All The Pretty Lights (The "A" List #1) (3 page)

Her hand awkwardly frees mine and moves to sit in her lap. “Sorry. I—I hate taking off.”

I can see her begin to relax, and decide to help ease the tone a little. “Really? Hadn’t noticed.”

She smiles and I can see just a hint of pearly white through her plump lips.

“Seriously though, if you hate flying so much, why are you?” I’m curious.

Her eyebrows rise and fall quickly as she ponders the question. “I try not to let it hold me back. It’s not so bad, really. I’m fine once we’re in the air. And besides, I thought I had a pretty good reason to suck it up. Turns out, I would have been better off staying at home and not going to L.A.”

Overhead the lighted display changes, indicating we can now unfasten our seat belts and recline our seats. Don’t need to tell me twice. I search for the small circular button on my armrest and push.

“Ah, fuck.” I try the button once more.

“What?” Daphne searches between us to where my hand is playing with the armrest.

I exhale deeply, frustrated. “My seat’s broken. It won’t recline back.”

I’m practically punching the small flimsy button. Her laughter causes me to pause. “What?”

She shakes her head at me. “Your seat’s not broken. You
are
reclined back. That’s as far as it goes. You’re in
coach
, remember?”

Not believing this half an inch of extra room could be all that I’m allowed, I inspect my seat as well as those around me. “You can’t be serious?”

When I finally give up and accept the fact that I’m given no more room than a fucking sardine, I drop my head back against the stiff cushion.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never flown coach before” her voice is wobbling, fighting to hold back laughter.

My eyes close as I resign myself to the amount of discomfort I’ll be enduring in this sorry excuse of a seat for the next four and a half hours. “So many years ago, that I’d forgotten what it was like. You? You had a first class ticket, so this must be new for you, too.”

“I always fly coach. I didn’t pay for the first class ticket. It was given to me to come out here for a job interview. Waste of time.” There’s a layered depth to the last of her words.

Shifting to try and get as comfortable as I can in this torture device of a chair, I angle myself to face her. She’s playing with the corner of one of her fingernails.

“I take it you didn’t get the job then?” I watch her as I say my words.

She rolls her eyes. “That’s an understatement.” A moment passes before she elaborates. “I didn’t get the job,
and
I had my life’s work bashed to pieces by one of the biggest names in fashion today.”

She’s a designer. Of course! I thought she was some kind of an artist or a painter judging from the drawings I’d helped her pick off the ground hours ago in the airport. They must have been her design sketches.

“Ouch,” I empathize. “Good thing there are other designers out there that you can interview with.”

Daphne, the designer, scrunches her eyes tight and lifts her small hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. “
No
. It’s not that easy. When you get passed up by Katharine Harding, there aren’t very many doors left open.”

“Katharine?” I repeat the name. “Katharine
Harding
?”

She watches me suspiciously. “Do you know her?”

I nearly wake the person sitting behind me with my loud laughter. “Sweetheart, if you avoided working for Katharine Harding, then consider yourself lucky. She’s a bitch. I’ve worn her designs a few times for award shows and it was a nightmare. I saw first hand how she treats her employees.” I shake my head, “Half of the people get chewed up and spit out and the other half wind up getting their designs stolen and called a
Katharine Harding Original
in her next collection.”

She’s looking at me like a six-year old kid who just found out Santa Clause doesn’t exist.

“It’s true. You dodged a bullet.” I reassure her. I don’t need to go into any further detail about
how
I know all this. Besides, what am I supposed to say?
I fucked a couple of her girls over the years and heard firsthand how they were backstabbed by the fashion icon?

I can just picture Daphne’s face if I were to tell her about the nameless girls on Katharine’s staff that I’d made my way through. And that doesn’t even take into account the models that work for her. There must have been six or seven of those girls that had slithered out of my bed with huge grins on their faces the next morning.

Nah, it’s best that I keep those things to myself.

The tabloids get wind of my dating life from time to time and my PR team has their hands full keeping most of those girls from talking. What can I say? Who
wouldn’t
take the opportunity to spend time with the beautiful women that throw themselves at me?

“You’re not just saying this to make me feel better?” She’s wary.

I bite the inside corner of my lip and playfully angle my eyes upward. “No.
Do
you feel better?”

She thinks on it. “Yeah. I do.”

I smile. “Good. Now, tell me.
What
do people do in coach? There’s no TV, no Wi-Fi…”

Daphne mockingly covers her mouth and gasps. “Oh, no! No Wi-Fi!” She’s making fun of me, and having a good old time doing it, too. “You won’t be able to tweet, or post a selfie, or check your Facebook, or check in on your millions of fans. What will become of civilization?”

