by Maggie Marr
“Sure,” Emma said and glanced around at Laurie. “Let me come with you.”
“No!” I said. I closed my eyes and took a long breath. “I don’t want to ruin the day. I just… I don’t feel very good. I’m fine—the fresh air will be good for me.”
Emma tilted her head. Concern still filled her eyes. “Okay,” she said slowly, “but you’ll text me if you need me.”
I nodded. I wouldn’t need her. What I needed was to get Dillon’s face out of my brain. What I needed was for this pain to stop throbbing through me. I needed to move on with my life and make my heart realize what my brain already knew: Dillon wasn’t mine. He belonged to the world now—he was the next big thing.
Since Mission Ranger had come out, people couldn’t stop talking about Dillon MacAvoy and how much they loved Dillon MacAvoy and how sexy was Dillon MacAvoy. His success made healing from the heartbreak more difficult. I knew Dillon in a different way, I knew the true Dillon, I had loved the real Dillon and now… now he was gone, lost to me forever. I knew I wouldn’t love like that again, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want the risk of feeling this way. My heart was gone; it would forever belong to the guy in that poster.
I walked through campus and down the hill toward Memorial Stadium. The trees had started to turn and there were crimson and gold and amber leaves. Normally the colors would look beautiful to me; they had in the past. Now I was so consumed by my pain that not even the fall colors and the crisp chill could boost my spirit.
Could you feel the difference of the seasons in Los Angeles? I’d only been there for one season. If I moved to L.A., I would miss the seasons. I sat on the bench beside Potter Lake. The colors were glorious. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. This was safe. This place was comfort. I was going to stay here. I was going to have a wonderful life. Far from all the glamour, all the games, all the politics of Hollywood. I wanted what was here for me: stability, continuity, friendship. Living here might not make my heart pitter-patter and beat fast, but it would most definitely make me feel safe. This was home.
Dillon
I looked out at all of Los Angeles at my feet. An empty feeling clawed through me. I had everything I thought I wanted. Bernie leaned against my side while Kong did figure eights around my feet. Scorsese and Spielberg sniffed in the bushes at the edge of the path. I was a star. My career was solid. I was in the next Steve Legend film. I had all that—all I had wanted—and I felt empty inside. Completely and utterly empty. My cell phone rang.
“Hey man,” Webber said.
“What’s up?” I kept the edge out of my voice.
“Good to hear your voice,” Webber said. “Steve and Hunter want to have a read-through next week at Steve’s new house. Whole cast will be there.”
“Send me the deets,” I said.
“Hey… uh… you okay? I mean, I heard you were kind of… well, you were kind of off the radar.”
If having a shredded heart because of losing the girl I loved was off the radar, then it was true. “Yeah, man, it’s been a rough couple of months.”
“Well, it’s good to have you back. Boom Boom has a ton to talk to you about. Magazines are clamoring for photo shoots and interviews. Man, you are smokin’ hot. We need to take advantage of all this while we can.”
I nodded. This is what I’d wanted, what I’d worked hard to get, and even with it right here at my fingertips, I still felt empty and shallow.
“Sure,” I said. I kicked a rock across the path. I couldn’t get excited about this without Lane.
“She wanted you to have this,” Webber said. His voice was softer.
“What?”
“Man, I shouldn’t even tell you this.” He sighed. “But I… look.” He paused, a pause where I knew he was making a decision.
“Are you talking about Lane?”
“She came in to pick up her letter of intent for her job here, for after she graduated.”
My heartbeat grew faster. The words, I knew whatever words Webber said next wouldn’t make me a happy man.
“And I told her… I explained to her about where you were in your career and the opportunity you had right now, and how it would only come once and sometimes it never came at all for some actors. And she got it. It broke her heart, but she got it.”
I clenched my jaw. I wanted to beat Webber’s ass. I wanted to beat Boom Boom’s ass. I even wanted to kick my own ass. This wasn’t Webber’s fault—hadn’t I told Lane that nothing was more important to me than my career? Hadn’t I proved that nothing was as important to me as my career by seeing Kiley—even if only for press? Yeah, it’d been my very actions that proved my career was important, even more important than Lane.
My heart hitched. A sour feeling slimed through my gut. Of course she thought and believed that I wanted my career more than her.
“That’s why she left, man,” Webber said. “Not that she couldn’t hack the glamour and the publicity, but because she thought she’d be taking the career opportunity from you. That she’d be stealing your big break. The opportunity to be in a Steve Legend film.”
I shook my head. I snapped my fingers and Kong, Scorsese, Spielberg, and even Bernie trotted to my side. “I gotta go,” I said.
“Sure, man. Where you goin’?”
“The place I should have gone two months ago,” I said. “I’m going to Kansas.”
