Famous (A Famous novel) Page 25

  “I’m not going to last,” he panted.

  “Good,” she said, not only because she wasn’t either, but because she wanted to claim him as quickly as possible. He was hers.

  He pressed a thumb against her clit as his thrusts became irregular. She cried out and bucked wildly, and in a moment they were both splintering apart.

  It was only after a few minutes had passed and their breathing slowed, that the question occurred to her. He was supposed to turn in his tenure file at the end of the summer. She bolted to a sitting position. “Did you get tenure? Did you turn everything in?”

  He smiled and pulled her back down, tucked her up against his chest, and banded a heavy arm around her. “I did turn everything in, but I don’t know the outcome yet. I probably won’t find out until early in the new year.”

  There was laughter in his voice, as if this thing, this goal he had structured his whole life around for so many years, was nothing. And then, as if to ratify her interpretation, he said, “Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

  She struggled against him until he released her. She didn’t sit up this time, but she pulled back enough that she could see his face.

  “I’ll get it, or I won’t. We’ll work it out.”

  “We?” she echoed, warmth spreading through her body like a blanket from the inside.

  “Hell yes, we,” he said, kissing her softly. Then he asked, “Are you going to release Song 58?”

  She chuckled and repeated his own phrase back to him. “Don’t know yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Probably not, but really, I have no idea. It’s not that bad a song. But I do know that things will be different from now on. I need to make a change in management, and then I’ll worry about the next album.” She turned another phrase back on him. “We’ll work it out.”

  She could feel him smile against her forehead. Then her stomach growled, and it echoed through the silent gallery.

  “Let’s get dressed and get you some food,” he said. “What are you in the mood for?”

  She didn’t even have to think about it. “Casserole. But I’m not sure where to get that in L.A.”

  Epilogue

  Nine months later

  Evan breathed a sigh of relief as the applause at Jean-Claude Riel’s main gallery died down. He’d given brief remarks, as was expected from the artist at an opening, and now the attention would be off him for a while.

  It would be on the woman standing in the back sipping a mimosa as the morning sun shone down on her like she was on loan from heaven, for fuck’s sake. His painting hand twitched.

  But it wouldn’t be overt attention, because it turned out that the L.A. art crowd liked to pretend it was above gaping at famous pop stars. So Emmy could circulate around the brunch party celebrating his second show with Riel as the recipient of sideways glances rather than pleas to autograph body parts. He met her eyes, and she inclined her head toward the door.

  He nodded. Yes. Hell, yes. Time to blow this pop stand.

  A young woman stepped into his path. “This is amazing, Professor Winslow!”

  He turned to smile at Kaylee, the newest art history MA student at UCLA, where he held an adjunct appointment.

  He had not gotten tenure at Dane College.

  And he didn’t give a shit.

  He almost laughed aloud. It hadn’t even been a year since Larry had let the axe fall, but it felt like a lifetime ago, and it still sort of amazed him how much he didn’t give a shit. How you could spend years of your life laboring toward a goal and then it could just…not matter anymore.

  The reason it didn’t matter? Because when you broke it down, he had everything he’d ever wanted. More than he’d even thought to dream of—the parts added up to way more than the whole he’d been working toward all these years. He had an adjunct appointment at UCLA that scratched his professorial itch—he got to do a little teaching and as much research as he liked on the side. But he spent most of his days painting. And that was like being given a second chance at life, like breathing on his own after years on a ventilator. His return to the art world had not been without its controversies. The reviews of his first show had been mixed, many of them focusing more on him and his familial legacy than the actual art. But it had sold out, which was enough for Riel to order up a second show, and now Evan was selling steadily.

  He met Emmy at the door, Kaylee trailing behind him.

  “Kaylee,” said Emmy. “You finished your first two quarters of grad school—congrats!”

  Kaylee grinned. “Thanks.”

  “You gonna be okay this summer?” Emmy asked.

