Glamour Girl (West Coast Girlz: Book Two)
Read Glamour Girl (West Coast Girlz: Book Two) Online
Authors: Sandra Edwards
Tags: #Contemporary Romance
GLAMOUR GIRL
by
Sandra Edwards
Glamour Girl
Copyright © 2012 Sandra Edwards
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from Sandra Edwards.
Published by Amazon KDP
Seattle, WA
Electronic KDP Edition: July, 2012
This book is a work of fiction and all characters exist solely in the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any references to places, events or locales are used in a fictitious manner.
Rosanna Carmichael’s career is one of glitz and glamour. She’s a photographer to the stars and the privileged. It’s her personal life that’s the problem. She just can’t seem to land a decent date. After getting fed up and swearing off new dates, she agrees to do a photo shoot for the wealthy recluse Gavin Elliot—a man who’s openly gay—where she thinks she'll be safe from further disappointing entanglements. As it turns out, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Glamour Girl
is the second installment of the
West Coast Girlz
trilogy.
California Girl
and
Glamour Girl
can be read out of order, but for full enjoyment potential,
Party Girl
should be read last.
CHAPTER 1
Blind date #27 (so far this year)
ROSANNA CARMICHAEL STOLE A PEEK
at her watch. 7:35. She sucked in a deep sigh and tried to stifle it by locking her lips. Funny how time drags when you’re bored. She’d arrived at the restaurant all of twenty minutes ago.
The waitress had just set the salad dishes in front of Rosanna and her date, and Rosanna coached herself to be nice and suffer through dinner just to keep from being mean. Pete—the guy Valerie Johnston had fixed her up with—seemed like a nice enough guy. His main failing, so far, was that he wasn’t Rosanna’s type. No crime there, just a fact.
Rosanna grabbed her fork and stabbed at the lettuce, spearing a piece. Just as she was about to pop it into her mouth, Pete said, “That’s a lovely dress.”
Geez, did he have to be so nice? Why wasn’t she ever attracted to the good guys? “Thank you.”
“Designer?”
She nodded.
“Sounds expensive.”
Rosanna shrugged. “I guess you can call it my guilty pleasure.”
“It’s frivolous,” he said in a much sterner voice.
“Excuse me?” Surely she’d heard him wrong.
“It’s a waste of money.”
“What?”
“If we’re to be together, you’ll have to change your spending habits.”
Okay, so she hadn’t heard him wrong. And more than anything else, it pissed her off. “What?” she asked again, but in a heightened tone of anger.
“I can’t tolerate such a waste of money.”
“You seem to be forgetting one thing.” She tossed her fork onto her plate.
“What’s that?”
“The money I’m
wasting
is mine,” she said. “Not yours.”
He laughed. Not a jovial laugh, but more of a cackling one, dismissing her. “That’s why girls like you need a man like me…to keep you on the right track.”
To hell with being nice. “Let’s get one thing clear.” Rosanna grabbed her clutch from her lap and pushed her chair back as she stood. “Aside from the fact that I feel absolutely nothing when I look at you…” Rosanna’s anger was about to pound her heart out of her chest. “I have my own level of tolerance. You’ve crossed it. And in light of that, I’m sure you’ll understand my early departure. Thanks for the drink. The date’s over.”
“I’ll call you,” he said, as she headed for the door.
Rosanna tossed a wave over her shoulder but kept moving forward. Leaving the restaurant, she was careful not to let her frustrations escape with each step she took, otherwise she’d be stomping.
“Come on, Rosanna. Go out with Pete. You won’t regret it.” She mocked Valerie, the person responsible for this debacle. “I promise you. He’s a great guy. Successful. Handsome.” Rosanna shook her head and hit the button on her key fob, unlocking the driver’s door on her Lexus. “Yeah—” She took on her own voice as she yanked open the door. “—Too bad you forgot to mention that he’s also a nut case!” Normally, Rosanna liked a man with an edge, but not one who’d chastise her for spending her own money.
She climbed inside the car, shut the door and started the engine. Rosanna maneuvered the Lexus into the light evening traffic. Recent attempts from her friends, acquaintances and coworkers to hook her up scrolled through her mind. There was Stan the neat-freak—now Rosanna had nothing against cleanliness, but ironing one’s socks was a bit much. And who could forget Jimmy, the guy who thought he was God’s gift to women and it was his duty to spread himself around. Course that was nothing compared to Mike, who thought everyone was out to get him.
“That’s it!” she said, turning left at the signal.
No more blind dates
.
CHAPTER 2
THE NEXT MORNING
, Rosanna was up early. She’d thrown a few outfits and other essentials into her suitcase, grabbed her Canon 5D Mark II, the 50D and a variety of lenses, and headed out.
Her latest assignment, a photo shoot with the reclusive Gavin Elliot, couldn’t have come at a better time. He lived, isolated, up in the Sierra Nevada foothills wine country, so the chances of being set up on new blind dates were slim, and he wasn’t likely to hit on her since he was openly gay.