Chapter 27
Lane
After my film history class on Tuesdays, I headed straight to Strong Hall to work five hours at the registrar’s office. I pulled my coat tighter around my body as the wind whipped down Jayhawk Boulevard. I ducked my head and tried to stay warm. I hadn’t slept much last night. I kept dreaming of Dillon. Our first time together had kept replaying in my mind: every touch, every kiss, every moment that he made my body ache for him. Then I’d wake up, realize I was alone in my bed, and cry. Cry for what I’d had. Cry for what I’d lost. Cry because I knew I would never find a love like Dillon ever again.
I would fall back to sleep and the same scene would replay in my dreams. I hated this. Now I wasn’t even safe from memories of Dillon when I slept. I braced myself against a blast of cold air and pressed my lips tight. I couldn’t go through this pain in the daytime and then have to face our intimate moments together when I slept. I had actually felt his hands on my body, rubbing me and touching me. I woke up and the sheer pain of the aloneness and the thought of never touching Dillon again created a horrible empty hollowness inside me.
I wove around the edge of a crowd that was forming across from the humanities building. Sometimes freshmen gave stump speeches on campus. If you were brave enough to do it, you got an automatic A for the semester in Freshman Speech. I edged around the growing group, crossed the street, and climbed the steps to the door of the admin building. My fingers touched the metal handle of the giant glass doors.
“Stop that girl!”
I froze. My heart jolted in my chest and my throat thickened. I tried to swallow. Tears started in the back of my eyes. Finally, after what felt like a forever moment, I turned my head and looked over my shoulder.
Standing on a stone bench with students milling around him was Dillon.
“Yeah, that one,” he said.
My eyes danced around the crowd. I felt incredibly embarrassed and exposed.
“I love that girl,” Dillon yelled. “I love Lane Channing.”
He jumped from the stone bench and the crowd parted before him. He walked toward me, his gaze never leaving mine. It was like we were alone, as though there weren’t a couple hundred students watching the newest big star in the world walk toward me, a no-name girl at the University of Kansas. His eyes were locked on mine. In his gaze I saw all my pain, all my loss, all my hope reflected in his eyes.
I reminded myself to breathe. I couldn’t swallow. A lump choked closed my throat. My mouth dropped open. The cold was gone. The wind was gone. The crowd was gone. All there was in this world was Dillon and me. He stopped on the step just below where I stood.
<
br /> Blood thundered through my head. I still couldn’t move. As much as I wanted to reach out and grab him, to pull him into my arms, I was frozen. I could barely believe that this moment was real, that this moment was happening, that the man I loved now stood before me. Dillon knelt in front of me.
I pressed my fingertips to my open mouth.
“Lane, I’m sorry. I can’t live this life without you… I won’t live this life without you. Please let me spend the rest of my life proving to you that nothing, nothing in this world has meaning without you.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a black velvet box.
I heard a collective gasp from the crowd.
“Lane Channing…” Dillon’s bright blue eyes, filled with hope, filled with love, filled with promises I knew he would keep, locked onto my eyes. “Will you marry me?”
My heart leapt. I couldn’t speak. Worry clouded Dillon’s eyes with my silence. “Lane, baby, please, baby… I…”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Oh my God, yes,” I said and dropped my books to the ground.
He jumped up and Dillon’s lips were on mine. He pulled me so tight, so close. “Oh, baby, you made me the happiest man in the world. I love you, Laney. I can’t live without you.” He grasped both sides of my face and stared into my eyes.
I saw forever in his eyes. The forever that went with his words. There would be only us.
“I’m so sorry baby. Nothing is more important than you. No film, no career, nothing… You’re the most important thing in my world.”
The crowd burst into cheers. Dillon turned and waved to his fans, to the world. I buried my face into his jacket, embarrassed with all the attention. The campus police stopped their patrol car, and Bob walked up beside Dillon.
“Okay, you two lovebirds,” Bob said. “I think it’s time to get you to a secure location.”
Epilogue
Lane
“You ready for this?” Dillon asked.
He squeezed my hand and his eyes ate me up. I wore a gown that was cut low. Sitting beside him in the town car, my dress rode high on my hip. His fingertips danced around the edges of my thigh. I looked up at him through my eyelashes.
“We don’t have time for that right now,” I purred.
Spirals of heat swept through my body. The last six months had been the best six months of my life. I lived with Dillon. I attended USC with Amanda. I was surrounded by people I loved and I worked in an industry, that even with all the crazy, I adored.
“I can ask Bob to drive around the block a couple of times,” Dillon whispered in my hair.
“We’re already late,” I gasped as his fingers slipped farther up my thigh. “Besides, I think we’re here.”
“Damn,” Dillon said. A wicked smile flashed across his face. “After…” He nuzzled my neck. His hand straightened my skirt over my legs. “You’re amazing. I can’t wait to call you Mrs. MacAvoy.”
My heart hammered harder. Warmth slid through my belly. “If you’d stop saying yes to movies, we could get married.”
