Page 11 of Ready, Willing and Abel

“Pictures?” Esme’s head tilts to the side a little with her question.

Tish hands over her tablet with the pictures on the screen.

“Oh damn. This looks like—” she looks up, her wide brown eyes finding mine. Then she tosses her head back and laughs.

And that’s it.

That’s the moment I know.

Esme is it for me.

All these years, all this waiting. All the Hollywood bullshit I’ve been fighting so hard to wade through. All the seemingly perfect women who haven’t been it, been anything to me … it’s all been leading to this moment. To this woman.

chapter

six

Esme

In most of the shots you can’t really see much of my face because it looks like I’m sucking him off. I ignore the shiver of pleasure that thrums through my body at the thought of this man’s dick in my mouth. But there is one shot in particular where I’m facing the camera, clearly right after I gave him my hat. I know it’s me. Mia would know it was me.

It’s doubtful anyone else would.

But still, this is obviously a problem for him. Because why would he want to be photographed with a fat farm girl?

I wipe the tears from my face because really? Who else would this happen to but me? That whole day was just like from Bizzaro World.

I hand the publicist—I think she said her name was Tish—back the tablet.

“Well, that’s kinda embarrassing,” I say. Not really because I’m embarrassed, but because I’m sure he is. I glance up to find him watching me. “Sorry.”

He frowns. “Why are you sorry?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. My field? My brilliant idea to cut off your pants.”

“Your brilliant idea saved me from a lot of pain.”

“Wait, so it really was about a cactus?” Tish asks.

He rolls his eyes. “I told you that.”

“I thought you were just making it up,” the publicist says.

“No. I legitimately fell into a cactus, or cacti. To be honest, I didn’t look to see if it was one or more than one. She had to cut my jeans off because they were burrowing the spines deeper into my skin. It hurt like a mother fucker.”

“Interesting. Well, regardless. I need you to sign this.” Tish holds her tablet back out to me.

“Is that a fucking NDA?” Abel asks.

Tish ignores him.

“I told you she didn’t need to sign anything like that. I think she’s proven she’s trustworthy. She could have sold pictures of me or the story,” Abel says.

“I would never,” I say.

He holds his hand out. “See?”

“I’m sure she’s very trustworthy, but someone has to have your best interests at heart,” Tish says.