One Night for Love (17 page)

Thank you to my Beta Readers! You guys ROCK!

Thank you to RWA, LARA, Girlfriends Book Club, and WFWA. These four professional organizations have taught me so much about my craft and publishing as well as providing me with the most fabulous group of friends a writer could have.

Speaking of friends… Thank you to my friends and family: Margaret Marr, Nancy Veskerna, Nealie Harrison, Lauren Harrison, Gavin White, Eloise and Dixie Marr, Paula and David Glasscock, Joyce and Tom Leahy, Linda and Bill Henderson, Lindsy and Mark Henderson, Dolores Henderson, Tom and Nancy Henderson, Garrett Marr, Janet L’Huellier, Peg Cafferty, Amy and Brent Zacky, PEG and the entire PEG Family, Melissa Lamoureaux, Victoria and Karl Makinen, Arlene and Frank Balkin, Tonya Barnett, Christine Ashworth, Maria Seager, Cami Bright, Sylvia Fox, Sarah Vance-Tompkins, Molly Donna Ware WR, Sarah and Mike McCafferty, Laura Drake, Orly Konig-Lopez, Kari and Craig Smith, Megan Crane, Jane Porter, E. Lockhart, Lauren Myracle, Tara Altebando, Alan Gratz, Maryrose Woods, Ally Carter, Jennifer Barnes, Sarah Mylnowski, and BOB.

Thank you to Chad and the kidlets. You make my world turn.

Maggie Marr is an attorney, author, and producer. She began her career in the entertainment industry pushing the mail cart but rose to the position of motion picture literary agent. She has written for TV, film, and celebrities. Maggie has been featured on KCRW's
The Business
and reviewed by
Publishers Weekly
,
Kirkus
, and
Romantic Times
. She lives in LA with her family.

Maggie is eternally grateful for the graciousness and support of her readers.

Please visit her Website at:
http://www.maggiemarr.blogspot.com
.

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/maggiemarr

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maggie-Marr-Books/168071873226783?ref=ts

The
Hollywood Girls Club
Series

Hollywood Girls Club

Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club

Hollywood Hit

Box Office Bomb
–
coming soon

Hollywood Girls Club the Series

The
Eligible Billionaires
Series

Can’t Buy Me Love

One Night For Love

Last Call For Love
– coming soon

Contemporary Romance

Courting Trouble

The
Glamour
Series

Hard Glamour

Broken Glamour

Fast Glamour

Easy Glamour
– coming soon

Luxe Glamour
– coming soon

Chapter 1

Lane

I wasn’t supposed to be in Los Angeles. I wasn’t supposed to drive halfway across the country for a job in entertainment and live in a city where I knew absolutely no one. This wasn’t supposed to be my summer. No, I was supposed to take the summer corporate job in Kansas City. A summer job that would pay enough for my tuition and books for the next year, a job that nearly guaranteed me a permanent gig when I graduated college. A job I should have been thankful to get, a job that any responsible, Midwestern girl from Brokesville, with no backup plan, would get down on her knees and thank the good Lord above for providing.

I didn’t take that summer job. In fact, I’d burned a gargantuan bridge by declining, but getting into my Jeep and driving to an adventure was the first time I’d felt alive in months. The first time I didn’t feel numb. I pressed the accelerator down and whipped around a curve on Oak Canyon Road. The guy at the front desk of my motel had told me I’d get a great view of the city if I wound up this road. I hit the brakes and made a quick right onto a turnout. I jumped from my black Jeep and felt the familiar crunch of gravel under my boots. A breeze whipped my hair and I pulled a caramel-colored strand behind my ear. I settled my hands on my hips and looked at this giant monster of a city. L.A. Out there… way out there, but not too far, where the sky merged with the sea, was the Pacific. I was a landlocked girl from the middle of the country and this was a helluva sight.

My best friend and roommate, Emma, had called going to L.A. for the summer the Big Risk. I bit down on my bottom lip and shook my head. Emma, with her sweet periwinkle-blue eyes and corn-silk hair and a surgeon for a mother and a CEO for a dad, couldn’t begin to understand why I would want to risk everything and go to Los Angeles. Here’s the thing Emma didn’t understand, couldn’t understand: the Big Risk is not that big when you have nothing left to lose. That’s how I’d felt this past semester after my mom died. I loved Emma, she was my best friend, but how could she understand? She had the perfect life with a whole lot of money and a great family. Me? I had nothing and no one left. At least not in Kansas. Maybe this summer in Los Angeles was a Big Risk, but I wanted into the world of entertainment. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to live in California. I wanted to feel alive and whole. I wanted so much more than a girl from Kansas should ever want.

My heart pounded. My internship at CTA was an opportunity I’d chased down for myself, a big opportunity that would hopefully lead to another big opportunity that would lead to another and another and another. Until someday Los Angeles might be my town. I cupped my hand over my aviator sunglasses and took one final scan of my summer home. Then I hopped into my Jeep. I had the entire summer to explore L.A.

