Strings attached, p.1
Strings Attached, page 1
Titles by Stephanie Julian
By Private Invitation
No Reservations
Over Exposed
Do Not Disturb
Strings Attached
Stephanie Julian
InterMix Books, New York
AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE LLC
375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014
STRINGS ATTACHED
An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2015 by Stephanie Julian.
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-19469-4
PUBLISHING HISTORY
InterMix eBook edition / November 2015
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Penguin Random House is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
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Contents
Titles by Stephanie Julian
Title Page
Copyright
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
About the Author
Chapter One
“I’m going to kill that man.”
Trudeau Morrison took a deep breath, trying to find her center. Which was more difficult than normal because it was flying all over the place.
All because of him.
“Seriously, I just want to put my hands around his neck and—”
“Uh, Truly, honey, maybe you want to keep your murderous intent to yourself. I don’t want to have to testify against you in court someday.”
Her eyes narrowing, she turned on her boss with a look that made his eyes widen. Greg Hicks was not a man who frightened easily, but he knew he was taking his life into his own hands when Tru started to sound like the possessed kid in The Exorcist.
“You.” She pointed her right index finger in his direction, freezing his feet to the floor of his film headquarters as effectively as any superhero’s superpower.
She didn’t care that he held her livelihood in his hands. That he was one of the richest and most powerful men in the film industry. That he could snap his fingers and kill her career.
She didn’t even care that he was the best boss in the whole wide world.
She would never forgive him for screwing her six ways to Sunday and up the other side by saddling her with Baz. Some days, the damn man only needed to look at her sideways and she’d want to string him up by his feet. Preferably over a pit of fire ants.
Saying they rubbed each other the wrong way was an understatement of epic proportions. No, Baz didn’t just rub her, he worked at her like a bristle brush on a tough knot.
Greg’s eyes widened even further, and he actually took a step back.
Maybe he did have a few brain cells left.
“This. This is all your fault.”
Greg raised his hands in surrender. “Uh . . .”
Her finger began to jab in his direction again. Was she doing that consciously? “And you will fix it. You will get that man out of my sight and out of the goddamn city. I don’t care where you put him, just get him away from me, because the next time I see him, I’m going to—”
“Blah, blah . . . cut me off at the knees . . . Blah, blah . . . make me regret I was ever born . . . Blah, blah . . .”
Tru caught sight of Greg’s eyes rolling just before she turned on the devil himself. The man who made her want to stomp her feet like a six-year-old and throw a tantrum worthy of any trust-fund princess denied her favorite new Ferrari.
The man she wanted to roast in the fiery pit of hell.
“You. Shut. Your. Mouth.”
Sebastian Valenti’s mouth closed, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t stay that way for long. The man had absolutely no self-control. Whatever popped into his head came out of his mouth and usually made her want to strangle him. It was one of the things that drove her batshit insane. But only one.
“You do not get to say another word right now because if you do, I will walk out that door.” She used her free hand to point at the front door, keeping her other hand pointed at Sebastian as if it had the power to hold him in place. “And if I do, I don’t know when I’d return and neither of you can afford that.”
Because it was the God’s honest truth, neither man said a word.
She took a deep breath, her center slowly stopping its crazy whirl as she drew air in through her nose and released it through her mouth.
With her gaze glued to Sebastian’s, she saw his brain working at breakneck speed. He wanted to say something. She could see it formulating in that mutant, brilliant brain of his. She actually saw his lips move infinitesimally, as if words were forming on his tongue and trying to get past his lips, but some last stronghold of sanity kept them contained.
“I am going to take a walk. I may be gone five minutes. I may be gone an hour. If I don’t return by tomorrow morning, you very well might be on your own, and then God help you both.”
With that, Tru turned on her heel and stalked down the hall.
The front door was in sight. She had her hands on the knob when she heard two little words.
“Drama queen.”
Every cell of her blood began to boil. Her teeth ground together with enough force to make her jaw hurt. And her hands gripped the doorknob so tightly, she thought it might turn to dust in her hand.
She was surprised to actually hear Greg mutter, “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” through the rush of blood in her ears.
It literally took every ounce of will power she possessed to open the door and take that first step through it. All she wanted to do was turn around and tell him . . .
What? What the hell could she say that she hadn’t already?
Even so, she had to literally bite the tip of her tongue so she didn’t say anything else.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the bright sunshine of a Monday in May in Philadelphia.
And started to walk.
* * *
“You, my friend, have a death wish. Because if Tru doesn’t kill you, I will for making her life miserable.”
