by Maggie Marr
The Amanda Legend Gallery was opening with a bang. This event had become red carpet with the appearance of my father, his famous friends, and all the famous people Amanda and I had collected in our Hollywood life. I wasn’t certain how many sales she’d racked up in this first night, but I’d overheard a number of collectors mentioning that most of the paintings were sold.
“Thank you!” Amanda nearly burst with pride. The light shining through her eyes made me happy. She glanced from me to Ryan, and then toward our Dad. “I’m so lucky to share this with my three favorite guys.”
Ryan lifted her hand that he clasped tightly in his and kissed her fingers. The giant diamond he’d just given to her when they’d recently gone to Paris sparkled in the light. Another man down for the count. I nodded toward Ryan. He knew I would love him like a brother, but I also had big expectations when it came to the man who would marry my little sister.
Forgiving Ryan Sinclair for being a douchebag was easy because of the permanent smile affixed to my sister’s face. The guy hadn’t been my favorite in the beginning, but post-rehab—the second time—my sister was the happiest I’d seen her in the nine years since our mom had died.
“I have to go schmooze,” Amanda said. “I’ll see you later.” She leaned toward me, “Oh, by the way, that painting you’re ogling was done by someone you know. Very well.”
I crinkled my eyebrows. Amanda and Ryan escaped into the crowd. I turned back to the giant painting that had captured my attention. What person did I know who was showing tonight? I stood in front of the giant work. It was almost a mural. The bright colors grabbed me. My gut twisted in response to the images before me.
“Do you like it?”
My heart kicked against my ribcage. Was it … could it be? The voice was familiar and yet, deeper, darker, older … sexier. Summertime memories of a beautiful girl flickered in my mind. A girl who had nearly been a woman, and me nearly a man. A girl I loved. A girl I could have made a life with if I’d known, even known at the tender age of seventeen, what making a life with someone meant. A girl who’d disappeared and had taken my heart with her. I turned.
Rhiannon.
My chest tightened. My breath caught in my lungs.
Rhiannon had been that girl.
Rhiannon stood in before me in a silky slip of a dress, tall and willowy with long lush white-blond hair draped over her shoulders. Haunting green eyes stared out from atop cheekbones that looked sculpted from marble. She was so beautiful, so ethereal, that she didn’t even look real. She was the magnificent-looking woman that, even as a young man, I’d known she would become. Her lips turned upward into a smile.
“You’re looking very well,” she said.
I maintained my cool Legend exterior. Rhiannon had been a mere schoolboy crush. Hadn’t she?
“Rhiannon,” I said. I leaned forward and grasped her hand and pressed my lips to each of her cheeks. A scent rich and dark like cinnamon trailed her. The scent caused memories to pop in my mind. Memories of blankets, and beaches, and Malibu and first kisses.
Heat jolted me. Desire coiled thick in my gut. I forced a coolness into my face. I hadn’t touched Rhiannon since I was seventeen and yet, and yet, her skin, her hand in mine seemed familiar, natural.
“It’s been forever,” Rhiannon said.
My throat clutched. Never at a loss for words and yet, in this moment her ethereal beauty blinded me. I was barely able to put words together in my mind and form the syllables on my lips.
“It has,” I said. I cleared my throat. Recovered. I’d bedded the most beautiful women in the world, I could speak to Rhiannon Bliss. “Weren’t you in Ireland and then London?”
“Good memory,” she said. She flipped her golden locks over her shoulder and glanced down at her wine. “The last four years I was in Paris, and now I’m here.”
“And now you’re here.” My head spun with her words. Rhiannon was here. In Los Angeles. After nearly nine years away, nine years of silence, nine years of memories, Rhiannon Bliss was again standing next to me and having the same effect she’d had on me when I was seventeen.
“You never answered my question,” Rhiannon said. She nodded toward the painting behind me. “Do you like it?”
I glanced over my shoulder. The landscape was familiar and yet distant, rendered in a surreal manner. “I do,” I said. “It seems so familiar in this eerie way.”
