by Mel Curtis
“I threw those hideous boots away while you were getting dressed.”
Gemma’s breath caught. “I’ll dig them out of your trash.” And she did. Those boots were the only physical link to her dead father. Sure, he’d been a liar and a coward for not telling her the truth, but he was her father.
While she was hugging the boots to her chest, Cora snatched her glasses back.
Forty-five minutes later, Gemma and Cora were still bickering about boots and glasses as they entered Javier’s restaurant, where the mini-dates were going to be filmed as part of their brother, Blue’s matchmaking reality show.
Almost legally blind, Gemma wobbled on Cora’s heels into the foyer. “Give me back my glasses. Randy isn’t going to choose me.” Her volume diminished pathetically. “I’m filler.”
“Rules are never filler,” Cora chastised.
“I’m not really a Rule,” Gemma whispered. “Or Glitterfrost Gem.”
“Thank God, you’re here.” Blue loomed into blurred view and dragged Gemma toward the back of the restaurant. At least it sounded like Blue. She couldn’t make out his face. “I didn’t want to start until you got here.”
“I need my glasses.” Was that panic in her voice? Gemma wanted to schlump out the back door.
“Give her the glasses, Cora. Now isn’t the time to torture her.” Blue was her hero.
Glasses were placed in Gemma’s hand. She wasted no time putting them on.
Sitting in the booth were two of L.A.’s hottest celebrities – Mimi Sorbet and fashion designer to the stars, Xuri. Mimi looked like a miniature Marilyn Monroe. Xuri looked like she could star in a modern remake of Memoir of a Geisha. Even with Cora’s makeover, Gemma was the one who didn’t look as if she belonged.
Gemma spun, wobbled, and crashed into Cora. “Don’t make me do this,” Gemma whispered. “I’m nobody.”
“Not to us, you’re not.” Cora turned her back toward the booth, keeping her hands on Gemma’s shoulders so she couldn’t flee. “To us, you’re a Rule.”
“I’ll be humiliated.” And that was if she managed not to fall over in Cora’s heels. If she was a Rule, she was the weakest link.
“Hey, you can have your pick of men.” Cora shook Gemma’s shoulders. “You could reject Randy.”
Reject Randy?
He was her crush. She’d seen the game film where he went down in a melee of limbs during the championship game at the Final Four. She’d seen him limp to his feet and tell his coach he was okay, when in reality he wasn’t. That took courage. The kind of courage the other Rules had. If Gemma had any guts at all, she’d have been tweeting at him hashtag Man Crush Monday.
She’d met him before. Several times. Gemma Kent, the prickly-mannered, army boot-wearing receptionist for the Dooley Foundation, didn’t interest Randy Farrell, up-and-coming young coach in the NBA and former NCAA stud. Nope. Randy was only interested in Glitterfrost Gem, fabricated bestie of Mimi Sorbet. He’d met Glitterfrost Gem once at a Flash practice and they’d barely exchanged a handful of words. How could she be infatuated with a guy who couldn’t recognize her when her hair was in its normal tight curls and she wore glasses?
“Gemma, come sit with me.” Mimi held out her hand. She was wearing a black wrap-around dress and a nervous smile. The fragile actress was still vulnerable in venues that served liquor.
Gemma took Mimi’s hand and sat, greeting Xuri tentatively.
Xuri didn’t smile. Rumor had it Xuri never smiled. The designer fixed Gemma with an evaluating stare, then said in her exotic accent, “Come see me Monday.”
“Why?” Gemma asked.
“You need a wardrobe that defines you.” Xuri sniffed and looked away.
“Oh, my God,” Mimi whispered, clinging to Gemma’s hand. “She likes you. I asked for an appointment and she pretended not to hear.”
Gemma wasn’t impressed. She’d worked at the Dooley Foundation for too long. The Rules made magic happen. They could arrange for you to bump into a talkative sex therapist at the mall, sit next to a powerful movie producer at an NBA game, or makeover the little, unfashionable, boot-wearing half-sister they’d recently discovered and were most likely embarrassed of.
Never be afraid to be who you are, Dooley had told Gemma one day not long before he died.
Great words of advice if you knew who you were.
There was nothing wrong with Randy Farrell that a good woman couldn’t fix.
And he had his sights on the perfect woman. But she was shy and in order to meet her, he’d had to bargain to be in this Valentine’s Day evening of dating, filmed no less. It was a white tablecloth, dark paneling, suit and tie event. There were cameras and a production crew. Daunting for a guy from Indiana, who was more comfortable in T-shirts and basketball shorts than in a starchy button-down.