Maybe while she was gone her friends would move on to some other poor schmuck who couldn’t land a decent date.
Rosanna loaded her bags into the car, drove to the 5 and headed north, jumping over to Hwy 99 around Fresno. After driving nearly five hours, which included a few stops, she found the roadside inn she’d booked for the trip.
She climbed out of the car and moved toward the trunk, stopping to gaze around the small town set picturesquely against the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada foothills. The scenery was pretty enough, but too quiet, too secluded to suit her. She’d be bored to tears long before she wrapped up her assignment and left this place.
Rosanna lugged her bags into room number four, which was two doors down from the office. After settling in, she thought about grabbing an early dinner before heading out to Gavin Elliot’s latest venture, Mirabelle Winery.
Hopefully, he had some nice views and she could get a few twilight shots. Those always paid well.
She hoped he didn’t ask her to taste his wine. Rosanna wasn’t much of a wine drinker. She was more of a champagne kind of girl. She’d heard people argue that champagne was wine, but Rosanna supposed that was only because they’d never tasted a decent champagne.
Stomach growling, she snatched the brochure off the small table by the window and opened it. There were two restaurants advertised inside. “I guess room service is out of the question.” She shrugged and perused the menus for both places. Nothing jumped off the pages to entice her taste buds. She closed the brochure and propped it onto the table.
Glancing around the dreary room, she backed up and sat down on the bed, raking her hand over the bedspread, which felt a little too rough for her tastes. It was one of those dull, dingy brown and orange striped jobs. It came with matching curtains, which Rosanna was sure had once been tarps in a previous incarnation. The dark brown carpeting on the floor came as no surprise. Topping off the decor, a gigantic painting hung on the wall above her bed—a weird, orange, red and yellow sunflower-looking thing with a red and green—yes, green—center.
Rosanna sucked in a breath and reached for her purse. “Well, you wanted to be isolated from the riff-raff you’ve been dating lately...” she said, digging around for her cell phone. Latching onto it, she decided to give Gavin Elliot a call.
The call didn’t go as smoothly as she’d imagined. Mr. Elliot wasn’t as nearly supportive of the idea as one would expect. After all, it was his parent company, Elliot Enterprises—and there was no coincidence in them having the same name—that had set up the photo shoot in the first place. Yet, he seemed overtly put out as he rattled off directions to the house.
She stuffed her phone in her purse, grabbed her car keys and her camera bag, thinking,
this might not turn out to be a boring shoot after all!
Twenty minutes and a long, winding road later, Rosanna rolled to a stop behind a new tricked-up Jeep Wrangler Unlimited on a spacious, tiled driveway. At first glance, it looked like a typical forty thousand dollar ride. But on closer inspection, it was obvious that the gold color was a custom paint job, as were the tires and rims. And, if she could get a look inside, she’d bet there were all kinds of amenities that didn’t come as standard equipment on the vehicle.
Gavin Elliot had good taste.
Rosanna shifted her own car into park, cut the engine and pulled the key from the ignition. Opening the door, she grabbed her purse and stepped outside. The brisk mountain air blew past. It was a bit chillier than down in L.A. She reached into the back seat and grabbed the light sweater she always kept hanging in the car. She’d learned from experience that she could never tell when a facility’s air conditioning—or the higher elevations—were going to freeze her out.
After slipping into her sweater, she walked up to the house and followed a flagstone trail around to the double front doors. The scent of the Arabian Jasmine climbing over the entryway wafted past her. She let the smell entrance her before pressing the doorbell off to the side.
A man in his late thirties to early forties opened the door and stared at her. His blond hair, blue eyes, and handsome face were easy on the eyes.
“Hi.” She smiled. “Gavin Elliot?”
He smirked at her. “You must be the photographer.” He stepped back and waved her inside. “Come on.”
She followed him through the house to a large, open family room with windows lining the far wall. The view—rolling hills behind a wooden deck with a sunken hot tub—was magnificent.
He gestured toward a couch facing the windows and waited until she sat. When she did, he took the chair kitty-cornered from her. “So you think you can wrap these pictures up tonight?”
“Tonight?” she repeated. Surely she’d heard him wrong.
“Tomorrow then.” He was serious, and less than compliant.
“Honestly...” She tried not to laugh. “A shoot like the one you’ve asked me to do typically takes two or three days to get the right shots. But weather permitting, I guess anything’s possible.”
“Nonsense.” He frowned and shook his head. “I expect you to...” His words trailed off as he looked over Rosanna’s shoulder. Silence filled the room and he looked away sheepishly.
Rosanna looked over her shoulder to see what had shut him up. In the archway behind her stood one of the—okay, possibly the best-looking man she’d ever seen. His blond hair was not unlike Gavin’s, although a bit darker, and complemented his sapphire eyes that were dancing with amusement. But all that was just icing on top of one very sexy body. Quickly, she scrolled through her mental list of true blue hotties, but couldn’t come up with a single one that topped this guy.