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Prologue
I gripped the door handle of the rental car and stared out the windshield into the blinding snow, listening to the frantic motion of the windshield wipers fighting a losing battle. The thought crossed my mind that this little joyride wasn’t the brightest idea I’d ever had. In fact, it might possibly rank right up there with the time I decided to try fake eyelashes before the homecoming dance my sophomore year in college and ended up gluing my eye shut. That bad idea resulted in a trip to the emergency room instead of dancing the night away with the gorgeous frat boy who had asked me out. Come to think of it, all my poor choices usually involved a guy. Case in point: I glanced over at Drake Foster, world’s sexiest man alive, a.k.a. my boss, white-knuckling the steering wheel as he drove us straight into a blizzard over a mountain pass.
A list of all the poor decisions I had made leading me to this semi-terrifying situation assaulted my overstimulated brain. Drake’s moody, sensual scent with a hint of spice had a way of sending my endocrine system into a tizzy. Like all the hormones and glands in my body were talking to each other—some screaming like my great-grandfather who only knew how to speak French. You have never been properly yelled at unless it’s in French. Man, do I miss Grandpa Julien. I could really use a good yelling at for my latest poor decision.
You see, my boss—or SMA as I called him, at least in private when I talked to my sister, Isabelle, who to her credit had tried to talk me out of this latest round of poor choices—had just wrapped up filming his latest action movie in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, of all places. We were supposed to fly back to LA but a freak snowstorm the first week of October appeared, closing the airport. I say appeared, when it was really more like the ushering in of the apocalypse, but instead of fire, we were going to be consumed by tiny ice crystals. Drake was already peeved that filming had gone two weeks past the original wrap-up date. He had an important meeting with Giorgio Smith (I still couldn’t figure out the fancy first name paired with the plainest last name of all time), the hottest director in Hollywood. And come hell or high water, he was going to make it. More like hell had come and it was literally freezing over.
“We can drive to Idaho and take a private plane from there,” Drake had said just hours ago.
“Uh, I think I’ll wait this one out.” That was a totally smart reply. Like, genius. Unfortunately, my glands and hormones started yelling at each other again. This is where my first poor choice occurred in this whole fiasco. Well . . . unless you count three years ago when I took this job, knowing full well I was going to fall head over heels for the debonair Drake Foster, despite his reputation as one of Hollywood’s biggest playboys. But that’s another story.
Drake had drawn closer and given me his signature dampened smile with pressed lips. The one that said, Not only am I in total control of every emotion I own, but I’ll control yours too, and once I’ve accomplished that, I’ll take your heart and soul just for the fun of it. “Come on, Charlotte,” he’d whispered, “I can barely tie my shoes without you. You have to come back with me.”
That was a lie. He was totally capable, but I longed to believe that he needed me, so I went with it. Yes, it was a big mistake.
The next poor choice was looking into his sea-green eyes shrouded in the thickest, darkest eyelashes in the history of all human existence. Those hypnotic beauties set off an entire chain reaction in my endocrine system. My hormones started chanting things that would make my mother blush. Next, he scrubbed a hand over his scruffy, carved-to-perfection jawline, which he darn well knew I was a sucker for, to remind me he was no mere mortal. If that wasn’t enough, his sneaky hand ran up through his tousled sandy-brown hair that curled perfectly above his ears. Oh, the curls—they were to die for. And judging by this blizzard, I might very well die for them.
He’d sealed my fate when he leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I’ll keep you safe.” Then he’d kissed my cheek. His lips on my skin sent my glands into overdrive. Hence, I found myself in a rented SUV, crawling behind a semi, in the dark, in the worst snowstorm I had ever experienced, praying I would live long enough for my sister, who I affectionately called Izzy, to yell at me for getting into the freaking car before telling me to quit for the hundredth time. For some reason she didn’t think it was emotionally healthy for me to work for the object of my desire while he dated every single one of his leading ladies. And in between those relationships, he was known to rekindle with Marissa Petra, his on-again, off-again girlfriend and the sexiest woman alive, or as I liked to call her, SOS—Sister of Satan. I was sure she was plotting to kill her brother and take over the realms of hell.
