Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Was that a photographer? Nope. Tourist. Or he was a paparazzi specializing in PCH photography. Still, she pulled her hat a little lower.
How did Josh live like this every day?
Where the hell was Ezra?
Her cell phone trilled and she grimaced, glancing down. Her dad. Damn it. She touched the screen to decline the call. Two weeks into her current assignment and things were coming to a head on the family front. She was going to have to call them and soon or they would be all over Damon.
It wasn’t like they weren’t used to her being out of touch for long periods of time. She used to go six months to a year without talking to them. She would say she was in rural Asia teaching kids English or some shit. The Agency would send out the occasional postcard for her and her dads would be appeased for a while.
She’d read the postcards later on and had been surprised how close they’d gotten the handwriting to her own. She’d talked about the kids she was teaching and how much she missed home. Later she found out her dads had sent her care package after care package—none of which she’d actually received because MSS might have been suspicious about their deadliest agent getting boxes of M&Ms and orange Fanta from the US.
Maybe a postcard would placate them now.
Dear Dads, On assignment in the wilds of Malibu. It’s been two weeks and I’m all Pretty Woman’d up, except the clerks in Bev Hills were nice to me. Guess they learned. Recently had sex in a dressing room with a feral movie star. He won’t kiss me and it’s making me crazy. Send condoms because the dude is insatiable.
Yep, that would make them feel better. Not that they would buy it now. They knew about her work for the Agency. Not the true extent of it, but enough to worry about her every minute of the day.
Damon would deal with them. And when this was over with, she would go back to Santa Barbara for a nice long visit. Hell, she would invite Tucker over. He had some nicely faked paperwork to keep him safe when he went out of the house. Her dads would love him and it would do him good to spend some time outside The Garden.
She stopped, her hand on the coffee cup. Someone was watching her. It was an instinct, an icy finger going up her spine. Slowly, she glanced around looking for anything, anyone out of the ordinary. Nothing. The Pepperdine kids were talking basketball at the next table. Two women were discussing plans for someone’s birthday and who the best caterers were. A lone man sat at a table in the shade, his baseball hat low on his head as he sipped his coffee and stared down at a newspaper.
Nothing out of the ordinary, but still she could feel eyes on her.
“Is this seat taken?”
She looked up and Ezra stared down at her, his eyes steady. If she told him she was waiting for a friend, he would know she couldn’t talk right now. Should she send him away or was that feeling of being watched just more Josh Hunt induced paranoia? “Please join me.”
Ezra slid into the seat next to her and she was sure they looked for all the world like a couple simply enjoying the gorgeous So Cal weather. “He’s been damn good about keeping you out of the papers, but he slipped up.”
He slid a magazine her way. It was a celebrity rag with full glossy pictures, the kind you could find at any grocery store checkout aisle. She glanced down at the photo. Josh was wearing what she liked to call his casual chic. Jeans, motorcycle boots, a button-down shirt he didn’t tuck in. He was walking into a building. Yes, she recognized it. They’d been going to see his agent to talk about the shoot coming up next week. She’d sat with him listening to an outrageous amount of demands she’d been told were all perfectly standard. His trailer was to be kept at a certain temperature. He drank only bottled water and needed it available to him at all times. The bedroom of his trailer was to be stocked with one-thousand thread count sheets. Yadda, yadda.
Diva. He was a diva, or rather his agent was since Josh had mostly sighed and rolled his eyes. He’d had other concerns. He had demanded that the studio hire a former DEA agent to tutor him in the role. He’d demanded time at the gun range.
She was in the shot, too, walking a few feet behind him wearing a yellow sundress that cost more than her entire wardrobe at home. It was an Elie Saab straight off the runway, and she would wear it until she was eight-hundred years old. Josh appeared to be holding the door open for her, her body in profile.