Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,201

saying the lines like a robot, I meant them—I wanted out of there. Immediately. My breath was coming in short gasps and my head was beginning to spin. I wanted to say the stupid lines as quickly as possible so I could turn and run out of the room and never look back—maybe run all the way back to Maine.

“I think we’ve seen enough, Leo,” said the woman at the desk. “Thank you, Sophie. We’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, and turned to leave. Before I could, Leo took my wrist, stopping me. I looked at his hand, smooth and lightly tanned, his fingers easily circling my small wrist.

He leaned in slightly and said, “A little advice? Eye contact is a good thing.” His thumb ran across my wrist. “Okay?”

I turned my eyes up to look at him, so close I felt the walls closing in. Now I could finally see it all, everything that even the best telephoto lens couldn’t pick up—the sharp lines of his face, the smooth skin of his cheeks, and his lips, full and gorgeous. I had to remind myself of the lies those lips told and the hearts they broke. With heat prickling my face, I turned to leave just as the next girl walked in. Taller, thinner and more beautiful than anyone had a right to be.

“Leo, this is Amber Hastings, also reading for the role of Grace. Sophie, thank you, we’ll call you,” Peggy said to nudge me on my way. I looked toward the others at the table, and noticed the guy in the corner eating his sandwich laughing softly.

As I left I heard someone say, “Isn’t there some vetting process in place? Why are we wasting our time on these amateurs?”

I made my way through the door, brushing shoulders with the girl going in. I wanted to take off at a full sprint, putting as much distance behind me as I could from what was surely the end of my short career in journalism. One thing was clear—I’d blown it.

Chapter 4

“I promise, you’ve never seen anything like this,” I said to Ava Marie, my roommate, later that evening. The audition was late in the day so I’d gone straight home afterward. “It was like I didn’t even speak English. I didn’t get one line out correctly. And I heard them making fun of me on the way out.” I bit into another nacho cheese chip with plans to finish the entire bag.

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” said Ava Marie as she stretched on the floor, her legs spread in an almost perfectly straight line.

“No, I promise you, it was. They’re probably all sitting in some fancy bar drinking martinis and laughing over the worst audition they’ve ever seen.” I crunched on another chip, trying not to see Leo Armstrong’s face. I rubbed my wrist where he touched me, getting orange dust on my skin in the process. It felt good to talk about. I didn’t have any friends in L.A.—yet—and Ava Marie was someone who knew the ropes.

I didn’t tell her, but I hoped she could help me with my column, once I finally started on it in the true sense of things. I figured we could go out on the town together, checking out the hot spots. She knew I worked at Crush, but I had told her that I was also thinking about getting into acting. In a town like this, it wasn’t unusual. What I didn’t tell her was that I was working undercover on a story to expose Leo Armstrong’s caddish ways.

Ava Marie pulled both her legs together in front of her, flexed her heels and leaned over her knees. She had what could only be described as the perfect body—long, lean, strong but not too muscular. A dancer’s body—which she was. A dancer, I mean.

“I don’t think you get it,” I said, cringing when I thought of the way those people looked at me when I read the lines. Siri had more personality than I did. “There was this guy sitting in a corner eating a sandwich during the whole thing. I think he was the janitor, Ava Marie, and even he was laughing at me.”

“Look, Sophie,” Ava Marie said. “I don’t know you very well. We’ve only lived together a couple of weeks. But one thing you should know about me is that I don’t lie, and I don’t bullshit. So if you’re looking to me to give you sympathy for this one