Baz fought to keep a guilty grimace off his face because . . . Well, hell, it didn’t exactly fit the whole bad-boy-rocker image. Then again, he didn’t have much of an image to uphold lately.
He’d taken a stage dive into near death and oblivion about a year before and hadn’t managed to pull himself out of the pit yet. He’d thought the first days after being out of rehab had been bad.
“Baz.”
They had been. They just hadn’t been the worst. The worst had come months later.
He’d fallen into a depression he had no idea how to handle. He’d gotten damn good at covering it up, though. He didn’t think any of his friends had noticed.
Especially not when he kept acting like such a dick to a girl everyone thought walked on water. How she managed it with a stick up her ass was beyond—
“Baz!”
He turned with a death glare. “What?”
Greg didn’t bother to glare back. The guy Baz had come to think of as a pain-in-the-ass older brother raised his eyebrows. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
He opened his mouth to say, “Nothing,” but the damn word got stuck in his throat. And they both knew it wasn’t true.
The insane urge to destroy everything in his immediate vicinity made him crazy.
Before rehab, he’d dull it with whatever drug happened to be on hand. Usually weed, or Klonopin, or Ketamine, sometimes acid. None of which he could touch now.
So what he really wanted was a drink, but he couldn’t start in on the liquor just yet. It’d just make him pissy.
He shrugged. “Fuck it. Nothing. I’m going back to the studio.”
Turning, he headed back to where this had all started. The studio Greg had built for him.
The thought stopped him in his tracks. Hands on his hips, he tilted his head to look at the ceiling. The still-unpainted ceiling.
This part of the building hadn’t been completely refurbished yet. For some reason that made him feel a little better. Something the amazingly wonderful Trudeau Morrison hadn’t done yet.
“Fuck.” The word slipped through his tight lips like a bullet. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Through sheer force of will, he unclenched his hands, knuckles cracking, and let them dangle at his sides. Chris t, he was one fucking ungrateful bastard.
“Shit, Greg. I’m sorry.”
He couldn’t make himself turn and say it to his friend’s face. Embarrassment fired through his body like a speedball.
Contrary to popular belief, he tried not to be a dick all the time. Sometimes he just couldn’t help himself, though.
Apparently now was one of those times.
As he sighed, he heard Greg walk up behind him.
“Spit it out, Baz. What’s up?”
Greg stopped beside him, waiting.
Baz wasn’t a small guy, but he had to look up a couple of inches to meet Greg’s gaze. Which held absolutely no condemnation.
It took a lot to make Greg angry, and Baz had never actually seen the guy blow his cool. Just being around Greg was sometimes enough to get Baz to chill.
“Honestly? I don’t fucking know.”
He only knew that whenever he and Tru were in the same room, he had the insane urge to needle her until she blew. She was so damn competent, so fucking put together and she made him crazy with her lists and her deadlines and her too-cool looks. He couldn’t resist trying to knock her off that pedestal everyone thought she deserved.
He loved seeing her lose her shit because—
Because you’re an asshole.
Shit.
Greg nodded, as if this was the answer he’d expected all along. “Okay. How’s the score coming?”
Ah, the one bright spot in his life right now. “Might be the best work I’ve ever done.”
“Might be?” The amusement in Greg’s voice loosened the kink in Baz’s shoulders a little more. “Better fucking be. It’s for my film, after all.”
Baz shook his head, then threw a smirk over his shoulder, feeling a little more like himself.
“You know, I do have a pretty fucking awesome career to fall back on, right? I mean, my band’s got fans and gold records and groupies and everything.”
Of course, he hadn’t seen the other four members of Baseline Sins in months.
The last time he and Nik had been in the same room . . . it hadn’t gone so well.
“Yeah, I do know that.” Greg paused. “Maybe it’s time you remembered.”
Greg smacked him on the back so hard Baz nearly pitched forward before he turned to walk away. “Got a meeting in five. I’ll be down to listen to what you’ve got later. Don’t piss off Tru again or she’s gonna cut off your balls.”
Greg disappeared down the corridor, leaving Baz alone in the hall.
Wondering how the hell he’d managed to wind up here.
* * *
By the time she got back to the office, Tru had walked off most of her mad.
The ice cream she’d gotten at the coffee shop on Lombard near Thirteenth had helped. Early May in Philadelphia was warmer than she’d expected, which was a nice surprise.
Before she’d moved here with Greg, she’d thought Pennsylvania would be cold. Not at all like sunny Southern California, where she’d dreamed of living all her life.
