The copper valley bro co.., p.30
The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 30
Sarah pauses between levels to glance at my abdomen. “You should see a doctor about that noise.”
“Nah. Just a bakery. And a hamburger joint. And this guy I know who makes a strawberry malt that’ll—oh, shit. Sorry.” I wipe the drool and grin at her.
And her are you for real? eye wrinkle turns into a smile.
A wide, uninhibited, you’re a big dork smile that makes her dark eyes sing and shows off those pearly whites and pops out a dimple in her left cheek. “You might want to rethink some of your life choices.”
I don’t know a single fucking man in the world who couldn’t smile back at that gorgeous shining face. “Eh. Has its perks.”
Her smile fades as quickly as it came, and swear on my first modeling contract, the room gets dark and chilly.
“I saw a therapist for a while when I came back for college,” she tells the game. “We talked about not letting one moment in high school ruin my life forever, but it still makes me almost throw up to think about letting reporters shred my life choices all over again. Especially because it wasn’t the first time. I was seven the first time I made a tabloid, and my parents made so few missteps, I was the easy target in our little family. I like my life now. It’s quiet and I have a job I love and nobody cares who my parents are or where I grew up, and I built a following all on my own of people who care about the world the same way I do.”
“You’ll get it back,” I promise her.
“No, I won’t. My boss already texted me to ask if I want to take tomorrow off so I don’t bring the circus to work. And the office gossip is asking what you smell like, and my team lead texted to find out what my favorite donuts are for our Monday morning status meeting. They forgot my name on the May office birthday cake, but now they want to know what my favorite donuts are.”
“Maybe—”
“No, they don’t feel guilty for forgetting my birthday, because I didn’t tell them, because then they’d ask if any of my family got me anything, and I don’t want to talk about my parents sending me the Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle Lego set this year because they remembered how much I begged for the sets in high school. And my mom will probably say it’s because her psychic told her to, because Madame Susan knew I needed a warning that prom would come back to bite me in the ass.”
“Your mom’s psychic is Madame Susan?”
She turns after demolishing the third level to pin me with those fascinating eyes again. “That’s what you picked up on?”
“No, I heard it all. That’s just the least uncomfortable part. I’m loogry. Sorry.”
“Loogry?”
“Yeah. I don’t get mad when I’m hungry. No hanger here. I get loopy.”
“Would you like to take a break to go eat?”
She’s adorable when she’s all logical. “Nah. I’ve been through worse.”
Her lips part again, her brow furrowing, and she’s shaking her head as she turns back to the game. “This is never going to work.”
“Why not? I like you. You tolerate me. That’s exactly the sort of chemistry all these people will eat up, wondering if we’re for real, because this whole show’s gonna go down with you ultimately releasing a statement that we’re better off as the accidental friends we became after I was a public ass, but that you prefer a quiet life trying to save the bees and giraffes and educate people on solar eclipses not actually being the work of witches. Your parents will go on The Calista Finley Show and talk about how proud they are of you and your engineering work, tell the world I’m a good guy doing good things, plug Persephone again, and in two months, none of your coworkers will care anymore who your parents are.”
But I have a very strong suspicion I’ll care.
And that’s my burden. Not hers.
She’s quiet while she runs Kong up the fourth level, and I think she’s concentrating on the game, but I’m wrong.
Not unusual.
“I always wondered if I was adopted. My mom can’t balance her own checkbook. My dad came home once bragging he’d gotten a role as an engineer, but he was a train driver, not a math-and-science engineer.”
“Heh. Ultimate dad joke. That’s funny. Desert Heist, right? Fun movie.”
She slides an unamused grimace my way. “It was not a dad joke.”
“You sure?”
She pauses, and a light stain of uneven color dances over her cheeks. “Well…no. I guess not. But they still didn’t get it when I asked for science kits and Legos and memberships to the science center and birthday parties at planetariums. Mom would always ask if I didn’t want a pedicure party instead, and Dad would offer to build me an art hut off the pool house.”
I snag a stool and sit, scooting close to her. My childhood was the exact opposite—parents running their own environmental engineering firm, little sister with straight A’s, and then me, the goofball who had big dreams but not enough brains to pull them off—but I never questioned if I fit in.
Had to be hard growing up in Hollywood, in the limelight, and not fitting the mold. “Your mom said they hopped a red-eye as soon as they saw the video last night. They were worried about you.”
“I worry about them too,” she tells me. “Mom went a few years without getting a role, and I thought she was going to fall apart. She had one director tell her she needed a facelift. Another told her she needed to lose ten pounds. One flat-out told her she was too old to ever work again. And meanwhile, Dad’s actually declining roles left and right because old is distinguished on men but he wants to slow down. But I can’t tell her to say fuck it and walk away, because it’s what she loves. It’s who she is. I don’t understand why, but I guess it would be like someone telling me I was too old to care about clean energy or that I had too many gray hairs to talk about endangered species.”
“Limelight sucks sometimes.” I lean in and point at the screen, because Donkey Kong’s about to get a barrel to the head.
