by Skye Jordan
“Are they really all that?”
Abby’s use of the American slang pushed a tired laugh from Tessa. “You’re asking the wrong woman. You’d be a better judge.”
“Abby,” Sophia called somewhere in the distance. “The commercial’s over.”
Her sweet voice created another pang in Tessa’s heart. She hated spending her meager vacation this way when her work already stole too much attention away from Sophia. She had to finish this. They’d both spent months grieving Corinne. Now it was time for them to move on, the way Tessa had promised her best friend they would.
“The princess calls,” Abby said. “I’d better bugger off.”
Tessa said good-bye and disconnected, sighing as she pushed the phone into her blazer pocket. Then she relented to the afternoon heat and slipped off her cropped navy jacket, folding it neatly over her arm. Standing by the stacked equipment, Tessa couldn’t have been more out of place. But she didn’t care. She had no desire to be one of the bikini-clad women mooning over some untouchable man because of his looks.
When a middle-aged crew member wandered toward the equipment pile, Tessa cracked open her introverted shell the way she did for meetings and congressional hearings. “Excuse me, sir?”
He looked up from his crouched position where he grabbed for a long black pole with a flood light attached to the end. “No,” he said, his voice gruff and annoyed. “I won’t get you an autograph. You should have been here this morning, when they were scheduled to do their meet and greet. Times were posted in the paper.”
“I don’t want an autograph—”
“Good.” He propped one light on his left shoulder, drew out another, and propped it on his right, then stood. His face glistened with sweat, and his weary expression clearly told the story of a long damn day in the heat. “And I won’t get you a key to anyone’s room either.”
“Key?” she asked bewildered, then shocked. “Do people really do that?”
The man laughed. “Where’ve you been, lady? Living under a rock?” He looked her up and down, his scowl indicating he didn’t much like what he saw. “They’re not doing interviews either. If you want an appointment, call the studio.”
“I’m not here for an interview or an autograph or a room key. I need to speak with Zach Ellis.”
The man harrumphed and turned away.
“Wait.” She stepped forward, pressing a hand to the barrier. When he turned toward her, she forced a smile. The apologetic, I’m-really-out-of-my-league-here-would-you-help-a-girl-out smile that had pushed her up the ladder of success faster than colleagues who’d slept their way from rung to rung. “Could you just tell me who is who? I can’t tell them apart.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“They look identical to me. I’ve asked…” She glanced toward the crowd, “the, um, the—”
“Casting-couch wannabes?”
Her gaze cut back to him. She was beginning to think these people spoke a different language. “Sure, let’s go with that. Unfortunately, they weren’t much help.”
He surprised her by laughing. His face brightened, his shoulders eased, and he shook his head. “Surprise, surprise.” He surveyed her again. “You’re not a reporter?”
“No.” She considered telling him she was an attorney but was pretty sure that would only get her shunned.
His brows shot up. “You a cop?”
“What?”
“A cop. You know.” He lifted a finger to point in her general direction, but his gaze wandered over her suit. “A detective or something?”
Tessa had a flash of looking at herself in the mirror before she’d left the condo—perfectly professional in her best navy suit. She’d left the house confident and secure. But now her self-esteem took a hit. She might not care that she wasn’t a bombshell casting-couch wannabe, but… “You think I look like a cop?”
“Or a teacher, maybe.” He smiled. “A librarian, even.”
“A teach— Librar—” She caught the disbelief before it colored her tone. “No. None of the above. I’m just a friend of a friend who knows Mr. Ellis, and I happened to be in town.”
“Uh-huh. Well, Zach came out of the water from his last run with a nasty cut on his forehead. That’s the best I can do.”
Not exactly a smoking gun she could spot a mile away. “Well, thank you.”
The man nodded and started toward the ocean, where more cameras, lights, and equipment littered the sand. Tessa relaxed a little. Now she had a reliable way of telling the two men apart, she just had to figure out how to get close enough to determine who was who.
