He glances back at me. “This might take a while. It’s a big house.”
No shit.
I roll my eyes to myself. My big house in the Hollywood Hills. God, I can’t even say that without rolling my eyes. Eighteen years old, and I’ve got a mansion in the Hills all to myself. But trust me, I started at the bottom. And trust me, the road to where I am now is one paved in shit.
It was a silly YouTube video that got me noticed. I was thirteen, and I sang a cover version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” just for…well, just for fun. And then it went viral. Twenty million views later, I had a manger, an agent, and a talent agency. A year after that, I was recording a record full of absolutely garbage, plastic pop songs, and being dressed like a girl five years older than I was. Some parents might have objected, but not my mama. My dad was long gone, and mama saw me as her golden ticket out of the sticks of Georgia.
And, well, I was.
The first movie gig was a small part, but they just kept growing. But like a bad prophesy, that first YouTube song seems to have set the tone for me in this town. For whatever reason, I got labeled as the bad girl — the bratty one who acts out. That whole sassy bitch face thing is part of it, but my publicists are also to blame. Setting me up with bullshit press stories about acting up.
And Chad, my ex, doesn’t help either. Yeah, that Chad. Chad Love, the teen heartthrob who also started as a young YouTube sensation. We dated briefly a year ago, and ever since then, he’s been talking to the papers telling them how “wild and out of control” I was, and how he just needed to “settle down and think about his fans.”
Barf. That’s his look, his image. The pretty farm-boy with the heart of gold. And somehow, I’m the vixen — “the bad influence,” the papers called me.
Whatever.
After a while, I guess you just start playing the part. Or you do what you need to do to survive in this crappy town of Hollywood.
I follow Diesel through the house quietly, watching him as he checks my security system. It’s out of date, I’ve been told. But apparently, Danny has a new security team and some experts coming out next week to get everything in order. Until then, it seems Diesel is my protection.
…I mean, he’s certainly big enough. Certainly scary-looking enough.
At some point, he takes an undershirt that was tucked into his back pocket and slips it on. It’s weird, because I really am so used to men just ogling me, but he’s not. But God do I want him to. Which I know is wrong and weird, but, it’s there in the back of my mind like a dirty little wish. I’m alone with this rough, purely masculine guy who’s probably twice my age. And all I want to do is jump him. Or maybe it’s that I want him to jump me.
The idea of this beast of a man just pouncing on me while we’re alone like this and just pinning me down and doing whatever he wants to me is as thrilling as it is wrong, but nonetheless, it brings a heated flush to my cheeks as it plays on repeat in my head.
Diesel is so rough, and nothing like the boys I know. Nothing like Chad, that’s for damn sure. So real, and so masculine. So manly and dangerous. Those tats, those big, strong hands, those muscles.
…I shiver.
Suddenly, I realize I’ve been standing there daydreaming in the hallway, and he’s gone upstairs. I chase after him, and when I see him headed down the hall to my room, I frown and run after him.
“Hang on, where are you…” Diesel pushes my door open and steps right inside, and I scowl.
“Get out of there!”
He ignores me, of course, and I purse my lips as I storm in after him.
“My room is fine.”
“And that’s what I’m checking for.”
He turns, and I suddenly blush furiously. My clothes are everywhere, including a suitcase-full of my lingerie tossed across my bed. Bras, panties, thongs — all of it spread out in all its lacy, skimpy glory for his eyes.
I groan, my face going hot, but he ignores it as he goes to the windows to check the sensors there.
Suddenly, I remember something else, and my face pales.
Oh fuck.
See, it’s been a while. And actually, it wasn’t ever much anyways. Despite all the gossip of me being a bad girl and a vixen and all that, and despite many tabloid stories about which pop star or rock icon I was fucking for all those years, it was all bullshit. I’d go to some function or awards ceremony and get photographed next to some director, and the next day’s tabloid story would be how I was fucking him and breaking up his marriage, and ruining his family. And all of it was total. Fucking. Bullshit. All just to sell some stupid gossip magazines.