“I see it,” she mutters. “You know what’s really stupid?”
“Soy milk?”
She barks out a surprised laugh. “Are you for real?”
“I spent six years touring the world with four of my best friends. Gets boring. Somebody had to entertain us all, and that someone was me.”
“And now I understand why you’re famous for your pictures instead of for your interviews.”
“I’m going into personal coaching whenever I finally retire from modeling. More people should be surfing this wavelength.”
She laughs again, a short, I can’t believe I’m laughing at this guy laugh, and my day is made.
“So. Tell me what’s stupid in your world.”
She bites her lip while she leans into the game, battling past the last obstacle before going on to level five.
She has nice lips.
Full.
They’re easy to overlook without makeup or gloss, but they’re perfect.
It’s like she’s hiding in plain sight.
“When I was sixteen, I asked my parents if they’d help me set up a blog about pollution. I wanted to be famous for saving the world.”
“That’s not stupid.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I thought I’d use their public platform to launch one of my own, when it turns out, I’m not built for life in the spotlight.”
I don’t answer, because I don’t agree. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in fifteen years in public life, it’s that you never know what you’re capable of until you try, and there’s no shame in using the path you’ve got to get there.
I never meant to go into modeling and fashion, but it found me, and I apparently have an eye for it—or something—so I keep hiring the right people to help make me look good, and here I am.
She pauses the game and turns to look at me. “I’m only doing this for the giraffes.”
“Why giraffes?”
“Because they really put their necks out there.”
Now I’m choking on a surprised laugh. “Dad joke supreme, right there.”
She pops another smile, and my dick sits up and takes notice. I tell it to pipe down, because dating in the spotlight is hard enough without adding real attraction to the mix.
Plus, I’m a relatively bad judge of who wants me for me, and who wants to take advantage of me.
I want to trust her—she’s pretty upfront about what she wants, but she’s also a daughter of Hollywood. She knows how these games work.
“Seriously,” I push. “Why giraffes?”
Those big brown eyes watch me warily, and I think she’s going to blow me off when she says softly, “They’re awkward and weird and still beautiful just the way they are. It’s inspiring.”
I’m not overly familiar with that tight heat cramping my lungs, but I think it might be my heart cracking a little at the implication that she only sees herself as awkward and weird.
Yeah.
I think I have it bad, whether I like it or not.
She shakes her head. “Anyway. I want a contract.”
“With a non-disclosure,” I agree, letting it go. Because much as she’s growing on me, I’m not the guy she needs to point out that she’s beautiful in her own way too.
I come with everything she’s worked so hard to get away from, and if there’s one other thing I’ve learned the last fifteen years, it’s that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
“The NDA was understood,” she says.
“We’ll have to go out in public a few times, and my team’s already working on finding any public charity event that’ll sell me a ticket for some good publicity. If it happens in the next two weeks, they’ll want you to go. If they can’t find anything, knowing Charlie, she’ll create something.”
She slides me an unreadable look. “Nice. Blame your team.”
“Blame? Nah, I’m giving them credit. It’s a great idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea.”
I cup her cheeks in my hands, because she’s there, and her skin is so soft and smooth, and if we’re going to pull this off, we are going to have to touch.
Her eyes go wide and connect with mine, and I really hope she’s not packing that taser right now, because I can’t protect the jewels from this angle.
“Trust me?” I say quietly.
“You’re the reason we’re in this mess.”
I’m grinning again, because there aren’t many people in the world outside my family, my lifelong friends, and my assistant who will flat-out call me on my bullshit, and I like that Sarah’s not afraid to.
“This is far from the worst mess I’ve ever had to get out of.”
One full eyebrow lifts.
“Ask Levi sometime about the elephant in Delhi.”
“You know elephants are endangered too?”
“Yeah, that’s why we saved its life. Cost a shit-ton to cover it up and get the elephant a new home, but he’s a pretty happy guy in an animal sanctuary now.”
Her eyes flare wide. “You saved an elephant?”
I could pull out pictures, but that feels like overkill. “Point is, we’ve got this. Okay? And if your life isn’t back to normal in six months, I’ll hop on Twitter and start a war with Chrissy Teigen just to distract everyone. Cross my heart.”
“You saved an elephant.”
Shit. She’s looking at me like I’m some kind of hero. I drop my hands and stand, moving the bar stool back against the wall. I put it in here yesterday so Tucker could reach the controls. “Just the one time. And I almost got the whole band tossed in an Indian jail for it. Like the time I got caught pissing behind a bar in Berlin. But in my defense, I couldn’t even walk in the men’s room without getting asked for my autograph. I just wanted to take a leak in private.”
“Thank you.”
I shrug modestly and intentionally misunderstand her. “Always happy to set a good example when it comes to taking a piss. I’m not always a fuck-up. You want some pizza?”
She studies me for a second, then a small smile tips her lips up. “Careful, or you won’t fit into your tighty-whities next week.”
“That’s why I’m branching out into tracksuits next.”