  Emmy had adopted Kaylee as a sort of surrogate daughter-sister hybrid when Kaylee had arrived to start her studies, inviting her to dinner and taking her as her date to industry events—Evan wasn’t much of a red carpet guy and usually sat out those sorts of things. If Kaylee had ever had a crush on him—Evan still wasn’t convinced by Emmy’s take on the situation—she had long since gotten over it. Hell, judging by the way she was beaming at Emmy, she’d probably transferred it to his girlfriend. Not that he blamed her.

  “You remember to call Tony if you need anything,” Emmy said, kissing Kaylee on the cheek, then putting on her hat and sunglasses.

  Evan peered out the gallery window. There was a long black car waiting for them. As had become their custom, he went outside first. In a stroke of luck, the sidewalk was empty. He, the infamous hermit, had learned a lot about the celebrity ecosystem. It turned out that if you put a little planning into it, you could lead a semi-normal life. Sure, there were places you couldn’t go if you wanted to avoid the paparazzi, but if you were smart, you could move around more freely than he might have expected. And she had a huge-ass wall around her house in the hills. Their house in the hills, he should say, because they’d bought one together, a fixer-upper that Emmy was slowly transforming.

  “Hey,” Tony said as he held the car door for Emmy. Tony had a mobile office set up in the car because he and Emmy had some last-minute business to attend to before she disappeared for the summer.

  “Oh my God, it’s Emerson Quinn!” Shrieks echoed from down the street, and he sighed as Emmy first froze, then turned to assess the situation. It was only a handful of teenage girls, so she smiled.

  It wasn’t always easy being Emerson Quinn’s boyfriend.

  But it was so, so worth it.

  He leaned against the car and watched the girls exclaim over how much they loved her last album, which she’d ended up calling, simply, Summer. They weren’t alone because the album had outsold all her previous efforts, even though she’d fired Claudia and Brian and co-produced it herself. The short tour she’d embarked on to support it had raked in so much money that he’d started calling her Sugar Mama.

  “Sir!” trilled one of the girls. “Sir, can you take our picture?” She thrust a phone into his hands, and he pushed off the car to perform his duties.

  “Wait!” said the other one as he was handing the camera back. “Aren’t you, like, that guy who paints Emerson Quinn?”

  That guy who paints Emerson Quinn.

  He grinned. He was actually totally okay with that.

  Six hours later the taxi pulled up in front of Mrs. Johansen’s house.

  “We’d better go right to the back, don’t you think?” Emmy said, checking the time on her phone. “We’re late.”

  “Sure,” he said, content in the knowledge that they were home—or close enough.

  A cheer went up in the backyard when they appeared.

  Mrs. Johansen, her latest suitor, Jace, Jace’s mom, and Evan’s former colleagues Ken and Melissa all abandoned their burgers and brats and swarmed Evan and Emmy. Hugs and kisses and greetings were exchanged.

  “How did the show go?” Mrs. Johansen asked.

  “Swimmingly,” Emmy said, beaming at him. “I lost count of how many little red dots there were on the captions.”

  “And look at you, you jet-setter,” Ken said, c
lapping Evan on the back. “An art opening in L.A. in the morning, a barbeque in Dane in the evening.”

  “Hey!” said Emmy, moving to embrace Jace. “Graduation next week!”

  Jace rolled his eyes, but Evan knew he secretly relished the fact that Emerson Quinn would be attending his graduation ceremony. “Yeah, and I don’t know why Tony won’t take my calls,” he grumbled.

  “Because we all agreed you’re going to college first,” said Jace’s mom, who, judging from the number of pies on the picnic table, had come directly from work bearing goodies.

  Tony, who devoted most of his time to managing Emmy, had selectively taken on a couple up-and-comers as clients, and he’d agreed to manage Jace’s career—after he finished his degree at the University of Minnesota, which would be paid for by the scholarship he’d won at the songwriting contest.

  “Everything fine here?” Evan asked no one in particular, once they’d all settled in with pie and ice cream.