I can’t help but smile through the scowl I’m forcing myself to wear. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t do any of those things. I pay people to do those things for me.”

She acts as if I’ve just solved world hunger. “Of course! Because that’s what normal people do, right? We pay people to tweet little pictures of cats who say funny things for us so that thousands of people can comment on it.”

“Alright, alright. You’ve had your fun. But it’s so much more involved than you could know.” I lay the bait.

I don’t know her very well yet, but I can already tell that she’s a spitfire, and she doesn’t like to be underestimated. “Oh, really? Then please, by all means… enlighten me.”

“Beverage?” Our private conversation is infiltrated by the flight attendant who’s parked her blue cart in the aisle next to my seat.

“Why not?” I answer. “I’ll take one of everything that has alcohol in it. Maybe it’ll help me forget how uncomfortable this seat is.”

The woman standing above me looks nervous in a shy kind of way. “Um, actually, we have an airline policy. Two drink maximum per person per flight.”

Oh. That won’t do.

“I’ll take two then. And two for the lady here.” I gesture to Daphne.

The flight attendant nods over my head to the beneficiary of my generosity. “Forty four dollars, please.”

Wow. Not only do I have to endure a hard as rock seat with no legroom, but my drinks are being rationed and they’re price gauging me on them, too. Coach sucks. I make a mental note to never do this again.

“Of course.” I awkwardly reach into my pocket with the limited amount of room I have to do the task, and withdraw my money clip. Peeling the first bill from the top, I hand it over to the woman and graciously take the miniature plastic bottles from her. “Please, keep the change.”

Her eyes widen and she takes the crisp bill before thanking me and moving along to the next passenger awaiting their stale ginger ale.

“Ladies first,” I offer the assorted selection to Daphne, and she chooses the vodka and whiskey. “Good choice.”

“So, you were about to enlighten me?” There’s a small cracking sound as the sealed cap is twisted off her dwarfed drink.

I watch as she brings the toy-sized bottle to her lips. They part just enough for the rim of the mouth of the bottle to fit perfectly between the lips that close around it. I watch those plump, juicy, smooth, deep pink lips of hers nurse the bottle and feel my dick twitch as it longs to feel what that bottle is feeling right now.

Oh, she has no idea what she’s asking me. It would be my
pleasure
to enlighten this girl. I’m daydreaming about it, fantasizing about it. We’ve got plenty of time to work up to that though. By the time this flight lands, I’ll have her begging to go back to my hotel room.

I take a swig of the tequila in my minuscule bottle and celebrate early for what will most definitely be a good trip to New York.

CHAPTER THREE

DAPHNE

“So? Let’s hear it.” I begin to feel a slight tingle in my toes from the cheap liquor. A moment later, my insides feel like they’re heating up as the vodka takes effect.

Colton settles in like he’s about to tell a bedtime story. “Let’s talk about those selfies you seem to find amusing.”

I giggle. “Let’s.”

Another sip of vodka.

I see the corner of his mouth twitch. “Each one of those pictures gets at least two million likes. Three million on a good day. Every single person that follows me on social media does so mainly to see pictures of me, glimpses of my private life. They get to feel like the know me. Then, every time I have a post that promotes something, whether it’s my latest movie, or a talk show that I’ll be on, those same people flock to their TV or to the theater to watch.”

He’s so full of himself, taking about the millions of people that see the movies he stars in. I can’t begrudge them though, as I’ve seen a few myself. But, that doesn’t mean he has to gloat about it.

“Each of those talk shows that they watch to see me gets paid by advertisers buying commercial time. The fans that see my twitter post and tune into the show get to see the commercials for laundry detergent or the newest car every fifteen minutes. That’s how the shows are funded to stay on the air. The more viewers, the higher their ratings, the more they can charge for ad space. Next, let’s talk about the movies.

“Many of those people that watch the talk show or see the post about my newest release, will go to the theater and buy a ticket. That’s how the theaters stay in business. The more fans I have, the more people buy tickets, the more money the theaters make. The better the movie does, the more money the studio makes. The more money the studio makes, the more people they hire to work on more movies. Set designers, sound techs, editors, graphic designers, makeup artists, all these people get jobs.”

He’s beginning to paint a picture that’s a little bigger, okay, a
lot
bigger than I had thought.

“Now, let’s look at it a different way. Let’s say I don’t post any shirtless selfies at the gym, or that one of a kind backstage picture at the latest award show. Then, people don’t want to be bothered following me on social media to find out about that talk show or that movie. They don’t tune in and they don’t buy a ticket, or buy the DVD when it gets released, or the cologne or watch that I’m endorsing. They don’t buy the magazine that has my picture on it. All that money lost, all those jobs lost—all because I don’t have fans that feel that they have enough invested in me to see me succeed. So, I give them the selfies, the half-naked pics, the funny posts about a damn cat, because it’s all part of the game. It’s one big circle.”