Growing up in bumfuck Nebraska, she’d promised herself when she’d moved away that she’d never again live anywhere winter lasted from October to April. Pennsylvania qualified, but only barely.
Until last year, she’d never considered moving away from LA. She’d loved it there.
Okay, mostly she’d loved that the temperature never really dropped below seventy and she got to shove her sister’s face in the fact that she was supporting herself in Hollywood.
Screw you, Violet. I fucking made it.
Which immediately made her feel like a total bitch. Still, it wasn’t Tru’s fault that her sister had gotten married during her senior year of college and started popping out kids a couple years later, thereby crushing her childhood dream of moving to New York and being a playwright and living the life of a starving artist.
Shit.
Alright, she totally needed to stop being a bitch, even if no one else could hear her.
And she needed to figure out where the hell she was. Stopping to take stock, Tru realized she wasn’t far from Haven Hotel. Sabrina was working the desk this afternoon, but she didn’t want to bitch to her new best friend about Sebastian. Again.
Sabrina actually liked Sebastian. Hell, if Greg wasn’t in the picture, Sebastian and Sabrina would totally have been a thing because Baz thought Sabrina walked on water. They’d have some adorkable nickname like Sebina or Sabrastian or something equally pukeworthy.
And Tru would have to seriously reconsider her relationship with Sabrina, because any woman who considered that man dating material had a definite screw loose.
Which wasn’t completely true.
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
Stopping at the next corner, she knew she should head back to the office. She had a shitload of work piling up on her desk. As the new managing director of ManDown Films, she handled the day-to-day operations of the company. And she had a shit-ton of things to do.
She also knew if she headed back now, she’d still be too pissed off to work and would probably hunt down Baz and start in on him again.
That left one option.
Rittenhouse Square was only a couple of blocks away so she adjusted her course. Thank god she’d had her phone in the pocket of her skirt when she’d walked out the door.
At this time of the day, there were quite a lot of people hanging out in the park, enjoying the sun and fresh air on their lunch breaks.
She probably should’ve gotten something other than ice cream to eat, but she wasn’t hungry. She was still too angry.
Finding an empty bench, she pulled out her phone. It rang once before her dad answered.
“Hey, Angelface. How goes it in the City of Brotherly Love?”
Tears sprang to her eyes for no reason other than her dad always sounded like home to her.
“Hi, Daddy. It’s going.”
“Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound good. You need me to send you a ticket home?”
She laughed because this was the game. And Tru loved the game she played only with dad. “Not yet. Maybe next week.”
“And you know the ticket would be waiting for you. Now, what’s up, sweetheart? You sound stressed. That boss of yours giving you trouble? You know I could take him in a fight.”
She laughed again, feeling her stress levels begin to recede at the thought of her sixty-year-old, cue-ball-head, thirty-pounds-overweight dad challenging Greg to a fight. The fact that her dad actually liked Greg didn’t mean he wouldn’t take on the younger man if Greg hurt her.
“I’m sure you could. Just having one of those days, you know?”
“Well, when I have one of those days, I’m usually hip-deep in sewer water in someone’s basement. I know that’s not in your daily planner.”
“True. No, it’s the damn musician scoring Greg’s film. He’s a pain in my ass.”
“Huh. Never thought I’d see the day you let a guy get to you.”
She opened her mouth to explain how wrong her dad was. That he hadn’t really gotten to her. That she’d been busy and he was a douche and—
She sighed. “Yeah, I let him get to me.”
“So what’s with this guy? You like him?”
The horror of his statement made her gasp. “Oh my god, no! He totally rubs me the wrong way. Most days I want to strangle him the minute he opens his mouth but we need him to finish the score. He’s such a pain in the ass. He constantly rubs me the wrong way and he does it on purpose.”
“I don’t know, honey. It kinda sounds like maybe he’s got a thing for you. You know, like in grade school when a guy likes you, he’s gonna pull your hair.”
She blinked a few times, not even able to grasp how completely off her dad was on this one. And he was usually so perceptive. “No. No, that’s just not even in the realm of possibility.”
“Well, you know best, being as you’re there and all. And I’m here.”
And sometimes her dad was Captain Obvious. But he was still one of the smartest people she knew. Only this time he had it wrong.
“So how’s Mom?”
Since her dad was a man of few words, they covered the rest of the family in two minutes flat, including her grandparents and their various ills and her sister and brother-in-law and her three nephews.
“The boys are giving your sister hell right now.” Her dad’s voice held noticeable glee. “Constantly on the move. Did you know they’re all playing hockey now?”
