Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (17 page)

Shelley reported to the trailer for the extras. Yay, no fat suit! Even better? She would be riding, though not fun trick riding. The script merely called for her to cruise into the rundown little town that Hollywood directors found so picturesque, and pull up before a shady bar. Then there would be a bar fight. The fight would take longer to shoot than the riding—three days total—but she also loved stunt fights.

When she was called to the wardrobe people for sizing, she said, “I brought some boots to ride in.”

The wardrobe director said briskly, “Let’s see.”

Shelley unzipped her gear bag and grinned at the raised eyebrows she got when she pulled out her Valentino Rockstuds with all the buckles.

“Okay, those will work.” The costume director spoke with a complete change of tone. Now she looked at Shelley not as a lowly
thing
to be sized, but as a person who could afford two thousand dollar boots.

“I was given these,” Shelley felt obliged to say. “I doubled for someone who had Valentinos written into her contract, and since no one else in town seems to wear my size . . .”

“Wow.” The costume woman whistled. “Okay. I think I’m going to change up the design here. Evil Biker Chick has to live up to those boots.”

Next morning, Shelley was set free by the makeup people, her brown hair gelled into black spikes and her face painted with tats and decorated with fake piercings, and sent to get into her costume.

“Well,” the costume director said, hands on her hips. “I wondered why they specified you. And now I know.”

Her assistant, a slender young man, wiggled his eyebrows and turned the full length mirror around in the crowded space so Shelley could see herself.

Shelley glanced at her reflection. She wore a leather jacket with the buckles low across her torso, leaving the top open in a sharp V to show her spectacular cleavage. The low-slung leather pants hugged her extravagant ass, leading the eye down her long muscular legs to her Valentino shit-kickers.

Yeah, this was a definite improvement over a fat suit, a flowered housedress, and two brown paper bags of cabbages and cans.

A perfunctory bang on the door announced a harassed production assistant bounding into the room, clipboard in hand. “We need the bikers. Gotta set up the shot.”

“Awesome outfit,” the PA added, halting in front of Shelley. “They put you in Valentinos for one shot?”

Shelley laughed and explained as the PA led the way past a labyrinth of reflectors, rolled cables, and sound equipment.

The transportation people, unsurprisingly, had a big chromed-up Harley waiting for her. Shelley had expected that. Evil bikers always rode Harley hogs in movie land, just like Mafia gangsters always wore Armani suits to their gun battles.

The rest of her biker gang set aside their coffee and got on their bikes. No one could resist a few experimental revs, including Shelley. It felt great to get this handsome piece of metal under her, even if it was only to roll sedately a few hundred yards.

Once again, she missed her own bike. She’d sold six months ago after her ex, the con artist she’d nicknamed the Douchebag, had maxed out her credit cards and vanished into the sunset, forcing her to give up her apartment and move in with Jan.

The assistant director megaphoned them into position, Shelley at the front next to the stunt guy standing in for the film’s villain. Her mood stayed great until she got close enough to the jumble of cameras, reflectors, cable cords, and canvas chairs surrounding the director.

He stood up, all six foot six and half inches of him. He was solid muscle under that silk shirt and those jeans, topped by tousled blond hair and a grim and granite jaw under ice blue eyes.

Shelley’s stomach plummeted into those supercharged boots. It was
him
. The Russian Bear. Scowling straight at her.

She turned away fast.

***

Mick couldn’t take his eyes off her.

There she was, dressed in leather.

She turned her spiked-up head to look at the assistant director, and Mick was able to breathe again.

He knew he shouldn’t have asked for Shelley Willis. LA was cram-packed with competent extras, women of all sizes, ages, and shapes. All of them would do a good job, come to the set, and then leave again after their scenes, without his giving them a second thought.

It was dangerous to have Shelley on the set, even for two days. The fact that he knew her
name
was dangerous. Ever since Oona had dumped him, he’d made a point of thinking about Hollywood’s endless stream of beautiful women by their character names. He’d buried himself in work, scarcely giving them a thought . . .

Until
this
one. Since the first time she’d walked onto his studio set for a bit part in an episode of his TV show, wearing a hideous straw hat, cheap-ass sunglasses, and a clock-stopping polyester dress over plastic shoes that looked like shower clogs, he’d noticed her. How her beautiful body with its extravagantly luscious curves had moved under that god-awful getup. How she managed to make a squawking tumble off the back of a pickup truck look sexy and cool.

He’d been burned too badly by Oona to even speak to Shelley. But somehow he’d managed to see the dailies when she appeared. And somehow he’d seen to it that she was on the list for similar extra work whenever a script called for it. After all, she was quiet, professional, skilled— everything they wanted.

Unfortunately, she was also everything
he
wanted. And not in a professional way.

Now that his divorce had finally gone through—‘official’ as in reported to
Variety
, thanks to Oona’s busybody agent—it was dangerous for other reasons. But he could keep his shit together. He’d been keeping his secrets all his life. And he was overdue a little innocent gratification.

Right?

Right.

So he’d worked the schedule so this B-roll scene would be shot by his A camera crew. Mick had slung a line of bull about how important it was to get those long shadows just right when the bad guys rolled into town looking to kick ass and take names.

All around him his production people did what they did best. Mick bent his ear toward the assistant director talking to him, but all he heard was
yadda-yadda-yadda
. His eyes and brain had riveted to the tall curvaceous woman dressed in damn-your-eyes black leather astride that Harley like it was a rampant stallion.

He let the shooting script fall into his lap to hide his sudden 500 horsepower boner.

God, this was such a bad idea.

And he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

The evil bikers cruised a few yards up the empty street and stopped right on their marks in front of the bar.

“Yadda yadda yadda . . .yadda?”

Mick broke his gaze away—it was like having his eyeballs ripped out of his head, like some cartoon character—to find his first AD looking expectantly at him. He’d probably asked a question.

Mick had no idea what the question was.

There was only one thing to do. “Again,” he said.

The order relayed down the chain of command, and the Harleys and Hondas obediently did an about-face in a roar of engines. By the time they’d come back a second time, he already had a mad plan in mind.

***

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Hollywood Bear
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