One
Eden
I walked out of the hospital after visiting Artie and Pierce’s beautiful baby girl, my heart filled with so much joy for my friends.
I owed the director-producer duo a huge debt of gratitude.
They’d cast me in the surprise box office success, Carrot, a few years before, and because of that, I’d had my dream of crossing over from model to actress fulfilled. I’d been one of those model urban legends, a pretty girl seen on the street and approached, my career in modeling easy and fruitful. I hadn’t been taken in by a creepy old man with a casting couch nor had I been assaulted or belittled or had a diary filled with horror stories like so many of my contemporaries.
I was lucky.
I was empty.
Because of everything that had happened before I’d been “discovered.”
But my past had meant that I’d learned, become smarter.
And though I’d eventually managed to escape, I was left a shell of a person because of it.
Merely a doll to be dressed up and styled in someone else’s vision, a simple vessel to be filled with someone else’s ideas. I was to be looked at and not looked in—
I snorted. It wasn’t like acting was so different. I continued to be judged by the way I looked. Magazines still frequently accused me of being pregnant after I’d had a big lunch, or linked me with any male I was seen exchanging a few words with.
But I wasn’t empty any longer.
I felt and lived and finally was me.
So much self-contemplation for so early in the morning, but then again, seeing a precious little bundle of life brought so newly into this world would do that to a girl.
I was absolutely thrilled for Artie and Pierce. They were the real deal and deserved every bit of their success—film or family version. Smiling to myself, I reached into my purse for my keys then promptly dropped them to the ground.
Ugh.
I bent—
“I know that ass.”
A gasp of outrage on my lips, I straightened and whipped around, ready to tell off the arrogant bastard who’d dared—
Damon Garcia.
Photographer extraordinaire and—
He grinned.
Man who still wanted to get into my pants.
Now, I wasn’t a prude. I slept around enough to have been called a whore by more than one publication. It wasn’t like my activities between the sheets were more than most men in Hollywood, but because I was a woman, it was noticed and frowned upon.
I just couldn’t bring myself to care.
I practiced consensual, safe sex.
If we both were attracted to each other and it was safe, then I didn’t hesitate to go for what I wanted.
Maybe that made me a whore.
Maybe I didn’t care what other people thought about me.
But Damon?
Damon, I didn’t sleep with.
Damon, I didn’t fuck or kiss or touch.
Because I knew if I allowed myself a taste, I would never have enough.
I was frozen in place when he bent in front of me and picked up my keys, extending them toward me. That was when I made my first mistake. My fingers brushed his as I took them back. Heat exploded up my arm, my stomach went tingly, and my voice was breathy as I asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I live here now. Well, not the hospital—I’m visiting a friend—but here in town.” He smiled, and that paired with the news of him being in L.A. hit me hard upside the head. So hard, it knocked my common sense loose and allowed me to make my second mistake.
Because I didn’t run after I’d said, “Oh, that’s great.”
My third came when he asked, “Want to grab a drink tonight and catch up?”
To which I said, “Yes,” instead of “Absolutely not.”
My fourth?
Well, my fourth came when I finally gave in to the draw that was Damon Garcia and woke up naked in my bed beside him.
And then he wouldn’t leave.
Two
Eden
Oh good God. What had I done?
Damon was in my bed.
Correction. A naked Damon was in my bed.
I shifted carefully, slipping out of the circle of his arms and from beneath the covers, then padded quietly to the bathroom.
Let it be noted that I was naked, too.
Worse, it had been good. No, great. No, fucking incredible and the best I’d ever had.
The. Best. Ever.
I was so screwed.
After slipping into my fluffy, oversized bathrobe, I turned to stare at myself in the mirror.
“Eden Larson, you are a mess,” I muttered, leaning my hands next to the sink and critically eyeing my bright red hair and pale skin. I might as well be critical because Hollywood sure wasn’t going to be kind about the new wrinkles—marring my forehead—or the gray in my hair—a strip appearing just above my right ear—or my boobs—and how they’d begun to sag in recent years. I mean, look, I had a healthy appreciation for my body, and I knew I was supposed to love every inch and all of the lines and sags and wrinkles . . . but my job was predominantly based on my appearance on a giant screen or the cover of a magazine or how good I looked when I went out and was caught “unawares” by the paparazzi, and sometimes it was hard to keep perspective.
Those Chunky Eden Has Let Herself Go headlines didn’t feel good, no matter how long I’d been in the press.
Probably why I’d given into my attraction to Damon in the first place.
The lovely gossip sheets yesterday speculating how far along I was.
Sigh.
Sometimes I hated this industry.
And the rest of the time I smacked myself out of this funk because I was really lucky to be in my position, that I’d gone from an obscure girl on a street corner approached by a model scout to one of the top models in the industry. Then, thanks to Pierce and Artie, I’d had my big break with Carrot.
So, there it was. I was one of the select few to successfully make the crossover from model to actor.
Go me.
That didn’t change the fact that now I’d fucked the one person I’d made a promise to myself never to sleep with.
Damon Garcia was handsome and talented and funny and . . . he got me. All of which might be great things, except for the fact that getting me also meant that I had gotten attached and I couldn’t afford to be. We had to go back to being just friends. We had to—
“Shit,” I muttered, knowing my inner pleading was the great sex equivalent of Pandora’s box. That lid was open now, and I knew all about what was inside.
Or rather, I now knew all about those hard, yummy inches and how they felt inside me.
Mistake. It had been a mistake.
But could something that felt as good as my night in bed with Damon really be bad?
Yes.
Of course, it was.
I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to get attached.
Not ever again.
I reached for my toothbrush and glared at myself in the mirror. “This was a mistake, Eden. You have got to get your shit together. Shower. Get him out of here, and then go back to your life—”
“Was it really that bad?”
I froze, Damon’s voice drifting down my spine.
Fuck, I’d always loved his voice, especially when it was like that. Warm and soft, but almost predatory.