Chapter 4
Lauren
I removed my headphones and laid them on the workstation, then stood up and stretched, groaning softly as my blood started flowing and the tension in my body released.
I’d been sitting in one spot for far too long, trying not to move so that the microphone didn’t pick up the sound of my clothes rustling or the chair creaking, and now my back was stiff as hell.
I reached for my water, taking a long drink to ease my parched throat.
It had been a grueling session today, but I felt good about the work I’d accomplished.
I had just started working on a new audiobook.
It was a romance novel – only the third one I’d ever done.
I was excited about this particular book, as it was written by Calliope St. John, a rising star in the book world.
Her first two books had gone viral, and this one, the third in the series, was already a highly anticipated release.
I’d been immensely flattered to find that she’d selected me after I’d submitted a sample for my audition.
I picked up my purse from the floor next to me, feeling around in it for the bag of throat lozenges I kept there.
I unwrapped one and tossed it in my mouth, then turned off the lights and opened the door of the soundproofed recording booth.
The buzz of activity elsewhere in the building came rushing in, which was always a bit disorienting to me after hearing nothing but the sound of my own voice for hours.
“Are you leaving for the day?”
I whirled around, startled at the voice coming from right behind me.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” JD said, reaching for my arm to steady me as I bumped into his cart full of cleaning supplies.
I gave a small laugh as my heart rate settled back down to normal. “That’s OK. I was in my own little world, I guess. And yeah, I’m heading out while I still have a voice left.”
The older man smiled at me and patted my hand, reminding me to look after myself. JD was the building custodian – a shy, quiet, hard-working man who kept things running smoothly around here, and apparently had for years now.
“I will,” I replied, then remembered to ask him how his weekend had been.
Last week, I’d overheard him telling the building’s receptionist that he had recently reconnected with his high school sweetheart.
I’d asked him about her later, and from his stammering reply, I suspected that he was hoping to rekindle their old flame and was quite nervous about it.
“It was OK. I painted my kitchen and worked in the yard a little bit.”
“No hot date?” I teased him gently.
He grinned almost bashfully then ducked his head, the boyish gesture making him look much younger than the mid-fifties I assumed him to be. “No, she was busy, but I’m hoping to have lunch with her this week.”
“Well, I’m sure she’ll love that.”
He blushed – which was oddly endearing on a man his age – and I stifled a laugh as I told him goodnight and headed out to the parking lot.
I followed the directions on my car’s navigation system and drove to the address Ella had given me.
The driveway was filled with a few vehicles and assorted motorcycles, so I parked along the curb, taking a moment to admire the house in front of me.
I knew from talking to her that she and King had recently bought it, and that Sinner – King’s father and my landlord – lived across the street. I envied the close bond they all had.
I couldn’t imagine living that close to my own mother. Since she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, I doubted she wanted to live near me, either.
Ella greeted me at the door and ushered me inside, leading me to the kitchen where Molly and Abby were sitting on bar stools pulled up to the large island in the center of the room.
“I’ll warn you now, Lauren, several of the boys are here to watch the football game with King.
They’re downstairs in the ‘man cave’, but I’m sure they’ll be up here at some point for more food,” she laughed, gesturing to the platters and bowls of Mexican food covering the top of the center island.
“We can go ahead and fill our plates while we wait for my friend, Camille. She’s running a few minutes late. ”
We all grabbed plates and began assembling tacos. I had just added a little extra cheese to mine when I heard the front door slam and a voice call out, “I’m heeeere. Bring on the sexy men and margaritas!”
Ella rolled her eyes as Molly and Abby laughed.
Moments later, a gorgeous, dark-haired whirlwind charged into the kitchen, snatching a nacho off Ella’s plate with one hand while she grabbed the blender pitcher and poured the frozen, fruity concoction into a tall glass with the other.
Camille was clearly a force to be reckoned with, and I loved her already.
I stuck to iced tea, since I tried to avoid alcohol if I had to record the next day. Abby also chose tea, while the rest enjoyed the margaritas.
We talked and laughed while we ate, getting better acquainted before starting to talk about the book we’d read. It didn’t take long for us to move on to discussing books in general – our favorite authors, hated tropes, and as Camille added, “the panty-melting men” found between the pages.
“I’m just saying, that Ryder guy in this last book had me giving Thor and Samson quite the workout.” Camille fanned herself with her hand and flashed a wicked grin, as Ella snorted and flipped a tortilla chip at her.
“No one wants to hear about you masturbating,” she chastised between chuckles. My eyebrows rose in confusion, and I saw expressions of surprise and curiosity on Abby’s and Molly’s faces, too.
“Thor and Samson are her favorite sex toys,” Ella explained, shaking her head fondly at her best friend.
“Don’t judge me. Some of us aren’t lucky enough to be getting dicked down on the regular by sexy, badass biker gods. It’s just not fair,” Camille whined. “I can’t even remember the last time my lady garden got a good plowing.”
I almost spit out a sip of my iced tea, and poor Abby choked on the chips and salsa she was eating. Molly helpfully pounded her sister-in-law between the shoulder blades as Camille blithely continued regaling us with details about her sex life.
“The last guy I slept with was a two-pump chump who was convinced the G-spot was just a myth, and the one before that tried a little dirty talk that included the word ‘moist’. Moist, ladies!” She emphasized with a shudder, then downed the last bit of her second margarita as the rest of us laughed.