“Ah, so you do remember that view,” Rhiannon said.
I cocked one eyebrow upward and my gaze locked onto those green eyes. Green eyes that I could fall into forever.
“It’s at my mom’s place, on the plateau.”
Heat grabbed my chest and pulsed through me. I knew that spot. We knew that spot. That spot in Malibu, on Gayle Bliss’s ranch, would forever hold a place in my life.
“You painted this?”
She nodded. Her eyes said so many things to me in this moment, things that words could never tell me. There were so many questions I wanted to ask. But pain, fear, and a broken heart stopped me. I had questions that only a man who needed answers, or who wanted to pursue a lost love, would ask. And I was definitely not that man. Love was not on my itinerary—not in this lifetime.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. I plastered the Legend look of nonchalance onto my face.
Rhiannon’s eyebrow cocked upward, and the smile widened across her face. “I see you’ve mastered the Legend facade,” she said. Her voice lilted and teased. My head jerked back; I was not used to anyone ever calling me on my shit. That didn’t happen in this town, not when you were a Legend.
I smiled. Why pretend there was no history, when Rhiannon was here to tell me otherwise? “You remember that?” I asked.
“How could I ever forget?” She glanced toward the giant painting. “You should buy it,” she said, “before someone else does.”
“Yes,” I said. “Maybe I should.”
My gaze swept the room as I tilted my wineglass to my lips. I caught Webber across the room. He’d stopped chatting up the new brunette and stood with his palms up. He looked at me and shook his head. His pointed at me and then he drew a heart in the air. He shook his head, as though I was the next man down for the count.
The muscle in my jaw twitched and I shook my head. I was simply buying a gorgeous painting created by a girl I’d known when I was a kid. That was all. I was not asking anyone to marry me. What the hell did Webber know?
Apparently, it turned out, more than I ever did.
The End
About This Series
Thanks for reading Broken Glamour. I hope you enjoyed it! Reviews help other readers find books and I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative. Please take a moment and write a review for Broken Glamour.
You’ve just read the second book in the Glamour Series. The other books are:
Hard Glamour
Broken Glamour
Fast Glamour
Easy Glamour
I hope you enjoy them as well!
Would you like to know when my next book is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list at http://maggiemarr.blogspot.com/p/maggies-newsletter.html.
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Visit my Website at http://www.maggiemarr.blogspot.com.
Book two of The Eligible Billionaires series is coming soon. Just click the link if you'd like to read an excerpt from One Night for Love.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my agent Kristin Nelson and everyone at Nelson Literary Agency and Nelson Digital. Thank you to Lori Bennett who is tireless in her efforts for my books. You amaze me! Thank you Angie Hodapp for your patience and talent. Thank you to Sarah Hansen of Okay Designs for a beautiful cover and her vision for the Glamour Series. Thank you to Julie Brazeal of AToMR Tours for her help and dedication.
To my editor Valerie Gray, thank you. To Crystalle Berry and J
ennifer Brown, thank you for making my words look so beautiful.
Thank you to my Beta Readers. Your notes and comments make every story better.
Thank you to all the fabulous writers at the San Francisco Indy Uncon. You inspire me.
Thank you to the members of LARA and WFWA.
Thank you to Shan Ray, my agent for film and TV. Thank you to my managers Mikhail Nayfeld, Markus Goerg, Dick Hillenbrand, Robert Watts, and the entire Heroes and Villains staff.
A special thank you to my friends and family: Margaret Leahy Marr, Nancy Veskerna, Lauren Harrison, Gavin White, Peyton Morgan, Nealie White, Mark Morgan, Joyce and Tom Leahy, Linda and Bill Henderson, Lindsy and Mark Henderson, Dolores Henderson, Gayle Leftwich, Garrett Marr, Janet L’Huillier, Eloise and Dixie Marr, Paula and David Glasscock, Paramount Elite Gymnastics and the entire Paramount family, Karl and Victoria Makinen, Mario Guddemi, Sal Aurora, Amy and Brent Zacky, Sheryl and Steven Ross, Kari and Craig Smith, Melissa Lemoureaux, Peggy Cafferty, Molly Donna Ware, Melissa Clark, Ally Carter, Jennifer Barnes, Tara Altebrando, E. Lockhart, Maryrose Woods, Alan Gratz, Sarah Mylnowski, Lauren Myracle, Sara Zarr, Maria Seager, Christine Ashworth, Sarah Vance-Tompkins, Sylvie Fox, Megan Crane, Jane Porter, and BOB.
