Her body went rigid, and she froze for half a step.
Mansi squeezed her arm around her. “Ignore him. Just keep walking.”
“Olivia,” the man taunted. “Come on, honey. Turn around for me.”
Her chest had grown tight, and each breath came with more effort. It took everything in her power not to take off running down the sidewalk, but that was what he wanted. A scene.
“Fine. You’re not nearly as friendly as your mother. Didn’t she sleep with like half of Hollywood back in the day? We all know she hooked up with at leastoneperson’s husband.”
At this, both Olivia and Mansi stopped walking. BeforeOlivia could react, Mansi whipped around and stabbed a finger in his face.
“Listen, motherfucker. If you sayone more word, I will throw a harassment suit at you faster than you can blink. I will bury you in charges so deep, there is no amount of trashy tabloid photos you could sell to dig yourself out. I said: Leave. Her. Alone. Hear me?” She said it with such malice, Olivia shivered in the warm night.
She could see the fright on the photographer’s face. He’d gone pale and his eyes were as wide as the full moon. Olivia was surprised he managed not to pee his pants.
“I hear you,” he nearly whispered.
“Good,” Mansi said just as quietly, which was somehow ten times scarier than her screaming at him.
Olivia still stood like a statue on the other side of them, and just as Mansi turned back around to her, the man lifted his camera and snapped one last photo of her surely looking like a deer in headlights.
Mansi froze, and a look like she wanted to turn around, smash his camera, and beat him with her Prada bag flitted across her face, but he’d taken off running. She returned to Olivia’s side and gave her a tight smile. “Well, congrats on surviving your first paparazzi,” she said in a breezy but sarcastic tone.
“Thank you,” Olivia quietly murmured, still stunned. She tossed a final glance over her shoulder at the man retreating down the street. She got a sinking feeling in her gut that those photos would end up online, and nothing good could come out of that.
Chapter
6
As it turned out, bothOlivia and Chuck had been wrong about the house where they were set to spend the next month together. It was neither a cramped condo nor a sprawling mansion, but rather a semimodest, single-story house with a nice yard tucked away behind a gate. Olivia reasoned the privacy would be useful given the paparazzi incident on the sidewalk the night before.
She also reasoned that Chuck had brought an unreasonable amount of luggage.
He’d shown up wearing a loose, billowy button-down with rolled sleeves and a pair of brick red shorts like he was going on vacation. His sunglasses perched in his messy hair and his phone stuck from his shirt like a pocket square. He leaned on one suitcase’s extended handle and crossed his ankles. His boat shoes made him look ready for a yacht. It reminded her of the yellow bikini trip to Mexico, and she imagined him smelling like sunscreen and a hint of sweat. The idea made her lick her lips. The way his eyes widened at the sight of her in her curve-hugging red maxi dress gave her an admittedly large swell of satisfaction.
The romantic notion that it was just the two of them battling their perennial attraction in a gated driveway in Pacific Palisades dissolved when Olivia took note of the whole motleyName Your Pricecrew unloading equipment from a van as she approached from the rideshare that had dropped her off.
“What’s all this?” she asked Chuck, and gestured to his six—six—suitcases. He stood among them like a Roman sculpture in a boxy little garden.
“My stuff.”
“Yourstuff? Chuck, how could you possibly need this much stuff for a month-long stay in a house with laundry and where you’ll surely be lounging by the pool in swim trunks each day anyway?”
He smirked at her and her reasonable set of a single large suitcase, a computer tote, and a toiletries bag.
She smirked back, sure that one of his medium suitcases was taken up solely by his daily ten-step skincare routine.
“Let’s save the drama for the cameras, shall we?” Parker Stone interrupted them. He approached and clapped his hands together with a smile. He looked more casual than he had at their meeting at the studio, wearing an untucked button-down and jeans. He was midfifties and wore a wedding band on his left hand. “Welcome to your new digs, kids,” he said, and squeezed each of their shoulders. He guided them toward the front door. “Now, the plan is to shoot your arrival and first impressions of the house. Then we’ll give you a little tour inside and let you get settled before we set up for an interview with TJ this afternoon.” He sharply cut off and whipped his head around. “Where even is TJ?” he asked no one. “Mark! Haveyou seen TJ?” he shouted at a burly man lugging camera equipment up the driveway.
Mark shook his head. “Nah. That asshole is late for everything.”
Parker sighed. “Host of the show and thinks he’s the goddamned king…” he muttered. “Anyway, just hang for a few minutes and we’ll get rolling.” He left them as quickly as he’d come, and it made Olivia dizzy.
She and Chuck awkwardly stood between their pile of belongings and the house’s entrance. Like many homes in affluent pockets of Los Angeles, it was beautiful. It might not have had towering privacy hedges, an ocean view, and a tennis court, but it was made of glass and stone, with lush, manicured landscaping and plenty of natural light. At least Olivia got that impression from where she stood in the front yard.
“Is all filming this chaotic?” she asked, and gestured at the swarm of people burying the prim front lawn in crates, cases, and duffel bags. A frenetic energy hung over them all while they hurried about and shouted to one another.
“Pretty much,” Chuck said with a snort. “You’ll get used to it, don’t worry. Soon you won’t even notice they’re there.”