Chapter 1
1
Newcomer Sydney Malloy, 17, Drops Debut Album.
TikTok sensation soars to the top of the charts and heads out on world tour.
Word is she wrote all her own songs – but do we really believe that?
-Celebrity Truth
It’s Boys, Boys, Boys for Pop Star Sydney Malloy.
Release of her second album is drowned out
by her arrest with bad boy rocker boyfriend in Paris.
-Celebrity Truth
The problem with stars is eventually they stop shining.
Sydney Malloy, pushing 25, can we believe it’s been that long?
Her new record is a solid dud.
It’s all emotion, but where’s the soul?
Girls just want to dance, am I right?
-Celebrity Truth
Is she getting too old to party?
Sydney doesn’t think so.
Seen out again in New York with all her girlfriends.
Maybe lay off the pasta, Sydney?
-Celebrity Truth
Vegas
Sydney
I wasn’t dead.
That was the good news.
The bad news: I kind of wished I was.
Oh my God, how much did I drink last night?
Too much was the answer. Waaaay too much. Especially for someone who didn’t drink.
There was always just so much to do on any given day and hangovers could set me back a solid twenty-four hours, but yesterday, I must have gotten carried away.
Vegas, baby. Am I right?
I buried my head in my pillow and tried to remember everything that happened, but my brain was broken and thinking was impossible. Breathing was hard, too. Opening my eyes wasn’t going to happen without medical help. Plus, the weird rumbling sound coming from the air conditioning unit was drilling into my brain.
Focus Sydney!
Groaning, I slowly rolled over onto my back and tried to push through the mud in my brain to figure out who I was, where I was and why I had done this to myself.
There had been a celebrity golf event.
The miracle of remembering forced my eyes open and the light coming in from the south facing window was a laser right into my eyeballs. I yanked the blankets up over my head and turned away from the windows.
Only to find myself face to face with a massive shoulder and a very hairy chest.
I squeaked. Like a mouse. A terrified mouse who’s discovered a giant bear in her bed.
I’m still dreaming. This is a tequila-induced hallucination. Carefully, in case I was wrong, I stretched out a hand and poked the hallucination.
The chest was real. The hair was real. And it was warm. Also softer than it looked.
“Hello?” A very male, very grumbly voice said in a minor C bass note so deep that it rumbled through my chest.
“This isn’t happening,” I whispered. Even when I tried not to mess things up, I somehow messed them up.
To my surprise, the guy lifted the sheet and pulled it over his head too. The two of us were now in a tequila breath scented cocoon.
“Hi,” he said with a tiny smile. He had a nice mouth tucked away in a close-cropped dark beard. He had really nice brown eyes. And he was naked. I mean, naked as far as I could see. I wasn’t about to make a show of checking him out.
Was I naked?
Ohmygod!
I glanced down at my body.
Panties?
Check.
Tank top?
Check.
Socks?
“Really? I left my socks on?”
“You said you didn’t like it when your feet got cold when you got up to pee in the night,” he said.
That sounded like me.
“What do you remember?” He said, his voice with that delicious low bass tone. Instinctively I harmonized with an A, well, I tried for an A, but it was mostly a B sharp.
“Are you singing?”
“No.” Because that would be ridiculous.
“Okay. What do you remember?”
“About last night?”
“Or the Spanish Civil war…whichever?” He shrugged and the whole bed moved.
“Is that… are you joking?”
“Trying.”
I realized he was trying to seem as un-bearlike as he could. He was trying to put me at ease. The effort was so sweet from such a big guy it actually worked, and I relaxed a tenth of a degree.
“Your name is Wyatt Locke,” I said, suddenly remembering. “You play…a sport.”
Again that smile, it made my heart curl up in my chest, like it was happy. “Hockey.”
“We met at the golf thing.”
“We did,” he said, and I got the impression he remembered way more than I did.
“Did we have sex?” I asked, blurted really.
“You’re not sure?” He asked.
“Did we have sex with our socks on?”
“Honey, we didn’t have sex. You would know if we’d had sex.”
“Well, the night is kind of a blur so I’m not sure…”
“Do you feel like we had sex?” he asked.
“Uh…I guess not,” I said in that mouse voice again.
I got caught up in his brown eyes. They really were pretty. Like the glass of a smashed beer bottle. I used to collect broken glass when I was a kid. There was always plenty around in the trailer park and I kept them in jars like beach glass but the trailer trash version.
“We didn’t have sex,” he said quietly. He reached up and touched my cheek, probably wiping away an eyelash or mascara flake because I undoubtedly was all raccoon eyes. But his touch unlocked another whole sequence of memories.
“You!” I cried.
“Me?”
My publicist, Tyler, thought this golf tournament would be a good idea. Get out of my element. Mix and mingle with some clean-cut athletes.
I didn’t play golf, but I was told all I had to do was ride around in the cart, swing a club every once in a while and look like I was having a blast.
After all, it was about the pictures.
I’d been skeptical. All it would take was for me to lean in too close to some golfer and…
BAM!
Sydney Malloy Seduces Pro-Athlete.
