“Sure. I’d still like to go with you and see Jolene perform sometime. Not as a date. Just one comic assessing another comic. Deal?”
“Sure.”
Cassie got into the car and headed down the drive.
She’d spent one day at the Corrigan estate. She didn’t want to risk losing out on this opportunity. Not even for someone as cute and funny as Zak Mercury.
CHAPTER 8
Rhett flipped his pillow back over and sank into it. The new side cooled him. For about three seconds.
He couldn’t sleep. Didn’t seem tired, even though he’d been up by six for weight training and it was already well past midnight now. Trouble always kept him awake, though, and it rained down with a capital “T”.
Trouble in the form of Randal James, to begin with. His mom—and all three sisters—had warned him about the model. He’d thought it was because she’d been Playmate of the Year and they wanted someone a little more respectable for him. Rhett had no intentions of settling down anytime soon, so their warnings flew past him.
Randi had an unbelievable body. That was what interested him. He could get good conversation from his family and friends. He’d simply needed a little mindless pleasure. The sex had been mind-blowing. Even thinking about Randi, Rhett’s body began to tense. She was that good in bed.
Despite the physical turn-on she produced in him, he’d begun to dread seeing her. Randi was smart and had let that slip. He’d let it pass and let her go back into pretend dumb blonde mode but he became wary after that.
Then she started the clingy behavior. Hinting at wanting more. Not more sex, though Lord knew they got plenty. Not more time with him since all she seemed to enjoy was sunbathing by his pool. Randal James wanted Rhett Corrigan’s ring on her finger. She was the last person he’d want to spend a lifetime with. Randi was manipulative, selfish, and played dirty.
As she had with Cassie.
Rhett had heard most of Cassie’s conversation with Breck and pieced together the rest. Cassie threatened Randi so she’d retaliated. And his new assistant and best friend thought they could keep news like that from him?
He realized that Breck had lowballed a few things along the way, downplayed others, and outright hid a few facts from him. His best friend’s intentions were solid, and whatever happened, he loved Breck all the same. Breck knew him, from the oldest of days, playing with Play-Doh and green army men, scaring each other with ghost stories that kept them up most of the night, all the way through voices dropping and pimples popping and getting their driver’s licenses and double-dating. Breck would move heaven and earth to protect him. Rhett knew that. Respected it. Would absolutely do the same for Breck.
This latest tire-slashing incident bothered him, though. It showed how really out of control Randi had become. It took every bit of acting Rhett had in him to saunter around the corner and lean against the door, scooping yogurt as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Of course, this particular yogurt helped him along, so delicious that it made him lose himself for a moment in it. Leave it to Cassie to find something like that.
That was Trouble Number Two. Cassie Carroll. She’d roared into his life like a bat out of hell. Totaled his favorite ride. Freaked out as much about the car as about him being famous. He’d surprised himself when he’d offered her a job out of the blue.
Was she good at it? Damn straight. She might come off as a little scatterbrained but she had worked a few miracles around the house in a single day. She and Breck were already thick as thieves. Shep followed her around with a sloppy grin on his face—and that was without her feeding the dog Nilla wafers.
Worst of all, Rhett felt like a middle schooler with a big-time crush.
He couldn’t say why. Cassie was pretty enough but he rarely bothered with a woman unless she was a twelve on a scale of one to ten. Cassie was a solid seven at first glance but as he got to know her, her winning smile and bright, blue eyes did something to him. Suddenly, that seven became a seventeen.
In the past, Rhett preferred his partners successful. He preferred women who made their own money and a lot of it because then he knew they weren’t after him for his. Cassie was poorer than a church mouse and lived on