Thank you to my husband and my children. The joy in my world is because of you.
About the Author
Maggie Marr is an attorney, author, and producer. She began her career in the entertainment industry pushing the mail cart but rose to the position of motion picture literary agent. She has written for TV, film, and celebrities. Maggie has been featured on KCRW's The Business and reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Romantic Times. She lives in LA with her family.
Maggie is eternally grateful for the graciousness and support of her readers.
Please visit her Website at: http://www.maggiemarr.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/maggiemarr
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maggie-Marr-Books/168071873226783?ref=ts
An Excerpt from One Night for Love
One Night for Love , book two in The Eligible Billionaires series. Available in 2014 from Maggie Marr.
Chapter One
“I want it harder,” Prim said. A grunt came from behind her. “God, yes.” Warmth pulsed through Prim’s body. Tingles shot from her spine and into her limbs. “Yes, deeper, deeper.” The warmth in her core puddled. Her muscles loosened. Her eyes closed. She soaked in the pleasure of a strong, hard, touch. To be stroked and kneaded and rubbed.
This was paradise.
“Lady got too much tension in her shoulder.” Layla’s hand supple with oil trailed along the fine vertebrae of Prim’s neck. “Muscles still knotted in here”—her deft fingers pulsed along Prim’s left shoulder—“even after six days of massage.”
Air wooshed from Prim’s lungs. She opened her eyes and stared at the terra cotta tile floor beneath the massage table. What could she say? Even with the sun, surf, and sand she couldn’t forget what she was about to return to in California.
Gargantuan changes and potentially a huge mess of an existence.
“Lady’s lower back is still tight.” Layla's fingertips fanned out and Prim felt the heat in her core melt. Relaxation oozed through her. “Lady needs to be with a man.”
Prim jerked her head from the circular cushion. “A what?”
“Head down,” Layla pressed on the back of Prim’s head. “A man. Lady, needs to be with a man to release the tension in her body.”
Prim resettled her forehead and cheeks against the cushion. Her sex life, of lack thereof wasn’t something she really wished to discuss with her masseuse. Of course Layla's hands had kneaded nearly every inch of Prim's body for the last six days. The massage, each day, was a high point of Prim’s existence at La Meridian Ora at which she’d spent the last six days trying to decompress, relax, and prepare for what she would return to in L.A.
“Thought Lady would find a friend by now,” Layla continued. “Every day I walk up to house and think, this is the morning pretty Lady has no more tension here.” Layla’s thumb dug deep into the muscle of Prim’s left shoulder.
“Oooow,” Prim whined. Layla’s thumb hurt so good.
“Lady is pretty. She is young. She has beautiful body. Not married. No kids. She has private house, private beach at resort.” With each word, Layla rubbed her hands deeper into the muscles of Prim’s back. “She on holiday without man, but plenty of men at resort on holiday without a woman.”
Prim closed her eyes, Layla was beginning to sound more and more like Prim’s mother in London.
“So why, I ask, why has Lady, while she here, not found friend to take care of all the tension in these muscles?” Layla pulled the heavy heated towel up over Prim’s back and took her strong hands and stroked down Prim’s left leg.
“God, yes,” Prim whispered between her teeth.
“You not answer me.” Layla laughed. “Maybe Lady not know answer.”
“Men are pigs.” Prim said. There were two Prim wanted to gut right now.
“You’re not having sex.” Layla said. “I feel it in your muscles. I see it in your joints. Too tight. No sex.”
Prim’s sexual frustration bubbled through her chest and replaced the relaxation that Layla’s hands provided.
