That look.
I knew that look.
He didn’t try to hide the skeeze as he let his gaze rake over me like I was a prized pony…
Or the hooker he’d just bought and paid for.
“I trust our little arrangement has worked out well for you,” he said.
I nodded. “Yes. I’m… quite pleased with how everything worked out.”
“Then I’m glad we could come to an understanding.” His gaze had caught on my chest, and I had to resist the urge to tug the top up. It was a wardrobe outfit. I didn’t normally dress like this. The fact that we were alone was making me antsy.
The fact that he wasn’t even pretending to hide his leer made me want to smack him.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even snap at him because he was the boss.
He was my boss.
He folded his hands in front of him, his smile fading to a smirk that made my stomach turn. “I don’t normally take time out to meet the young girls on my shows, but you, Amber…” His eyes took a leisurely tour of my curves. “You’ll be eighteen soon, I hear. Almost legal.”
He laughed.
I forced a laugh in turn as I gave a teasing wag of my finger. “Not for a few months yet.”
“I can wait.” He was serious. He was one hundred percent serious. As if it was a given that once I turned eighteen, he could snap his fingers and I’d be his… what? His new mistress?
My mouth went dry. The contents of my stomach curdled. He wasn’t even trying to hide his perviness. A wave of revulsion hit me hard, but I wasn’t sure if it was toward him or me.
Did he do this to all the new girls or was it me?
It was the same thought that had been taunting me for a while now. The question I tried not to think about.
Was it me? Did I bring this on myself?
I felt disgusting. My skin crawled with this sensation that seemed to come from my worst nightmares.
It was fear and something else…
Powerlessness.
I listened with half an ear as he rambled on for a while about all the plans he had for the show. For me. He didn’t say anything crass, but we both knew what he meant. If I played nice, he’d make my role permanent. He’d make me a star.
If I didn’t…
Well, he might have used the word renegotiate a time or two in there. Any power I had was his to give and his to take away.
All that smug satisfaction from earlier drained away from me as it hit me smack in the face. The words I’d slung at Jack were coming back to mock me.
I didn’t have power.
I’d just traded one user for another. One manipulative bastard for the next.
More powerful maybe, but that power still wasn’t mine.
It was his.
And for the first time in my life, my thoughts weren’t just catty and they weren’t just spiteful.
They were downright murderous.
Nine
Lila
I glared down at my phone as I waited for Jack to text me back.
I was really beginning to hate this stupid show.
Love on the Range was the only reason Jack was still in town, but it was also the reason I hadn’t seen him in a week. We’d been texting, but I could tell you right here and now that Jack was a terrible texter. He used texts like he was paying per word or something. All monosyllables and need-to-know info.
Jack’s texts basically sounded like old timey wires. Stuck on location. Stop. Can’t see you tonight. Stop.
Okay, fine, so he didn’t actually type ‘stop,’ but that’s how I read them to myself. All week we’d been trying to meet up and failing, and with each passing minute, my nerves threatened to get the best of me. Why? Because after that awful dinner at my mom’s, he’d sent me one text.
You never did answer my question, Princess. We need to talk.
Even now, a week later, my stomach flipped as I thought about the conversation to come. The question he wanted answered. He didn’t need to spell out what question.
I already knew.
It was the question that had been nagging at me. The one I wished I’d answered.
The one I was terrified to answer.
Was any of it real?
I set my phone down on the lounge chair beside me and picked up the romance novel I’d been trying to get into for about an hour now without success. It wasn’t the author. It was me. It was my thoughts. It was my phone.
I scowled down at the page I couldn’t focus on.
It was the stupid TV show that was ruining my life.
I was hiding out in the poolside cabana again. Not because Daddy Dearest was on the rampage—he’d been in a shockingly decent mood this week. I was the one having a hard time keeping my cool around him. It was my guilty conscience getting in my way. Every time I saw my father, I thought about how I’d done something sneaky to help Tess in her quest to get dirt on him.
All I knew was that I’d installed some spyware on my mom’s computer because Tess thought accessing my mom’s banking information would help and not even Tess the tech genius had been able to hack in remotely.
I wasn’t even sure what she was looking for or how it would help her cause, but just knowing I’d done that much made it difficult to face Daddy. Guilt and fear flared every time I heard his voice in the house or saw him working at his desk on my way to the kitchen.
So yeah, for now, the cabana was my safe place.
I had no idea how Tess managed it. How she kept that “yes, Daddy” sweetness and that innocent façade all the time.
It was beginning to occur to me that in this family, maybe I wasn’t the actress. Maybe Tess had been playing us all this whole time.
Me included.
But she was starting to let me in, and if this damned show hadn’t kept her working late at Daddy’s offices all week, I might have even been let in on the whole freakin’ plan.
But no. Instead, I’d spent the week by myself since Brandon was filming on location, and Jack was too. I’d gone to school as usual. I’d hung out with Evie and Siobhan and done all the stuff we used to do all the time. Parties. Spa days. Manicures. Shopping.
The usual.
But I’d still felt alone. And I’d hated every second of it.
I blamed Jack.
“A Mr. Jack is here to see you.” Maria’s voice had my head snapping up as she did that funny faux tapping thing she did whenever she interrupted someone and there wasn’t a proper door to knock on.
My eyes widened in surprise, and my stomach did a leap like it might run for the hills without me.
I wasn’t ready!
And yet, I was dying to see him. I literally felt like I’d die if I didn’t see him again. I was like a freakin’ junkie when it came to this guy, and having him near, his being in my town and back in my life… it was such a tease. A tiny taste of that way he made me feel, when what I wanted was to drown in it.
I sat up straight and opened my mouth to tell her she could let him come back here, but his familiar voice drowned me out. “It’s just Jack, Maria. No ‘mister,’” he said.
And then, he was there, in the entrance to the cabana, a white T-shirt molded to his muscles and a smirk on those sexy-as-sin lips.
Maria shot me a questioning look, and I gave her a little smile. “It’s all right, Maria. Jack is welcome here anytime.”