Hollywood Husbands Read Free Page B

displaying very white, even teeth, and a warm, sexy smile. ‘Glad you like it,’ she said, subtly edging him towards the door. Once they started on about her famous coffee commercial she knew the time was ripe to move them out, having learned, very early on in her career, to be friendly yet unreachable to her many unknown admirers. Once, at eighteen, she had been attacked and nearly raped by a crazed fan who had fallen in obsession with a swimsuit poster she had posed for. Only the intervention of a concerned neighbour had saved her.
    The delivery man paused at the door. ‘Maybe ya gotta photo y’can sign for me,’ he said hopefully.
    Out she projected silently. She was looking forward to being alone and beginning the great unpack. ‘I’ll send you one,’ she said pleasantly.
    ‘Scrawl, I love ya Big Ben,’ he leered. ‘That’ll give the boys somethin’ t’ think about.’
    Big Ben! Was he kidding?
    She waited patiently while he laboriously printed his address on a slip of paper. ‘Thanks again, Ben,’ she said, finally closing the front door on him.
    Alone at last! In L.A. Who would have thought she would ever make the long trek west again? New York was her kind of town, always had been. California never beckoned. Well, once, when she was twenty and naively accepted the offer of a screen test. Stupido. She was no actress, and held no ambitions in that direction. But she was young and curious, and what the hell – a trip was a trip.
    She had arrived to be met by a block-long limo with a youngish agent lounging on the back seat. He wore multo gold chains with his open-to-the-limit silk shirt and carefully pressed designer jeans. He had a suntan, a mini-mogul cigar, a receding hairline, and an attitude. He offered her grass in the car and an invitation to dinner.
    She turned down both, which caused frown lines to appear in his perfect suntan.
    A suite at The Beverly Hills Hotel was reserved for her. Flowers and fruit abounded. She stayed five days, tested with a broody actor who tried to kill her close-ups, turned down several more invitations from the bronzed agent, returned to New York, and never heard another thing.
    Several years later when she was really hot, Hollywood beckoned again. ‘Forget it,’ she told her New York modelling agent. ‘I’m going to be the best model in the business, and the highest paid. Who needs to travel the starlet route? Not this girl, baby.’
    And she was right. Jade Johnson was the best. And she was – due to the deal she had recently signed – the highest paid.
    The deal was the reason she was once more in Los Angeles. Cloud Cosmetics made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and part of it was spending a year on the West Coast to make a series of million-dollar TV commercials. Normally she would never have considered leaving her beloved New York. However, she had just come out of a six-year relationship with a married man, and getting away seemed like an appealing prospect.
    She wandered around the apartment kicking off her tennis shoes and unzipping her jeans as Springsteen belted out ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ The sound of his raspy voice filled the room, and she was content. This was going to be a new beginning, the start of a whole different life. No more Jade Johnson – mistress. Oh no, sirree. That trip was over, finito . What a fool she had been. What a gullible idiot, falling for every cornball line he threw her way. She was hardly naive, and yet for six long years he had kept her captive with his tongue – in more ways than one.
    She thought of him briefly. Mark Rand. An English Lord. An English asshole. A wild-life photographer of world-wide repute. They had met on assignment in Africa. She was doing leopard swimwear for Vogue, and he was shooting the photographs. He had curly hair, amused blue eyes, and fascinating conversation. It wasn’t until a week of passion had passed that his fascinating conversation included mention of a wife, Lady Fiona Rand.
    Jade