She took a cleansing breath, steeled herself, and turned toward her last source of information—the casting-couch wannabes.
2
Zach plucked the Sharpie from the fingers of another bubbly babe and scribbled Ian’s name on her arm. “There you go.”
The girl—or woman; Zach could only guess her age at somewhere between sixteen and twenty-six—had a breathy Marilyn Monroe giggle. “Thank you so much, Ian.” She held her arm to her breasts, barely contained in little more than a bikini top. “I’m such a fan. I’ll treasure it.” Then she pulled a piece of paper from inside her left bikini triangle and laid it on the table in front of him. “My room number at the Hilton and my cell. I’m available. Anytime.”
Zach smiled and nodded the same way he had with all the other women.
“You’re so much nicer than everyone says,” she said before she bopped away.
Zach caught Malo’s gaze. A local hired by the studio as a member of Ian’s security team, Malo read Zach’s silent message and stepped in front of the table, steering the girls away. “We’re taking a break, ladies.”
“Who said you could have a break?” Tucker jibed from beside him. Tucker, Josh, and Grace had spent the last three hours either making fun of him for agreeing to this or chatting about everything from their childhoods to travel.
Zach lifted his beer and finished it off, then looked at his watch. “I’ve got just under an hour to take a permanent break from this bullshit.”
“You’re giving Ian his money’s worth,” Grace told him. She and Josh had only been married a few months, and she’d come on the trip so they could squeeze in a quasi-honeymoon. “His reputation is going to skyrocket. He’s such an ass.”
Malo steered a few women away from the booth. When he stepped aside, Zach’s gaze fell on the bar, and the barstool where Miss Prim and Proper had been planted since before he’d arrived. She hadn’t moved when all the other women in the VIP bar had clustered around his booth for the shower of champagne. She hadn’t danced to the music ripping through the club beyond the VIP lounge. She hadn’t come forward for an autograph. And even on the occasions she’d been approached by others, she hadn’t given any man—or woman, for that matter—more than a few seconds of her attention.
Now, she ran the tip of her finger around the rim of her wineglass and scanned the club with a look that screamed bored to tears. When her gaze reached Zach’s table, she met his eyes for an extended second before averting her gaze with a sigh. Then she picked up her drink and sipped.
That had been happening for hours. Their gazes had met so often, he felt like they had a silent conversation going, though he had no idea what they were talking about. She wasn’t showing any sign of interest, which was both refreshing and odd considering the situation and present company.
“Yo, dude,” Tucker said. “Why are you looking at her when you’ve got babes willing to fight for your attention?”
“These aren’t babes,” Zach said, looking around. “They’re fuckin’ groupies.” And they were all so damn young. “He picked up the paper the last girl had offered and handed her phone number to Tucker. “Here’s another one for your collection.”
“Right on.” He pocketed it.
“Who are you looking at, Zach?” Grace asked.
“No one.” He pulled his gaze away from the cross of Miss Prim’s legs beneath the hem of her busine
ss skirt. He had a bevy of skin to look at—tight, tanned, curvy skin—yet he couldn’t stop looking at the shape of her legs or the way her heels made the muscle in her calf flex.
“The suit at the bar,” Tucker countered.
“I thought Zach was the only suit in this bar.” Grace leaned to the side and looked that direction.
“Stop,” Zach said.
Grace’s gaze pivoted to Zach, and she grinned. “That’s different. I thought you were a casual-island-girl type of guy.”
“She’s probably a studio exec,” Josh offered, “making sure everything goes smoothly.”
Grace tapped Zach’s leg under the table. “Maybe you ought to go cozy up to that studio exec, liven up her night a little, and see if you can get a scoop on Ian’s role.”
A spark teased the edges of his bored brain. “That idea actually has merit.”
“You sound surprised. Lots of my ideas have merit. Ask Josh.”
“Absolutely,” Josh answered without provocation, then tilted his head and kissed his bride’s neck.
