Free Heartthrob by Suzanne Brockmann

ghostly memory, flitting at the edge of Virgil Laramie’s alcohol-sodden consciousness.
    “She doesn’t have any dialogue, and I’m not sure Naomi’ll take the part if we can’t throw her at least a few lines. Maybe if we add more flashback scenes—”
    Kate put down her pencil. “Victor. Babe. The script is too long as it is. I’m not going to ask for story rewrites and make it even longer—just so you can get into Naomi Michaelson’s pants.”
    He smiled sheepishly. “Am I really that transparent?”
    “You’re top quality window glass, my friend.”
    “I met her at a party in L.A. last week,” he confessed. “She’s unbelievably beautiful. I only had about fifteen minutes to talk to her before she had to leave, but there was a real spark between us, you know? I told her we were still looking for the perfect Sarah. She nearly dropped her drink when she found out we had Beaumont, McCoy, and Hawkes already committed.”
    Kate gazed at her ex-husband. His beat-up baseball cap was emblazoned with the name of his first feature film,
Dead of Night.
She was struck again by the fact that he’d seemed to have changed so little in the past ten years. Sure, he drove a more expensive car and had a new, pricy address, and his résumé was now filled with an impressive list of both box office and critical hits, but aside from that, he was still a fourteen-year-old when it came to romantic relationships.
    And because of that, although she still felt a twinge of remorse for what might’ve been, she could look at him and feel no jealousy whatsoever when he talked about other women.
    He hadn’t been the man she’d hoped he was, and she’d grown out of him very quickly. She honestly didn’t want him anymore. Not as a life partner, anyway.
    Now, if only she could figure out what she
did
want.
    Virgil Laramie.
She wanted Virgil Laramie. And these days, he was coming to her in a package that looked exactly like Jericho Beaumont.
    Kate had been dreaming about an odd mix of both her character and the actor for weeks. In her mind they had begun to blend dangerously into one. And this wasn’t good, because although Jericho could
pretend
to be Laramie, he
wasn’t
Laramie.
    She knew that. She’d been reminding herself of that every chance she got.
    But when she closed her eyes, she could smell the slightly sweet, slightly spicy fragrance of Jericho’s cologne. He’d stood close enough for her to feel his body heat, close enough to feel his breath against her cheek.
    She hadn’t really expected him to sign the humiliating agreement she’d drawn up. Yet he had. He’d wanted the part of Laramie badly enough to place all control over his personal life into her hands.
    And after the initial shock had worn off, Kate had started to get excited about the possibilities. With 24/7 supervision, it was extremely unlikely that Jericho was going to fall back into his old habits. Even if he wanted to stray, he was going to be watched virtually all the time.
    The man Kate had hired to watch Jericho was a former marine named Bobby Hollander. Hollander was a huge, hulking, unfriendly looking bear of a man with an impressive set of credentials. It hadn’t been easy to find someone she could trust completely, but Hollander’s last job had been similar. He’d been hired to supervise the nineteen-year-old son of a Fortune 500 Company CEO. The kid had been through rehab but needed a little extra help staying sober once out of the hospital. She’d spoken with the CEO, and he’d given Hollander a glowing reference.
    Somehow, she got the feeling that Jericho Beaumont wasn’t going to like Hollander quite so much.
    Across the room Victor was still talking about Naomi—about how she looked enough like Susie McCoy to play the part of her older sister. Her hair was the same shade of golden blonde, and her mouth and chin had a remarkably similar shape. He was almost certain they could throw some extra lines of dialogue in for her without