I Loved You First
Suzanne Enoch
Molly Harper
Karen Hawkins
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
I LOVED YOU FIRST
Take Two by Suzanne Enoch
Pasties and Poor Decisions by Molly Harper
The Last Chance Motel by Karen Hawkins
Copyright © 2020 Suzanne Enoch, Molly Harper, Karen Hawkins
Ebook ISBN: 9781641971478
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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Copyright © 2020 by Suzanne Enoch
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Contents
Take Two
Suzanne Enoch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Pasties and Poor Decisions
Molly Harper
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
The Last Chance Motel
Karen Hawkins
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue
Discover More by Suzanne Enoch
Discover More by Molly Harper
Discover More by Karen Hawkins
About the Authors
Take Two
Suzanne Enoch
1
“Cafferty, when’s the Charlotte Maybury interview?” Eleanor Ross yelled, tapping her finger on the edge of her phone. Please let it be Thursday, she repeated to herself, eyeing her calendar’s open skies at the beginning of the week. Three days without a make-up appointment, without a fitting or a reading or a camera test or a schmooze dinner with a producer.
“Tuesday,” Cafferty returned, his voice echoing up from the office.
Shit. “Can we—”
“I think we can shift it to Thursday,” he interrupted. “That would give you a three-day break before you dive in again.”
“Yes, please.” Brian Cafferty, the magnificent beast, always anticipated her every need, even if it was only for a bit of breathing room. No wonder she’d nearly married him. And no wonder she’d changed her mind about that; what woman wanted to be married to a man who could read her like an open book?
Instead, they’d found the perfect niche for Cafferty. He could keep her schedule, book her appearances, and give her pep talks, and she could tell him to back the fuck up when she needed some space and a moment or two when her life wasn’t scheduled to the millisecond. Hell, she’d fired him six times over the past four years since they’d become un-engaged, which she couldn’t have done if they’d been married. And she’d hired him seven times, so he liked something about the arrangement too.
Eleanor tapped in next Thursday’s date for the e-news interview, leaving the time blank for the moment. That left her with a FaceTime chat in an hour with Enrique Vance so he could tell her—how had he phrased it—“the window he wanted to open into Teresa Woodward’s soul.” All directors were like that, with their own favorite method of communicating their vision to the pesky actors who had to pantomime it, but for crying out loud, some of them were pretentious little shits. She liked what she’d seen of Enrique and the fact that he wanted to make a superhero movie with soul, but that didn’t stop her from sending up a quick prayer every morning since she’d signed onto the project that she’d made the right choice.
“El,” came from the open doorway of her upstairs sitting room, and she jumped.
Cafferty leaned there, a sculptor’s wet dream of manliness hidden beneath a Star Wars T-shirt and faded jeans. Yeah, it hadn’t been just his gift for anticipation that she’d fallen for. That was past tense now—though she did still like to look. She wasn’t dead, for crying out loud. Eleanor shook herself. “Did the new pages show up?”
He straightened, bringing an envelope around from behind his back. “Yep. Figured you’d want to take a look before Vance’s call.”
“Thanks.” She pulled out the two dozen pages, flipping through them. “Huh. Teresa Woodward’s drinking problem is now a shopping addiction. Dolce and Gabbana. Can you say product tie-in?”
“You’re so cynical.” Brian leaned over her shoulder. “It’s difficult being a high-powered lawyer with a mutation that lets her detect lies. A new purse helps dull the pain.” He reached down to flip over a page of the script. “She is still a lawyer, right?”
Eleanor snorted. “Yes. And I’ve always wanted to play a superhero. Don’t make fun.”
“Uh-huh. Speaking of fun, Rod the Bod called twice while you were on the phone with the summer camp people. Something about dinner.”
“You shouldn’t call him that.”
“Sorry. Mr. Bannon, then.”
Since Roderick Bannon’s last movie had very nearly gone straight to the Walmart five-dollar DVD bin, Rod had been spending extra time at the gym, with Chris Hemsworth’s ex-trainer. Personally, she thought the movie had floundered because Rod, with his sun-bleached blond hair, eight-pack abdomen, and trademark piercing blue eyes, hadn’t made for a very convincing blind, reclusive professor of literature. Then again, she happened to have inside information that Rod detested reading, so that might have prejudiced her a little on the believability scale.
She liked Rod. He told a good joke, they shared friends, and he happened to be very pleasant to gaze upon—though in her line of work, she knew a lot of guys who fell into that very same category. Still,
they’d been dating for three months, and she hadn’t fallen out of the starry-eyed, mushy stage yet. Maybe this time she wouldn’t. It could happen; it nearly had four years ago when she’d met Brian Cafferty. The three other men in between those two kept trying to prove her wrong, but hell, if an actress couldn’t imagine a different life, she was in the wrong business.
