My Charming Rival Read online

  As if it were happening at a rapid-fire pace, I saw my future crater as the distance between us grew with each step she took. The letter from the State Department loomed in front of me, like a red countdown clock blaring out the remaining days, hours, minutes. I had one job prospect and I had to do whatever I could to keep it afloat. Jess was my way in. She was the only lead in my grasp for the field work James had me chasing. Without her, I’d have nothing for James on how the paparazzi worked, and I needed that for his client. I couldn’t lose Jess or I’d be leaving on a jet plane for the homeland in two months, and the prospect of dreary old England was a lead weight in my stomach. I desperately needed Jess, but I also had something tantalizing to offer her.

  “Wait,” I shouted as she reached the curb. “Jess, please wait.”

  “Why?” she asked, barely acknowledging me.

  I raced to her and placed my palms together, a plaintive plea for her to forgive me for lying.

  “What I’m trying to say is I truly am sorry, and I want to make it up to you. And I have a way to make it up to you.”

  She scoffed, and started to walk off. “Right. Sure.”

  “I just told you my uncle runs a security firm. His firm is handling the Bowman-Belle wedding. I can get you into the wedding.” I gulped, but moved on quickly, because she’d say yes, she’d surely say yes, right? “If you’ll be my date.”

  18

  Jess

  * * *

  My jaw dropped. It likely clanged on the sidewalk with a loud crashing din because that’s how shocked I was.

  There was no way he’d just said the most beautiful, wondrous words. Not the be my date part. But the get you into the wedding words. Because those were magical. Those were the keys to the medical school kingdom.

  I stared at him, studying his face for clues. Was he tricking me? Playing me again? Were his eyes lying to me? Those gorgeous gray storm clouds seemed honest and true. I didn’t try to be tough or cool. Instead, I let down my guard. I wanted this. I needed this. “You can? For real?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and nodded a few times. “James is having me handle some of the desk work, records and stuff, so I’ll be at the wedding. I can sneak you in.”

  “You’ll be at the wedding?” I asked again because this felt too good to be true.

  Which meant there was no way it could be true.

  “Yes. I’m helping him to keep track of the list because we’re using a new app that matches pictures of faces to the guest list, and I set it up for him. I’ll get your name on the list as a wedding guest. I’ll be there and he asked a few of us to make sure we blend in by having dates. Once all the guests have checked in, he wants us to appear as if we’re guests as well, so the other guests feel more comfortable.”

  I’d heard about that app. It was being tested by a few event planners who had raved about it, but it wasn’t well known or widely used yet. “Right, they don’t want to feel like their every move is being watched by security. But what’s the name of the app?” I asked, jutting out my chin as I tested him.

  He rattled off the name, and as he said it, a layer of doubt peeled away from me. Underneath it, the shimmering possibility of no longer crashing, but feasibly attending, the wedding of the century bubbled up. Still, I wanted to be certain. “You’re not playing me? You can really sneak me in?”

  “I’m not. I swear I’m not and we have to be super careful, but I can definitely get you in, under the radar.”

  I lifted my chin. “Where’s the wedding?” I was tense all over as I waited for him to answer. If he said Malibu, I was gone.

  “Ojai Ranch. Chelsea Knox’s home. Saturday. Two p.m. In her backyard. In between the pools.”

  Excitement roared through my veins as he said all the right words. His answers matched Anaka’s info. This changed everything. If William was willing to help me get into the wedding, then I didn’t care that he’d played me. Because he wasn’t truly a player—he was the reformed bad boy, and boy did I like that archetype. “I think I’m in love with you,” I said, then impulse took over and I leaned forward, placed a palm on his cheek, which was the tiniest bit stubbly, which was the biggest bit sexy, and planted a kiss on his other cheek.

  He blushed. “Well, I think I’m in love with you, too.”

  “Okay, so what’s next?”

  “There’s only one condition to this.”

