work ethic. This gave dedication a whole new meaning. I thought about the sacrifices I’d made in my life and was instantly filled with regret. The fact that I’d ever felt bad for myself was astonishing in the face of this…this…I couldn’t even find the right words for it. But I knew one thing. Izzy deserved better.
It made me even more determined to make Beyond Sunset a hit. It was time we both saw some rewards for our labors.
That thought shook me from my daze.
I ignored the strange looks my idling Mercedes was getting and pressed a button on the dash, the automatic convertible top clicking back into place. As I turned off the ignition and exited the car, I wondered what the odds were of it still being here when I came out.
But that was the least of my worries.
The only thought in my head was getting Izzy out of this place—permanently.
And that started today, maybe even at the Maxwell’s party.
Chapter Ten
Izzy
“Have I told you lately how much I hate you?” Fallon asked.
I grunted as I tried to pull Carolina’s skirt up over my thighs. “Once or twice.”
Her sigh from my phone's speaker was melodramatic, even for Fallon. “You’re just so lucky!”
I couldn’t argue with her there. I knew that from where Fallon was sitting—in a dorm room in Ohio—my life was looking glamorous. But then again, she didn’t see how hard I’d been working, or the ridiculously unglamorous way I was trying to smash myself into a too-small leather skirt.
I looked up at Carolina with a disappointed sigh and shook my head. “Not gonna work. Not unless I lose ten pounds in the next ten minutes.”
Carolina’s face fell and I felt a stupid surge of guilt for disappointing her. The more I got to know my roommates, the more I liked them. Even Carolina, the cold as ice Russian supermodel. Turned out she was actually pretty sweet, just permanently hungry.
And often hangry.
“Maybe I have something bigger,” she said in that thick Russian accent, holding a hand out to take back the skirt as I shimmied myself out of it. “I’ll be back.”
I heard Fallon’s snicker from my phone’s speaker as Carolina retreated. “Does she know she sounds like the Terminator when she says that?”
I reached for the sundress Becca had told me to try on.
Henry’s sudden change of plans for today’s meeting had us all scrambling to reconfigure the game plan. It seemed to be a point of pride for my roomies that their least-fashionable friend didn’t embarrass them in front of Henry Landon and the powers that be in this town.
Ashley was currently shouting at me from the bathroom. Something about how we forgot the eyebrow gel, whatever that meant.
“Be right there!” I shouted back.
I turned to the phone. “You never answered.”
“You want the scoop on Henry and Elena?” Fallon laughed. “I can’t believe it. Miss ‘I’m too cool for Hollywood celebrity gossip’ is coming to me for help.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fallon, don’t make me regret this.”
Her laughter was a familiar, calming sound in the background and a pleasant distraction from the chaos going on outside my room as my roommates scrambled to help me not make a fool of myself at Martina Maxwell’s house.
Martina Maxwell!
I still couldn’t believe it. My mom was going to freak when I told her that I was going to her favorite singer’s house.
“Last I heard they were back together,” Fallon said. “But honestly, it’s too hard to keep up with those two. They could have broken up again yesterday for all I know.”
I stared at the phone as my stomach flip-flopped; diving down toward the ground at the news that Henry was taken and then soaring like I was on a roller coaster at the thought that maybe he wasn’t dating the flawless Elena Rhodes.
I tugged the sundress over my head and muttered a curse under my breath. It shouldn’t matter one way or the other if he was taken.
We were nothing more than business partners.
Just like me and Leo.
With the friend ESP we’d honed so well over nearly two decades, Fallon said, “Izzy, do you have the hots for Henry? I mean, I totally get it if you do, but I thought you were into the screenwriter.”
I made a face at the phone, wishing I wasn’t so easy to read. Even I was confused about my feelings, but I didn’t want to admit it. I mean, it was pathetic enough that I’d gone and fallen for a guy I’d