Courting Trouble (Reality Romance Book 5) (2 page)

She parked her car next to a small cluster of vehicles off to one side and climbed out, retrieving the gift bag from the passenger seat along with her purse.

“Elena!”

She’d taken only two steps toward the front door when it burst open and revealed Sidney, looking as perfectly put together as ever. The wedding planner and fellow former-Suitorette could have been the poster girl for California blondes—everything about her expensive and flawless. She looked right at home in the doorway of the gorgeous mansion, even as Elena’s heels wobbled on the cobblestones of the driveway, her stilettos finding every hole.

The Suitorette mansion in Beverly Hills had been posh, but she’d known her role there. She’d had a part to play, taking the luxurious accommodations as her due, but now she just felt out of place—so she hid it behind her most confident smile. “Hello, Quitter.”

Sidney laughed. “Hello, Trouble. It’s so good to see you.” She tucked her tablet under one arm as she rushed to greet Elena. “Samantha’s already inside with Caitlyn. Come on. I’ll show you to the bridal suite.” Sidney hooked their arms together and Elena found herself carried along into the house. “How was your drive? You’re still living in LA, aren’t you?”

“Yep. Hopelessly addicted to Tinseltown,” Elena confirmed.

They made small talk as Sidney guided her through the stunning foyer and up the
Gone With the Wind
staircase to the sprawling master suite where Caitlyn and Samantha waited.

Elena spread her arms wide as they crossed the threshold. “Fear not, ladies, the party has arrived.”

“Elena!” Sam and Caitlyn squealed and leapt up for hugs—and Elena’s discomfort melted away.

She hadn’t gone on
Marrying Mister Perfect
to make friends—and there were several dozen sound bites of her saying exactly that to prove it.

She hadn’t cared about being kind to the other girls—initially she’d only wanted to be memorable and that meant screen time and
that
meant being outrageous and saying the things no one else would say.

Then, as the show had progressed, she’d just wanted Daniel. The things he’d said to her, the way she’d felt about him, she’d been certain the other girls were fooling themselves by sticking around and had felt no compunction whatsoever about telling them that in the bluntest possible terms. It was
her
love story and they were the parasites on her happily-ever-after.

No, she hadn’t made friends.

But then the unthinkable had happened.

He’d chosen Caitlyn.

She’d been blindsided. She
loved
him and all of his promises had proved to be lies. Everything she’d done had been because she was positive they would end up together. The ends justified the means. Nothing made sense if they didn’t.

The world could have started spinning in reverse and she would have been less shocked.

Then the show had begun to air.

America hated her. The editing was brutal—but she couldn’t entirely blame the editing. She’d said and done everything they showed on television, even if it was often shown out of context.

Trashy Elena. Bitchy Elena. The Slutty Suitorette. The show’s viewers became an online lynch mob.

And Daniel was giving interviews, going on daytime talk shows, lining up to pass out the tar and feathers.

Strangely enough, the only people who didn’t judge her for what she’d done on the show were the women who had been on it with her. Even her family had stopped speaking to her, but Samantha had reached out to her, becoming her lifeline as they spoke on the phone for hours every week.

She hadn’t reconnected with Caitlyn until the reunion special—by then both of them had realized what a slime bag Daniel really was—and in the months since they’d formed a surprising sort of friendship.

She hadn’t gone on the show to make friends—but some days it felt like the friends she’d made were the only good thing to come out of it.

She, Caitlyn and Sam had been the last three—the ones in the trenches the longest—while Sidney had chosen to remove herself from the show several weeks before the end of the season, stating that she just didn’t feel a connection with Daniel.

Smart girl
.

Samantha was a small-town Midwestern blonde—the show loved blondes—while Caitlyn had fiery red curls at odds with her quiet, sweet demeanor. They were all beautiful—
Marrying Mister Perfect
didn’t pick unattractive Suitorettes—but as different as the Studs on Parade at the front gate.

Sidney and Caitlyn had bonded early—having quieter personalities and silver spoon backgrounds in common.

They both looked right at home at the mansion they’d chosen for the wedding venue, but Samantha made her eyes huge as she hugged Elena and mumbled, “Crazy digs, eh?”

“Oh, you mean you weren’t planning to rent out a seventeen million dollar mansion for your wedding day?” Elena teased.

“No, thank you.” After leaving the show, Samantha had gotten back together with her ex and now had a ring on her finger as well. “We’re keeping it small—and cheap.”

