God, she hated people like Mark Bressler. Rude people who thought they were better than everybody else. For the past ten years, she’d been surrounded by people like him. She’d booked their appointments, walked their dogs, and planned their events. She’d been the personal assistant to movie stars and moguls. Celebrities from A to D list until she’d finally had enough.
“Enough” had come last week in the guesthouse of a B-list actor who’d suddenly hit it big with a leading role in an HBO series. She’d worked for him for five months, lived in the guesthouse, made sure he was ready for his appointments, and ran his errands. Everything had been fine until the night he’d come into the guesthouse and told her to get on her knees and give him oral sex, or get another job.
Ten years of pent-up anger and impotence had curled her hand into a fist. Ten years of crappy jobs and disappointment, of working her ass off. Ten years of watching other pretentious, talentless, nasty people succeed, while she waited for her big break. Ten years of sleazy sexual propositions and thankless jobs swung her arm back, and she’d punched him in the eye. Then she’d packed up the CR-V and called her second-rate agent to tell her she’d had enough. She’d moved a thousand miles from Hollywood, away from the egos and arrogance, only to land smack-dab employed by one of the biggest a-holes on the planet. Although technically, she supposed, Mark Bressler wasn’t her employer. The Seattle Chinooks paid her salary—and the big fat bonus.
“Three months,” she muttered. If she stuck it out for three months, the Chinooks’ organization had promised a ten-thousand-dollar bonus. After meeting Mr. Bressler, she knew the bonus for what it was.
A bribe.
She could do it. She was an actress. She’d put up with worse for far less. She pulled onto the 520 and headed to Bellevue and her sister’s condo. She wanted that ten grand. Not for any noble reasons like helping the sick or donating to a local church or food bank. She wasn’t going to please her family and finally get that degree in nursing, drafting, or graphic design. She wasn’t going to put a down payment on a home or a newer car. She wasn’t going to do any of those things that might secure a future or improve her mind.
At the end of three months, she was going to use that ten grand to improve herself. Until a few days ago, she hadn’t had a plan of action. Now she did, and she had it all figured out. She knew what to do and how to go about it, and nothing and no one was going to stand in her way. Not the risk involved to her health or the disapproval of her family was going to keep her from her goal.
Especially not one cranky, oversized, overbearing hockey player with a mean streak and a huge chip on his equally huge shoulder.
“This is great, Chels. Thanks.”
Chelsea glanced up from her plate of spaghetti and looked across the table at her sister Bo. The meal wasn’t great. It was Prego. “I’m a gourmet cooker.”
“It’s better than Mom’s.”
The sisters shuddered. “She never drains the grease off anything.”
“Flavors the sauce,” Bo quoted their mother as she lifted her merlot. “Cheers.”
“What are we toasting?” Chelsea reached for her glass. “My skills at opening a jar?”
“That and your new job.”
Except for the hair color, looking at Bo was like looking into a mirror. Same blue eyes, small nose, and full mouth. Same small bones and big boobs. It was as if the Olsen twins had gone out and bought sets of matching stripper boobs. Only the reality of being built like their mother wasn’t quite so glamorous. The reality was that they’d been born to suffer backaches and shoulder pain. By forty, they were doomed to start saggin’ and draggin’.
Bo touched her glass to Chelsea’s. “Here’s to lasting longer than the other home care workers.”
Chelsea was the older of the two, by five minutes, but Bo was the more mature. Or so everyone always pointed out. “I’ll last longer.” She wanted that ten grand, but she didn’t want to tell her sister what she planned to do with the money. The last time she’d brought up the subject of breast reduction, the whole family had flipped
out. They’d accused her of being impulsive, and while that was occasionally true, she’d been thinking about getting a reduction for years. “He may have questioned my intelligence and disrespected my Pucci, but I’ve worked for a lot of jerks and I know how to win him over with my charming personality. I’ll just smile and kill him with kindness. I’m anwo,„ actress. No sweat.” She took a drink, then set the glass on the table. “Although he must have a few brain cells out of whack, because who doesn’t love Pucci?”
Bo raised her hand.
“You don’t count.” Chelsea twirled spaghetti on the tines of her fork. “You’re afraid of color, and Mark Bressler doesn’t count because he’s too big a jerk to appreciate the artistry of designer clothes.” Bo’s apartment was a lot like Bo. Stark and minimalist. There were a few ink sketches above the black-and-white-striped sofa. She had a few dusty silk ferns, but no real splashes of color anywhere.
“He’s a hockey player.” Bo shrugged and took a bite. “Elite hockey players are arrogant and rude.” After she chewed, she added, “Although whenever I worked with Mark, he wasn’t bad. At least not like some of them can be. Before his accident, we were doing a big media push using him and some of the other players, and he was relatively nice. Sure we locked horns, but he eventually listened to reason. He didn’t balk at taking his shirt off.” She smiled and held up one hand. “The guy had an eight-pack. I. Swear. To. God.”
Chelsea thought of the man walking slowly up the sidewalk toward her, leaning on his cane, looking anything but weak. Everything about him radiated strength and darkness. Eyes, hair, energy. A dangerous archetype. Like Hugh Jackman in X-Men, minus the claws, facial hair, and superpowers. Not to be confused with the Hugh Jackman who’d hosted the Oscars and sang and danced. She just could not picture Mark Bressler busting out in song. “How bad was his accident?”
“No one in aftercare told you?”
“Some.” Chelsea shrugged and took a bite of garlic bread. “They gave me a folder with his schedule and some info in it.”
“And you didn’t read it?”
“Glanced at it.”
Bo’s eyes rounded. “Chelsea!”
“What? I saw that he has a physical therapist come to the house twice a week, and I was going to read the rest tomorrow. I never read everything till the night before. It keeps it fresh in my head.”
“That was always your excuse in high school. It was a wonder you even graduated.”