Hollywood Husband, Contract Wife

And if she did sign the contract to play Wolf’s new love interest, she wouldn’t have to get a roommate, she’d be able to pay the entire rent herself.

Alexandra loved the thought of that.

Since moving to Los Angeles she’d really struggled, both financially and emotionally.

She’d taken a job waitressing and then a part-time job temping for an independent film studio, answering phones, handling mail, playing general office errand girl, which was mainly going to Starbucks and getting everyone’s favorite espresso and latte.

Alex discovered that she liked being useful in the office. She was good in the office—quick, smart, agile, she could multitask and never needed to be told anything twice.

After a year working for the independent film company, she answered a Paradise Pictures ad she saw in Variety and was hired to assist intense, brainy directors and producers with whatever needed to be done.

She’d worked for Paradise for nearly three years now and she thought she’d proven herself on more than one occasion, but the promotion had never come.

Why?

It wasn’t as though she couldn’t handle more responsibility. She actually needed the risk, craved change.

In the kitchen, Alexandra took out the business card Daniel had given her several days ago, the one with Wolf’s private number. She tapped it on the counter, flipped it over to the personal cell number scribbled on the back and tried to imagine the next four weeks.

New clothes. Input from a stylist. Exciting parties.

Smiling nervously, she bit her lip. It’d be scary but also fun.

Then she thought of Wolf Kerrick and the whole concept of fun went out the window, leaving her unsure of herself all over again.

But it’s an opportunity, she reminded herself sternly, and that’s what you want.

Quickly she picked up the phone, dialed Wolf’s number.

“It’s Alexandra Shanahan,” she said when he answered, dispensing with any preamble. “And I’ll do it. But before anything else happens, I want the offer—and the studio’s promise about the assistant director position—in writing.”

“Of course.”

She held the phone tighter. “And working on B-rate flicks doesn’t count. I want to work on major studio films. Big-budget films.”

“Certainly.”

She folded one arm over her chest and pressed a knuckled fist to her rib cage. “I want to be clear that this is a job, and I’ll treat it like a job. I’ll do what I have to for the cameras, but I won’t do anything inappropriate.”

“And what is inappropriate?”

“Kissing, touching, sex.”

“There’s got to be a certain amount of intimacy for the camera.”

“Only for the camera, then, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Mr. Kerrick.”

“I’ve got it all down, Miss Shanahan. You’ll get the contract tonight. It should be there by seven.”

The contract did arrive at seven. But a courier service didn’t deliver it. Instead Wolf Kerrick brought it himself.

She hadn’t expected Wolf and she’d answered the door in her faded blue sweatpants, cropped yellow T-shirt and bare feet in dire need of a pedicure. Without her contacts, and in her glasses, with her hair in a messy knotted ponytail on top of her head, Alex knew she looked more like a librarian than the sex symbol required.

“Hi,” she said awkwardly, tugging on her ponytail, trying to at least get her hair down even if she couldn’t make the glasses vanish.

“Cleaning house, are you?” he asked.

“I didn’t expect you.”

“Mmm. But maybe I should come in. Two photographers tailed me. Red car on the right and the white car that hopped the curb. They’re taking photos of both of us as we speak.”

Alexandra opened the door so Wolf could enter.

As Wolf glanced around the house, she peeked out the living room curtain, and just as Wolf had said, the red car and the white car were out there, and both drivers held cameras with enormous telephoto lenses. “Those are some huge camera lenses,” she said.

“I learned the hard way that you’ll want to keep your curtains closed. Otherwise they’ll get shots of you walking around.”

She dropped the lace panel and faced him. “How did they know you were coming here?”

“There is always someone tailing me. Has been for years.” He dropped onto her beige couch, extended his denim-clad legs so they rested on her oak coffee table and looked up at her with piercing dark eyes. “How long have you lived here?”

“Almost three years.” The abruptness of his question was less disconcerting than the fact that Wolf Kerrick was stretched out in her living room, looking very relaxed-and comfortable—in a loose gray T-shirt, with his thick black hair tumbling across his forehead. “Why do you ask?”

“There’s not much furniture.”

“My former roommate took it all with her to Boston,” she answered, thinking that even dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt, Wolf looked like a film star. It was his bone structure, coloring, the easy way he carried himself. He was more than beautiful, he was elegant and intense and physical. Sexy.

Alexandra exhaled in a painful rush.

That was really the problem. He was far too sexy for her and had been from the time she first laid eyes on him—which was in a movie, of course—eight years ago. In Age of Valor, just his second film, he’d played a soldier. And while he wasn’t the lead in the film, his performance was so strong, he stole the show. Alexandra remembered sobbing when his character died in the film, dramatically blown to bits just before the movie’s end. She’d liked him—the man, the actor, the character—so much she couldn’t bear for the story to end without him still in it.

She had been fifteen at the time, just starting her sophomore year of high school, and of course she had known it was just a movie and he was just an actor, but she’d never forgotten his face or his name.

Wolf Kerrick.

Amused by the girl she’d once been, Alexandra took a seat on the edge of the coffee table across from him. “Shall I sign the contract?”

Wolf’s dark head tipped and his long black lashes dropped, brushing his high, strong cheekbones. “Think you can do this?”

Growing up, she’d been the ultimate tomboy. As the baby of the Shanahan clan, she’d stomped and swaggered around in her cowboy boots. But moving to Southern California had killed her confidence, and she was only just starting to realize how much she missed her old swagger.

She’d once been so brave, so full of bravado.

How had moving to California changed her so much? Was it Hollywood? The movie industry? What had made her feel so small, so insignificant, so less than?