My Charming Rival Read online

  William

  * * *

  As I elbowed open the door, I tapped the search bar on my mobile phone. Dropping my sunglasses over my eyes, I keyed in the name “Riley Belle,” then waited as the beach ball made its rounds. Someday, somewhere—I was convinced of this eventual possibility—we’d live in a world where cell phone searching wouldn’t be the equivalent of staring at a watched pot that never boiled. But for now, I heaved a sigh as I mounted my bike and kept my vigil on the screen. The sun blasted high above, a perfect yellow orb that delivered rays of happiness as far as I was concerned. I didn’t miss the English weather one bit. Not even a single iota, and hadn’t since I flew across the pond for my junior year abroad that turned into staying my senior year, too. Some people say they want four seasons; I was not one of those people. I say give me perfect day after perfect day, so I suppose that’s why Los Angeles suited me quite well.

  Quite well indeed, and so much better than the homeland.

  As the phone chugged along, a text message dinged from the name Hack.

  I thumbed it open and read. So what’s the story with the new gig? Think you can keep this one for longer than a weekend? - Your big brother. (Don’t forget—I’ll always be older and wiser and better looking.)

  I typed a quick reply. Don’t worry. I won’t embarrass the family in front of good old Uncle James. (And you will always be older, which means you’ll be grayer and fatter.)

  After I fired off the note to my brother Matthew in New York—he’d caught American fever, too—the Riley Belle search results appeared, so I clicked back to the browser and scrolled through them on a mad dash for the best image. I had to kick unholy ass on this job for a million reasons, not the least of which was to end Matthew’s ribbing. I needed a quick visual of the subject. I tapped a close-up of Riley Belle, then studied her features until I had damn near memorized her face. Right, she was the brunette with the sunshine smile and chocolate eyes. Or so this story said on some entertainment site. Probably a suck-up one. After all, who uses words like sunshine and chocolate to describe a hot girl?

  As I tucked the phone into my back pocket and revved the engine, I ran through better words for hot girls. Blond, sarcastic, a fan of huckleberry pie.

  I pulled into the westbound traffic, weaving among cars, with my focus on the beach.

  Oh, there was one more word. Competition.

  She was the competition.

  * * *

  Jess

  * * *

  The memory of William’s pinchable butt and lickable lips was front and center as I sank down on the worn and cracked vinyl couch kitty-corner from J.P.’s desk.

  “Jess,” he said in his gruff voice. “You might want to pick up your jaw from the floor.”

  “If my jaw is anywhere near the carpet, it’s from your handiwork as a baker,” I said quickly, pointing to the tray of the chocolate-covered biscuits on his desk. Sure, they looked delicious, but I’d been caught red-handed and I wanted an alibi as I denied that William had me all agog.

  He rolled his eyes. “Right. You were salivating over my kitchen skills. Not that hot man in the well-worn jeans.”

  “You are correct, sir,” I said with a straight face because there was some truth to his comment. I stood up, picked up the tray, and carried it to a table in the corner, placing the biscuits far away. There. Now I wouldn’t be tempted to gobble them and then throw them up, like I’d done every now and then for many years with other delectable treats. But no longer. I’d been on the wagon for two full years now, 100 percent in control, and I had to stay that way.

  No. Matter. What.

  I returned to J.P. “Just thought they’d look better over there,” I said with a shrug.

  “Right. Sure. You were just rearranging. I also didn’t notice you giving sexy, scrumptious Will the old once-over.”

  Perfect adjectives.

  “If my eyes were on him, it was only to size up the potential competition. So which is he? My competition or your next boyfriend?”

  “He’s either a shooter or a suitor,” J.P. said, kicking his feet up on his desk and crossing his ankles. “Which way do you think he swings?”

  “You never can tell in this town. Everyone’s acting.”

  “He acts straight, then,” J.P. said, shaking his head as if he were sad that William liked girls. I was happy. But I couldn’t be happy. I reminded myself I didn’t care about his preferences.

  “Shame for you. He’s criminally handsome,” I said, admitting begrudgingly what J.P. and I both already knew. William was a certified babe.