Sidney chimed in with tips for wedding planning on a budget as they migrated to the suite’s private balcony overlooking the patio below where the reception would be held after the beach wedding. Plush white chairs formed a cozy seating area with killer views of the Pacific.

This was the life. The one Elena had always wanted that had always been tantalizingly out of reach. Luxury and beauty and all the comforts money could buy. And she was no closer to it than she’d ever been.

“Champagne!” Caitlyn declared, reaching for the bottle that had been left chilling for them. “My maid of honor and Will’s sisters took me out for a bachelorette thingy in Tuller Springs, but after all the toasts to true love we had to do on the show with Daniel, it wouldn’t feel right getting married without toasting
real
love with my Suitorette ladies.”

The cork popped off and Caitlyn yelped as champagne overflowed. She filled three glasses and passed them out. Then she reached back into the ice bucket and pulled out a can of ginger ale, popping the top and filling her own champagne glass.

“Holy shit,” Elena said without thinking. “How did you keep it out of the tabloids?”

“Keep what out?” Samantha asked, having been distracted by the view and missed the ginger ale sleight of hand.

“Congratulations,” Elena offered, eyeing Caitlyn’s waistband to try to judge how far along she was…and who the daddy might be based on the timeline.

“I’m pregnant,” Caitlyn explained, when Sam continued to look confused.

Sam squealed, issuing her own congratulations, but Sidney didn’t even blink—obviously the wedding planner had been in on the secret.

“Is Will excited?” Sam asked—much more tactful than Elena’s silent question:
Is it Will’s?

“He’s thrilled. We both are. And terrified. And anyone who says pregnancy is a wonderful glowing experience should be shot. I’ve been throwing up for three months straight.”

“Yet another reason I will never breed,” Elena said, raising her glass in a mocking toast. Apparently the baby wasn’t a legacy of Caitlyn’s brief engagement to Dickhead Daniel. Thank God.

“It’s a minor miracle it hasn’t leaked,” Caitlyn went on, “but I think we’re in the clear now. The press around us has been dying down lately. I think the only reason the wedding is a story is because it’s happening so soon after the show ended and because they haven’t announced the next Miss Right yet.” She waved a hand to wipe away the topic. “Enough talk of
Marrying Mister Perfect
, let’s toast before all the bubbles evaporate.”

Elena obligingly extended her own glass as Caitlyn lifted hers high.

“I know there are going to be a lot of toasts tonight, but this one is just for us. The show was insane—no one knows that like we do—but if I never went on the show, who knows if I would have met Will, or if Sam would have gotten back together with Jase, and Sidney wouldn’t have met Josh—”

Elena tried to keep her surprise off her face at the mention of Sidney and
Marrying Mister Perfect
’s recently divorced host. That was one bit of gossip that hadn’t hit the tabloids.

“That isn’t anything—” Sidney started to protest, but Caitlyn waved away her protests.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But you’re still planning the wedding of the year and Elena is going to be the next big star. So I want to propose a toast. To real love and dreams coming true. To us.”

Elena’s smile was natural and easy—Academy Award worthy—as she clinked her glass against the others.

Caitlyn and Sam were both getting married, Sidney was planning the wedding of the year on a televised special that would launch her business into the stratosphere, and what was Elena doing? Running around taking fan photos in her fruitless career as the Slutty Suitorette and contemplating her future as a stripper named Cinnamon.

Dreams coming true, indeed.

Elena reached down and lifted the gift bag she’d brought with her to the balcony. “I also got you the traditional gift from your registry, but this is a little something extra from me and the girls.”

Caitlyn made a soft sound of delight and accepted the bag. Reaching inside, she pulled out the album Elena’d had made from mementos from each of the Suitorettes from their season.

“It’s us!” Caitlyn flipped through the pages of candid shots that had never made it on the air, exclaiming over each memory. “Oh my goodness, Madrid. The homemade sangria was such a bad idea—”

“Alcohol is always a bad idea on
Marrying Mister Perfect
,” Sidney intoned dryly.

Elena had to agree—alcohol had figured strongly in the infamous Jacuzzi Incident to which she would forever be linked—but she held her tongue as Caitlyn kept exploring her gift. The Bahamas, Tahiti, Spain—they’d gone around the world in a hundred and eighty dates. A whirlwind trip on the quest for love.

A love the others had now found, just not on the show.