I had been matched up with a recently retired NFL quarterback who proceeded to get shit-faced drunk at nine in the morning.
I didn’t mind the burping. Or the farting. Or the beer guzzling. I plastered on a fake smile and told myself to deal with it. People were watching. Phones were filming. The only bright side was, there was no chance any picture of me with this guy would create rumors of us falling in love.
It was when he started to get handsy that the morning took a turn for the worse. A few pinches here, a poke to my ribs there. I kept smiling through all of it. Determined that one of us would be a professional.
Things went off the rails at Hole 6 when I was bending over to put the ball on the tee and he came up behind me and grabbed my ass.
But then it happened.
He. Happened.
“You saved me,” I said to Wyatt.
“I think I saved him. You were winding up with that golf club like you were going to line drive his head.”
Wyatt had been playing in the group in front of us. He must have seen the football player grab me, because he left his teammate, got in the cart, drove back up to the tee box and proceeded to manhandle the football player into a nearby Port-a-Potty.
“What did you do to him in that Port-a-Potty?” I asked.
“Gave him a little lesson in manners.”
There’d been some shouting and the whole blue box shook a couple of times. Then the football player came out, looking rumpled and sweaty, and told everyone he was too sick to keep playing. He got in his golf cart and raced out of there.
Leaving me standing there like a forgotten bag at the airport.
Wyatt invited me to hop on his golf cart and said I could play with him and his partner for the rest of the day.
And I did.
It had been…
“So fun,” I whispered. Like real fun. Like the kind of fun you have when you’re a kid and no one is watching. The kind of fun that felt…pure. Rare.
“We had a blast,” he said with a nod.
“Richie plays on your sports team,” I said, remembering his gigantic teammate hanging off the back of the golf cart.
“Hockey. He’s the captain of my team,” he said. When I clearly didn’t remember, he laughed and said, “The Peaks.”
“You were racing the golf cart?”
“That was your idea,” he said. “You challenged Jimmy Fallon and Glen Powell to a drag race.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.” I was too cautious for that kind of stuff. Celebrity had burned the fun out of me years ago.
“Well, you were a little shaken after that asshole grabbed your ass so Richie gave you his flask.”
“Right,” I whispered. “Tequila.”
“And you’re a tiny thing,” he said, the tone of his voice implying it wasn’t an insult. Quite the opposite. My hungover-self liked that. So much.
I was used to being admired for my looks. Being sexualized by grown ass adult men when you’re a teenage girl growing up in the business gives you a real weird relationship with your body.
But the way he admired me was different. I didn’t know how, it just was.
“Did we win the race?”
“Of course, honey. I don’t lose.”
“But you lost the game for the trophy.”
“ That you remember?” he asked with a grumble.
The way he said honey brought out a bunch more memories. “We went out for dinner. Just…”
“The two of us. Yeah.”
There’d been the hushed booth and a really nice bottle of wine. We were sunburned and starving and I ate a whole steak. Plus dessert. And we’d laughed. So much. So much…
He nodded like he was remembering the same thing.
“I saved your life,” I said.
“Let’s not get carried away. Steak went down the wrong pipe and you gave me a thump on the back.”
“Nuh, uh. I totally Heimliched you.”
“Hardly. I do the saving, honey.”
I laughed, deep in my belly like I had all last night. My abs hurt like I’d done a core workout.
“Hey,” he said. “No offense?”
“I’m already offended.”
“I think something died in your mouth.”
I gasped. “That is no way to talk to the woman who saved your life.”
I pushed the sheets away from our heads but we didn’t move. We lay facing each other in the middle of the king size bed. In my suite, thank God. I didn’t need to do any walk of shame back to my hotel.
He reached towards me again and smoothed down my hair, which had probably been standing up like I’d been electrocuted.
“What else do you remember?” he asked, and something about the sunlight coming in through the window, hitting the skin of his shoulder, reminded me of something else.
“We went swimming.”
He nodded.
After golfing, but before dinner, we met at the hotel pool with the swim up bar. He didn’t ogle my body in my bikini, and I tried to keep my eyes off him wearing nothing but his swim trunks.
It hadn’t been easy. The guy was ripped. Six-four maybe? Solid muscle everywhere. But it wasn’t pretty muscle. Like there were no packs, ridges, or deep V wedges like so many Hollywood actors had.
He was just a massive wall of humanity covered in chest hair.
We had so much fun at the pool, that it led to dinner.
We had so much fun at dinner, that it led to a dance club.
We had so much fun at the dance club, that…
“We kissed,” I said.
“We did.”
Like teenagers in the middle of the club. It had been sweaty and hot and I’d gotten so carried away, I’d put my arms around his neck and let him… lift me? My legs around his waist? I remembered his hands on my ass. I remembered heat. The heat of his mouth. The heat of his body.
I groaned and covered my face with my hands.
He tugged them down. “It was hot,” he said.
“There will be video all over social media.”
“Yeah. Cause it was hot.”
My world was not that simple.
“What else do you remember?” he asked.