  J.P. gave me a knowing look. “Shame for you if he can shoot as well as he looks.”

  “Doubtful. The pretty ones belong in front of the camera. But who has time for boys anyway?”

  “You should make more time for boys, Jess. Maybe you wouldn’t be so tightly wound.”

  I scoffed, because boys were on the back burner. “If I wasn’t this tightly wound, you wouldn’t have any good pictures from me. I’d be a blathering mess of hormones and lust rather than your top shooter. I don’t give in to boys because boys scramble brains and I do not function well with a scrambled brain,” I said. In fact, I worked hard to avoid the temptation to fling myself bodily at beautiful guys.

  Fine. I was guy-crazy. I knew that about myself. I fucking loved them. I loved their chests, and their arms, and their hair, and their eyes, and their guy smell, and their jeans, and their abs…and, well, you get the point. I loved everything that made a guy a guy, and I was often caught staring at the pretty ones. That’s why I stayed away as best as I could. Beautiful guys were trouble, and so I regularly warred with all such impulses to align myself with one horizontally.

  Especially considering what happened to my brain the last time I was involved with a guy. His name was Thadd, with two Ds, he was a business major, a movie fan, and one of the best times I’d ever had. In fact, hanging out with him was so much fun that my grades nearly suffered, and when I got my mid-term progress report sophomore year, it might as well have come with a warning—falling for a guy is known to cause plummeting grades. Fortunately, Thadd found himself distracted by an art major the same day that I planned to cool it with him, so that alleviated any and all guilt on my part for ending things with him for a little reason like nearly failing, when he was nearly putting his dick in another girl.

  I unzipped my backpack, and handed J.P. the contents of the digital card from my camera.

  “All yours. But the shot of Velvet Treadman isn’t for you,” I instructed, referring to Range’s seven-year-old daughter in her beret and capris. “So don’t take it.”

  J.P. snapped his fingers. “Damn. I was thinking she’d be about ready for a fake ID.”

  “You’re not getting any of those shots from me. Maybe Criminally Handsome will get you some of those,” I said, since I didn’t specifically want to ask what William was angling for, whether for a glimpse of stars behaving just like us or for a mug shot for J.P.’s other business, making the best un-bustable fake IDs in Hollywood for studio execs’ kids, celebrity offspring, or anyone rich enough or thirsty enough to come calling on the former caterer, now photographic impresario. J.P. ran both a legit business as a photo agency, and a not-so-legit one aging up the under-twenty-one crowd. Even though I wasn’t J.P.’s only celebrity shooter, I needed to know if William was horning in on my turf or supplying ID shots.

  “Or maybe he’ll get a shot of Riley and someone else in the cast of The Weekenders hooking up,” J.P. mused, giving me my answer—William was a paparazzo, too. Then my pulse quickened as J.P.’s tip registered. I nearly forgot about William because very little excited me more than a star stakeout. I raised an eyebrow, curious who the starlet Riley Belle might be seen with from the cast of The Weekenders. After years of rewrites, Solomon Pictures had just finished casting the remake of the story of five high schoolers forced to spend a Saturday together in detention. In the new version, a sixth student was added to the story because the studi
o wanted everyone to couple off at the end. Riley Belle played the cheerleader.

  “Is it Riley and Miles? Riley and Nick? Or Riley and Brody?” I asked, peppering J.P. with questions. “I bet it’s Riley and Miles.”

  He pointed at me. “Option number one it is.”

  “I knew it,” I said, pumping a fist. I’d been tracking Riley Belle’s career for years, as a fan and as a photographer. Riley was a darling of all directors after she earned an Oscar nod for her turn as a runaway in an indie breakout hit a year ago. “Miles has been vocal about having a crush on her since they met at the party for his wolf-turns-into-an-angel movie last year.”

  “That tanked.”

  “Obviously,” I said, in the off-hand, casual cool of the Hollywood insider that we all thought we were. “Everyone knows angels are so last year.”

  “But the cheerleader and jock from The Weekenders are so this year. Perhaps even this day.”