I feel like I’ve gotten whiplash.

“Oh.” The last of the vodka passes my lips and I reach my tongue out, searching out the final drop. I suddenly feel foolish, having belittled what is apparently a huge symbiotic relationship between the measure of his celebrity and the industry he’s a part of. “So what you said earlier, when our picture was being taken with the soldier and his wife. I asked you what was happening and you said ‘work’. Was that all that was?”

~*~

COLT

So much for light conversation.

I use the Tequila to buy me an extra few seconds before I have to answer. I’ve known this woman, for what, all of three hours? She doesn’t know me as anything other than the face in the picture, the headline. She doesn’t know how accurate some of those stories are, what an asshole I’m capable of being sometimes. I don’t know why, but the thought that she might somehow see me as something other than an empty shell of a media driven personality somehow appeals to me.

“What?” I feel a lump form in my throat. “Of course not.” I lie. “The pictures were work. Giving up my seat wasn’t work, it was the right thing to do.”

Daphne mulls over my statement. She doesn’t know me well enough to know that I’m full of shit. She doesn’t know me well enough to know when I’m acting and when I’m not.

The empty bottle in her palm is abandoned in her lap as she twists off the plastic cap to the second bottle. “To ‘
the right thing’,
” she holds up the dark amber colored bottle to toast.

Our drink containers clank artificially as the plastic butts against each other. “And to chance airport encounters with gorgeous women who crash into you and inspire you to do the
right thing
.”

“So you know why I was in L.A. I think it’s only fair that I know why you’re heading to my neck of the woods.” I watch her take two sips to empty the bottle at her mouth as she asks me about my reason for travel.

“Premiere. New movie. TIME COP. You heard of it?” I test her. The studio’s gone full force with publicity, buying up ad time and pimping me out to every talk show and morning show in the country. For the last two months I’ve done nothing but answer the same dozen or so questions- “What’s it like to star in what’s being hailed as the biggest budgeted movie ever made?” or “Are you nervous to see Audrey at the premiere?” or, my personal favorite, “Will you and Audrey be getting back together for a sequel?”

I always get a kick out of that one. These people haven’t even seen the film yet, and they’re foaming at the mouth for a sequel. All they care about is Hollywood’s golden couple reuniting once more. Little do they know, there was nothing golden about Audrey and me. As far as I’m concerned, that ship has long sailed.

I can’t slip up though, let any of those reporters and fans know that. According to the latest polls and surveys, the film would take a nosedive if moviegoers got wind that there was a greater chance for snow in hell than for me taking Audrey Camden back.

Hasn’t stopped her from calling, from having her agent try to double book us for press so that I’ll be forced to see her again. Nope. Not happening. She can try all of her underhanded tactics, but I’m not giving in. Not this time.

Anger is having its way with me. It tends to happen when I think about how Audrey stabbed me in the back. I find that I’ve wandered away in my own thoughts and will myself to snap out of it. It never does me any good to think about old times.

“I think so,” Daphne reveals. “Actually,” she reluctantly adds, “My best friend, Lori, already bought tickets for the opening weekend. She’s kind of a fan.”

Hmm, interesting.

I wonder if this “Lori” person actually exists or if Daphne is using her as a cover to hide her own fandom.

“I see. And you? Are you a fan?” I bait her.

Her heart shaped-face and adorable little nose tilt sideways as if she’s thinking. “I don’t know. I—I’ve seen a couple of your movies. I really liked that one where you were a teacher in the rough neighborhood and got the gangs to stop fighting. Does that make me a fan?”

I laugh.
Hard Lessons
, the movie she’s talking about, is about eight years old. It was one of my first feature films and is responsible for most of my success. It got me noticed, put me on the radar of some of the most powerful producers in the business.

“I’d say that makes you a fan. But don’t worry. I won’t tell if you don’t.” I promise to keep her secret.

The plane is quiet, with nothing other than the occasional flight attendant walking past. It’s peaceful, the most I’ve had in weeks with all the scurrying around and rushing to and from promotional appearances.

Shivering sounds break the silence and I turn to see Daphne crossing her arms and rubbing. “I hate how cold the air conditioning gets,” she explains herself.

“Wait,” I have a solution, standing quietly to reach into the overhead bin above us. My leather jacket is lying on top of the pile of boxy suitcases. I hand it to her. “It’s really warm. Go ahead.”

