up to see that Jake was gone. I briefly scanned the area, looking at all the faces, surprised to see that he’d disappeared.
And when I felt a twinge of disappointment, I shrugged it off completely.
The last thing I needed in my life was another rock star—no matter what the definition.
One had been plenty, and I had the tire tracks on my back to prove it.
Chapter Fifteen
Jake
Starting a book was never easy. At least not for me. The process was often tedious, requiring a lot of thought. I usually spent so much time trying to come up with a way to begin—something that sparked interest in the first few lines—that I needed a breather before I could even start.
I wanted something that would hook the reader, make them want to keep reading.
For me, the first few words were always the hardest. Always.
Hmm.
I thought about the hot chick with the coral hair—Presley Abrams—and smiled as my pen moved across the first line.
Once upon a time…
I stared at those four words for a moment, remembering Presley’s suggestion the first day I’d seen her in the coffee shop. She had been glancing down at those two puny words I’d had there at the time.
What would she think if she ever read my book? Would she remember that day? That particular conversation? I still remembered the sound of her voice, the way she looked at me when she spoke.
Another smile formed on my lips and I started writing.
Oh, who the fuck was she kidding?
Once upon a time only happened in fairy tales, and Kora Madison’s day-to-day was anything but. Sure, perhaps her life bore an eerie resemblance to a fairy tale Cinderella’s, but not in the sense of Prince Charming coming in to save the day.
It was Prince Charming, right? He was the hero in that book? Admittedly, it had been a long, long time since I’d read a fairy tale, if ever. I glanced over at my laptop, considered doing a little research. That quickly passed, though. If I started researching, I’d get lost in it. The first rule was to write, so that was what I chose to do.
If that were the case, Kora would be getting hot and sweaty in her Nissan Honda Civic with a sexy guy wearing leather and smelling like sin. Riding him hard and fast, making him gasp and moan, the same way he would be making her gasp and moan. All while they rocked the wheels of her tiny car on their way to oblivion.
The only part Kora resembled was the hot and sweaty, but it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with her nerves. Last she’d checked, she was the only one in her car, so it looked as though public sex was out of the question.
Hmm. Public sex. I liked the idea. Really liked the idea.
Glancing down at the paper, I decided to worry about the sex scenes later.
Okay, and no, she didn’t have a stepmother, either, wicked or otherwise, but she did have a sister. And well … wicked was one way to describe the woman who’d purposely slept with Kora’s longtime boyfriend, the man Kora had mistakenly believed one day she would marry. Granted, Sam wasn’t innocent in all of this, either—nor was his dick. In fact, the guy was a prick, a prick who had—behind Kora’s back—been screwing banging Kora’s sister for months.
Yep, I could sense it already, Sam was a total dick. The character women wanted to castrate because he was too stupid for air. Sleeping with your girlfriend’s sister? Not cool at all.
But Kora didn’t have time to dwell on that shit. She had more important things to focus on. Much more important. Like, how she was going to get past all the scathing glares when she walked into the restaurant where her sister’s baby shower was being held.
I imagined all of those people looking at my female lead, watching to see what she would do. But they were also admiring her, albeit secretly. She was the girl everyone wanted to be, even if they didn’t understand why.
Had she mentioned that not only was her sister wicked, she was also pregnant?
Yep, she was.
With Sam the Prick’s child.
Kora sighed and reached for the door handle. One breath at a time, she managed to push open the door, step out into the cool evening breeze, adjust her skirt, then force her legs to carry her away from her car.
My mind drifted to what shoes she’d be wearing. Not