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LUCY

Idrummed my fingers on the back of my laptop and glared at the empty chair beside me. Something was wrong. Jeremy had left the seat twenty minutes ago, and he should be back by now, which meant he’d either gone to craft services or a pretty girl had smiled at him and he’d gone chasing after her.

Knowing Jeremy, it was probably the second one.

I glanced toward the pool, then the cabanas, searching for a flash of dark hair and an expensive pair of sunglasses. Nothing.

Around me, the Blackwell Couture crew had taken over the pool deck at the hotel with the perfect pool for a backdrop. We were in Santa Monica, not far from home in LA. I was just glad to be on a job that meant I could sleep in my own bed tonight.

I scooted my chair closer to the table, putting myself in the shade. The umbrella was the only thing between me and a slow death by sunshine, and I was grateful for it. It was a perfect seventy-eight degrees in the middle of fall. The ber months—September, October, November, and December—lacked the brr in sunny southern California.

And I loved it.

The pool shimmered beside me, dotted with pink floats shaped like flamingos. On the other side of the low stone wall, the Pacific stretched out flat and gleaming all the way to the horizon. Tourists with Australian accents walked by in a pack of laughter and bright-colored bathing suits. Each held a drink in their hands sporting tiny umbrellas, and they brought their drinks into the pool with them, joining other travelers from all over the world enjoying their little slice of paradise.

I had an iced coffee in a tall glass with a paper straw and vanilla cold foam on top. And instead of a sexy two-piece, I wore my blue pantsuit with a silk sleeveless blouse.

I minimized the Milan calendar, opened Jeremy’s bookings, and grimaced. He was in demand. Models had short shelf lives, which meant they worked their asses off while they could. Jeremy Blackwell was aging better than fine wine. It didn’t look like the jobs were going to be drying up anytime in the near future.

And that was why he was the only client I managed. I tried juggling other clients, but they all complained I didn’t have time for them. I didn’t.

I was only one woman trying to keep up with the hottest male model in the world at the moment. And he insisted I come with him everywhere.

I didn’t mind at first. When Jeremy asked me to start traveling with him to shoots and shows, I thought it would be glamorous. Paris Fashion Week. Milan. Tokyo. The kind of places seventeen-year-old me cut out of magazines and taped to the inside of my locker door in high school. Now I got to go on someone else’s dime while doing my job. The reality was less glamorous and more exhausting.

I’d seen incredible things that made those cut-out pictures look like, well, cut-out pictures. They couldn’t compare to the real thing. I’d eaten at Michelin-star restaurants I could never afford on my own, stayed in hotels that cost more per night than my monthly rent, made a wish in Trevi Fountain, walked the Great Wall of China, and seen the sunrise over Angkor Wat in Cambodia. But I’d also spent those trips hunched over my laptop trying to keep up with the mountain of work that came with managing Jeremy’s career.

Contracts. Negotiations. Scheduling conflicts. Travel arrangements. The endless back-and-forth with brands and agencies and publicists. All of it fell on me.

Jeremy and I had spent days living in a trailer together on deep-location shoots early on in our working relationship, and it had been a crash course in getting to know him. I knew how he took his coffee. I knew he was terrified of snakes but would never admit it. I had learned that one really fast on a jungle shoot that he refused to speak of to this day.

I knew he talked to his mom on the regular and that he enjoyed it. It wasn’t just an obligation. He was close with his family. He liked to laugh and make people laugh. Oh, and he used to sleep in socks until I bullied him out of it. If the world knew one of the sexiest men alive slept in socks up to his calves, he would fall from grace. Period. And I didn’t want to find another model to work for. I liked it right where I was.

He knew things about me too. Perhaps not as meticulously as I knew things about him, but I didn’t blame him for it. I was the type-A one here. Self-awareness was also one of my skills.

And hindrances.

Speaking of hindrances, where the hell was Jeremy, anyway?

I twisted around in my chair, shielding my eyes as sunlight reflected off the light stones of the pool deck. A tall shadow approached, but I couldn’t make out his face as the sun nearly blinded me.

“Dang it, Jeremy,” I said. “Where have you been?”

The man laughed, and I knew right away it wasn’t Jeremy. It was his cousin, Sebastian Blackwell, from the New York branch of the family. He was a co-owner of Blackwell Couture, and once upon a time, he’d been the face of the brand. Jeremy looked a lot like Sebastian. The Blackwell genes were no joke. They won the gene pool lottery. Sebastian was now acting as the creative director for Blackwell Couture campaigns.

Sebastian moved under the shade of my umbrella and slid his hands in his pockets. “Lucy, have you seen Jeremy? We’re ready for the next setup and he seems to have…” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “Wandered off.”

I suppressed a sigh. “I swear, I need to put a leash on that man. I’ll find him.”

Sebastian’s mouth quirked into a smile. “I appreciate it. We’ve got about twenty minutes before the light shifts and I’d really like to get these shots done.”

“Give me ten.”

He nodded and headed back toward the photographer. I pulled out my phone and called Jeremy. It rang. And rang. And then, quite expectedly, went to voicemail. His smooth voice filled the line.

This is Jeremy Blackwell. Text me like a normal person, will you?