Free Secrets and Seduction: Solacia Cellars by Alicia Roberts Page B

damn tedious. I’ll pay you to surf the internet eight hours a day, find cool information about good wine and healthy organic living, and post it on the internet for me. You can even work in your pajamas if you want.” He grinned and his blue eyes probed Terra’s for a reaction.
    She gave him none. “It sounds interesting,” she said coolly.
    “You probably want to know the salary,” Rafe continued.
    “Of course.” She expected it to be as bad as her waitressing wages, with the expectation of sexual fringe benefits, of course. This wasn’t her first rodeo.
    “$139,000 annually, plus health insurance and an IRA with a two-to-one matching contribution from the company. The job is yours if you want it. Do you want it?”
    Terra’s head had started to spin after the first set of zeroes. “Yes,” she heard herself say.
    “Good! I’m delighted that you accept. By the way, you’ll have a private cottage on the grounds and full use of all facilities for as long as you want to stay here. That means you can help yourself to the gardens, sauna, fully equipped gym, and hot tub.” When he said hot tub, she could swear through her brain fog that he winked at her.

Chapter 2
    The cottage was a tidy one bedroom house furnished in blue and white and shaded by a grove of trees. The windows were open to the breeze off the ocean, and the bed was made up with a puffy white down comforter. A computer with a large monitor sat on a work desk. Exhausted from the drive up the coast, Terra took a quick nap as soon as Rafe left her with instructions to get settled in and then come up with a plan for her first week of work.
    “Make yourself at home, and we’ll talk when I get back tomorrow evening,” he had told her, touching her arm before he left.
    When she woke up, the sun had already set. After checking the computer to make sure everything was working, Terra changed into her bikini swimsuit, tied a gauzy wrap skirt around her waist, and set out to find the hot tub. She did find it, on a deck in a grove of pine trees overlooking the ocean. Even though Rafe had told her he would be gone until the following evening, she approached the deck stairs quietly and listened to make sure no one was around.
    Satisfied that she was alone, Terra grabbed a towel from a storage bin, untied her skirt, and slowly lowered herself into the hot water, which bubbled quietly and gave off a wonderful aroma of redwood. Closing her eyes, she relaxed and let the tensions of the past year leave her thoughts as the heat worked its way into her tired body.
    A year ago her acting career still held promise. The director of her first film had later become famous, which renewed public interest in his early work, and interest in her. Although she hadn’t enjoyed the same fame, her agent sent some good scripts her way and made sure she kept working.
    Then she caught the attention of Jim Mann. The powerful horror movie director had a reputation for gory filmmaking genius matched by a taste for mentally and physically abusing the women who worked for him. Ten years ago he had stood trial for murdering his third wife, a blonde actress with more talent than she ever got credit for, but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. The Hollywood rumor mill had whispered for years that he had connections with organized crime.
    Terra remembered the single time she met Mann and shuddered. Afterward she had instructed her agent to tell him she was under option to another studio and couldn’t work for him. At the time that was true, but shortly after she sent the message, Terra stopped getting scripts to read, any scripts, even bad ones. After more than a year without any acting work, she was sick to death of Hollywood and had taken the job in the restaurant in LA that she had kept until yesterday.
    She wondered about her new boss, who never seemed to get upset about anything. Probably a trust fund baby, she thought. Must be easy to be mellow when you’ve never had to