“Elena, this is beautiful,” Caitlyn said finally, when she turned the last page. “And so thoughtful. Thank you.”

Elena shrugged. “I figured you could use a reminder that it wasn’t all Dreadful Daniel. As tempting as it can be to want to wipe those three months from our collective memories, there were good times too.”

“There were,” Caitlyn agreed.

“Absolutely,” Sam said, “but thank God I never have to do it again.”

Sidney raised her champagne. “Here here. I’m so glad I said no when they asked me to be Miss Right.”

“Me too,” Samantha chimed in. “Of course I was already secretly engaged to Jase at the time so he might have objected. Did they ask you, Cait?”

“Yes, but I was already head over heels for Will.” She turned to Elena. “They probably asked you first.”

Elena smiled her most mysterious smile. “I’m still weighing my options. There are so many opportunities to consider.”

If she implied that the opportunities were good ones, or that the executives at
Marrying Mister Perfect
had actually asked her to be the star of the spin-off show,
Romancing Miss Right
, it was a harmless lie.

She certainly wasn’t going to admit that she was the only one the producers hadn’t asked. America may not care about the hopes and dreams of the Slutty Suitorette, but Elena had become a master at saving face. If only that were a marketable skill.

Caitlyn fell back in her chair, smiling dopily as she gazed toward the beach where the ceremony would take place, one hand resting lightly on the barely visible swell of her abdomen. “I’m getting married in four hours.”

Everyone else’s dreams were coming true. Elena smiled, sinking back into the plush chair on the perfect California afternoon, and pretended her life was going perfectly too.

And she planned.

The executive producer and host of
Marrying Mister Perfect
would both be at the reception tonight. Sure, they hadn’t asked her to be Miss Right, but they also hadn’t announced who it would be. Which meant nothing was official yet. Nice girls might wait to be asked, but Elena had never been the kind of girl to wait for things to come to her. If she wanted something, she had to go after it. So she would ask Miranda and Josh tonight.

She’d shot herself in the foot the first time, getting lost in the moment with Daniel, but this would be different.

She might be a reality television cautionary tale now, but
Romancing Miss Right
could be her redemption. She would be the New Elena and America would fall in love with her. It had happened before. This was her second chance. She wasn’t going to screw it up. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to let it pass her by.

Chapter Two

Adam Dylan knocked on his boss’s door, ready to get his ass chewed for doing the right thing. It wouldn’t be the first time, but at least this time there was a shadow of a chance his boss might listen to him.

Maybe.

A distracted voice called out for him to enter and he pushed open the door to the room that Elite Protection had commandeered as their command center during the wedding detail. The space was a decent sized home office, but was too small for all the equipment crammed into it, leaving little room for the room’s two occupants.

Max Dewitt, owner of Elite Protection, stood leaning over the shoulder of the company’s tech expert, Candy Raines, as she pointed out something on a laptop screen. Today Candy was all sleek black skirt-suit and a slicked down bun—like a high-end lawyer in a legal thriller—but in the six months since Adam started with Elite Protection, he’d seen her in everything from a Japanese school girl outfit to biker leathers.

When he’d asked her—one afternoon when she’d shown up for work in Daisy Dukes and a flannel crop-top—why she went to such varied fashion extremes, she’d told him she was conducting an informal sociology experiment to see what kind of assumptions people made about her based on her appearance. And then winked and told him she just liked to mess with people’s heads.

She was a wizard with electronics, and as far as Adam was concerned she could wear whatever the hell she wanted. Which today was lawyer chic.

Max had shrugged off his suit jacket and tossed it over an empty equipment bin. The tableau could have been intimate, but the vibe in the air was off. All business.

“There! See? Someone is clearly piggy-backing the signal.” Candy tapped something on the screen as Adam clicked the door shut behind him and she spoke without taking her gaze away from the computer. “Hey, Dylan. One sec and Max is all yours.”

Adam wasn’t surprised she knew who had knocked—the wall of video monitors in front of her linked to all the cameras she’d set up in the house. There was nowhere to sit, so he found a patch of wall that wasn’t supporting a tower of equipment and leaned against it, folding his arms.

Max straightened, frowning down at the screen. “We don’t have enough of our ear-buds to outfit all of the show’s regular security with them. Can you do something to their comms to upgrade their encryption so whoever is listening in can’t do it anymore?”

