear. Caleb was obviously gay. Oh, thank goodness. “Got it,” she said, hoping her relief wasn’t totally obvious.

  Kat toyed with her phone for a minute before pressing her on the topic at hand. “So, will you give him a shot? Please? Pretty please?”

  Kennedy rolled her eyes. “You know it’s not terribly professional to beg.”

  “Maybe it’s not professional for Katherine the headhunter to beg a hiring manager, but this is friend Kat asking a favor from friend Kennedy.” She clasped her hands in front of her chest and batted her eyelashes outrageously until Kennedy relented with a laugh.