*

The winding roads back down the hill circled and curved and circled again. I leaned forward, trying to read the street sign on my right. I’d driven by the big white house with a Mercedes and a BMW parked in the drive three times. I pressed the brake and stopped in the middle of the road… shit. I was lost. The sun sank in the west, and even with my sunglasses on, the harsh light blinded my eyes. I pulled hard on the wheel of my Jeep and turned left. There had to be a way out of this maze of streets and back to my motel—I just hadn’t found it yet. I sped down the road.

Orange-and-white barriers closed off the way I needed to go. Three giant white semitrucks lined the road I needed to drive down. I could back up, turn around, and try to find my way back to my motel by going the other direction, but I wasn’t sure where I was. My fifteen-year-old Jeep didn’t have power steering, much less GPS. Instead, I pressed the clutch and pushed the stick into first gear, then wove around the barricade. The sun beat into my eyes. I swiveled my neck to get a good look at the giant white semitrucks.

There was a planet logo and a studio name painted on the cab doors of the trucks. My heart kajolted in my chest. These were production trucks. Someone, somewhere on this street, was making a movie. I craned my neck to the right and lifted my foot from the brake, and my Jeep rolled forward. In front of the last truck was a giant RV. Was there a star inside? Someone I’d have seen on the big screen? My eyes widened and my heart beat faster. This was the very reason I’d shucked my golden opportunity in KC and taken the Big Risk. I wanted to be part of this world. I wanted to make movies. To work with people who made movies. For me, movies were magic.

Metal clanged and I slammed my foot onto the brake pedal.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

Standing beside my Jeep with his eyes burning fire was the best-looking guy I’d ever seen. His white T-shirt strained over his chest and his black hair blazed in the sun. His arms were thick with muscle, and a giant tattoo wound over his forearm to where his hand was balled into a fist. The same fist that he’d just pounded onto the hood of my Jeep. His bright blue eyes pierced through my window. His full lips pulled tight. He walked around to my side of the Jeep.

Up close he looked even better. Hot little flashes pulsed over my skin. His cheekbones were high and cut hard. His golden skin was perfect, flawless, his body muscled and tight under his clothes. With so much masculine perfection so near, I could barely breathe.

“D…d…do? Do I know you?” I stammered out. He looked so familiar. That face. My eyes dropped down to his neck and roamed over his body.

“Do you
know
me?” He shook his head and rolled his eyes up toward the sky. “Oh, sweetheart.” He crossed his arms and the muscles in his forearms flinched. “There is no way that you don’t recognize this face, is there?” He pointed at his own mug. He looked at me like I’d fallen out of the sky from an alien planet.

Did I know this guy? Did I recognize his face? I could sit here all day and watch his muscles tense. He waited and finally he pressed his face forward with a bored expression. “Even as good as you look, you’ve got to come up with a better line than that.”

A better
line
? Behind my sunglasses I squinted. What the hell? Did this guy think I was picking him up?

“You”—he pointed his finger at me through my open window—“nearly ran over me.”

I should have apologized. I could have apologized. I would have apologized if this guy wasn’t behaving like such an incredible ass.

“Maybe you shouldn’t walk out into the center of the road without looking,” I said and flipped my hair over my shoulder. I cocked my eyebrow. He was the jerk, I was just a driver.

“Maybe you should pay attention to where you’re going instead of craning your neck at a film set.” His voice grew louder with each word. “There are barricades all over the street so some no-name person like
you
doesn’t run over someone like
me
.”

Someone like
him
? I fought the urge to shove the stick into reverse, back up, then ram it into first, hit the accelerator, and let this asshole know just what it would feel like for this no-name someone to run over his ass.

“Dillon, baby, are you okay?” From the left, a bleached-blond California bimbette ran into the road and grasped his arm. He didn’t look at her or even answer. She ran her hand up his bicep and over his shoulder. Her eyes turned to me and shot me the smoldering bitch-look.

“This is a closed set,” he said, his tone so sharp it could make you bleed. “Do you know what that means?”

I ground my teeth. I was new to L.A., but I wasn’t stupid.

“Dillon, baby, let me call security.” The girl whipped her cell phone from the back pocket of her barely there short-shorts. I was surprised she could stand up straight without those fake ta-tas pulling her forward.

“Leave it, Denise,” he said without looking at her. He sharpened those blue eyes on me, then left Denise on the edge of the street and walked right up to my Jeep window. The muscle in his jaw flinched. He was so close I could feel the heat of his breath. He was even more handsome up close—if that was possible. How
was
that possible? He smelled like mint and something so very… male. “A closed set means you’re not supposed to be here.”

I thanked God I had on my sunglasses so he couldn’t see the wide-eyed attraction racing through me. I’d never been so affected by a guy. Even with his anger and his smoldering look, something so crazy inside me wanted to lean forward, clasp my hands to his face, and plant my lips on his. He wasn’t nice, he was a big jerk, but this guy was all kinds of sexy. He latched his gaze on me and paused for the tiniest second, then jerked backward away from me and away from my Jeep.

“So back this heap of shit up and get out of here.” Again he folded his arms over his chest as though he were king of the world and the bimbette reattached her body to his side.