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Jessie's the queen of buzz... and she's about to get stung!
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CHAPTER ONE "Jessie, baby, I never thought I’d see you again." That voice! It was Shane Rockett. It had to be. The smooth as caramel words melted over my right earlobe, sending my pulse into overdrive and my heart dancing to a salsa rhythm. As usual, Shane had popped up when I least expected him. I was shoe-horned inside an audio booth that smelled like pepperoni pizza and stale cigarette smoke at Primo Studios, a hole-in-the-wall outfit in a rundown section of west Hollywood. I spun around, and there he was, lounging against the door, giving me a slow, sexy smile, the one that drove his fans crazy. Shane looked amazing in Diesel jeans and a jet black Reckless Summer T-shirt, his handsome features deeply tanned from the California sun. "Shane!" I blurted out. "What are you doing here? I thought you were making a movie in Costa Rica with Lindsey Lohan." He grinned, flashing a set of perfect teeth. "Lindsey Lohan? In my dreams! Jessie, hon, you must have been reading the tabloids again." He shook his finger at me playfully. "You can’t believe everythin’ you read, babe. Here’s the real story. I’m sticking around L.A. all summer, just chillin’ and doing some serious R and R." "You’re not working?" "Nope. My next movie isn’t scheduled until late October. Some action-adventure flick set in New Mexico, with a kick-ass director who won a prize at Sundance. Gus is doing my stunts, just like the last time, but I’m hoping they at least let me get behind the wheel a couple of times. You know how I love to drive." "I sure do," I said ruefully. I remembered my heart lodging in my throat when Shane had zoomed down the road like a Formula One driver in the indie flick, Restless Summer. I‘d been strapped into the passenger seat next to him, my fists clenched into tight little balls as the tires squealed and the cameras rolled. The dashboard had been padded, the road cleared of traffic, but I had been convinced we were going to end up in a fiery thunderball. Shane noticed my look and his dark eyes twinkled with amusement. "I bet you’re thinking of when I fired up that Mustang convertible and tore down the highway in the chase scene? Man, that car was smokin’." "Smoking’," I said, grinning in spite of myself. Literally smoking. Clouds of blue smoke had belched from the back end of the car as Shane had jammed the accelerator to the floor, chasing a motorcycle gang out of the local diner, careening down the highway. It was one of the key scenes in the movie and would probably be dazzling on film. I missed seeing the dailies because that was the last day I worked on Restless Summer, the day everything fell apart. Shane leaned toward me, and my heart drummed against my ribs. "So I’m stayin’ in town for the whole summer, Jess. That item about me going to Costa Rica was just a plant, that’s all." "A plant? What do you mean, a plant?" I was still learning Hollywood-speak, and should have remembered that only half of what you read and hear in Tinseltown is true. Dreams, fantasies and half-truths are the name of the game, and facts are routinely "spun" to make them seem more exciting. Shane locked eyes with me. "Some wanna-be producer, or maybe his press agent, planted the piece, hoping it would get a little buzz going for his project. He figured if Lindsey and I were attached to it, he’d have a better chance of attracting some financing, and the movie would get green-lighted." There was a bitter scrape to his voice. "But as you can see, none of it was true, because I’m right here, babe." Oh, he was here, all right. I wondered if there was a Richter scale for sexiness, because Shane’s score would be off the charts. Just being close to him was having a big effect on me. My brain had turned to polenta and that my heart was doing the happy dance in my chest. "You’re looking good, Jessie. So good." His voice was soft and seductive with a husky note that could make me feel like I’d been torn into a million shreds. He must have come in the audio booth silently, or maybe I had been so intent on getting the voice work done, I hadn’t noticed. I wondered how long he’d been standing behind me. "Are you glad to see me?" he teased. He had an uncanny ability to read my mind and I felt my face flush as adrenaline shot through my veins. Of course I was glad to see him. But I knew, at some deep level, that it would be a mistake to show it, and decided to play it cool. I had been caught in his web once before and vowed to be stronger this time. Watch your step, Jess. The thought flashed through my mind like a tornado warning. I tried to give him an Uma Thurman ice maiden stare, and realized from his devilish grin that he wasn’t fooled for a minute. Shane was an expert on girls, after all, he had had plenty of practice. His electric eyes flicked over me, blink-clicking rapidly, like the lens of a camera. "So what are you doing here?" I repeated, sidestepping his question. "I came to see you, darlin’," he said easily, taking a step toward me. "That’s obvious, isn’t it? We never really got a chance to say good-bye in Bedford, you know. The movie wrapped so fast, and well, a lot of things happened," he said vaguely. A lot of things happened? Interesting how he glossed over the whole incident with Heidi Hopkins, his gorgeous co-star. I had caught the two of them in a major clinch, and stormed away, my heart shattered. Shane had acted like it had all been a major misunderstanding and now he seemed to have wiped the whole incident from his memory banks. I stumbled backwards, the headphones slid onto a sticky tile floor, and when I bent down to get them, Shane grabbed me by