They say love is blind, and in Lauren Rossi’s case, that’s certainly true…
Navigating life in LA is always a challenge, but after a series of dating disasters, romance novelist Lauren Rossi has finally met a decent, down-to-earth man in app developer Theo.
But the course of true love never runs smooth, and Lauren soon finds herself being tugged in different directions by A-lister Kane Sanders, brooding gym owner Cristian, and Mario, who’s going all-out to prove that he’s her biggest fan. Lauren loves to give her characters happily ever afters, but can she find her own?
Blurred Lines is a standalone romance novella in the Blackstone House series.
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The life of a romance writer…
Oh, wow. Gorgeous guy alert. Yes, yes, I had a boyfriend now, but I also had eyes. And this dude studying the menu board was way out of my league anyway. A six-pack rippling under a tight white V-neck shirt, muscular thighs poorly hidden by faded jeans that looked lived-in rather than artificially distressed, and a sexy-as-hell Adonis belt that disappeared under his waistband. Dark hair, dark eyes. A thin scar on his right cheek took him from hot-boy-next-door to slightly dangerous, and when he caught me staring at him and smiled, he had dimples. Freaking dimples. And he probably thought I was a kook.
Dammit.
I looked past him and waved at the next woman in the line. She glanced behind herself, understandably puzzled, but that was okay. Better for her to think I’d lost my mind than Mr. I’m-Too-Sexy-for-My-T-Shirt, and it wasn’t as if I’d try to strike up a conversation. No, I had words to pen. This was the very reason I came to Café au LA.
“Yes, Mr. Hotly. I’ll arrange that right away.”
I turned to leave my new boss’s office, but he stopped me with six short words, one tiny sentence with a much bigger meaning.
“We’re not done yet, Miss Rossi.”
We weren’t? But we’d covered every item on the agenda, and he’d been the one to set it. Mr. Hotly wasn’t like his predecessor. Mr. Dullard had left the agendas to me. Until last month, my job had been boring and predictable, the two of us arriving each morning at nine o’clock on the dot and leaving at five. Every cent had been accounted for, our roles tightly defined. The business had thrived. Under Mr. Dullard’s leadership, VD Enterprises had become California’s premier supplier of bathroom sanitary ware with showrooms in nine cities and a busy online store, a suitably uninspired business for a man who’d eaten a cheese-and-pickle sandwich for lunch every single day, washed down with tap water because who needed to pay extra for a bottle?
Mr. Dullard’s only rebellion against order had come in his passing, falling as he had from the mezzanine outside his office and landing in an oversized clawfoot bathtub on the floor below. The dent his head left meant we couldn’t even offer the tub as a sale item, a fact I knew would have upset him more than death itself. Write-offs caused him physical pain. I’d seen him clutch at his chest after a pallet of tiles fell off a forklift, although in hindsight, perhaps I should have encouraged him to seek medical help before he suffered the fatal heart attack.
Anyhow, Mr. Dullard’s nephew wasn’t like his uncle. No, he wasn’t a businessman at all, and he knew nothing about vanities, toilets, or anything else bathroom-related. He’d been working as a fitness model when he received the news that he’d inherited VD Enterprises, and now he was here with the rest of us, trying to figure out how to steer a rudderless ship. In jeans. And a T-shirt three sizes too small. At six thirty in the evening. Le sigh. I’d missed my yoga class, not that I’d wanted to go anyway—the amount of Lycra always made me feel inadequate.
“What else can I help you with, Mr. Hotly?”
“There’s been some concern about the build quality of the new prefabricated shower stalls. They don’t seem to be as strong as the previous model.”
“I haven’t heard any complaints.”
“The quality-control department raised the issue.”
“Really? I didn’t see that report.”
Which was strange because when Mr. Dullard had been in charge, the reports had come to me first to print and bind. He didn’t much like reading on a screen. He’d penny-pinched in every way, but we did have an unlimited supply of ink cartridges.
“I need you to help me with some testing downstairs.”
“Testing?”