Candy lifted an ancient looking headset, disgust plain on her face. “I’ll see what I can do. If they weren’t such bargain basement Radio Shack crap I could do more, but MMP obviously wasn’t spending the big bucks on their security gear.”

“Do what you can,” Max instructed. “We have to play nice with their security on this one.”

“Even if they don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” Candy muttered, her attention already diverted by the problem in front of her.

Max turned to Adam, snagging his suit jacket and shrugging into it. “Come on. Let’s find somewhere we can talk where we won’t disturb Candy.”

Adam silently trailed his boss up the stairs and down a long hallway. Max was only a year older than Adam himself, but he’d already built from scratch and sold-off one multi-million dollar company before deciding to launch Elite Protection, a personal bodyguard service for the crème-de-la-crème of Hollywood. The celebs at this event were more D-list than Elite’s usual carefully cultivated clientele, but Adam had heard that the pretty blonde wedding planner running around the mansion was Max’s sister.

Like everything in this town, it all came down to who you knew.

Max opened a door and waved Adam into the upstairs study before following and shutting the door behind him. Adam looked around the lavishly appointed room, seeing none of it as he wondered whether he would still have a job when he walked out of it.

Max cut right to the chase. “Would you care to explain to me why I got yelled at by Sandy Newton this morning?”

Cassandra Newton. Box Office Gold. Top of the A-List for over a decade. The rare movie star who had transitioned fifteen years ago from being America’s rom-com sweetheart to perennial Oscar nominee without missing a step.

And bane of his existence.

“I turned down a job,” Adam said simply. When getting his ass chewed, he’d learned from experience that simplicity was best.

“So I gathered,” Max said dryly, taking a seat on the couch and waving him toward one of the large armchairs. “Apparently you also informed one of the biggest stars in Hollywood that you were booked solid for the next month and would not be able to take any job she had for you for the foreseeable future.”

Adam sat, rigid with tension. “It wasn’t for her—”

“It was for her daughter. I’m aware.”

“She wanted me on the red carpet with her at the premiere of some big summer blockbuster. That’s not security. It’s a publicity stunt.”

“Of course it is,” Max said, without turning a hair. “You saved little Cassie’s life and now she wants to show off her hero.”

“My job is to protect people. Not to be a show pony.”

“Your job is both,” Max said, blunt and unsympathetic. “Clients come to us—and pay our astronomical fees—because we’re more than just security. We’re image enhancement. Our clients want Tank and Cross because they want to be guarded by former Pro-Bowl athletes. They want Pretty Boy because he’s not just a black-belt, he’s a model, and in this town there’s status in having the most handsome bodyguard in the room. And they want
you
, because you’re the All-American hero.”

“The Secret Service asked me to avoid unnecessary publicity.” Right before they asked him to resign.

“Which is idiotic. You’re the best PR they’d had in years.”

“I failed to do my job,” Adam argued, feeling a certain vicious satisfaction in voicing the truth that few people knew and even fewer would acknowledge out loud. “Very publicly.” Thanks to cell phone videos and the magic of YouTube, his dereliction of duty had gone viral.

“And in the process you saved a girl from a burning building. A very
famous
girl. The truth may be that you left your detail to do it, potentially endangering the life of the son of a vice-presidential candidate in the process, but the optics are all the media care about. And the optics right now are that you don’t want to be seen with the first family of Hollywood in public after you saved precious Cassie Newton from certain death. Which is pissing off her mother, who feels the need to call me at seven in the morning and yell at me. I don’t like it when my clients yell at me. And I like it even less when I’m blindsided by it because one of my guys is turning down jobs without telling me.”

“I should have told you about it,” Adam acknowledged.

“You should have. Especially since I’m supposedly the asshole who booked you solid for a month so you couldn’t work for the Newtons again.”

“Understood.” He braced himself for whatever came next. The ultimatum. The line in the sand.

This had been a good job. He would miss it. Guarding celebrities wasn’t exactly serving his country, but the jobs could be interesting and his coworkers were nice enough, though he’d never really bothered to get chummy with anyone because he’d known this was just a temporary measure. Just something to pay the bills until he figured out what he was going to do with the rest of his life now that his career had gone up in flames. Literally.

He’d sure as hell miss the money.

Max grimaced and rocked back on the couch, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Look, I don’t want to be a dick about this—”

“But you will if it gets you what you want.” No point bullshitting about it.

Max released a short laugh. He’d always appreciated the direct approach. Something Adam had liked about him. Especially after the politics and double talk of government work.