  “There were some photographers in town earlier this week, but Wanda chased them off. She told them you guys had bought a house in Miami.”

  Evan laughed. Given his background, it was a plausible story. He could imagine the paparazzi spinning their wheels in Miami, looking for them. The people of Dane, it turned out, were actually pretty chill when it came to Emmy. It was like the town had collectively decided that she was one of theirs, and hell if they were going to throw her to the wolves. In fact, they seemed to enjoy going to elaborate lengths to put the media off the scent. And, in a miracle he didn’t expect to endure but would enjoy while it lasted, no one in the media had found out his address. Tony had overseen some kind of data wipe that made any evidence of Evan Winslow in Dane magically disappear.

  So, for now at least, they had their haven. Their “summer home,” Emmy liked to call it, which, even with the indoor refresh she’d overseen last summer, was a rickety, leaky old bag of bones that was such a far cry from their life in L.A. that it was laughable.

  But that was the point.

  As the fireflies and stars started to pop out in the darkening sky, he met her eyes over the campfire that Jace had started.

  She raised her eyebrows and did the same slight jerk of her head that she’d done that morning in the gallery, but this time toward the house next door.

  Hell, yes.

  He was on his feet in a flash, and he didn’t care that they left rather abruptly.

  He didn’t care that everyone probably saw him grab her ass as they crossed the yards.

  He didn’t care that the house was hot as Hades. He’d been going to retrofit for central air this summer, but she’d talked him out of it, and, frankly, given the image of a summer spent sitting on the porch with her in her little tank tops and shorts, she didn’t have to do much convincing.

  She dropped her purse on the table in the entryway and kept walking.

  “Hey,” she said to the giant bear sitting on the bench at the back of the entryway. She patted its head. “It’s good to be home.”

  Then she twisted to look at him over her shoulder and performed one more questioning twitch of her head, this time toward the stairs.

  “Hell, yes.” He said it out loud this time, and then he, the guy who paints Emerson Quinn, followed his girlfriend up the stairs.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Tracy Montoya for working her usual editing magic and to Julia Ganis of JuliaEdits.com for the thoughtful copy editing. Carmen Pacheco’s eagle eyes saved me from some embarrassing last-minute typos.

  Sandra Owens, Audra North, Erika Olbricht, and Gwen Hayes provided extremely helpful feedback on early drafts. Also: friendship, well-timed jokes, pep talks, and all that jazz.

  Laurie Perry straightened me out on a bunch of Los Angeles details. (Emmy is now shopping at the correct Whole Foods thanks to her.)

  Alexis Hall provided tagline help. (Meaning he basically came up with it.)

  My agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, contributed a lot of brainpower to this project and remains amazingly supportive of her hybrid clients’ indie adventures.

  Finally, I want to thank Riptide Publishing, publisher of book two in this Famous universe, for being game to embark on this adventure with me. (Shameless plug: Look for Infamous, a male/male romance releasing November 28, 2017, from Riptide Publishing!)

  Thank you to all!

  Infamous

  Coming November 28, 2017, from Riptide Publishing.

  Is he brave enough to face the music?

  All that up-and-coming musician Jesse Jamison has ever wanted is to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. When a gossip website nearly catches him kissing someone who isn’t his famous girlfriend—and also isn’t a girl—he considers the near miss a wake-up call. There’s a lot riding on his image as the super-straight rocker, and if he wants to realize his dreams, he’ll need to toe the line. Luckily, he’s into women too. Problem solved.

  After a decade pretending to be his ex’s roommate, pediatrician Hunter Wyatt is done hiding. He might not know how to date in the Grindr world, how to make friends in a strange city, or whether his new job in Toronto is a mistake. But he does know that no one is worth the closet. Not even the world’s sexiest rock star.

  As Jesse’s charity work at Hunter’s hospital brings the two closer together, a bromance develops. Soon, Hunter is all Jesse can think about. But when it comes down to a choice between Hunter and his career, he’s not sure he’s brave enough to follow his heart.