Zach cast a look at Tucker, and they both rolled their eyes at the newlyweds. Then he turned his gaze on the woman again. Everyone swirled around her, talking, laughing, flirting, without giving her a second look. If she cared, she didn’t show it.
Maybe that was why he kept zeroing in on her. He could relate to that feeling of being invisible. Of being unworthy of attention because of all the shining stars hovering around. He experienced it every time Ian was within five miles. He’d also experienced it within his family his entire life.
Miss Prim picked up her phone and glanced at the screen, then scanned the bar again. And again, her gaze paused on Zach, searched the table, paused on Zach again. This time a little longer, as if to ask, What are you looking at?
A tickle of humor made him smile. She glanced to her left and right, obviously thinking he was smiling at someone else.
“Oooooh,” Grace hummed. “There’s definitely something happening there.”
“There’s nothing happening,” he told her. “I just find it refreshing to see someone who owns some self-possession for a change.”
“She’s not Zach’s type,” Tucker said. “Way too uptight.”
“Just because she’s wearing more clothes than skin doesn’t make her uptight. It makes her well-dressed,” Grace said. “And maybe if he raised his standards, he’d find a girl he’d want to hold on to.”
“I’m right here,” he told them.
“Whoever she is, she’s not here for the same reason everyone else is.” Grace grinned at Zach again with a teasing “She doesn’t seem particularly interested in you—or, I guess I should say, Ian.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Tucker said. “Maybe she knows he’s not Ian. I bet the studio heard Ian was going to bail, and she’s standing by to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
“I don’t look that much like Ian,” Zach said for the tenth time in the last three hours. “Some of the women know I’m not him.”
“Um…really?” Grace chuckled. “I don’t think it counts when a woman asks if you’re Zach, you tell her no, and she chirps, ‘I didn’t think so,’ then asks for your autograph as Ian. And there have only been three or four out of— Hell, how many women are in this lounge, anyway? A hundred?”
“Just under,” Josh said. “Maybe ninety-five.”
“Maybe she’s not an exec,” Grace mused. “She’s not on her phone or running around ‘handling’ things. She’s searching the crowd, watching people. Maybe she’s waiting for someone. Maybe she’s in the wrong place.” Her brows shot up, and she grinned at Zach. “Maybe you ought to go give her a little help.”
“Oh for God’s sake.” Josh laughed and wrapped his wife in a hug, kissing her head. “Zach, would you just go talk to her and get her story so this little matchmaker will go home happy?”
Zach took the out. He was as bored as Miss Prim and uncomfortable stuck in a booth in slacks and a blazer. Grace’s idea of cuddling up to a studio executive when Ian’s role was about to hit the audition block wasn’t a bad one.
“Fine,” he said, standing from the booth to slide his blazer off and rolling up his shirtsleeves. “I need another beer anyway.”
The other three didn’t even wait until he’d left the table before they started making bets on who she was and what progress Zach would make with her.
He stepped past Malo with a pat on his shoulder. “Take a load off, buddy. I’ll bring you back a beer.”
Malo glanced back and grinned. “Can I work for you all the time?”
“Sorry, I can’t afford you.”
“Maybe soon…”
Zach laughed. He wasn’t the only one who wanted Ian off the set.
His stroll to the bar took three times as long as it should have with women stopping him to chat or ask for an autograph. By the time he reached the bar, he’d never been more sure Miss Prim was a fish out of water. Her suit was fitted over a slim frame, her hair twisted into a tight coil at the base of her neck, and those glasses—thick, dark frames—
“What can I get for you, sir?” A bartender about Zach’s age appeared almost before his elbows hit the wood.
He tipped his bottle. “Another.”
When he glanced toward Miss Prim, she was eying the table Zach had left. Hell, maybe she’d been looking at Tucker this whole time.
The bartender placed his freshly pulled beer on the bar.
“Thanks,” he said, then gestured to Miss Prim. “Can you refill her wine for me?”
