I stared at the girl, and finally it came to me.
Girl in the wet shirt.
She’d looked different then. No makeup. Damp hair. Kind of flushed.
Unintentionally sexy.
Now she looked awkward-sexy.
Maggie made a noise of exasperation. “Don’t mind him,” she said to Katie. “He’s been in a bad mood. For like a year.”
“I remember.” I held Katie’s gaze, ignoring Maggie. “Cherry pie.”
Her cheeks turned pink again. Damn, she was cute.
This shoot just got a hell of a lot more interesting.
“There’s pie?” Zane walked in, and it took all of two seconds for his gaze to find Katie. And stay there.
Great.
“Who’re you?” he demanded.
“Um, Katie,” she said.
Zane, being Zane, went all the way around the very long table, took her hand, and kissed it. “Sweet to meet you, Katie. I’m Zane.” He gave her his ultra-intense, ice-blue-eyed Viking stare down; the one that generally got him any pussy he wanted.
“Cool,” Katie said. She stared at Zane, because that’s what women did.
“Alright,” Maggie said, rounding the table and hauling Katie away. Maggie was one of the few women I’d ever met who was immune to Zane’s bullshit. “Don’t mind Zane. He’s like that with everyone.”
Not everyone. Just women he wanted to fuck.
When the girls were gone, Zane looked over at me. He froze on the receiving end of the look I gave him. “What?”
I turned to leave, just as one of the wardrobe girls came in with a shirt for me.
“Not that one,” I said, and walked out.
CHAPTER THREE
Katie
I’d never felt so out of my element in my life.
The thing was, I’d been sitting on the sidelines of my own life for so long that I’d kind of forgotten what my element was.
Which was how I’d ended up here. I’d let my best friend convince me, Katie Bloom, regular girl with not one shred of modeling or acting experience, that I could play super-cool girlfriend-of-a-rock-star in Jesse Mayes’ hot new music video.
What the fuck was I thinking?
Today was the first time in my life I had legit palm sweat.
I rubbed my palms on the plush robe, my hands tucked into the pockets as I followed Maggie through the massive house she said belonged to Jesse’s manager, Brody, the guy with the tattoos from Devi’s office. I’d met him for real this time, and he had this intensely sexy business-meets-rock-’n’-roll thing going on that made me all tongue-tied. I was relieved when the incredibly nice Maggie rescued me from that conversation. Same, when she did it again with Zane. Because what the hell would I say to Zane Traynor, the most charismatic frontman to rock a pair of leather pants since Jim Morrison?
Yeah, I’d hit up Google since getting hired for this thing.
A lot.
Dirty’s lead singer had the body of a love god and a voice he’d clearly sold his soul to the devil for, and yes he was gorgeous, but I only stared at him because it was that or get sucked into eye contact with Jesse Mayes again.
And that was a serious threat to my sanity.
When the man looked at me, things happened to my body that I could only describe as temporary but all-consuming hormonal insanity. It was dizzying, thrilling and terrifying, and I needed to get my shit together before we shot this scene. I was supposed to be all cool and girlfriend-like, hanging out by his side at a party or whatever, not swooning like a pent-up virgin who might combust if he bumped shoulders with me.
It didn’t help that he’d brought all his larger-than-life friends to the shoot.
Sure, I’d seen pictures of all the members of Dirty on the web. But since this shoot was for Jesse’s solo album, I didn’t expect Zane or Dirty’s drummer, Dylan Cope, to be here.
What the hell did I expect?
Maybe some kind of sterile sound stage with an efficient, all-business film crew calling the shots?
This felt more like a party, people crammed into every room of Brody’s architectural marvel of a house, which was in North Vancouver, up the mountainside in Canyon Heights, and probably cost high seven figures.
The film crew looked a lot like what I’d always thought roadies would look like, the roadies looked like criminals, the security guys looked like straight-up bikers, and the management team, which consisted of Brody, Maggie, and various underlings, looked like rock stars.
Jesse, Zane, and Dylan? They looked like something out of a Greek goddess’s masturbation fantasy.
I’d never met people like this in real life.
When I’d first arrived, Maggie had mercifully plucked me from a roomful of women who looked like they’d come straight from backstage at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. I must have looked as out of place as I felt in my Rolling Stones T-shirt, paint-splattered jeans and purple kicks; apparently all my jeans had paint on them, which was something I’d only realized that morning.
Honestly, what the hell was I doing here?
For the second time today, Maggie deposited me in one of the upstairs bedrooms that had been taken over by the wardrobe team, promising to fetch me in ten minutes.
Ten minutes until my scene with Jesse Mayes.
My palms were sweating again.
The wardrobe girls freed me from the robe and stood me on a little platform to stare at me. Which wouldn’t have been all that weird, given their profession, if I wasn’t totally naked except for a bra and panties. It was definitely not my comfort zone, but since there were only a couple of models and the wardrobe girls in the room, and they did this all the time, I tried to convince myself it was no big deal.
Not terrifying in the slightest.
They had me do a quick change in the adjoining washroom, keeping the champagne satin and black lace bra, but switching out the matching panties for a pair of skimpy black lace boy shorts, which showed a hell of
