“When you said I could spend the summer with you while you filmed your movie, this isn’t what I had in mind,” Sally says from the back seat of my rented SUV. My best friend is staring at the shop-front of the day spa in abject horror. “You actually have to do this for your job?”
“It’s in the contract. She has to do it,” Ramon says, meeting her gaze in the rearview with a wink. “You don’t, beautiful.”
Sally’s cheeks go scarlet. If she’s not careful, her glasses are going to fog up. I swat my personal assistant on the knee.
“Ow—”
“Stop doing that to her,” I hiss. “She’s an innocent. From Oklahoma. She has no natural defenses against Puerto Rican pheromones like yours.”
Ramon brings his lazy gaze back to Sally’s reflection. “They are rare and potent pheromones,” he purrs, and I hear Sally’s breath catch. Ramon has been teasing and flirting with her since he picked us up at the airport last night, and her blush tells me she’s taking it a little too seriously.
It’s understandable. Sally and I have just spent the last two weeks hiking a one-hundred-fifty-mile section of the Appalachian Trail for our vacation—just the two of us. Every guy we encountered needed at least three showers and two shaves before any of them could be considered flirt-worthy.
Ramon is clean, coiffed, and one hundred percent gorgeous. He’s also one hundred percent trouble.
“Cut it out, Ray,” I scold him before twisting around to face my best friend. “Steer clear of him. He doesn’t do monogamy.”
Sally’s mouth opens and closes like she’s a landed fish. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—”
I hold up a hand. “I know you weren’t. It’s not you. It’s him.” I shoot Ramon a glare before looking back at Sally. “And, you know he’s bi, right? So you’d have to be paranoid about all the guys in addition to the other girls.”
Sally’s shocked gaze snaps to Ramon.
He shrugs, his grin a sinister curling of lips. “It’s true. I love both beautiful women and men.”
But instead of clapping her hand over her mouth in embarrassed horror as the Sally I went through puberty with would have done, she closes her gaping mouth, visibly swallows, and licks her lips, looking… thoughtful.
Even though Ramon has worked for me for three years, this is the first time they’ve met face to face. No one else is allowed on our AT hikes—that time is ours alone—and between Sally’s school schedule at the University of Oklahoma and my work schedule, she hasn’t visited me in L.A. since our senior year of high school. She’s not equipped to handle Ramon and all his Ramon-ness.
I clap my hands to get her attention.
“Seriously, Sal. Here be dragons.”
These two people are, hands down, my favorite people in the world. And as awesome as they both are, I can’t have them hooking up, and in Ramon’s case, screwing up, and jacking up my life. It may sound selfish, but at this point in my career, it needs to be smooth sailing, and that can’t happen if the people I care about most in the world can’t stand to be in the same room together.
Or, for example, the same car.
“And I thought you’d be cranky after the asshole waxing,” Ramon mutters.
Sally gasps and I choke.
“What?!”
“Moira didn’t tell you? She booked legs, armpits, and the full Brazilian.”
I clench my jaw. Goddamned Moira. “The contract didn’t say anything about me needing a Brazilian wax. It said bikini. I know. I read the whole thing.”
“You—” Sally squeaks, her eyes as wide as goose eggs, “have to wax your…”
“No,” I say firmly. Because Moira can kiss my ass. Hair and all. I mean, not that there’s really any hair back there to speak of.
That is, I haven’t exactly checked, but—
“And they actually do that sort of thing,” Sally points to the front of the day spa, “here?”
Ramon shrugs. “Why do you think the name is Rose Petal Spa?”
Sally silently mouths the name of the spa, and I see the moment it all clicks into place. She goes pale. “Oh my God.” Then she looks at me. “Iris, you poor thing!”
“I’m not—”
She’s shaking her head. “Why would the studio even need you to do that? I thought Hexed was TV-MA. You’re playing a witch.” She frowns at me behind her glasses, all concerned confusion. “How would anyone see Raven Blackwell’s... your… your... “
“They won’t.”
“Well, there is that bathing suit scene you’re shooting next week,” Ramon says.