“Every time I try, she rejects me.” The bartender smirked at her. “A guy can take only so much before he crumbles.”
“Funny, Jack,” she said with the flicker of a smile. Her voice was soft and warm. “Very funny.” She cast a look at Zach before facing the bar again. “Thanks, but I’m over my limit, and I’m leaving anyway.”
She refused him like a woman used to being hit on. His intrigue rose.
He angled toward her, leaning against the gleaming wood. “I know I can rub some people the wrong way, but this is a first.”
Her brows pulled a little. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean you’ve been here doing nothing for three hours, then decide to leave after I come up to say hi?”
“I thought you came up to get a beer.”
Her quick response made him grin. “And to say hello.”
She looked confused. “Why?”
He chuckled a little. “Because we’ve been looking at each other for hours, and because you’re hard to ignore. Like a shark fin in calm waters.”
One brow shot up above the rim of her glasses. “Did you just call me a shark?”
He tilted his head, trying to get a read on her. “It was a metaphor.”
She exhaled with a shake of her head. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
He was about to agree and steer the conversation that direction in hopes of getting to know her better, when she turned her head and deliberately met his gaze. Even held it with a curious edge. The moment’s hang time rivaled his Hail Mary aerial twisting flip and gave him the chance for a good look. Her eyes were light, crystal blue lined with long dark lashes. Her nose was slight, her lips pink and full.
“Do you know if or when he’s coming?”
Her question pulled Zach back to the conversation. “What? Who?”
“Your twin.” The impatient edge in her voice alerted him to the fact that he’d missed what she’d already said. “Your double. Your costar. Whatever you call him. He was supposed to be here tonight. Is he coming?”
The only guy who was supposed to be here tonight was Ian, which meant Tucker had nailed it—she knew he wasn’t the series star. It also explained why she hadn’t engaged with him and why she’d been sitting here all night. She was waiting for Ian.
Fucking figured.
He turned fully toward her and asked, “Are you with ABC Studios?”
“What?”
“The studio,” he said louder,
unsure if she didn’t understand the question or if she couldn’t hear over the noise. “The film studio.”
She huffed a breath. “No. And I’m not a reporter or a cop or a librarian or a teacher. But I do need to talk to your other half. And it’s important, so I don’t want to leave if—”
“Hey there.” A blonde pushed in between them. Her lush breasts rubbed Zach’s biceps, her lower body pressed against his hip. And she smelled like a still. “We haven’t been able to get to you all night. My friends and I are staying at the hotel next door.” She flashed an inviting smile, then glanced over her shoulder toward two other women grinning his way. “Want to join us?”
“No, thanks, ladies,” he said. “I’m here with frien—”
One of the other two wet dreams slipped behind him, leaned her curvy body to his back, and slid a hand over his ass. “We’ll be real good to you.”
Her warm breath skittered over his neck, and Zach’s body reacted the way it should when two bombshells of the opposite sex were fused to him. Especially when he hadn’t had a woman’s hand sliding over his ass in months. Only, he didn’t want to have anything to do with these women. “Look, ladies, I’m—”
“Jesus Christ,” Miss Prim muttered just before she stood and wrapped her hand around the biceps of the woman between them, pulling her to the side. “He said no. Haven’t you ever heard no means no? Have some respect—for yourself and others.”
“Hey,” the girl whined. “Mind your own business.”
“Hello, you walked right into my business. Learn to take no for an answer, or wait your damned turn.”
Zach’s gaze snapped to her face, and he found her calm and confident. A strange hush fell over the conversations nearby. He cut a look around and found others equally stunned.
“Ms. Drake.” Malo’s smooth, authoritative voice boomed over the din, and space magically appeared around them. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine, thank you, Malo. These ladies were just going to give us some room to talk.”
Malo glanced at Zach. “You cool?”
“Sure.” After Malo dispersed the drunks, Zach told her, “That was—”