Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Hollywood Roommates
A Reverse Harem Romance
Elizabeth Briggs
Contents
Free Book!
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
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More Than Music - Excerpt
Also by Elizabeth Briggs
About the Author
Acknowledgments
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Chapter One
ALLIE
The proposal is coming, I know it.
Parker, my sweet, handsome boyfriend, sits before me in a navy blue suit, the wind teasing at his dark, silky hair. The pink roses he brought me rest on the marble table beside our plates. Any second now he’s going to pull out a ring and pop the question. Why else would he invite me to this specific restaurant for lunch?
We’ve been dating a year. Living together for six months. It’s totally time.
“This past year has been really great, Allie,” Parker says.
I smile at him and take a sip of my wine. “Yes, it has.”
“And you’re such a great person.” He clears his throat and yanks on his tie, looking everywhere but me. He’s obviously nervous. Of course he is. A proposal is a big deal.
I reach across the table and rest a hand over his. “Moving in with you was one of the best decisions I ever made. Some people thought it was too soon, but it felt right. Don’t you think so?”
He slides his hand away. “Yeah. Um. It’s been great.”
Yes, I’m great, he’s great, we’re all great. Okay, so Parker isn’t a master of words and clearly hasn’t prepared this speech very well, but I can live with that. Everything else about him is perfect, after all. Or mostly perfect anyway. I mean, every couple has their problems, right?
Just when I start to wonder if he’s ever going to get the nerve to do it, I spot a plane behind him. One of those small ones, flitting low across the cloudless blue sky, leaving a trail of white in its wake. As the waiter clears our plates, the plane slowly spells out the words, MARRY ME.
Hope spreads throughout my chest. It’s happening. It’s really happening.
I smile even wider at Parker, who chugs his wine like it’s water and he’s on a desert island. How adorably nervous he is. I look up again, and there, below it…
Is that an A?
I sit up straighter in my chair, my heart racing. No wonder he wanted to sit outside today. I had no idea Parker was such a romantic. This skywriting stunt totally makes up for his lack of preparing a speech.
“You were saying…?” I ask, although I can’t stop looking at the letters forming behind his head. The next letter is an L, like in my name. This is it for sure. I want to kick my feet and squee.
Parker clears his throat. “Yeah. Um. Well. It’s been a year and I think it’s time we move on.”
I nod. C’mon next letter! “Exactly. Move forward. Couldn’t agree more.”
“I care about you a lot.”
“I care about you too.” The plane draws a straight line. The start of another L?
“And I want you to be happy.”
“Of course. I am. Happy, I mean.”
“I just think that—”
There it is. A second L! I can’t hold it in any longer. I jump to my feet and clasp my hands to my chest. “Yes, I’ll marry you!”
He looks up at me with his mouth hanging open. “What?”
I sit back down with a giggle. “Sorry, I just got excited. I should have waited for you to ask me first.” I smooth the skirt of my dress and smile at him. “Okay, I’m ready. Go for it.”
His eyebrows pinch together, causing a deep line to form between them. “Why would you think I’m proposing?”
“This is the restaurant where we had our first date. You brought me flowers. And of course, there’s that.” I gesture to the skywriting behind him. The plane has already begun to form the next letter, which I know will be an I.
He turns in his chair to look. “Oh, shit.”
Wait a second. Is that…an E?
Parker turns back around as a sour feeling hits my stomach. “Allie, I’m not proposing.”
“You’re not?” No, that can’t be right. The pilot is clearly spelling my name wrong. Probably switching the I and the E. I stare up at the plane, hoping with everything I have that the letters will magically change.
“No. I’m trying to break up with you.”
My eyes snap to his face. “What?”
“Listen, there’s no good way to say this. I want to see other people. Well, one person. I met someone. At work.”
“You…met someone.” My head spins. The letter is definitely an E, not an I. Followed by another one that looks like it’s going to be an N. No, no, no, that can’t be right. This isn’t how this lunch is supposed to go at all.
“I was trying to break it to you easily.” Parker shakes his head. “Shit. I can’t believe you thought I was proposing.”