“We are getting married. I have the date in my calendar. A place. A bride.” He pulled me close and gave me a long hot kiss.
I wanted to sink into him and relax into that giant, gorgeous chest, but I knew what waited for us on the other side of the door. Bob now stood outside the car. He tapped on the glass of the window. A warning and a signal worked out between him and Dillon.
Dillon raised his eyebrows and looked at me. I nodded. Dillon tapped the window with his knuckle. I took a long, deep breath.
The door swung open and Dillon jumped out. The roar was nearly deafening, and the flashes blinded me. Dillon turned back to the car and reached for my hand. Our fingertips touched and I knew I was okay; I knew I was safe.
I slipped one foot and then the other out of the car. My eyes grew accustomed to the flashing lights. My ears were ready for the cheers and the shouted questions. Dillon clasped me close, pulled me into his side with his arm around me like he always did. We walked down the red carpet, hand in hand, toward his shining star and our future together, forever.
The End
Acknowledgements
First, thank you to, you, my readers. Thank you for buying my books and spending time with the characters. I am grateful for your support.
Thank you to my agent, Kristin Nelson, and every person at Nelson Literary Agency. Thank you to Sarah Hansen of Okay Designs for a beautiful cover and her vision for the Glamour Series. Thank you to Lori Bennett who is patient, and determined, and kind. I love working with you! Thank you to Angie Hodapp who creates interior designs for my paperbacks. Thank you to Anne Victory, my editor, who keeps my words looking good and thank you to her colleague Crystalle Berry, for picking up the errors that my eyes miss. Thank you to Jennifer Brown who is brilliant at proofing my paperbacks.
A special thank you to Amy Zacky and Maria Seager for being beta readers when I needed extra beta readers.
Thank you to Shan Ray my agent for film and TV. Thank you to my managers Mikhail Nayfeld, Markus Goerg, Dick Hillenbrand, Roberts Watts, and the entire Hero's & Villain's Staff.
Thank you to the Los Angeles Romance Authors RWA Chapter and to the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.
Thank you to my friends and family who make my writing possible: Margaret Marr, Nancy Veskerna, Lauren Harrison, Gavin White, Peyton Morgan, Nealie Harrison, Mark Morgan, Peggy Cafferty, Melissa Clark, Garrett Marr, Janet L'Huillier, Gayle Leftwich, Eloise & Dixie Marr, Joyce & Tom Leahy, Dolores Henderson, Lindsy & Mark Henderson, Linda & Bill Henderson, Amy & Brent Zacky, Victoria & Karl Makinen, Sheryl & Steven Ross, Paramount Elite Gymnastics and the entire Paramount family, E. Lockhart, Lauren Myracle, Sara Zarr, Sarah Mylnowski, Maryrose Woods, Jennifer Barnes, Ally Carter, Alan Gratz, Tara Altebrando, and BOB.
Thank you, to my husband and my children for the love, the support, and the joy.
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
If you liked Hard Glamour, read on for an excerpt from the next Glamour Series New Adult contemporary romance, Broken Glamour!
Also by Maggie Marr
The Hollywood Girls Club Series
Hollywood Girls Club
Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club
Hollywood Hit
Hollywood Girls Club the Series
The Eligible Billionaires Series
Can’t Buy Me Love
Contemporary Romance
Courting Trouble
The Glamour Series
Hard Glamour
Coming in 2014:
Broken Glamour
Fast Glamour
Easy Glamour
HARD GLAMOUR
Maggie Marr
Copyright © 2014
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations
AGENCY INFORMATION
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Writers spend years laboring over a single book. Please respect their work by buying their books from legitimate sources. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal a
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An Excerpt from Broken Glamour
Book two of The Glamour Series, this New Adult contemporary romance is coming in 2014 from Maggie Marr.
Chapter One
Amanda
“Steven make them stop!” Kiley Kepner my father’s soon-to-be 4th wife wailed.
A helicopter hovered above my father’s Malibu home. Steve Legend was the second biggest action star in the world and therefore a helicopter was an expected wedding guest. Or perhaps just expected by me, since I’d attended my father’s two previous wedding ceremonies in the last seven years.
Fatigue darkened the skin under my father’s eyes and lines pierced the edges of his pursed lips. He crossed his arms with a very ‘make-my-day’ kind of attitude and tilted his head toward the copter hovering in the sky. “Those sons a bitches,” he said.
“Security is handling it,” Sterling, my older brother stood just to left of our father. “But it may be an hour,” he said. He pulled at his left cuff. The muscle in Sterling’s cheek pulsed. He had the hard-carved Legend chin with a devil’s dent in the center. He could easily pass for an action star himself. His black hair brushed the collar of his crisp white shirt. Sterling’s gaze flickered from the cloudless sky to me. He too found our soon-to-be-step-monster an insufferable bitch. A bitch who had first hit on Sterling, had been denied, and then pursued daddy-dearest.