Blue Rule, the emcee of the show, entered the private dining room at Javier’s. He sat across from Randy at the small table. “Here’s how things go down. Each woman comes in. You have up to ten minutes to break the ice, but during that ten minutes, you need to ask her these three questions.” He handed Randy an index card.
Having seen Blue’s matchmaking reality show once or twice, Randy knew this was coming. But he’d created his own three questions.
“After the third candidate, you’ll choose your Valentine dinner date,” Blue said.
There was no question in Randy’s mind who he’d pick. But he nodded his agreement, fiddling with the knot of his tie. Other than to coach, the last time he’d worn a tie had been when he met the President of the United States with the rest of his college basketball championship team. Back then he’d also worn a knee-brace and an Achilles boot. He’d sacrificed his body for a shot at history. Nearly a year later and he was still unsteady when he moved too quickly.
The door opened and Xuri, the beautiful, Japanese, fashion designer walked in. He greeted her with a handshake. She was a few years older than he was, and her expression was intimidating as hell.
He waited until she was seated to begin. “What’s your favorite sport?” His first question.
“Sumo wrestling.” Xuri sounded bored.
Randy noted Blue shifting his weight and hurried to his second question. “Do you like basketball?”
“No.” She was about as warm as a dead fish.
There was no sense asking any more of Randy’s questions. He glanced at the card Blue had given him. “Would you take me on the red carpet dressed the way I am?”
“No.” She didn’t hesitate. “You bought your jacket off the rack.”
Randy had come to Hollywood via conservative Holy Southern Cross University. The amount of attention paid to appearances in L.A. never ceased to amaze him.
But Xuri wasn’t done. “Your jacket bubbles on your shoulders and makes you look like…What is the word? A scarecrow.”
“It’s been a pleasure to meet you.” Randy stood, feeling hot and bothered. And not in a good way.
“You didn’t ask all my questions.” Blue frowned when Xuri had gone.
“I asked one and it was the deal-breaker.” While they retrieved Bachelorette Number Two, Randy updated his Twitter feed: Waiting for my #WCW. That’s right. Soon the focus of his Woman Crush Wednesday Twitter campaign would be here.
The door to the private dining room opened again and in walked the crush of every man in America – Mimi Sorbet. She was a petite, blond bombshell.
For a moment, Randy was star-struck. Never mind that he’d met the actress once before at a Flash practice, the same one where he’d met Glitterfrost Gem. Mimi was fantasy beautiful, with a lush mouth and a pair of boobs his mother would roll her eyes over.
Randy had to bend so Mimi could reach his cheek with the mover-and-shaker air kiss people in California loved so much. Mimi smelled like a bouquet of roses, which reminded him of his grandmother, whom he’d last seen in her open casket. Definitely a desire-killer.
When Mimi was settled across from him, he asked, “What’s your favorite sport?”
>
“I don’t like sports much. Growing up, I was into beauty pageants.” She rolled her shoulders and gave him that million-dollar smile. “I was Miss Arkansas.”
“Congratulations.” No sense asking her any more of his questions. He didn’t want to talk about world peace. He flipped over Blue’s card. “Would you take me on the red carpet dressed the way I am?”
She leaned over to look at him from head to toe, exposing more of her goods. “There are some events where what you’re wearing would be acceptable.”
It was a better answer than what Xuri had shot him down with. He consulted Blue’s card again. “What do you find most attractive in a man?”
“A year ago, I would have said a great smile or a killer body.” She considered him again, giving him the confounding impression that there was more than sex on her brain. “That sounds rather shallow. Frankly, I don’t know what I find attractive anymore.”
Everyone in the room, including Blue Rule, who was the relationship master, seemed to perk up and take notice. This was Hollywood’s hottest sex-kitten, just months out of rehab. She sounded as if she’d lost her meow.
Mimi laughed self-consciously. “You know what? I’m going to take myself out of the running. You seem nice, but I have this friend…And frankly, I’m not looking to date right now.” She walked out with a tantalizing swing of hips that left every man staring at the door.
“That’ll make great television,” Blue muttered to his fiancé and producer, Maddy, who was nodding and grinning as if she’d just won the lottery.
So far, Randy had been rejected by two of Hollywood’s most intriguing women. He updated Twitter: Here comes #WCW!
A few minutes later, the door opened.
It was her.
Gemma’s black dress clung to her petite, gently curved frame, and featured a rare glimpse of creamy cleavage. He gulped. Gemma was like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. You never knew what you’d get, but whatever it was, he liked it.
“I’m Gemma.” Her hand was small, but her grip firm. She didn’t look him in the eye.