“Am I giving him an excuse, then?” Cafferty prompted. “An early wake-up call? A production meeting first thing in the morning?”
She shook herself out of her whimsy. That was something that didn’t belong in her line of work. Whimsy led to heavy-assed costume dramas just so you could play a princess, even if the script was a bloody train wreck. Or a carriage wreck, rather. “Anticipating my every need again?” she quipped, a little too sharply.
“Not your every need.”
Now she wanted to dive into that damned whimsy again. “Boundaries,” she muttered, stacking the script pages in her lap again. Too many people clawed at her, wanted bits of her. It felt…safe, being able to tell one of them off.
“Sorry. What do you want me to do with
Bannon?”
“Ask him when he wants to come by or if we’re meeting somewhere.” She stretched. “A night out will be nice.”
“And then three days of catching up on Secrets of the Zoo and finally seeing the third season of Stranger Things?”
“God, yes. I need to know what happens to Hopper and Joyce before I fly off to Brussels for four months. Why can’t Chicago be in Chicago anymore?”
“Because it’s cheaper to make Brussels look like Chicago than it is to film in actual Chicago,” he pointed out.
“Yes, I know. Just let me complain a little. I can’t do it in front of anybody else; they think spending four months away from my house while wearing spandex and hanging by my waist from a piano wire is glamorous.”
“So Teresa Woodward can fly, now?” he asked, lifting both eyebrows this time.
“Not yet. By the time I get the next rewrites, who knows?”
He grinned. “I’ll let Rod the…Mr. Bannon know you’re available tonight.”
“Thanks, Cafferty. Tell him he can call me after five, or text me before that.”
With a mock salute, he strolled out of the room. Eleanor sank back in her comfy chair and read through the script changes in more detail. It wasn’t exactly what she would call edgy, but it did look fun. Clever. And after her last gig playing a no-nonsense factory worker uncovering a flaw in car seats in Carrier, fun had a great deal of appeal. And Enrique Vance had directed the very well-regarded Last Bus to Providence last year, so she tended to think he could help her pull off being a superhero.
Before he called, she sent off a quick email to Cafferty, instructing him to double her endowment to the Wild Wind Summer Camp so they could send an additional fifty kids camping this year now that they had the permits to expand the campground facilities. City kids visiting lakes and mountains, fishing and experiencing nature for the first time—in the four years since she’d started the foundation, she’d never had a second of regret for either the time or the money spent.
Her phone vibrated and abruptly erupted with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice yelling “Get to the choppa!” She jumped, looking down at the number. “Dammit, Cafferty,” she yelled, “quit changing my text tones!”
Okay, it was a little funny, given Rod’s current obsession with being physically fit, but he was also sensitive about it. She read through the text. Rod wanted to pick her up at six sharp, and she was to dress for a fancy dinner so they could celebrate her getting the lead in Prosecutor. That was nice, since he’d just lost out to Zac Efron on his own superhero bid. As soon as she texted back her agreement, she went into the phone’s contacts and edited his text tone back to the old-fashioned car horn it had been previously.
Brian didn’t generally mess with her phone, or her private life, but he’d made it fairly clear that he wasn’t a fan of Rod Bannon. She wasn’t quite sure why; she’d gone out with a handful of guys in the four years since she’d ended their engagement, and Brian had never so much as batted an eye. Then again, Rod was the first one who’d made it past the four-date mark.
Before she could decide whether that was progress on her part or just a really sad commentary on her high-profile life, her phone rang, and she spent the next forty minutes discussing the psyche of a superhero who’d been happy with her pre super-powered life. God, she’d been after this part for so long, and even with the script changes, or perhaps because of them, the role seemed just…perfect. Or perfectly imperfect, rather. Fun, sarcastic, a bit unsure of herself—a female Tony Stark but with confidence issues and no flying. And then Enrique texted her the photo for the costume prototype, and she began to believe this might actually be her Tony Stark moment.
Yeah, she’d had some hits—some big ones—and a couple of rough patches, but this could be it. The it. The part that meshed hard work and skill and craft with fun and pure joy. As she tapped off the call, she felt nearly read to burst out singing. Her gaze on the full-length photo of her costume prototype, she uncurled from her chair and practically bounced to the top of the stairs. “Cafferty! Come look at this!”
“On my way.” Brian’s voice came from downstairs, the last syllable drowned out by her phone ringing with the theme from The Terminator. Damn it, she hadn’t checked to see if Cafferty had changed Rod’s ringtone too.
“Hey,” she said into the phone, jabbing a finger in the direction of her grinning assistant—or handler, as she generally referred to him—as he topped the stairs. “Thanks for waiting to call until after five.”
“Your voice is happy,” Rod’s melodic voice came back to her. “Good news?”
“Yep. I’ll tell you what I can at dinner.”
“I get it. Confidentiality and all.”