  An excerpt from The Engagement Game

  This USA Today bestseller is a standalone novel from the 49th Floor series.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rosie glanced down at her buzzing phone.

  Josephine Withers

  Her initial reaction—what the hell?!—was followed by panic. Something had to be wrong for Jo to call. Texting was one thing—it had been grandfathered into their friendship—but talking? With their voices?

  Rosie had been exchanging paper letters with her best friend Jo since Jo’s family moved away when both girls were twelve. Since then, they had religiously exchanged a letter per week. A letter. Written by hand. On paper. As they grew up and long-distance telephone calls became less of a big deal, Rosie stubbornly clung to the idea of a weekly handwritten letter—you didn’t just abandon a tradition that had been going strong for fifteen years—though they also emailed and texted pretty much daily.

  But calling? Jo knew Rosie hated the phone. The last time they’d spoken on the phone was two years ago when Rosie’s dad died. Heck, they saw each other in person for visits more than they called each other.

  “Hello?” Rosie was breathless. The way her stomach fluttered, it might as well have been tonight’s Match.com date. Rosie had high hopes that the guy, who was presenting extremely well via text, would turn out to be “the one.”

  “I think you made a mistake,” said Jo, “with your last letter?”

  Rosie wanted to say, “Huh?” but Jo was talking so fast she couldn’t squeeze it in.

  “I thought if I called you might still have time to fix it don’t yell at me I know you hate talking on the phone I’m going to read it and then hang up and it will be like this never happened.”

  “Uh, okay?” was all she could think to say in response to that epic run-on sentence.

  “Dear Mr. Rosemann—”

  Rosemann. As in Marcus Rosemann. As in millionaire Marcus Rosemann, to whom she had just sent a thank-you letter for his sizeable donation to EcoHabitat Toronto, the nonprofit for which Rosie worked.

  “Thank you for your generous gift in support of…”

  Oh, no. No, no, no, no.

  Rosie dropped the phone as adrenaline surged through her limbs, making them shake. When she picked it up, Jo was still talking.

  “It’s donors like you, whose regular commitments we have come to rely on, who will truly help us realize our goal: a city in which humans and animals—and their habitats—can coexist peacefully.”

  Sending the donor thank-you letter
to Jo, and the gossipy, nattering note intended for her best friend to Marcus Rosemann wasn’t just a mistake, to use Jo’s term, it was a fireable offense. As the charity’s fundraising manager, she was the last person who should be making such a careless error. “Shit, shit, shitballs!”

  “Sweetie, calm down. You do everything at that place. You’re allowed to make one mistake,” Jo said.

  “Triple shitballs!”

  “Who’s lined up as tonight’s Mr. Thursday Night?”

  Every Thursday night, Rosie went on a date with a guy from one of the many dating sites she used, and Jo had adopted Rosie’s practice of referring to each of her suitors as “Mr. Thursday Night.” Rosie appreciated that Jo was trying to change the subject, to return her attention to something mundane and routine, but she had to fix this letter mix-up. She had to fix it now. “Jo. I love you, but I gotta go.”

  Dear Jo,

  I’m a day late writing this. I thought about forging the date, but I knew you would KNOW somehow, so I’m just going to come clean. I’m a day late. So shoot me. I was busy this weekend.

  With what, you might ask? Was I busy with the latest Mr. Thursday Night, one Mr. Mark Larson, second grade teacher?

  Yes, but not in the way you might think.

  But, oh, my dashed hopes! Wah! He taught seven year-olds! He was kind and gentle! He did not have (as far as I could tell) a secret wife/child/family/cocaine habit/sex addiction/storage locker full of vintage typewriters. (He did, however, have an unfortunately untidy—bordering on gross—beard in this whole “I look like a logger but I’ve never even been camping” way that seems to be all the thing. But a girl can’t have everything. A girl becomes suspicious, in fact, when presented with everything. So I was good with the beard. Mostly.)