the elbows, pulling me close to him. "Hey you, don’t I even get a kiss hello?" he asked. He pulled me gently to my feet. We were standing very close, so close I could feel the heat coming off his body, see those tawny dark eyes flecked with electricity. I suddenly felt claustrophobic in the tiny booth. There was no way I could answer him because it felt like someone had sucked all the air out of my lungs. Without waiting for me to say a word, he bent down to brush his lips against my cheek. Very soft, almost tentative. "You have no idea how much I’ve missed you, Jessie," he murmured. "I flipped out when I heard Fearless was flying you out here. Somebody in production told me there was a problem with the audio portion of the film. I was thankin’ my lucky stars, I’ll tell you. I drove over here as soon as I heard." He kept his arms linked tightly around my waist, and I didn’t have the willpower to pull away. In fact, I had to make a superhuman effort not to curl my arms around his neck and snuggle into his chest. "Really?" My voice was wobbly. "Really. I figured if you were going to be here for a few days, I could show you around Hollywood. Remember when we talked about driving out to Malibu at midnight and cruising up Sunset Strip? I told you I’d take you shoppin’ at all those little stores on Melrose? And drivin’ up to Griffith Park to the planetarium to see the Hollywood sign at night? That’s just the start. I’ve got big plans for us." I let myself melt into his arms, turning to mush as I glanced up at him. I had forgotten the way those tawny dark eyes could look burning from beneath half-closed lids, the way his skin smelled like the sun. My heart pinged faster inside my chest as he dipped his head down to mine and I knew that in another second, it would be full-throttle kissing. Then reality struck. "Hey Jessie, wake up in there! We’re ready for the next take!" Ron, the audio guy, tapped sharply on the window with his key ring, spoiling the moment. He was a huge, bear-like man with a red beard and a fondness for Doritos and diet sodas. He peered inside the recording booth and spotted Shane, just as I wriggled out of the clinch. "Oh, sorry, Shane. Didn’t see you in there. How ya doin’ man?" Shane gave him a thumbs up, and leaned against the wall, apparently planning to drive me crazy for the rest of the taping. "Go ahead, Jessie." He motioned for me to put the headphones back on. "I’ll wait right here for you." "Ready, Jess?" Ron said, more softly this time. He shot a quick look at Shane. He must have decided he didn’t want to antagonize the star. "Ready," I said firmly. I eased myself back into the vinyl seat, and clamped the headphones on my ears. "Let’s do it." I focused on Ron, who was standing just beyond the glass window, fiddling with some dials in the recording studio. My hands were trembling, so I white-knuckled the mike as I waited for my cue, willing myself to be calm. "Just a couple more lines, and we’re done, babe," Ron said, his voice crackling like dry leaves from the speaker tucked into the corner of the sound proofed ceiling. "Take it from the top of page six." He checked some gauges on the mixing board, working his magic, and then waved his index finger in a slow circle, motioning for me to continue. I slapped my headphones back on, and squinted at the script, ready to tackle a few more lines of dialogue from Reckless Summer. Somehow the audio track had developed a glitch during the shoot in my home town in New England, and Fearless Productions had flown me out to L.A. to record my lines all over again. I had been sitting in this cramped little booth for hours, saying my lines over and over, trying to get just the right tone, the right inflection. I’d thought my fling with show business was over. I had enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame with Reckless Summer, playing opposite Shane, and I never expected to set foot on a sound stage again. But here I was, sweaty and exhausted, my pale yellow sundress sticking to my legs, my hair trailing limply down my neck. So that’s the perfect time for Shane to turn up, right? Shane Rockett. The dazzling star of Reckless Summer, the guy voted Sexiest Teen Alive by People Magazine, and oh yes, the boy who had broken my heart just a few weeks earlier. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Who would have thought Fearless Productions would come to my small Connecticut town to shoot a movie during the summer vacation? And what had happened next is even more remarkable. In Hollywood-speak, they would call this the backstory. I ended up in the movie! Sometimes fact really is stranger than fiction, because this is exactly the way it went down. I hadn’t planned on auditioning that day at Fairmont Academy, but the director picked me out of the crowd, shoved me under the lights, and bingo, I ended up being getting a speaking role. In a Hollywood movie! And not just any speaking role, but I was cast as the love interest for the impossibly sexy Shane Rockett. If this was the logline for a movie, it would read: girl meets boy, girl falls head over heels for boy, boy cheats on her with a hot young actress, boy goes back to Hollywood. Meanwhile, girl’s heart crumbles like a cookie. They would probably cast somehow sweet and vulnerable in the role, maybe Kate Hudson. End of story, or so I thought. But it wasn’t over, because somehow Shane Rockett had found me in this crummy little studio in a forgotten corner of Hollywood. Stay cool, Jessie, I warned myself. "I never thought things would turn out this way," I said into the mike, my voice bouncing back at me through the headphones. "I guess life is full of surprises, and I just have to make the best of it."
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