“We’ve met before.” In reality, they’d met once when she’d been dressed like this – in the clothes of a Hollywood celebrity, without her glasses. They’d been at several of the same events when she’d been dressed in skirts or leggings and army boots. Always the boots. But at those events, she avoided him like foot fungus. And he, who led giant men on the court with words and actions, was struck stupid by this miniature dervish of a woman. He’d resorted to pinging her on Twitter every Wednesday. What a wuss.
He smiled, trying his best not to look like an awkward petri dish of foot fungus. He leapt ahead in his questions. “Do you like basketball?”
“If I say no, will you choose someone else?” Her sarcasm wasn’t unexpected. He hadn’t heard her talk without it when she’d attended Flash events. She was always digging at Cora.
That’s what he enjoyed about her. She was sharp and sassy, but caring, too. Real in the land of phonies. His body flushed with adrenaline, much as it had before an important college basketball game. “If you say no, I might try to convince you otherwise.”
She eyed him warily, as if he’d approached her on the street, asking for gas money with some lame excuse about a stolen wallet. “I watch a lot of football, but recently I’ve become a Flash fan.”
Points to her. He had another question, a request for her phone number, but he decided to save it for later. “Would you take me on the red carpet dressed the way I am?”
“Why would I take anyone on the red carpet?” She seemed to check herself out. “Do you expect me to dress like this every day?”
“I hope not.” A girlfriend that involved in her appearance would be exhausting.
“Is there something wrong with the way I’m dressed?” There was that temper, so contradictory it made him grin.
“No. You look hot.”
She huffed as if she didn’t know what to believe.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Blue cross his arms over his chest and lower his chin. If Randy wasn’t careful, if he didn’t obey Blue’s rules, he was going to blow his chance with Gemma. He referred to Blue’s list of questions. “What do you find attractive in a man?”
“Honesty.”
He wanted to squirm. He didn’t. He’d asked to participate in Blue’s show on the condition that Gemma be a part of it. Blue hadn’t gone easy on him. He’d interrogated Randy as if Gemma was his little sister. Randy glanced down at the card and then back up at Blue. “I’m not asking this question.”
“Do it.” Blue’s voice was firm.
“Trust him,” Maddy whispered.
Randy swallowed. “My apologies. To you and my mother. Because I don’t want to ask this question.”
“You might as well ask me.” Gemma glared at Blue.
“What’s your secret bedroom fantasy?” And did it include him? In his effort to be still, Randy’s lungs froze, his vision fuzzed, and his brain farted, setting his tongue free. “Or maybe you could tell me a less private fantasy.” Like fantasies weren’t private? Randy contained a groan.
Gemma’s eyes were normally a deep brown, but now they were almost violet behind her glasses. “There are people in this room who are so dead.”
“Don’t say another word.” Randy hurried to salvage the situation. “I’ve made my decision. I want to have dinner with you.”
Continue Reading
More by Melinda Curtis
This book percolated for years with a combination of things: I enjoy hearing celebrity gossip, I married a Final Four college athlete who later became a coach, I listen to self-help audio books (The Secret is still a favorite), and my mother was obsessed with Richard Simmons when I was growing up. If you mix all that together, you'd get a self-help guru who isn't cool to his kids, who dies and wills his practice to his kids - only he's never told anyone the secrets to his self-help success. You'd also get a cast of characters only Hollywood can provide: a sex kitten reality star, a heartless heart-throb actor, a NBA star with something to prove, a wounded gossip columnist, a driven self-made NBA franchise owner, a sister who needs to grow up, and a brother who thinks he can cut corners and ride the heroine's coat tails. Amber Rule is one of my favorite heroines because she lived in my head for far too long. I hope she's become one of your favorites, too.
Playing for Love
Fool for Love
It's Only Love
All My Love
All She Needs is Love
Fighting For Love
Melinda Curtis is an award winning, USA Today bestseller who lives in her empty nest with her husband (her college sweetheart), two small dogs (Yorkie-Shitzu mixes), and an average looking cat (Queen of all she Surveys).
To receive Free Reads and book release notifications from Melinda sign up here: http://bit.ly/1hQOMIP
Follow her on FB for series updates and chances to win stuff. https://www.facebook.com/MelindaCurtisAuthor/
Other Series by Melinda Curtis
Harmony Valley from Harlequin Heartwarming
(fun, touching sweet small town romances)
Dandelion Wishes
Summer Kisses
Season of Change
One Perfect Year
Time for Love
A Memory Away
A Man of Influence
The Bridesmaid Series
(sweet, romantic comedies)
The Wedding Promise
Always a Bridesmaid
Rescued by a Bridesmaid
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Excerpt from All My Love
More by Melinda Curtis