Chapter Three

I wake with a start. My heart is racing and my cheeks are wet. It’s been a while since I had this nightmare, but I don’t have time to consider why it’s back haunting me again. It’s six a.m. It’s my first morning in Morocco, and there’s someone thumping loudly on my hotel room door.

“Just a moment!” I holler, my voice thick with sleep. At the same time I scoop up all the icy remnants of my nightmare and dump them at the back of my mind. I’m pretty skilled at that. I’ve had sixteen years of practice.

To the chorus of more knocking, I root through a suitcase that’s more books than clothes and throw on a pair of khaki shorts and a white vest top. After scraping my hair into a loose ponytail and tucking the stray strands of my bangs behind my ears, I open the door and stand blinking in the bright sunlight. The next thing I know, a cute-looking blonde in denim cutoffs and a tight blue T-shirt is thrusting a wad of paper into my hands.

“Hi, you must be Charlie. I’m Rachel, Jake’s assistant,” she chirps, her mega-watt smile pinning me to the doorframe like a hot, white spotlight. “I figured I’d swing by and say hello. Here’s a copy of the latest script. Jake changed it again last night.”

“Th-thanks,” I stammer. That’s too much information before my first espresso. She’s not much older than me and she seems nice enough. A little lightweight maybe… A little too upbeat… Then again, I’m used to Lucy and her bulldozer personality.

Rachel gives me a quick once-over, then frowns. “Are you ready to go? Our car’s waiting downstairs. It leaves for the studios at seven.” She consults her watch with a brisk flick of her wrist, and something tells me her immaculate bob haircut isn’t just a quirk of fate. “It’s ten-to already.”

“Uh, sure,” I say, feeling ambushed. “Can I have a minute to brush my teeth?”

Rachel flicks her wrist at me again. “Better make that thirty seconds…” She trails off as her phone starts chiming. She reads the message and her face drops before she’s backing away from me at top speed. “I’ll, um, meet you downstairs,” she calls out over her shoulder.

When I join her in the back of our jeep, she’s pounding away on her iPad as if her life depends on it.

“Is everything okay?” I venture cautiously, reaching around for my seat belt.

She shakes her head. “Jake arrived this morning without telling anyone. Caught an early flight. Bam! Just like that. Not even his L.A. team knew. He’s already at the studios—”

And already raising hell, if her expression is anything to go by.

She’s left the sentence hanging on purpose and it’s got me drawing some serious conclusions about Jake Dalton. She looks dead nervous, but about what? Jake? Being caught on the hop? She keeps gnawing at her bottom lip with small, very white teeth.

“Is he a relentless asshole all the time, or are we blessed with brief periods of remission?” I blurt out suddenly.

Her head jerks up in shock. “Excuse me?”

“I heard the rumors.” My off-switch is malfunctioning again.

“I really don’t think—”

“Is it true he’s alienated half of Hollywood with his behavior?”

Her mouth drops open. I’m not playing by the rules that a deferential new assistant should abide by. “I don’t know what you think you’ve heard, Charlie, but Jake’s an amazing producer.”

If you say so. My verdict is still very much out, somewhere in amongst the golden sand dunes that are coating the horizon.

Our driver hits the accelerator and we rumble out of the hotel parking lot at a slow crawl. Rachel can’t stop staring at me, and I know what’s being concluded beneath that flawless makeup of hers. I’m just another outspoken film crew wannabe with an out-of-control set of bangs that dips indolently into her eyelashes.

But it’s all a front. I’m all about the contradictions. No one knows the real truth about me, not even Lucy, and she’s the closest thing I have to family. Yeah, my real one was shattered a long time ago.

“Are you always this direct?” Rachel splutters eventually.

Get the words in first so that no one has a chance to wound me with theirs.

“Bad habit,” I mumble, regretting my outburst. Day one, and I’m already topping her shit list.

“I see.”

I think she does, as well. Something tells me that she’s a lot more astute than her ditzy image implies. A smile starts playing at the corner of her lips—completely sincere, no catty connotations. All of a sudden, I don’t want to be on her shit list anymore—I want to be her friend.

“Max will adore that about you, but I’d rein it in around Jake,” she advises gently. “He’s not such a fan of other people’s opinions.”

That’s never going to happen, but I don’t tell Rachel.

Ten minutes later we’re being waved through a security station. Up ahead, the Moroccan film studio is laid out before us in a sprawling confusion of dusty-brown buildings and warehouses. We park up next to one and exit the jeep, a pack of stray dogs surging forward from the shadows to greet us with energetic barks. In the distance I can see the soaring peaks of the Atlas Mountains conquering the landscape like an army of craggy-faced militia. I swipe my palm across my brow. It’s still early, but already the desert heat is intense.

