“I’d still take the rich guy. Money is the ultimate beauty.”
“I’d take the hot guy,” says Sierra. “’Course, the best would be a guy who’s fucking rich and hot.”
“Like that exists outside romance novels,” scoffs Julia.
“Hot or rich doesn’t make a guy good in bed,” I offer.
“Listen to the virgin talk,” Sierra sneers. “Like she would know anything about what it takes to be good in bed.”
“What if a guy is rich and hot but a total jerk?” I ask of the other women.
“If that mattered, we wouldn’t be here,
would we?” Rachel returns.
“I bet the majority of men who are hot and rich are jerks,” Julia muses. “I bet it gets to their heads.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dan interjects. “We’re auditioning for a job, ladies, not some dating service. That’s how you got to look at it.”
“Who are we auditioning for?”
I see Dan’s grin in the rearview mirror. “It’s a surprise.”
Abril has been quiet, so I ask where she lives. We converse a little about where our families are from and where we work—all safe subjects. Abril would like to enroll in community college but has to work to help her parents support five younger siblings and a grandmother.
Sierra doesn’t bother with me the rest of the drive. Dan cranks up the radio. Rachel puts on Beats to listen to her own music. Julia falls asleep against the window.
An hour later, after winding up to the top of a hill with views overlooking the Pacific, the van pulls up in front of a stunning three-storied house guarded by several palm and cypress trees. My jaw drops at all the perfectly manicured plants, the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a deck that seems to wrap the entire house.
“Sweet,” Rachel exhales as we get out.
A butler, or maybe he’s some kind of security guard, opens the door, and we follow Dan into a large foyer with marble floors and a chandelier overhead. All of us except Dan gawk at our surroundings.
“You can take ’em into the den,” the butler/guard tells Dan.
I bring up the end as we pass through the living room with panoramic views of the coastline and down several steps to a more rustic-looking room with oak panels, bookcases, the largest flat-screen TV I have ever seen, a billiard table, and a bar. Not just a counter with sink but an entire bar, like someone airlifted part of a restaurant into this room. Bottles of all shapes and colors line the shelves behind the mahogany bar, which has several stools pulled up to it.
A man about thirty years old sits on a large leather sofa with his arms spread across the back of it. With dark brown hair cut short, framing his brow in a rectangular shape, a rounded jawline that gives him a boyish look, and a small dent in his chin, he’s good-looking save for the smug expression on his face. He looks clean cut and like someone Lila might approve of, though Lila would never judge a person just on their appearance. Nevertheless, I try to decide if he’s someone I would be okay crawling into bed with.
My gaze travels to the far corner of the room, where a cue rack is mounted—and my breath stops halfway up my windpipe.
CHAPTER SIX
In front of the rack, cue stick in hand, stands Tony Lee.
He recognizes me, and his face darkens.
Damn.
Even if I don’t get selected and only miss one day of work, I’m out of a job for sure.
I want to look away, but his gaze traps mine.
“So what do you have for us today?” asks the man I now realize is Eric Drumm.
“Nothing but the best,” Dan replies. “All good American stock, the way you like it. No Russian skanks or underage Thai girls.”
Eric gets up to make a closer inspection of the women. He’s much shorter than his dad, the governor of Florida, whom I’ve read is six and a half feet tall.