“Exactly. I want to have your back, but I’m a businessman. Sandy Newton is offering me triple fees and you’re asking me to turn them down because you don’t want your photo taken with a beautiful young girl who hero worships you.”

“It isn’t like that.”
At least not entirely
.

“It’s exactly like that. You saved her life. You are her hero. Forever. So don’t be a dick about it just because it ended your Secret Service career.”

Adam ground his teeth, still waiting for that ultimatum. “I won’t do the job.”

Max sighed. “You can have a pass on this one, but if you won’t take jobs that put you in the public eye, you might want to think about another line of work.”

And there it was. “Are you firing me?”

“Hell, no,” Max said, lazy and completely at ease, not rising to match his aggressive tone. “You’re great for business. And believe it or not, I like you. But you have to be willing to actually
work
for me. And all my clients want publicity. They want flash. And they pay us very well to get what they want.” Max met his gaze, calm and unflappable. “Right now they want you. So you need to decide if you want to keep working for me, because that involves jobs where you are on display.”

“I can do that. Just not for the Newtons.”

“It would help if you would tell me why I’m turning down triple fees.”

Adam shifted uneasily, resisting the words before finally admitting, “Cassie…
likes
me.” He ground his molars. “It felt like being asked to Prom.”

Cassie had shown up unannounced at his beach house—which her mother had insisted on giving him as a thank you for saving Cassie’s life, so it wasn’t like he could refuse to let her in—wearing a skimpy little sundress and too much make-up. She’d batted her eyes and licked her lips, asking him to be her bodyguard like she was asking him to go steady. Considering she was seventeen, it had been unbearably awkward and the only thing he’d been able to think of was the booked-solid excuse.

He braced himself to have to explain more, but Max just nodded. “Fair enough.” When Adam blinked in surprise, Max went on, “I like to give my clients what they want—within reason. She’s got a crush on you because you’re her savior and the tabloids are already all over any story with the two of you because it’s like something out of a movie—completely ignoring the fact that she’s underage and that shit’s just creepy. You want to stay far away from that, I get it. I’m not running a gigolo service. Any of the clients try to treat you that way, you let me know about that shit pronto. Or if you don’t want to bring it to me, Tank’s wife is especially good at laying out what is and isn’t considered sexual harassment for any clients who might be a little confused. Some people have seen
The Bodyguard
too many times.”

He couldn’t quite make Max’s words compute. After the way his Secret Service partner had thrown him under the bus after the fire fiasco, Adam had gotten out of the habit of expecting anyone to back him up. “So I don’t have to work for the Newtons.”

“Nope. Plenty of other clients are requesting you—though I’m not sure I can keep you booked solid for the next month, I can probably come close if you want to work that much.”

“That’d be great.” The property taxes alone on the beach house were kicking his ass. He needed all the work he could get.

“Good. Now get back to work.”

He didn’t wait to be told twice.

He still had a job. That was good. And his boss had no intention of pimping him out to the highest bidder. Also good.

So why didn’t he feel good?

That was the story of his life these days. Ever since that damn fire.

Life should be good. He’d saved a life. No one was hurt in the process. A movie star
gave
him a fancy house on the beach. He lost his job and his reputation as the Secret Service golden boy, but a much more lucrative job in private security landed in his lap and he became
America’s
golden boy. Whenever things started to go bad, they turned around and got ten times better.

And it just felt
wrong
.

Everything felt off. Like he didn’t know what the hell he was doing anymore.

First world problems.

A door popped open in front of him, spilling feminine laughter into the hall. Adam stopped so he wouldn’t run into the two women who stumbled out. Laughing, they hung onto each other and an open bottle of champagne, the blonde spinning awkwardly to shut the door as the brunette’s eyes fell on him.

The same brunette from the dented yellow Beetle, with the Selma Hayek body and the Marilyn Monroe attitude—whom he’d recognized instantly from the one episode of
Marrying Mister Perfect
that would be forever emblazoned on his memory.

“Well, hello,” she said appreciatively, dark eyes glinting. “I would say we really should stop meeting like this, but I’m so glad we do.”

The force of her personality seemed to pulse around her like a heat wave, all sensuality and daring. The woman was hot enough to make not flirting with her a crime, but he was on the clock, so he gave her a crisp nod and a polite, “Ms. Suarez.”

“Please. Call me Elena,” she said, somehow managing to make the request sound decadently suggestive.