“I just haven’t found anyone,” Prim said. “No one that I want to be with.”
“Don’t have to keep the man, just have to use the man. Don’t keep the pig for a pet, just use it for what you need.”
Prim smiled. She liked the way Layla thought.
“Done,” Layla said. She tickled Prim’s right toes. Prim sat up and pulled the sheet around her body.
“Lady leave tomorrow?” Layla asked. She wiped her hands on a towel.
Prim nodded. “Early. I return to work on Monday.”
“Maybe you get lucky tonight. With all the massage your muscles are ready for a man. The heat will explode for you. Maybe you find one at Devils and Angels?”
Prim screwed up her face and shook her head. “Not going.” She slid from the massage table. She grasped the table with her hand. The first few steps, after a massage, were always tough. “Leaving early tomorrow morning, spending the night here.”
Layla’s smile slipped from her face. “Lady must go to Devils and Angels party.” Her grey hair was in a long thick braid. The skin around her eyes was etched with tiny wrinkles but Prim could neither tell Layla's heritage nor, for certain, her age. She seemed timeless. “Someone you must meet. I feel it in your body.”
Okay. A little too much voodoo with the massage. Prim reached for the envelope she’d prepared and handed it to Layla. “I can’t thank you enough for this week. You’ve made my body feel,” Prim pulled the sheet tighter around her body. “Well you’ve made my body feel better than it has in years.”
“Eighteen months,” Layla said. “It’s been almost eighteen months since you’ve been with a man.”
“How do you-?”
“You still not believe what my fingers feel? I can feel it all in your muscles, in your bones. We carry the body through life and life, it infiltrates all of the body.” Layla said the words as if it all was obvious. “You go tonight. You meet someone take away the tension these hands can’t reach.” Layla reached for her bag of oils and hefted it over her shoulder. “You go.”
“Not going,” Prim said, again, and followed Layla toward the door. “But thank you.”
“You are going,” Layla said a smile plastered to her face. “The man who will take the tension from you will be there. You will find him tonight.”
Prim’s smile remained fixed to her face. Perhaps it was the language barrier. She’d had similar conversations with Layla over the course of the last six days and instead of arguing or trying to explain Prim had simply nodded and smiled. The last one was when Prim emphatically denied that she would go snorkeling but then she....had?
Layla’s smile remained in her lips as she descended the front stairs. She raised her ha
nd and waved over her shoulder. “Lady have fun time tonight. More fun than the last 18 months.”
Prim closed the door behind Layla. She was not going to the party at the resort’s disco tonight. She’d already scheduled an early dinner and she had to pack. Her flight left for Los Angeles early and the car was scheduled to pick her up before sunrise. She walked to the open French doors. The surf pounded the shoreline. A breeze gently lifted her hair from her shoulders. Beautiful. Luxurious. Glorious. Relaxing.
The muscle in her left shoulder tightened. How was that pain happening already? Layla had worked on Prim’s body ninety minutes a day for six days. How could there still be tension in any part of Prim’s body. She reached her hand to her shoulder and rubbed. Because of two men in Los Angeles. Two men that she’d left behind. One a seller and one a buyer who had forever changed the carefully crafted landscape of Prim’s life.
Monday she would return to an office fundamentally changed by the sale of Ryan Murphy’s beloved Metro Media to the near recluse and old codger of a man: William Rhodes. If only Prim's best friend Meg had managed to convince Cole to buy Metro Media. Prim could be happy working for her best friend’s husband. But Cole didn’t bite. No he was too smart for that. Prim knew the financial details of the deal between her former boss Ryan and her soon-to-be boss Mr. Rhodes, and she was still uncertain how Ryan had managed to get the purchase price he did for Metro. And why would a seventy-year old man who'd made his money in steel suddenly have an interest in a media company?
Prim closed her eyes. A breath of fresh air tinged with salt entered her lungs. She opened her eyes and exhaled. The black rocks on the edge of the shoreline created a protected and private cove for her own enjoyment.