She smiles, and once again, I smile back.
Can’t help it.
Smiles are contagious.
Especially when I have to fight this hard to earn them.
15
Sarah
As expected, Monday is a disaster at work.
On a normal Monday, everyone’s grumpy and slow and they all pair off to talk to their normal Monday morning gossip buddies about the weekend, the Fireballs—or Thrusters in the winter—a concert or whatever they’re binging on Netflix or someone’s kids’ activities.
This Monday, every last one of my twenty-seven coworkers stops at my desk at our small environmental engineering firm to ask me about Beck Ryder or my parents, because yes, the entire world knows now that I was born Serendipity Astrid Darling, geek daughter of one of Hollywood’s leading but aging power couples.
Because I didn’t edit out the part of the video where I showed Beck my mole. And a paparazzi caught sight of my parents out to eat last night.
And that’s before Beck sends a giant bouquet of purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans, which arrives at lunchtime.
Coneflowers. Black-eyed Susans.
Favorites of bees.
And here I am, trying to stifle the flood threatening to leak out my eyeballs, because I didn’t expect this level of thoughtfulness, and I also don’t want to believe it was all Beck, because that’s dangerous.
And not helpful for getting my work done today.
Also, he probably really isn’t as good in bed as Trent was.
Huh.
I wonder if Trent’s seen the news.
Sarah, honey, I don’t care who your parents are. They raised you. That’s good enough for me. I just want to meet them.
He asked to see my parents, and I dumped him the next day.
And I felt horrible for it.
I really did.
But we didn’t go to his apartment until after he got me hooked on his magic dick, and we didn’t pull up his iTunes account to watch movies together until a month later, but he literally had zero movies in his account that my dad hadn’t been in.
You like Judson Clarke? Guy’s a fucking legend.
The sex got not-so-great after that.
For me, anyway.
Which was a shame, because he was super talented.
By mid-afternoon, I’m about to call it a day. I’m getting nothing done, and even my clients only want to talk about Beck and the tweet heard round the world and if I’ve actually forgiven him or if he’s paying me off.
People are ruthless.
Oh, honey, take the day off, my mom said last night when I dropped by their hotel on my way home to apologize for abandoning them and thank them for being here and to explain the situation, because my parents have been Hollywood royalty too long for them to believe that my soon-to-be budding romance with Beck Ryder is anything more than a publicity stunt.
You didn’t sign anything without my lawyer looking at it, did you? my dad said. Okay, yes, growled. He’s really into whatever role this is. And your mother’s right. Take the day off. You have a trust fund for this exact reason.
But I didn’t want to take the day off.
I wanted normal.
And going out in public and doing my normal routines is good practice for going out in public with Beck tonight for our first official fake date.
Because I can’t stop the circus.
All I can do is accept that I have to adjust to a new normal and make the most of it, and trust that this really will die down in another month or six.
The end of the day can’t come fast enough, but it finally arrives, and I dart out of the building with my head down, because I don’t know who’s watching.
Mackenzie meets me at my house. She’s got a hoodie over her blond hair, sunglasses that swallow her face, and she’s wearing a scarf wrapped around her mouth and nose. Yes, around the hoodie too. She’s hilarious.
“Seriously?” I say when I open the door for her.
She pulls off her gloves as soon as we’re inside, then rips off her button-down track pants and strips out of the scarf and hoodie. Her fine hair stands straight up like she’s touching a static electricity ball, and at least I know the weather won’t be unbearably humid tonight. “I’m currently unsure as to the level of attention I want just for being your best friend, but I wanted to support you before your date.”
“They’ll run your license plate, and even if they didn’t, you drive the Fireball mobile.”
We both look back at her Smart car, painted in Fireballs colors with the mascot on her hood.
“Shit,” she mutters.
“But they might think you’ve been burned in a horrible accident and that you had to have a face transplant,” my mom says as she sails in from the kitchen to drop cheek kisses on Mackenzie. “I always cover up when I want them to think I’ve had a little work done. Such an ego boost, finding out they think you’re less saggy and wrinkled when you’ve just been eating better and moisturizing regularly. Now, come come. We have canapes out in the kitchen, and I need your help convincing Serendipity to wear this lovely outfit I picked out for her this morning.”
“I think Sarah looks cute just the way she is,” Mackenzie says.
“She’s utterly adorable,” my mom agrees with a smile aimed my way. “But the paparazzi are ruthless and don’t appreciate creative fashion. We need to set the tone if this relationship has any chance of surviving.”
“We’re just friends,” I remind my mom, because that’s the script for today. We’re just friends. And I might not be built for Hollywood, but I know how to deliver a line.
I am Sunny Darling’s daughter. And despite having to fight for roles now, she’s won way more awards than Dad ever has.
Mom smiles. “Mm-hmm.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m going to a baseball game, so I’m wearing a geek shirt. It’s for good luck.”
“It’s totally good luck for Sarah to wear a geek shirt,” Mackenzie agrees.
Mom sighs. “At least let me do something with your hair and makeup.”
