Chapter 7
SEVEN
WILLA
“Are you still on Sunset?”
I’m on speakerphone with Harley, who is breathing heavily because she’s on a treadmill at the gym. I think she’s been doing a walking pace this whole time—the heavy breathing is from staring at some male model who’s doing deadlifts in her eyeline. We live very different lives.
“Oh my God, yes. This street is endless. I’m actually in the Pacific Palisades now, though. Very different vibe from every other part of LA that I’ve been to so far.”
“It’s called boring rich people vibes. Make a legal U-turn ASAP and get back to the east side while you’re still cool enough for me to talk to.”
“You and I both know that I’ve never been cool enough for you to talk to.”
“True.”
“I think I might love it here. Oh, look, there’s a hardware store that’s not a Home Depot!
All the buildings on this street are two floors at the most. It seems really chill, and everything’s clean and pretty!
” I roll down my window. The air is cleaner here.
I can’t see the ocean, but I can feel it.
People are actually walking around in this village. Willingly. Happily.
“Oh God, I’m losing you.”
“Can you hear me now?”
“Yeah, I mean I’m losing you to the Westside, and I’ve only seen you once since you got here. This is tragic.”
“I will still hang out with you. Hang on, I have to turn here. I think I’m almost at his house. I think…I think that’s Tom Hanks coming out of a Starbucks.”
“Stellar. I bet he doesn’t look half as good in compression shorts as the guy doing squats twenty feet in front me. Okay, send me pictures of the house, I need to go flirt with Mr. Leg Day before he hits the showers.”
“I’m not going to send you pictures of the house. That would probably be in violation of the nondisclosure agreement I’ll be signing.”
“Ugh. Girlfriend needs to get over herself.”
“No comment. Have fun squatting on Mr. Leg Day.”
“See now, that’s the kind of fun you should be having in LA.”
I end the call and lift the inside of my wrist to my nostrils to inhale my homemade vanilla and amber perfume oil.
I smell like a sexy, soulful bakery, and it makes me feel calm, feminine, and warm—not at all like the horny girl who pleasured herself in the shower yesterday while thinking about her poor, tired, hot-as-fuck new boss.
Now that I’m off the phone, my navigation app is telling me to turn onto a residential side street.
This neighborhood is gorgeous. There are red and fuchsia bougainvillea bushes and small trees everywhere.
The sky is a more vivid shade of blue here than it was downtown, and the wispy, windswept white clouds are so inviting.
The houses aren’t as big and fancy as the ones I could see right off Sunset when I was driving in, but I like that.
They’re built into the hills and designed to favor the views.
I love it here.
When the app tells me that my destination is on the right, I slow the truck down and my heart starts racing.
Stop it.
This is where I’m going to be living for three months?
Stop. It.
I can see the ocean from the driveway.
The rest of the property is gated with a privacy fence, but not in an obnoxious way. Through the horizontal slats I can see a young eucalyptus tree and ornamental grasses, Russian sage, and lavender plants. The house is modern, understated, friendly, eye-catching. Just like its owner.
I park the truck, leave my belongings inside of it, and skip to the gate.
At this point, I might even be more excited to see the rest of the house than I am to see Shane Miller’s gorgeous, sexy face.
It’s just after eleven, so the kids are still in school.
I press the button on the intercom, running my fingers through my hair and trying to control my facial muscles so I look a little less like a lunatic who fantasized about getting drilled by a former Disney Channel star and more like a responsible caregiver who really appreciates good architecture and landscaping.
I am all ready for a little joke-y home security banter, but the gate buzzes and clicks open.
I push the gate and step inside the front yard.
It is narrow, with landscaping on either side of a wide path that extends up a sloping hill to the street and down to the front door.
The front door opens, and Shane Miller steps into view, breathing heavily and chugging a bottle of Gatorade.
His brown hair, though sweaty and disheveled, still somehow looks like it has been styled that way.
He’s wearing a tight tank top and gray sweat shorts, and his skin is flushed.