I barely knew this guy, but somehow at the same time, I really knew him, and whatever he was trying to get me to remember was not good.
Not good at all.
“We came back here? I told you about my socks issue? We fell right to sleep?”
“We made one other stop…”
Oh shit!
I squeezed my eyes shut. Hard. And prayed.
“Tell me we didn’t.”
Before he could answer, the two doors leading into the bedroom exploded open and we were assaulted by the bottomless cheer, total efficiency and utter Britishness of Beatrice Smyth-Hasslebloom.
My assistant and personal savior.
“Rise and shine!” Beatrice clapped her hands together as if we were little English school children being called to class.
Beatrice had been a part of the PR team for the British Royal family before she came to work for me. She had a posh accent, silver hair, styled much like the Queen used to style hers, perfect posture, and she wore a gray skirt and blazer over a crisp white blouse every day of her life. I had never seen her in anything else. Ever.
When I’d hired her years ago, I explained she didn’t need to wear a uniform.
“Whatever do you mean?” she’d asked.
Staring at her standing at the foot of the bed, I tried to judge by her expression just how bad things were outside this hotel suite. Catastrophic? Merely inconvenient? Did I dare wish for fine?
No. I wasn’t that big a fool.
But Beatrice didn’t just have a poker face, she had a PR for the British Royal Family poker face. I wasn’t going to know anything until she divulged it.
“Should I be scared of this woman?” Wyatt asked me.
“A little? But she’s on our side,” I said to him.
“Your pores are still leaking alcohol. Really Sydney, aren’t you a little too old to be over imbibing like a sorority girl?”
“Why is she yelling?” Wyatt whispered, lifting a hand to his head. The only indication that he too was hungover. That made me feel a little better.
“Mr. Locke,” Bea said. “We have a number of things to cover, so if you would be so kind as to get your day started.”
He groaned and rolled on to his back. “Is she kicking me out?”
“I can hear you Mr. Locke. And yes. I am.”
Beatrice proceeded to pull back the second set of curtains along the eastern facing wall. Blinding Vegas sunlight filled the room.
“What the fuck? My eyes, my eyes!” He threw the covers back over his head.
“I have brought supplies,” Bea said. From a back pack she carried with her at all times, she pulled out a large bottle of water, another large bottle of Gatorade, the blue kind, and a bottle of aspirin. All of which she placed on the nightstand on Wyatt’s side of the bed. “After watching several videos of you playing the sport of hockey, Mr. Locke, I determined Glacier Freeze to be your flavor of choice. You’ll need to drink all of that, along with the water, and take no fewer than four aspirin. A man of your size requires a double dose. Now for you, Sydney.”
I also got a Gatorade, Cherry, my fav, a bottle of water, only two aspirin, and a soft hand on my shoulder.
In a low tone I called her mommy voice , she asked. “Are you quite all right?”
I nodded.
“You’re sure? Because if we need to involve the police…”
“No.” I shook my head and immediately regretted it. “No, we just drank too much and passed out.”
“Hmm,” she murmured disapprovingly. “You did a bit more than that. But first, drink, aspirin, shower. Separately,” she said, casting Wyatt a stern look. “I’ll have coffee, eggs and toast waiting for you when you’re ready for what comes next.”
“What comes next?” Wyatt asked.
He was sitting up, the sheet draped around his waist. The swirls of all that dark chest hair formed a line that went all the way down his stomach and disappeared under the sheet.
I swallowed.
I knew I had my underwear on, but did he?
He was already chugging the Gatorade and I could see the muscles in his neck flexing with each gulp. Seriously? Neck muscles?
He sighed once he’d finished the bottle, and Beatrice, because she was Beatrice and anticipated everything, set yet another bottle of Glacier Freeze on the table.
“Hydrate and bathe,” she said again. “I’ll be waiting for you in the sitting room.”
With that, she turned on her heel, left the bedroom and shut the double connecting doors behind her.
“Is she a witch?” Wyatt asked.
“Yes. But she uses her powers for good.”
I tried to make it a joke, but Beatrice had brought reality back to the room. Today I was going to have to deal with the fall out of what we’d done. Golf cart racing? Making out in a club?
“Hey,” he said, like he could see the spiral I was about to embark upon.
“We got fucked up. People do it all the time.”
I nodded. Getting fucked up and letting my guard down and having fun was stuff other people got to do. Not me. Not since I was seventeen. I’d been trapped for seven years in a world of my own making.
“I wasn’t lying…nothing happened when we got back to the room. We were both too messed up for that. Just so you know.”
“Thanks,” I told him. “I believe you.”
“I don’t take advantage like that. It’s not cool.”
Because he was a good guy. It’s what I thought about him when he roughed up the former quarterback. It’s what I thought about him at the pool and at the club.
It’s what I thought when I was standing next to him in front of Elvis, who was officiating our…
“Wow, we really did that?”
He knew what I meant. I could tell by his expression. Worried and resigned. He remembered it the second he woke up and he was just waiting for me to catch up this whole time.
“Yes, we really did,” he said, that grin of his splitting his dark beard. “Congratulations, wife.”