I was a personal assistant. Quality control wasn’t a part of my job description. But instead of elaborating, Mr. Hotly led the way to the door.
“After you,” he said.
The spot where Mr. Dullard had taken his final swan dive was still roped off, a wilted bouquet bungeed to the broken railing. There’d been an investigation, a hundred questions from the police, but the autopsy had revealed the truth: blocked arteries. He’d stumbled out of his office, no doubt looking for help, and with panic snapping at his heels assisted by its cousin momentum, he’d smashed right through the wood. There’d been talk of ordering a memorial plaque, but nobody was sure if Mr. Dullard would approve of the expenditure. He was still with us in spirit, if not in body.
No, the body belonged to Mr. Hotly, and what a body it was. Rumour said he fought MMA in his spare time, and while I was a hot mess, he was more of an ice cream sundae—cool, lickable, and delicious. Half the women in the office had not-so-secret crushes on him, and as for the other half, they were probably just better at keeping their feelings quiet.
Me included.
Being Mr. Dullard’s assistant had been like driving a Chevy: safe, easy, and run-of-the-mill. Now I rode a roller coaster every time I came to work. Without a safety bar. Mr. Hotly was dangerous in every way—to my heart, to my sanity, and if the thin scar that curved across his right cheek was any indication, to every man who dared to get on the wrong side of him.
Stairs or elevator? Stairs or elevator? I usually took the elevator, but Mr. Hotly was a stairs guy. And the idea of being stuck in an enclosed space with all those pheromones…
“We’ll take the elevator,” he said.
Deep breaths, Lauren.
Meet Mr. Hotly…
“Cris, there’s a woman downstairs to see you. She says she found your wallet.”
Was it her? The blonde?
“Tell her I’ll be right there.”
Cristian Garza checked the security camera feed from the lobby, and there she was. The curvy beauty he’d considered delaying this afternoon’s meeting to talk to, only to back away when she didn’t look up from the notebook she was frantically writing in. That was when he’d removed the credit cards from his wallet and tossed it under her chair. He’d figured the odds of winning the game were twenty-five percent. Fifty-fifty that she’d find the wallet, and if she did, half a chance that she’d bother to return it. Call it fate, call it a test… If the barista or another customer picked it up, then the spark he’d felt wasn’t destined to become a flame. And if the blonde kept the cash, then he’d had a lucky escape.
Twenty-five percent… He wouldn’t have played those odds in Vegas, but today, he’d taken the risk, and the gamble had paid off. Cris rarely got distracted—in his old job, losing focus had meant risking death—but this woman had the face of a fucking angel.
As for the meeting, it had gone reasonably well. Terms had been agreed upon with a potential partner for the Planet Health nutrition products he wanted to produce, with just one sticking point: they wanted him to be the male face and body of the range. But he hated the idea of having his picture splashed across billboards all over the city. Models were two a penny in LA—let the marketing team pick someone hungry for the job while Cris stayed in the background. He’d spent his whole life in the shadows, and that was where he wished to remain.
He wasn’t budging on that issue.
When he first started Planet Health in the derelict former furniture showroom he’d purchased from a father he’d barely known, he’d never imagined that the brand would take off in the way it did. But online influencers had been attracted by the stripped-back industrial chic—necessary because Cris hadn’t been able to afford a proper fit-out—and then the juice bar he’d started because he didn’t have time to go elsewhere for lunch had turned into another money spinner. Now there were four branches of Planet Health in California with plans for two more, and Cris could eat wherever he damn well pleased.
Apart from today. Today, he’d been running late, so he’d dashed into a café to grab a sandwich instead of skipping lunch altogether. And that was where he’d caught the angel staring at him, presumably for longer than she’d intended seeing as she’d turned red and quickly pretended to be looking elsewhere when she realised he’d noticed.
And now she was here in his gym, her cheeks still flushed, her smile hesitant. Big blue eyes half-hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses watched his progress across the lobby, and when he got closer, she bit her lip. Hot damn. He should have blown off the meeting altogether. She would have been worth it.
