First Comes Like (Modern Love #3) - Alisha Rai Page 0,20
this particular duo. Young and fit and blond, they made a lot of nauseating fifteen-second videos about how in love they were with each other.
Jia had once seen the woman chuck her phone at her dear hubby’s head in the hot tub because he was scoping out another woman, so how much of their on-screen presence was genuine was up for debate.
“Have you met the new guy down the hall?” Ken asked his wife. “I heard he’s barely got ten thousand followers.”
Barbie sighed. “They’ll let anyone in here.” She cast a sideways, malicious glance at Jia.
She was getting too old for this, but Jia wasn’t so preoccupied that she couldn’t react. She straightened and gave Barbie a sweet smile. “Sorry, have we met?”
The blonde surveyed Jia from head to toe and then smirked and tossed her hair. “I think so. You’ve been around for a loooong time, haven’t you?”
In internet entertainment years, Jia was a grandma, but she didn’t like other people pointing that out.
Bitchiness activated. The elevator dinged, arriving at her floor. “I have. You have that collaboration with frozen pizza, right?”
She walked out of the elevator while Barbie sputtered. “It was that one time!”
Forcing someone who underestimated her to eat dirt was quite nice.
Jia, nice isn’t the word I’d use.
Jia wrinkled her nose at her mother’s chiding tone in her head. That’s what she got for going more than a few days without talking to her family; they invaded her subconscious.
Pettiness was one of her prime character flaws. She whipped out her phone and made a note as she walked. Pray on how to not be so bitchy. She hesitated, then deleted bitchy. She didn’t think higher powers were reading her notes app, but to be on the safe side, she replaced it with cranky.
Once inside the apartment, Jia kicked off her shoes and placed her bag on the granite counter in her kitchen. The place was pristine and cold. Lots of sunshine came through the windows, but she flipped on the recessed lighting anyway. Sometimes she had a little crew, but since she’d been a little light on content lately, she hadn’t called in her assistant or cameraperson.
She pulled the blinds higher, to let in as much natural light as possible, and also to procrastinate. She had a million things she could do. For one, she needed to start brainstorming ways to get her metrics back on track. Her emails were probably overflowing already today. She had that goody bag she’d brought with her; she could unbox that. Perhaps she could rehearse another at-home hair cutting tutorial with her long-haired friend Man E. Quinn.
Yes, she had a lot to do. A billion million things that had nothing to do with brooding over the fact that the sun had already gone down and up once since she’d first met Dev and he’d stared at her blankly.
The heroine stands in an empty, soulless apartment, her thoughts more melodramatic than a fifteen-year-old’s.
Her phone rang and she was disappointed to see it wasn’t her twin, but an unknown Los Angeles number. She answered it, already planning to yell at the scammer pretending to be from the IRS on the other end of the line. “Hello?”
“Ms. Ahmed.”
She flopped onto the couch, putting her feet up on the cushions. She’d fluff everything back up before she left. “No, I don’t want to buy any pills, I don’t believe you’re from the IRS, and I’m not giving you my Social Security number.”
The man paused. “I don’t want to sell you pills, I’m not from the IRS, and I don’t care to know your Social Security number. Is this Jia Ahmed?”
His musically accented voice pinged a memory in Jia’s brain and she sat up straight. “It is.”
“My name is Dev Dixit.”
Jia ran hot, then cold.
She was going to move on. Which was why she was going to hang up.
No, you are not.
She lowered her feet off the cushions. “Yes,” she bit off. “This is Jia. How can I help you, Mr. Dixit?”
There was a brief pause, probably because he was trying to reconcile her testy tone with her cool words. “We met briefly last night. I was the one who got stuck on your, ahem . . .”
“Shawl,” she supplied. Even the anonymous viewers who chided her if her skin was visible wouldn’t find that word scandalous, she didn’t think. “I know who you are. How can I help you.”
“I was calling because . . . well, I got the sense that I had upset