  My heart sank. I did not want a condition. I wanted access. I wanted it handed to me on a silver platter. But nothing was free. “What’s the condition? Does it involve chocolate cake or huckleberry pie? Please say no.”

  “Someday, you are going to want a chocolate cake. For now, here’s the deal—I help you. You help me. You help show me the inner workings of how you get the pics. I’ll never share your name with my client. I’ll never let on where I learned it all. But you’ll show me around. Bring me with you for the next few days so I have enough to report back to James and by extension to his client. That way I can keep my job for now, and that job helps you get into the wedding without anyone knowing you’re a photographer.”

  Fine, so he wasn’t Captain Altruism. But then I wasn’t, either. Besides, given what he was offering me, there was very little William could have asked in return that I’d have turned down. I didn’t want him to know I was putty, though. I breathed out hard, as if the request bothered me. The truth was, I’d be grateful for his company tonight in the deserted warehouse section of Burbank. I wasn’t keen on a solo trip, and William was six feet tall and then some, and his chest had a nice breadth to it, and his arms were well-muscled, and he could be my bodyguard without even knowing it.

  I held out a hand. “Partners.”

  He shook. “Partners.”

  19

  Jess

  * * *

  “Do you realize your shirt has been touched by the blessed? That you have Sparky McDoodle scent on you? We could auction this off.” Anaka pointed to my black V-neck that I’d picked up from Target a few weeks ago.

  “Who on earth would buy this shirt?”

  “Are you kidding me? This is the shirt that the girl who saved Sparky McDoodle was wearing. You’re all over the gossip sites.” Anaka clicked to one of our regular online haunts.

  The photo of Riley Belle and me was on the home page with the words in big, blazing font “Save the cat? Save the dog!” It was a takeoff on a popular screenwriting book, Save the Cat, that suggested writers should always find a way to have the hero or heroine do something noble, like save a cat, to win the audience’s sympathy.

  I pulled off my T-shirt and tossed it into the hamper in my room. “I need to jump in the shower. Don’t you dare steal my Sparky McDoodle–marked T-shirt while I’m in there,” I said, and wagged a finger at her. I headed into the bathroom and closed the door most of the way.

  A minute later Anaka called out. “Oh my God. We have our first bidder, Jess.”

  “A good auctioneer would drive the price way up. But while you’re working the bids, can you please pick out a new shirt for me to wear?”

  As I shampooed my hair, Anaka tossed out another question. “Why are you showering again? Supposedly to get dog scent off you?”

  “If I go to the Riley stakeout tonight smelling like her dog, and if she brings him along, then he might run over to me again,” I shouted, so she could hear me above the water.

  “Hmm,” she said loudly. “I think there’s a logical fallacy in that.”

  “What is the logical fallacy you’ve uncovered?”

  “Dogs don’t sniff out their own scent. They sniff out the scent of other animals or of people.”

  “Either way, I don’t want to take a chance.”

  “Funny. But I don’t believe you.”

  I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair, turned off the shower, and grabbed a towel. I wrapped it around me, then poked my head out the open door. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “I think you might be showering for the hot British guy.”

  “
Please,” I said, rolling my eyes to show how little I cared about William.

  “It’s true. You can admit it now, or admit it later, but admit it you will.”

  “We are only a means to an end for each other.”

  “I don’t believe you for one iota of a second,” Anaka said, falling back on her red-and-pink bedspread. “Why else would you team up with him?”

  “Um. Hello. He’s getting me into the wedding.”

  “If he were just getting you into the wedding, you’d just go to the wedding with him. But you’re not. You’re going out with him at night.”

  “On a stakeout, Anaka!”

  “That’s what you call it, and maybe it is one, but the best friend always knows when love is in the air,” she said, as she tossed me a dove-gray shirt with glittery stars embedded in the sleeves.

  “Seriously?” I held up the shirt. “This is your shirt. And do you even own anything without bling?”