  “Where? Now? I want in,” I said, my fingers clutching the desk like I was ready to pounce.

  Hookup shots were close to gold. In the pantheon of payouts for photos it went like this: playground shots were at the bottom, parking ticket and pedicure shots were located a notch above, then night-on-the-town pics landed a bit higher up. They were followed by hookup shots, which rocketed the shooter to another pay range altogether that could only be topped by the image of a celebrity unraveling by food. The people loved a public pig-out more than just about anything. I’d managed to earn enough to cover a handful of college classes with a tidy triumvirate of meltdown-by-food shots about a year ago, including a rather embarrassing one of a former child star downing a key lime pie in his car when he thought no one was looking.

  But even though the photographic evidence of the most-shunned Hollywood possession of all—an expanding waistline—had graced my portfolio, I hadn’t grabbed the brass ring yet. Because there was one kind of picture that trumped them all. The most priceless and rare.

  The wedding shot.

  I’d never come close to a wedding shot and probably never would. But a hookup shot of someone from The Weekenders could net a whole handful of bills, so I wanted that pic to be mine.

  “Venice Beach. Riley and Miles have been seen taking sunset strolls as they walk her dog together,” J.P. said, and when I stood to go, he held up his big hands to slow me down. “Let me get the Treadman shots first, Jess.”

  “Come on, come on,” I said, rolling my hands in the speedup gesture. “I’m not about to let Criminally Handsome get the first shot of the cheerleader and the jock,” I said, my territorial instincts kicking in. I protected my turf like a mama bear, and that deliciously handsome British boy would not get in my way.

  “Treadman’s looking good, and such a good guy,” J.P. said and licked an approving lip at the photos on his screen. “The Strip will run these,” he added, referring to one of the online sites he fed his photos to. Then he fed himself, popping a biscuit into his mouth. I dug around in my backpack for my gum. It would distract me from the tantalizing look of that biscuit.

  “Treadman’s always a good guy. That’s why he’s only worth one hundred dollars. But Up Close will run hookup shots of Riley and Miles.”

  “God, I love Up Close and its millions of readers,” J.P. said.

  “It’s a deep and meaningful love for me, too,” I said, as he slapped a cool bill in my palm. I slipped the Andrew Jackson inside my bra and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” he said, as I turned the handle. I looked back. “Want to know what else I’m hearing related to the Belle family? And this isn’t something I’d share with anyone but you.”

  My ears pricked, and a smile darted across my lips. Insider secrets made me tick. “What else are you hearing?”

  “I got a little tip on a wedding date,” he said, sucking all the letters of the last two words as if they were juicy and delicious, “for the hottest wedding in town, that of Riley’s older sister, Veronica.”

  A shiver of excitement raced through me. Veronica Belle and Bradley Bowman were Hollywood’s hottest young couple these days. They had gotten engaged six months ago. Guessing where and when the wedding would be was the parlor game of Hollywood.

  “What’s the date?”

  “Supposedly this weekend. Somewhere on the beach.”

  “The beach? That could be anywhere.”

  “I know. Better start asking around. I want you to be the one to nab the shot.”

  “I will be the one. Even though security at the wedding will be insane,” I said.

  “It will be. Absolutely one hundred percent insane. So insane that a picture would be worth more than a thousand words. A picture would be worth many, many thousands of dollars.”

  My heart skipped with a sick kind of longing. That would cover a lot of semesters of med school. I needed that photo desperately, and I needed it before the first bill came due in two more months.

  “I’ll ask around,” I said, like the eager beaver I was.

  “That’s my bloodhound.”

  Or maybe that was the better comparison.

  3

  Jess

  * * *

  I popped a piece of spearmint gum into my mouth and chewed ferociously as I knitted my way through the cars. On the route to the beach, I ran through the possibilities for getting into the wedding.

  Bradley Bowman and Veronica Belle were the toast of the town, their sweet romance eliciting oohs and ahhs from onlookers. The young twentysomething stars had fallen in love last year during the shooting of Griffin Studios’ SurfGhost, a tale of a come-back-from-the-dead wave rider who falls in love with a girl afraid to swim. It was a megahit, with women of all ages swooning over their star-crossed love story.