We pick our way through our flea-bitten welcome committee and enter a large office block. There’s a pervasive smell of rotten wood, and each desk is coated with a light sheen of dust. I count five in total as Rachel heads toward the window shutters. The swollen latch gives way to her frantic tugging and the room is flooded with the rose-tinted hues of early morning.

“Fancy a coffee?” she says, catching me yawning.

My reply is lost to a loud crash as the production office door is booted open.

“Rachel!” bellows the newcomer, her black ponytail bouncing in agitation behind her skinny shoulders. “Jake is kicking off about the costumes again. He’s demanding last-minute changes to everything and we don’t have the time. Somebody has to speak to him about it.”

“Well, he’s never going to listen to me, is he?” says Rachel calmly, switching the kettle on. “Is you-know-who here yet? He’s the only one who can calm Jake down when he’s in this sort of mood.”

“I am. And not a fucking chance,” drawls a voice as a delectable-looking man in his mid-twenties strolls into the room. He’s wearing navy combat shorts, black high-top Chucks, and a pale blue-and-white-striped Ralph Lauren shirt. His dark hair is so long and unruly that it’s curling around the tip of his collar. “Sorry, Rach, but I refuse to face the firing squad this early in the morning. Not voluntarily, anyway.”

“Who’s that?” I hiss at her. Tall and lithe with shoulders as broad as his smirk, he’s so good-looking he must be a movie star.

Rachel shoots me an incredulous look and mouths his name at me.

Oh, shit.

That’s Max Dalton?

My new boss…

“But he looks so, um…young?” I whisper.

“You mean attractive,” she says, blushing slightly.

Max grinds to a halt when he spots me lurking behind Rachel. “What have we here?” he says, eyeing me with interest. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure. You must be my latest…assistant?”

“And you must be British,” I shoot back in surprise. I can’t help it. His accent isn’t the cool California drawl that I was expecting from a member of the Dalton Hollywood dynasty.

Everyone turns to stare at me.

“I prefer Trans-Atlantic mongrel myself,” says Max, looking amused. “My mother gave me the accent, but not a lot else.”

“I dare you to call your brother that,” mutters the aggrieved costume designer to my left.

“Max, this is Charlotte Winters,” says Rachel, ignoring her, and pouring out two steaming mugs of coffee.

It better be the strongest damn hit of caffeine I’ve ever had. Max is even better looking close-up, and he knows it, too.

“It’s Charlie, actually,” I say, sticking out my hand awkwardly.

“I had a friend called Charlie once,” he muses, taking my hand and grinning lazily at me. “He didn’t look half as tempting as you do, though.”

Did he really just say that?

“Rachel, come quick.” A large man clutching a walkie-talkie erupts into the office to join the melee. “The art department is staging a mutiny. Jake hates the new set design and he’s threatening to raze studio six to the ground.”

This place is quickly filling up with a whole lot of Dalton disapproval. My eyes swivel sideways to find Rachel’s. What did she call Jake again? An “amazing” producer? He sounds more like a petulant man-child who delights in throwing his budgets out of the stroller.

“Welcome to the madhouse.” Max relinquishes my hand with some reluctance. “You can always tell my brother has arrived by the mounting hysteria amongst his loyal subjects.”

I laugh, despite myself. He’s clearly a degenerate and a raging heartbreaker but I like Max Dalton immediately.

“That’s not all he’s threatening to do,” says Rachel, her cheeks coloring again as she thrusts a mug into my hand. She starts to list off Jake’s latest misdemeanors, when there’s a scuffle in the hallway outside and a loud, mocking voice reverberates off the cracked terracotta tiling.

“I don’t give a fuck about their pride. If they want to stay working on my movie, they’ll have that set fixed by lunch.”

Rachel stops talking abruptly as a dark shadow approaches the doorway. Seconds later, Jake Dalton steps into the room. Pausing to whip off his Ray Bans, he straightens his back and turns to glare at us.

Oh. Good. God.

The breath catches in my throat as everything—my heartbeat included—judders to a halt…but not before the safety barrier is breached and I’m left hurtling into a void.

Unnerved, I take a slurp of my coffee, but it goes down the wrong way and I start to splutter liquid in all directions. The magazine photo hasn’t done him any justice whatsoever. His glory is only amplified a thousand times in the flesh. There are no flaws or glitches, just a fallen angel’s perfect symmetry.

Jake’s tousled black hair is scraped back off his face but as he stands there filling the doorway with all his moody machismo, stray tendrils keep escaping and drifting into his blazing brown eyes. His skin is the color of rich honey, his jaw is darkened with stubble, deliciously so, and he’s tall, really tall. Well over six feet. Black jeans hang low off lean hips, and the sleeves of his black shirt have been pushed up to display thick, muscular forearms.

Wiping coffee off my chin, I can only gaze and gaze at him. For once, I’m all out of smart words. I’m all out of laughter.

There is nothing remotely funny about Jake Dalton.