“Why can’t I find someone like Ryder, or what’s-his-name from that other book…you know the one, El, with the blindfold, and the ropes, and the feather?”
Ella had been staring at her blankly, until recognition kicked in at the mention of the feather. She nodded knowingly as she informed us, “Alejandro, in Naughty Nights.”
“That’s the one,” Camille declared with a wicked smile.
Abby nodded in agreement as she asked if we’d listened to that one on audiobook. “I can’t remember the name of the guy who narrated his character, but he had the deepest, sexiest, growliest voice. It gave me shivers every time he called her ‘my love’.”
“Jamison Danvers,” I informed her with a grimace.
“He’s an incredible voice actor, but unfortunately, he’s also a complete asshole.
I met him briefly at the Audie awards gala last year, and he didn’t take his eyes off my chest the entire ten minutes or so that we talked and then promised to get me cast in his next production if I went home with him.
When I turned him down, he had the audacity to…
, “ my voice trailed off as I realized that all four women were staring at me in confusion.
“The Audies?” Molly asked.
“Sorry, they’re like the Emmy awards or the Oscars, but for audiobooks,” I answered. “Anyway, then he –“
“Wait, back up a minute. Why were you at the Audies? I thought you did radio commercials and training videos?”
Molly’s questions made me remember that I hadn’t been completely forthcoming when I first met them.
“I started out that way, and I still do some in my downtime, but I stumbled into audiobook narration a couple of years ago,” I confessed.
“OK, I’m out of the loop here. Start from the beginning since I didn’t even know what you did for a living to begin with,” Camille demanded. “How exactly does one stumble into doing audiobooks?”
“Well, I originally studied radio broadcasting in college. I interned for a radio station my senior year, and one day, the on-air talent who was supposed to record an advertising spot for a local business got food poisoning. I was roped into filling in at the last minute because there was a tight deadline. That commercial led to others, and by the time I’d graduated, I had branched out into voiceover work for corporate training videos and online learning modules.
Between the ads and the various other gigs, I was making a decent living and decided not to pursue a radio career,” I explained.
“Then, one of the people at the recording studio I used in Pittsburgh suggested that I audition for audiobook narration after finding out that I’d appeared in a couple of high school and college theater productions.
I wasn’t sure I actually had the skills to act out the parts, but she convinced me to give it a try. ”
“What kind of books do you narrate?” Abby asked.
Before I could answer, Camille jumped in. “With that sexy, bedroom voice of yours, you’ve got to be doing smutty romance,” she declared.
She looked slightly disappointed when I told them that I’d voiced several children’s books and a fictional account of a woman raising her kids on her own after her husband was killed in World War II.
“And yes,” I teasingly revealed, “I also do romance. I’ve recorded two of them so far, and I just started recording my third.”
“I knew it,” Camille crowed, reaching for her phone which was on the table next to her plate. She started tapping at the screen then asked for my last name. “I want to listen to your stuff.”
“It’s Ashcroft, but I record romance under the name Laura Asher.”
“This is so exciting!” Molly squealed, grinning widely. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.”
I shrugged. “I’m sorry. My ex was always embarrassed by the romance books I did and hated for anyone to know. I guess I got used to keeping it to myself.”
“Your ex sounds like a dickbag,” Camille mumbled distractedly, still tapping and swiping at her phone.
“He is. And a lying, cheating dickbag at that.”
Ella reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. I knew she understood, having heard all about her own lying, cheating ex-husband.
“Well, I think it’s incredible, Lauren,” she said, before being interrupted by her friend.
“There, I just downloaded one of your books. I think we need to give it a listen,” Camille waggled her eyebrows and grinned, then pressed the button on the side of her phone to turn up the volume before setting it down on the coffee table.
The other women were excited as the audiobook started to play, and I cringed as I heard the intro for my last narration project – a particularly steamy storyline involving a dirty-talking hockey player and his teammate’s sister.
It had been a duet narration, which was a first for me.
It was freeing to only concentrate on the various female voices, rather than having to adjust to a lower register to voice the male characters as well.
I was proud of the work I did, but listening to it with a group of people I didn’t know well could be mortifying. I sighed as I realized I was letting Beau the Bastard get into my head about my romance audios being too slutty.
“You might as well be doing porn, Lauren. It’s embarrassing as hell,” he’d told me more than once. The more successful I became, the more he complained. I didn’t think that was a coincidence.
I took a deep breath, mentally pulled up my big girl panties, and forced myself to relax as the sound of my voice filled the room. Dammit, I was done letting my cheating ex-fiancé and his insecurities live rent-free in my mind.
“I’d been around hockey players all my life, and I’d never, ever, wanted to lick one from head to toe.
Until him. Damian Mathers. All-star center for my brother’s team, sexiest man alive, and an all-around pain in my ass.
And not the good kind of pain in my ass, either.
The man had major big-dick energy – and as I’d learned three-point-two seconds ago when he’d dropped the towel from around his waist – he also had an actual big dick to back it up. ”
“Hot damn! I love it when a book jumps right into the good stuff,” Camille hooted. “Now, let’s see if he knows what to do with that big dick.”
“He does,” I assured her with a satisfied grin. Damian’s character was probably my favorite book boyfriend. My trusty vibrator had gotten quite the workout while I’d been recording that book.
With the other ladies listening with rapt attention, I put aside the last lingering smidgeon of embarrassment and settled back into my chair to enjoy their reactions.