Unrivaled (Beautiful Idols 1)

“But it’s Burberry!” Aster had pleaded, trying to appeal to her mother’s own high-end shopping addiction. When it didn’t help, she went on to add, “What if I promise to only wear it at home?” She eyeballed her mother, trying to get a read, but her mom’s face remained as imperious as ever. “What if I promise to only wear it at home when I’m the only one there?”

Her mother had stood silently before her, weighing the merits of a promise Aster had no intention of keeping. The whole thing was ridiculous. Aster was eighteen years old! She should be able to buy her own stuff by now, but her parents liked to keep as tight a rein on her spending as they did on her comings and goings.

As far as getting a job and financing her own bikinis—Aster knew better than to broach that particular subject. Other than the rare exception of a random lawyer here, a famed pediatrician there, the females in Aster’s family tree didn’t work outside the home. They did what was expected—they married, raised a family, shopped, lunched, and chaired the occasional charity gala—all the while pretending to be fulfilled, but Aster wasn’t buying it.

What was the point of going to those impressive Ivy League schools if that expensive education would never be put to good use?

It was a question Aster had asked only once. The steely gaze she received in return warned her to never speak of it again.

While Aster loved her family with all her heart, while she would do anything for them—heck, she’d even die for them if it came to that—she absolutely, resolutely, would not live for them.

It was too much to ask.

She inhaled a deep breath, about to take another plunge, when her cell phone chimed, and she shot out of the Jacuzzi so fast, she had to yank her bikini bottom back into place when the water threatened to drag it right off.

Seeing her agent’s name on the display, she crossed her fingers, tapped the gold and diamond hamsa pendant (a gift from her grandmother) for luck, and answered the call, trying to convey a capacity for great emotional depth in a single hello.

“Aster!” Her agent’s voice burst through the speaker. “I’ve got an interesting offer to run by you. Is now a good time?”

He was calling about the audition. She’d put her whole heart and soul into it, and clearly it had worked. “This is about the commercial, right? When do they want me to start?” Before Jerry could answer, she was envisioning how she’d break the news to her parents.

They were in Dubai for the summer, but she’d still have to tell them, and they were going to freak. She’d dreamed of becoming a world-famous actress since she was a kid, always begging her mom to take her on auditions, but her parents had other ideas. From the moment that first ultrasound revealed Aster was a girl, she was groomed to meet a set of expectations that seemed simple enough: be pretty, be sweet, get good grades, and keep her legs firmly crossed until she married the Perfect Persian Boy of her parents’ choosing the day after she graduated college, only to start producing Perfect Persian Babies a respectable ten months later.

While Aster had nothing against marriage and babies, she was committed to delaying those dream stallers for as long as she could. And now that her big break had arrived, she was determined to dive in headfirst.

“This isn’t about the commercial.”

Aster blinked, clutched the phone tighter, sure she’d misheard.

“They decided to go another way.”

Aster’s mind raced back to that day. Hadn’t she convinced the director that completely foul cereal was the best-tasting thing she’d ever put in her mouth?

“They’re going ethnic.”

“But I’m ethnic!”

“A different ethnic. Aster, listen, I’m sorry, but these things happen.”

“Do they? Or do they just happen to me? I’m either too ethnic, or the wrong ethnic, or—remember that time they said I was too pretty? As if there was such a thing.”

“There will be plenty of auditions,” he said. “Remember what I told you about Sugar Mills?”

Aster rolled her eyes. Sugar Mills was her agent’s most successful client. A no-talent pseudo celebrity discovered on Instagram thanks to the staggering number of people with nothing better to do than follow the daily adventures of Sugar’s Photoshopped body parts. Because of it, she’d snagged some high-profile commercial eating a big sloppy burger while wearing a tiny bikini, which inexplicably led to a role in an upcoming movie playing some old guy’s wildly inappropriate much younger girlfriend. Just thinking about it made Aster simultaneously sick and insanely jealous.

“I assume you’ve heard of Ira Redman?” Jerry said, breaking the silence.

Aster frowned and lowered herself back into the water, until the bubbles rose up to her shoulders. “Who hasn’t?” she snapped, feeling more than a little annoyed at a system that celebrated girls like Sugar Mills and wouldn’t give Aster a chance, even though she was a much classier act. “But unless Ira’s decided to get in on the movie biz—”

“Ira isn’t making movies. Or at least not yet.” Jerry spoke like he knew Ira personally, when Aster was willing to bet that he didn’t. “Though he is running a contest for club promoters.”

She closed her eyes. This was bad. Very bad. She braced herself for whatever came next.

“If you make the cut, you’ll spend the summer promoting one of Ira’s clubs. Which, as you probably know, are frequented by some of Hollywood’s biggest players. The exposure will be great, and there’s money in it for the winner.” He paused, allowing the words to sink in, while Aster fought to keep her disappointment in check.

She climbed out of the Jacuzzi. The heat of the water combined with the heat of her humiliation was unbearable. Preferring to finish the call barefoot, wet, and shivering, she said, “It sounds shady. And sleazy. And low class. And desperate. And just overall beneath me.”

She gazed toward her house—an over-the-top, sprawling Mediterranean-style monument to her family’s wealth with its tennis courts, covered loggias, big cherub-adorned fountains, and rolling manicured lawns. Wealth that would one day be hers and her brother Javen’s, provided they followed her parents’ strict and uninspiring plans for their lives.