  Given their high profiles, the wedding details would be under wraps. That meant I’d have to dig. I could ask my mom, a makeup artist, if she’d heard anything. Like a hairdresser, she picked up all sorts of little details as her clients gabbed while having their faces done. Another option was my roomie, Anaka. I could ask if her dad, Graham Griffin, who greenlit SurfGhost, would be at the nuptials. But if I got in through Anaka, then I’d risk her dad knowing about my job, and the more under the radar I flew, the better.

  The key to being a good paparazzo was to be surreptitious. You needed to get in someone’s face when you had to, and then get out just as quickly. Stealthiness was critical to my operations.

  Anaka’s cousin Kennedy, in New York, was another option, as her mom was a TV show producer who was often invited to the fetes of the famous. Her mom had cast Bradley Bowman in a guest spot on her popular Sunday night show Lords and Ladies. But that might be too roundabout a way in, though I’d check with Kennedy later just in case.

  The smell of the ocean grew stronger, so I shelved the wedding strategy until tonight when I’d have more time to noodle on it. For now, I had another shot to chase. I reached Venice Beach, parked, and began trolling for Riley and Miles.

  The boardwalk was teeming with its usual assortment of characters. A man in stilts and a red, white, and blue top hat crutched past me, threatening to knock down other passersby, like a hipster kicking a hacky sack and a mustached man in a lime-green speedo riding a unicycle.

  As I scanned the crowd for Riley, I carefully sidestepped a speed-demoning set of cyclists in matching zebra-striped bike shirts ripping toward me. The ocean waves lazily lapped the shore as street musicians plucked out twangy notes on their acoustic guitars. I kept up my pace, eyes peeled, ears perked, on alert. The usual camera-carrying suspects, such as Soul Patch and Leather Jacket, were nowhere to be seen, nor were the other regulars I’d grown accustomed to running into on red carpets, at coffee shops, outside gyms, and along the clandestine spots in parks, parking lots, and nightclubs that the famous thought were secretive.

  No one else was scanning so I figured Riley and Miles weren’t a widely known tip yet among the paparazzi.

  Which meant it was Criminally Handsome and me going fishing for the hookup shot, and it wo
uld be a race for first in. I spotted him hanging out by the ice cream shack on the edge of the boardwalk. He sat at one of the wooden picnic benches, his long legs stretched out in front of him, looking so cool and edible. I needed to look away. But knowing the enemy isn’t a step one should ever skip.

  I snapped mental pictures—of his cheekbones, his thick mess of hair, the faint trace of stubble, then on down to the flatness of his abs, though his stomach was hidden behind that blue T-shirt.

  Still, as a physician-in-training, I could tell he had fine obliques, as well as solid rectus abdominis muscles. His arms were toned, and his muscles strong. Being pre-med, I needed to familiarize myself as much as possible with musculature. When I had finished tucking away my virtual shots, I surveyed the rest of him, noting that he had a soda in one hand, and his other arm rested on his waist now, probably covering his camera. He took a drink of his soda, and seemed to be enjoying it and the view.

  Hmmm… He had the whole act casual routine down, but something didn’t add up.

  Sitting was never the best way to land a shot. You needed to be on your feet.

  Besides, I happened to know there was a new dog water fountain a few hundred yards down the beach. Since Riley was crazy about her Chihuahua–mini pin, Sparky McDoodle, I was betting that would be a better spot to lie in wait. As I neared the water fountain, artfully avoiding a rollerblader in leg warmers bopping out to oversized headphones as she weaved disco-style down the path, I had the precise feeling of being followed. It was a feeling I knew well, a feeling I was used to in my profession.

  I turned around, and there was my competition walking toward me.

  “Hey. I didn’t catch your name earlier. I’m William,” he said, his gorgeous gray eyes fixed on me. They shined, they twinkled, they blazed. They did everything a hot guy’s eyes could do.

  “You already told me your name,” I said coolly, doing my best to look away, down the beach, at the sky. Anywhere but the fineness of his face in front of me. Because then I’d melt.