Chapter 1
Sam
There are only a few things that I love more than hot soup on a cool evening. For one, my dog, Harley. Two, shower sex. Three… humiliating my brothers on national TV. Then… soup.
I was the youngest of the four Murphy brothers—and we starred on our own hit network TV series where we pranked the shit out of each other. And got paid for it. It was the best fucking job ever. My oldest brother Josh, the most famous of all of us, had been an actor before our show began. Next born were Dom and Cal—in that order, but on the same day—the twins of the family. Then me.
I brought the plastic container of tomato soup to my lips and drank it, closing my eyes as the delicious flavor ran over my tongue.
“For fuck’s sake,” Cal said and shoved my shoulder, sending a bit of soup dribbling down my chin… on national television. Because, that’s right, we were currently filming. That was the other amazing thing about this job. We could eat and fool around while we were in the midst of filming. Because fans loved that almost as much as they loved our pranks. “Can you not slurp soup in my ear? Why don’t you use a damn spoon?”
Of all my brothers, I annoyed Cal the most. He loved me… we all loved each other of course, but I irritated him like nothing else in the world. And I fucking milked that for all it was worth because it made damn good TV.
“Aw, c’mon,” Josh said, tossing an elbow to Cal’s ribs. “You know Smurf loves his soup too much to eat it quietly.”
I inwardly sighed. Fucking hell. If I had known that stupid nickname, Smurf, was going to stick around for life… used not only by my family, but by literally every fan of the show… I would have made sure to do something else to earn a better nickname. It all started when I was in middle school, and my brothers thought it would be hilarious to stain my face with blue food coloring. That, combined with my name—Sam Murphy—gave birth to the world’s worst nickname, Smurf.
“Would you idiots pay attention?” Dom shouted from where he was in the center of The Grotto… a well-known shopping center in Malibu. “I just finished my turn.” Sure enough, he was stomping back over to us and snapped the back of his hand against my chest. “You’re up, Smurf. Give ‘em hell.”
I set my soup down and moved out from under the tent where we were mostly hidden from passersby. It was an integral part of our show that the people being tricked didn’t see the other three brothers feeding instructions through our ear pieces to the one pulling the prank. Now that the show was in season four, we were popular enough that this was a challenge. More and more people recognized us on the streets, and our production crew had to stay vigilant to make sure no one standing around blew our cover.
It took me two hours until my turn in the hot seat was almost complete. That’s the crazy thing about TV—all the viewer sees is a five-minute cut of the time we were busy tricking people and getting pushed by our brothers to do all kinds of crazy shit. But in actuality, we were each actively working on our challenges for hours at a time to get that five minutes of good footage.
I scrubbed my hand down my face, the weariness settling into my bones. I was exhausted. We had an early call today… earlier than usual at 5:00 a.m., and it was taking its toll on all of us. “Come on, we must have gotten a few things that were usable. Can’t we wrap for the day?”
I spoke into my empty paper coffee cup—where the microphone was hidden so that the people I approached wouldn’t see it and immediately figure out they were part of some gag.
From across the courtyard, I saw one of our producers whisper to someone beside him. “Almost, Sam. Almost. They’re telling me that all of you mostly talked with men today, and we need you to interact with a woman before we call it a wrap for the day.”
I sighed and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Why the hell couldn’t they have told me that an hour ago? I could have stepped up and approached more women then rather than now at the end of a twelve-hour day when we were all getting cranky.
I glanced behind me where I was standing in front of a men’s clothing store. “Well, then I should move locations,” I said. My brothers groaned in my ear. “Does that mess up the camera positions?”
More silence as the producers and some of the crew conversed. Finally, he said, “Not if you only shift over one store front and don’t go past the window display. I glanced to my left where there was a Chanel store, and a breath hitched in my chest.
Fuck. Maybe I was stereotyping, but I didn’t think most broads leaving fucking Chanel were going to appreciate our specific brand of pranks and humor. I pushed the breath out through my pursed lips and, shaking my head, took a few steps over to that window. “Guys… please don’t get me slapped.”
“No promises,” Cal joked, and the rest of the guys cracked up laughing.
Dammit. I shouldn’t have said that. Now their main goal was going to be to get me slapped.
I waited, watching the people walking buy. Since it was close to dinner time, the crowd was thinning out, with most people heading home to their families or out to dinner. Through the front window of the shop, my eye caught a woman… a gorgeous woman. Her hair was a rich chestnut brown and fell in a sleek curtain over one slender shoulder as she looked through some clothing on a rack at the front of the store. Razor sharp cheekbones slanted down toward perfectly plump bow-shaped lips. Even though her body was hidden by the clothing rack she was perusing, I could see a hint of cleavage curving out of a button-down blouse.
Fuck me. My cock twitched, and I silently chided myself. Not now. Do not get a fucking boner on television—I’ll never hear the end of it.
Maybe we can wrap and I can run in to meet her. Introduce myself. I had to know her name. I craved to know it.
“Sam,” Christina, one of our prop masters interrupted my thoughts—which was probably a blessing in disguise because those thoughts were getting dirtier with every passing second that I stared at that woman through the Chanel window.
I turned and she pushed a tray into my hands with a clipboard on top and a few small paper cups holding soup samples in them. “This is their next challenge for you.”
“Is this the soup I was eating?!” Snickers rang in my earpiece. “Guys! That was my fucking dinner! I wasn’t done with that!”
She shrugged. “It was supposed to be smoothie samples, but an hour ago, your brothers asked me to switch it out and use your soup.” She scrunched her nose and whispered, “Sorry, Sam.”
“It’s not your fault my brothers are a bunch of assholes.” The crew had a blast on this show. We all laughed so much, but it didn’t take away from the fact that our crew—lighting, camera, props, and producers—had really hard jobs sometimes.
The tray wobbled in my hand. Shit. This wasn’t good.
“Also, be aware,” she whispered, “They rewrote a few of the questions just now.”
My brows creased. That wasn’t totally unheard of—us adding a question or two here and there that we make each other ask our targets. But we’re all on microphones. If we want to add a question, we can just do so on the fly by saying it aloud into the pranking brother’s earpiece.