I stare at him, my mouth dry. Behind his head, the letters clearly spell a name that isn’t my own. Somewhere nearby, a guy named Allen is getting engaged and I’m not.
When I can spe
ak, my voice is small. “But the restaurant. The flowers.”
“I completely forgot we went here on our first date. It’s a convenient spot near my office, that’s all. And I brought the flowers because I feel bad.” He folds his hands on the table. “Especially because I need you to move out.”
I reach for my glass of water, but his words shock me so much I knock it over. The water spreads across the table and onto Parker’s lap. Who, frankly, kind of deserves it. “You want me to move out?”
He grabs a napkin, his mouth twisting in annoyance as he wipes at the water. “Yeah. By the end of the week. So Amy can move in.”
I’m being replaced by another girl whose name starts with A. I’m not sure why that makes it even worse, but it does. First Allen got my proposal and now Amy is getting my apartment. I can’t tell if I’m about to break down into tears or go into a mindless rage and upend the table on Parker. Probably both, especially as his words sink in.
“How long have you been seeing her?” I ask.
Parker ducks his head, like he expects me to throw something at it. “About two months now.”
“Two. Months.” My whole world has turned upside down. All this time I’ve been mentally planning our wedding while he’s been banging some other woman.
“It just happened. A dumb work fling, but then it turned into more. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” My voice is veering into screeching territory and I don’t give a single fuck. “You’ve been cheating on me for two whole months and you’re kicking me out of our apartment and you’re sorry?”
Parker glances around at the other diners, who are all staring at us. “Keep your voice down. Like I said, I never meant to hurt you, but I really need you out of my place by the end of the week.”
The absolute nerve of him. He knows how much this screws me over. I’m so upset I can’t even form words. Instead, I grab my wine and toss it in his face. For a second I savor his look of shocked horror that probably mirrors my own, and then I turn on my heel and storm out of the restaurant.
On the sidewalk two men are kissing, one in an expensive charcoal suit, the other in a beige delivery uniform. They break apart as I walk by, beaming at each other, and I catch the name Allen on the front of the uniform.
“Congrats,” I tell them, smiling through my tears. At least one of us is having a good day.
Chapter Two
ALLIE
Once I regain control of myself—which involves hiding in the bathroom of a drugstore until I finish ugly crying, then spending another five minutes fixing my makeup while cursing Parker’s name—I text my best friend Brooke and ask her to meet me.
“I can’t believe him,” Brooke says, twenty minutes later. I’m lucky I was near the law firm where she works and that she was able to meet me at a nearby coffee shop. She listened to my entire sob story while rage made her dark blue eyes look black. “That scumbag. I knew he wasn’t good enough for you.”
I fold my arms on the table and bury my face in them with a groan. My eyes are all dry and scratchy from crying and my heart aches. “Two months. Two. Freaking. Months.”
Brooke rubs my back in slow circles. “I’m going to murder him. Or at least sue his ass for all he’s worth.”
“I thought he was going to propose! I can’t believe I was such an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, but you should get a blood test. You don’t know how many people he stuck his dick in.”
I sit up with a groan. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Sorry, I’m no good at this touchy-feely emotional stuff. But if you want realistic advice, I’m your girl.” She hands me a tissue from her black Coach purse. Brooke’s style is minimalistic chic, and she never wears any color other than black and white. The one exception is her nails, which she always paints in a dramatic color. Today they’re a deep, luxurious purple.
If we were in a movie, Brooke would be the gorgeous, workaholic heroine and I’d be her curvy, funny friend. But this isn’t a movie, and there’s no Hollywood ending for either of us in sight.
I wipe my face and blow my nose. “You can help by finding me a place to live. Parker said he wants me out by the end of the week.”
Brooke scoffs. “He can’t do that.”
“He can. Thanks to my stupidity I gave up my own apartment to move in with him and my name isn’t on the lease. I have nowhere to go, and since I’m on summer break, I’m too broke to afford a deposit on a new place. I’m screwed.”
“You can stay with me.”