She doesn’t seem sure whether to take it or not, so, after a moment, I drape it over her like a blanket.

Another flash behind me reminds me that whatever sense of peacefulness I had earlier is just a façade. I’m still very much on display.

“Uh, thanks. Wow, this
is
warm.” Her mouth opens in a wide yawn with her last word.

I feel myself finally give into the lack of rest from the past few days and yawn myself, as if her sleepiness is contagious. My eyes close once, then twice more, each time a bit heavier.

~*~

DAPHNE

New York

The bell chiming along with an echoed voice break my dream and my eyes fight the urge to open. I take a deep breath and peek from under heavy eyelids. There are arms being stretched high above and the telltale sounds of people stirring from sleep as the pilot announces that we’ve been given approval to land.

I stifle a moan as my right shoulder rolls, stretching the tight muscle near my neck. Soft, early morning sunlight streams in through the nearby oval-shaped window as I watch what must be daybreak.

My body feels warm, very warm actually, and I hesitate to move, to lose any of the heat. Swallowing hard, I open my eyes wide and take in all of my surroundings as the foggy haze of sleep begins to wear away.

My head is blocked from turning further left, and I angle myself to see why. The sharp angle of his jaw is resting just above my forehead as I seem to be tucked into the crook of his neck.

I feel steady, even, streams of hot air escape and wash over me with every breath he takes. The darkened stubble of his cheek scratches like a fine grit sandpaper when I move.

He moans at my movement and unconsciously wraps his arms around me tighter to pull me back close. My stomach plummets and swirls at that exact moment and I convince myself it’s from the descending airplane, not from his touch.

People around us start moving, preparing to gather their things since we’re so close to our destination. Their bustling sounds grow louder and I wonder at how that alone doesn’t wake him up. I’m locked in place, unsure of the best way to handle this.

Our seats are close, sure, and he must have no idea that he’s practically cuddling me, right? It must be some instinctive part of falling asleep in a tight area, to drop your head or lean on the person next to you, right? Stuff like this happens all the time. Right?

I can’t kid myself. He’s not just leaning on me, or resting his head against me. He’s holding me tight, both arms, his incredibly strong arms I might add, holding me to him.

“Look!” A loud whisper shoots through the air as a young woman two rows ahead of us spots the compromising position Colt and I are in. I barely have time to move, to try one more time to break free of his sleeping grip when the bursts of flash begin.

One person, then another, and another, whips out their phones at lightening speed and snap photographic evidence of the purely innocent yet embarrassing position we’re in.

“Colt!” I nudge him. The flashes don’t stop. He groans, his eyes flutter but he doesn’t wake. Temporarily blinded by the most recent flash, I pull back my elbow and nudge harder—maybe a touch too hard.

“Hey… what’s happening? We crashing?” His voice is groggy and confused. “Why are you beating me up?”

God. Men are such babies.

“We’re landing. You—you fell asleep.” I clue him in as he begins to assess our situation. His right arm with its rounded bicep is behind me, snaked under my neck, wrapped over my shoulder, pulling me in. His left arm strung across me, hand resting in my lap.

His lips. His steamy mouth with their picture perfect lips rests just above my ear as his sleep heavy head rests millimeters from mine.

“Oh,” He begins to realize that he’s practically spooning me. “Oh!” He pulls back his arms finally releasing me. “Sorry. I—I didn’t mean to--”

Smiling, feeling just as awkward as he does, I try to make light of it. “Don’t mention it. You were tired. Sleeping. You had no idea what you were doing.”

I listen to my words and realize that I’m saying them for as much my benefit as his. My skin, the skin that touched his, that was held by him, feels empty, lonely, craves his touch once more. I tell myself over and over that he didn’t mean it, that he didn’t know.

A small piece of me holds onto some impossible hope that maybe he did?

“This is yours.” The soft leather jacket is folded in half and I place it on his lap, returning it.

I can’t help but notice that his hair, even after a long flight of sleeping in such a contorted position, looks perfect. Swallowing hard, I look away harshly, not liking the direction my thoughts are heading.

He’s just a guy
, I tell myself. Okay, he’s a famous guy, but still a guy. It was a random flight and he’ll get back to his crazy life that has nothing to do with me. I’ll get back to whatever’s left of my own life and these last few hours will mean nothing. Right?

The wheels of the plane skip gently on the tarmac as the pilot expertly makes his landing, delivering us to one of the busiest airports in the world.

Slowly we make our way to the main terminal as the plane lines up with the ramp. Once we feel the slight jerk when the plane halts to a stop, pandemonium takes hold. Every man, woman, and child springs into motion, taking hold of their belongings to pile out in a mad rush.