“Hey,” he says, a little breathless. “My trainer just left. Sorry I’m all sweaty. Welcome. Come on in.”
He allows me to step into the foyer past him, simultaneously giving me a glance of this magnificent home and a whiff of the most amazing man sweat I have ever inhaled.
Let me take this opportunity to nerd out and briefly discuss a chemical substance known as pheromones…
Pheromones are like hormones that are secreted externally by an animal’s body—they subconsciously cause a physiological response and affect the behavior of other animals of the same species.
It’s an incredibly effective form of chemical communication that is detected within the olfactory system—despite the fact that they may seem odorless.
Ever wonder why ants follow an invisible trail to a tiny piece of food?
Scent pheromones. Curious as to why your cat keeps rubbing his face against the leg of your coffee table and absolutely everything else in your house?
Scent markings—he’s marking it with facial pheromones.
There is great debate among scientists as to whether or not humans actually produce pheromones, because it has not been definitively proven, but it is surmised that if humans do emit pheromones, one of the main ways they do it is through their sweat glands.
This has led one university researcher to conduct a study of women’s brain responses to polyester pads that were placed under men’s armpits while the men were watching porn, as well as pads of men’s sweat when they were not sexually aroused.
Guess what? The MRI scans revealed that the sexy sweat stimulated different parts of the women’s brains than the normal sweat did, and the scientist then suggested that women can subconsciously recognize the scent of a man who is attracted to her.
Because, science!
Well, alert Scientific American, because I am one hundred percent certain that Shane Miller has just detonated a sex pheromone grenade in my face, and I fucking love what I smell.
I’m not saying he’s lying about recently working out, but perhaps at some time in the very recent past he has also worked a little something else out, if you know what I’m saying.
And I say this as a professional perfumer—if I could bottle up and sell this man’s scent, women would try to hump everything you sprayed it on.
I would be financially secure for life. For life.
But I wouldn’t. I’d keep it for myself. Because I want it all over me.
Fortunately, I am not an insect and my rational brain is perfectly capable of overriding this primal urge to rip off our clothes and plaster my mouth to my employer’s mouth.
I think.
Yeah.
I can definitely transform this primitive sexual desire into sarcasm.
“Wow. What a shithole,” I say, looking around. “You should probably call your agents and tell them you need to do a few more crappy blockbuster action comedies.”
He blinks. The corner of his mouth twitches. He nods once. He is not amused.
“If you’re trying to laugh, it’s not coming out right.”
“I’m just too fatigued to express my appreciation for your delightful sense of humor.”
“So this is what you’re like when you’re at home?”
“This is what I’m like when I’ve had a grand total of eight hours sleep in two days.”
“Did the lavender essential oil not work for you?”
“It did, but then it didn’t.” He gestures and leads me farther inside this glorious and spacious house.
“Wow.” The back of the house is almost all windows, and the view is all ocean. “To be clear—I think your house is gorgeous.”
“Thanks. I’ll let my agents know they can stop sending me crappy scripts, then.
” He leads me to the counter of the island in the center of the kitchen of my dreams, but I go straight to the kitchen sink and the window that overlooks the bougainvillea-covered bluffs and narrow highway and beach and glimmering ocean below.
“Wow” is all I can say. “Seriously. Well done.”
“I’m glad you like it. Can I get you something to drink?
Eat?” He guzzles the last of the Gatorade and walks over to where I’m standing.
I can feel the damp heat emanating from his skin.
It’s giving me goose bumps. My physical response to this man is strangely intense, even though our interactions are decidedly unsexual.
“’Scuse me,” he mutters as he reaches down to open the cupboard door under the sink.
His fingers don’t even touch my denim-covered leg, the empty plastic bottle does, and yet I feel a ridiculous little jolt and step aside.
Pheromones, I tell you.
Clearing my throat, I ask, “Can you walk to the beach from here?”
“Not really. There’s no direct path down the bluffs, so you have to go back up to the village and then down along Temescal Canyon. It’s a bit of a hike, especially with the kids. But it’s doable. Was that a ‘no’ regarding something to drink?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”