“No thanks. Your place is so tiny I’m not sure it actually qualifies as an apartment. We’d murder each other after a week.” Her miniscule studio near her office costs a fortune anyway—one of the downsides of living in Los Angeles. Hence my dilemma. Anything I can afford on my tiny salary will be so far away from the private high school in Santa Monica where I teach that I’ll spend my entire life in traffic. Assuming I could somehow scrape together enough cash for a deposit plus first and last month’s rent, which seems unlikely.
She lifts one shoulder. “It’s better than nothing.”
I scrunch my nose up. “Is it though?”
She tucks a strand of golden blond hair back into her tight bun. “Fine. What about your sister? Surely you can move in with her.”
I practically choke on my green tea. “No way. I’d never hear the end of it. Kristen would gloat forever about how her silly baby sister went and did some stupid thing again and needed her big sister to bail her out. Again. I can’t do that.”
Brooke taps her purple nails on the side off her coffee cup. “Hmm. I might have a solution for you, but it’s not ideal.”
“What is it? I’ll take just about anything at this point.”
“My brother has an empty guest room in his house in Malibu and he owes me a favor.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “The actor? You said he was a ‘cocky prick.’ Your words, not mine.”
“He is. But you know what he’s not? A random stranger from the internet who might end up making a suit out of your skin. Plus his house is big, and he’s ridiculously anal, so it’ll be clean at least. You’d just have to put up with the royal ass until you’re back on your feet again.”
I swirl my tea around in my cup as I consider. “I don’t really have any other options.”
Brooke types away on her phone. “I’m texting him now about it.”
“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”
“You won’t thank me when he makes you cry on a daily basis. You sure you don’t want to ask your sister for help?”
“Very sure.”
“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She points her phone at me. “And whatever you do, don’t get a crush on him.”
I let out a miserable laugh. “That’s definitely not in the cards.”
“Really? Because I know you. You meet a halfway decent guy. You fall instantly head over heels in love and start seeing babies and dogs and a minivan. You make reckless decisions like moving in with him way too soon. Sound familiar?”
“It wasn’t reckless…” I say, even though everything she said was spot on.
“You’re a romantic. It’s one of your most endearing qualities, but it means you need to be careful too. My brother’s single and he’s not a bad looking guy. Until he opens his mouth and ruins it with his personality, anyway.”
“You don’t need to worry. I am done with love. Totally over it. As far as I’m concerned, romance can suck a big one. Besides, I’ve seen your brother on TV before. He’s not my type.” Okay, that’s not entirely true. Shane Easton is a damn fox, but he’s probably Photoshopped or wearing tons of makeup or whatever they do to make actors look hot all the time, even when they’re sweaty and tired. In person there’s no way he actually looks like that. “If he’s half as bad as you say he is, I won’t be interested anyway.”
“Uh huh,” she says. “Shane says he can meet you tonight at five. That work?”
“Perfect.” T
hat gives me enough time to run back to the apartment and pack my things.
“Don’t get any ideas about the other roommates either. They’re all actors and—” She pauses and glances down at her phone, which is vibrating. “Shit, I have to run. I have a meeting with a client that I can’t miss.” She downs her coffee in one gulp, grabs her purse and jumps to her feet, only stopping to give me a quick hug. “I’ll text you Shane’s address. Everything is going to be fine, I promise.”
After she speeds out, I finish my tea and sit up a little straighter, bolstered by her words. My love life may be in shambles, and I may have no place to live and only a few pennies to my name, but at least I have the best friend in the world.
Her brother and his roommates can’t be that bad…right?
Chapter Three
ALLIE
This can’t be the place.
I switch off my car and stare at the house in front of me. Actually, house is an understatement. Something this gigantic and majestic can only be called a mansion. Or a beach house, considering the glimpse of the bright blue ocean behind it.
A really freaking huge beach house.
I check the address on my phone. Then the numbers on the house. Then my phone again. The numbers. My phone. The house. It all checks out, but my brain can’t seem to connect the dots.
I text Brooke just in case. Are you sure this is the right place?
Hollywood Roommates: A Reverse Harem Romance Page 1