  “You know I don’t believe in wearing plain clothes. That’s the simplest thing I own,” Anaka said, and gestured to her own outfit. She wore a purple scoop-neck shirt, a jean skirt, thigh-high striped gray-and-lavender socks, and heeled lace-up boots with a Victorian flare to them. Her black hair was swept into a twist on top of her head.

  I marched into my bedroom, grabbed a blue T-shirt from a drawer, and pulled it on, along with underwear and jeans. I returned to her room, and held out my arms for her appraisal.

  “Perfect. You skinny bitch.”

  “You’re exactly the same size.”

  She grabbed at her belly. “Don’t make me show you my love handles. Because I will.”

  I poked her stomach with a finger. It was flat. “You’re beautiful.”

  “And so are you,” she said emphatically. “Whether you’re a skinny bitch or not.”

  “Now you’re just practicing all your help the friend who used to have an eating disorder tactics,” I said.

  “Is it working?”

  “Like a charm.” Then I snapped my fingers when I remembered I needed something from my brother for the wedding. “Hold on. I need to send Bryan a note,” I said, grabbing my phone and firing off a quick email request to him. I dropped the phone on my bed, then returned to the altar of the bathroom mirror where I applied a light dusting of blush to my cheeks, then blow-dried my hair as Anaka and I chatted. “And now,” I said, turning off the hair dryer, “I’d like to become a pixie-cut redhead.”

  Anaka rubbed her hands together, made a beeline for her closet, and pulled out a hot-pink box. She flipped it open, and extracted one of her many wigs.

  “Voilà.” She gave me the stocking cap to hide and flatten my own hair, and I tucked my hair into it, then pulled on the auburn-ish wig and considered my reflection.

  “He’s going to think you’re so hot as a redhead,” she said.

  “I’m wearing it so Riley doesn’t recognize me.”

  “If William can’t keep his hands off you, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But wait…don’t forget the golden rule of a good romantic comedy film,” she said in a teacherly tone as she wagged a finger at me.

  “What’s that?”

  “Think of all the good ones. Late Nights in San Francisco, When My Best Friends Met, You’ve Got Me.”

  “Love those,” I said, pining momentarily for the golden days of romantic comedy, and not just the times of black-and-white, but a few decades ago, when stories were fresh, when the leads held out, when the writing wasn’t predictable.

  “They don’t make movies like that anymore. I’ll tell you the big flaw with rom-coms today.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “They let the leads hook up too early. A good romantic comedy needs to be full of simmering will they–won’t they tension until well into the third act. Then the first kiss can come. Then the misunderstanding. Then the final scene when they make up and live happily ever after.”

  “Delayed gratification,” I said with a nod. “Then it’s too bad I already kissed William twice.”

  “We’re just talking about the movies, Jess. In real life, you can and should kiss him three times tonight.”

  Like that was going to happen.

  20

  William

  * * *

  I spread the blueprints against the wooden gate outside a branch of the Burbank Public Library as we began our wedding planning in a well-lit spot before the stakeout. It was ten minutes after eight, the sun had set, and Jess scanned the map from the light of an old-fashioned streetlamp nudged into a corner nook in the reading garden.

  I’d brought three pages of the layout of Chelsea Knox’s spacious property that James had shared with me when I was working on the computer maintenance for him. To develop a full picture of the venue, I’d compared his blueprints to the publicly available photos from real estate listing services, flyover photos, and a Google image search.

  “Veronica’s going to get ready here, right inside the east wing of the house. We’ve all been instructed that absolutely no one is allowed in the east wing under any circumstances,” I said, tapping a bedroom layout on the second floor that overlooked the ostrich and llama pool. “The ceremony itself will be under the bamboo veranda, which is right next to the pond full of mechanical koi.”

  “Mechanical koi?”

  “Chelsea Knox thinks it’s inhumane to raise fish in any form,” I said as if the answer was obvious.

  “I trust there won’t be salmon on the menu?”