That was the nice thing about dating somebody in the business. She didn’t have to explain why blabbing about as silly a thing as the color of her superhero uniform could cost her the entire job and her future as an actor. “Thanks. See you in fifteen?”
“I’m on my way now. Just tell me you at least got a peek at the costume. You don’t want to get Green Lanterned.”
Eleanor snorted. “It’s an actual costume, not CGI. And it’s gorgeous.” She took a breath. “Rod, this could be it.”
“Damn. I wanna be your date to the Golden Globes, then.”
That made her laugh, the excitement in the sound audible even to her. God, she was giddy. “You’re on. I’m hanging up now. I need to get dressed.”
“’K.”
She ended the call. “Have you messed with any of my other contacts on my cell?” she asked, waggling her iPhone at Cafferty.
“Nope.”
“Good. And don’t do it again. What are you, twelve?” Turning left, she headed along the upstairs balcony to her bedroom.
“He gives me the willies,” Brian countered, following behind her.
“You’re my assistant. You help me schedule things, keep my calendar straight, and make sure I don’t miss appointments. You field phone calls for me. You assist me. You do not get to pass judgment on my boyfriends.”
His footsteps slowed. Good. She was serious, dammit. The last thing she needed was to be in a meeting and have somebody forward her something only to hear the Three Stooges theme in response. Eleanor turned to face him.
“You’re my employee, Cafferty. Stop being so…familiar.”
“So you’re being independent again?” he asked, an eyebrow lifting.
“I like being independent. Remember?”
“Yeah. Not likely to forget that. Do I get to see the costume?”
“Nope. Maybe tomorrow, when I’m not pissed at you.” Narrowing her eyes, she backed into her bedroom and shut the door.
She hoped they were going to Dillard’s for dinner. God, she loved the steak there. Together with some wine and a very handsome man saying adoring, supportive things to her, that steak would be just the thing to celebrate her becoming the anchor of her very own movie franchise, if she permitted herself a bit of whimsy for just a minute. Or an entire evening.
Brian Cafferty left Eleanor’s house when she did, making sure Rod the Bod saw him lurking beside his Jeep. At twenty-eight, a year younger than he was, El could stand on her own two feet, but it seemed to him that every single young lady should have someone standing at her side to give the evil eye to every potential boyfriend who looked her way. Eleanor had lost her dad when she was twelve, and she didn’t have any brothers. So that left him to deliver nonverbal threats as necessary.
The Bod had driven his Maserati, bright yellow and practically screaming “look at me!” Maybe that was what had attracted Eleanor to Rod Bannon—she liked the shade, and he could blind the sun with his giant personality.
It wouldn’t last. At least he hoped not. To his fans, Rod was open and charming and friendly and never too busy for a photo or two, so they all adored him. But Brian had seen him up close and for more than the space of a handshake. Rod fed off the adoration. It literally sustained him, and he had nothing else going on but being famous
. Ever.
Or maybe that was just his own ego talking. Scowling, Brian climbed behind the wheel of his four-year-old blue Jeep and headed the five miles southwest to his own condo. Yeah, El paid him a good salary, and he could have afforded one of the nice houses between her mansion and his condo, but he spent so little time at home that the additional expense seemed stupid.
Five years ago, he’d been just shy of becoming a junior partner in a big-name law firm, but his life had made a serious left turn on a warm, windy day in February. That was when a truck towing a giant marquee sign advertising the new romantic comedy movie Mating Dance had overturned a hundred feet in front of him. In a weird, Hollywood-style coincidence, the star of the movie, Eleanor Ross, had been driving one of the cars right behind the sign and had subsequently found herself trapped between a forty-foot image of herself in a duck costume and a hundred surprised commuters and shoppers along Artesia Boulevard.
She’d been totally gracious and good-humored about it, too, taking pics with fans in front of the toppled-over truck, until some of them had gotten too zealous and started grabbing at her. He’d moved in between her and them before he’d even realized he’d decided to get out of his car. For a bare second he’d thought she’d believed his line that he was the driver the studio had sent over, until she sat down in the passenger seat of his BMW next to him and commented that until that moment, she’d never believed in the Blanche DuBois line about relying on the kindness of strangers—and her hands had been shaking.
It had never occurred to him that anyone in the acting profession would be personally shy or introverted, but Eleanor Ross was a classic crowd-a-phobe. He’d choked back the abrupt, idiotic desire to ask her to dinner or to drive her to some quaint ice cream parlor out of a ’50’s romantic comedy, and instead had simply asked where she wanted to go. He’d then embarked on some inane chitchat he couldn’t even recall, just something to give her time to pull herself back together. And when they’d arrived at Paramount Studios, she’d asked for his name and phone number, offered to pay him for his trouble like he’d been an Uber driver, and then with a quick smile and thanks, hurried off into the executive building.
I Loved You First Page 1