  “There are three menus. Dairy vegetarian, vegan, and raw.”

  “Will you be guarding the crudités, then?”

  I laughed. “I’m sure there will be a mad rush for the carrot sticks. We’re going to have plainclothes security officers all throughout the grounds, around the perimeter, but also along the driveway, inside the house, and by the pools.”

  “What are they doing about the possibility of helicopter shots?” she asked, thoroughly running through her questions, looking all the more alluring in her redheaded wig tonight. Though, in all honestly, she’d be hot to me if she had purple hair. Blue hair. Green hair. Didn’t matter. It was her attitude that had hooked me from the start.

  “They’re renting a tent.”

  “Smart plan.”

  “And James also has a helicopter for security in the sky. To watch over and make sure everything is safe. So even though you’re going to be on the guest list and James told me to bring a date, we have to be incredibly careful to keep you under the radar. I don’t want you to get caught, and I don’t want to screw over James, either. My thinking is we need a fake name for you and a fake ID. We don’t want anything traced back to you or me or him when the pictures leak out. Enough people know you’re a shooter. This way, neither James nor the wedding planners would be able to put two and two together that the shots came from you.”

  Her eyes met mine. For one of the first times, she seemed nervous, worried even. “You’re not going to get in trouble for this, are you? I don’t want your uncle to get hurt, either.”

  Her concern was sweet, and worked its way around my heart. “Don’t worry. You’re good at your job. I’ve been watching you,” I said with a wink, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Seriously, though?”

  “I’m serious. Look, you know how this goes. We can do everything we can to keep the wedding private, but someone is going to get a shot somehow. I know I’m taking a risk, but I’d just as soon it be you who gets the inevitable shot, so let’s make sure of that.”

  “You’re risking a lot to get me in there,” she said softly.

  I didn’t say anything at first. Just kept my eyes on her. “I know.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Hey, as long as you are as sneaky as I know you can be, the picture won’t be traced to you or James or me. It will just seem like it came from some random guest. Hence why we need to make sure there is no Jess Leighton at the wedding.”

  She swiped her hand through the air as if she were wiping away her id
entity. “Jess Leighton won’t exist on Saturday.”

  “You can get a fake ID, then?” I asked, and I liked that Jess and I were a team now. We both needed each other. We’d come to a truce, and we each could help the other.

  “I can get a fake ID, but my fake name is Fred. Is that going to be a problem?” she asked in mock seriousness.

  “Maybe a little. Any chance you could be a Fredericka?” I suggested.

  “I can totally pass for a Fredericka,” she said in some sort of random indistinct accent.

  I laughed. “What the hell kind of attempt at an accent was that?”

  She shrugged sheepishly. “Italian?”

  I placed a hand on her shoulder, gripping her lightly and shaking my head. “No, that was not an Italian accent whatsoever,” I said to her in Italian, and she furrowed her brow. “But you are so fucking hot even when you try to put on a ridiculous accent that I still want to fuck you. Especially since you look even sexier with that red wig on.”

  She tilted her head curiously, her fake hair moving perfectly in sync with her face. “You speak Italian, too?”

  I nodded. “I do.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “That I’m glad you’re not mad at me anymore.”

  “Who said I’m not mad at you?” she asked, shooting me a narrow stare.

  “You’re here with me and we’re plotting to rappel Espionage Style into a wedding this weekend,” I said, naming the famous spy movie franchise. “I’m giving you something you need and you’re giving me something I need.”

  She sliced a hand through the air. “And that’s all.”

  I grabbed her hand, and kissed her palm. Cheesy, I know. I wasn’t above a cheesy move. “I’m sorry,” I said, again in Italian.

  “How do you know so many languages?”

  “My parents know Spanish. They both studied it in school. They spoke it at home so we could know another language early on. I was good at it. Picked it up quickly. Matthew knows it, too, so we all talked to each other in Spanish. When I was in secondary school, I spent a summer in Italy and learned Italian.”