OTHER CONTEMPORARY NOVELS BY SAMANTHA TOWLE
Unsuitable
Sacking the Quarterback (BookShots Flames/James Patterson)
The Ending I Want
When I Was Yours
Trouble
REVVED SERIES
Revved
Revived
THE STORM SERIES
The Mighty Storm
Wethering the Storm
Taming the Storm
The Storm
PARANORMAL ROMANCES BY SAMANTHA TOWLE
The Bringer
THE ALEXANDRA JONES SERIES
First Bitten
Original Sin
Copyright © 2017 by Samantha Towle
All rights reserved.
Visit my website at www.samanthatowle.co.uk
Cover Designer: Najla Qamber Designs
Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-1542959858
Prologue
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Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Vaughn
“So, Vaughn, how was it, making a movie with your girlfriend and best friend?” Bradford asks me.
I’m sitting on a studio sofa in front of a live audience with Piper Watts, my girlfriend, and Cain Acton, my best friend. Treason is the film we did together. It’s a romantic comedy about two best friends who end up fighting over the same girl. Of course, I end up with the girl. It would have been a little weird for audiences if Cain had ended up with my real-life girlfriend. The film is due to drop in cinemas next week, so Piper, Cain, and I are doing the press rounds to promote it. Tonight, we’re on Digby’s Dirt.
No, I shit you not. That’s the name of the show I’m currently on.
The most popular late-night chat show on television.
It’s hosted by Bradford Digby, the television host that every celebrity loves to hate. The fucker is a rat through and through. He’s like a bloodhound. He can sniff out scandal at fifty paces. God, even his name sounds pretentious.
But he’s popular. His show has high ratings, hence the reason Jack, my manager—who is also Cain’s manager—and the studio are having us appear on here to promote our new movie.
Pausing briefly at his question, I slide a smile in Piper’s direction. “It was fun.”
Hard work.
Piper bitched the whole time. I might have been with her for six months, and I’d known she could be a challenge at times, but I’d thought her diva reputation on set was sheer embellishment. It wasn’t.
Honestly, it made me look at her with a whole new set of eyes. But that’s a thought for later.
I’d worked with Cain before, so I knew what to expect. It was great, as always. He’s my best friend. I’ve known him for ten years. I trust the guy with my life.
“It’s always fun working with Vaughn,” Cain says, smirking at me.
I know he thought Piper was a pain in the ass, too, but he’d never say it to me because she’s my girl.
Piper is actually the first woman I’ve dated seriously since I got in this business. I just figured it was time to settle down. I’m not getting any younger, and I want to have a family someday. Piper’s great—apart from being annoying to work with, which I’ll make sure I never do again. I’ll keep our relationship and work separate in the future.
“No disagreements? Arguments?” Bradford asks.
“Well, there are always disagreements.” I give a laugh, and the audience laughs, too.
“But they were only minor disagreements, right, V?” Piper says.
God, I hate it when she calls me V. How hard is it to say my name? Vaughn. It literally rolls off the tongue.
“We had a blast filming together. And what more could a girl want than to work with the man she loves and, of course, his best friend?”
The audience sounds out with an, “Aw.”
“Of course,” Bradford says. “Don’t forget the best friend.”
Um…what? Piper loves me?
First I’ve heard.
I make sure to control my outward reaction to this surprising piece of news, keeping my facial expression as neutral as possible.
Inside though, I’m shocked to shit. I mean, we’ve been together for six months, but we haven’t said I love you yet. Honestly, I don’t think I’m even there yet. But that’s beside the point. You’d think she’d have said it to me first before announcing it on live television.
God, I hope she hasn’t said it to me, and I didn’t hear it—or worse, that I forgot.
“So, Vaughn, how long have you and Cain been friends for now?” Bradford asks.
“Uh…” I look up.
Bradford chuckles. “Been that long that you’ve forgotten?”
“Probably.” Cain laughs and looks at me. “Ten years, right, man?”
“Yeah. Ten years too long.” I grin at Cain, and the audience laughs.
“Ten years? Wow.” Bradford leans back in his chair. His hand straightens out his tie.
There’s something in his tone that I don’t like. Unease moves through me.
“So, I guess it must come as a hell of a blow to learn that Cain has been having an affair with Piper for the last three months.”
What?
I hear a whoosh in my ears and realize it’s the audience gasping.
I blink, glancing around.
Piper’s and Cain’s faces are frozen, like I guess mine is. And Bradford just has this smug expression on his face.
“What?” I laugh, but it sounds uneasy, even to my own ears. “You’re kidding, right? This is a joke.” I even look around to see if Ashton Kutcher is waiting to tell me I’ve been punked.
“It’s no joke.” Bradford’s eyes flick to the big screen behind him, and there’s a picture of Cain and Piper in an embrace, outside what looks like a hotel room door.
It’s fake. It has to be. Because Cain would never do that to me.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
But I know it’s not a fake.
Because I know this industry. I know this asshole wouldn’t risk his career on a rumor or a fake picture. He must have authenticated it. He wouldn’t have done this on live television without die-hard facts and the proof to back it up because he knows he’d have his ass sued if he were lying.
My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach.
“This is bullshit!” Piper snaps.
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I open my eyes and look at her. She’s pissed.
It’s because she’s been caught. And caught so publicly.
My eyes flick past her to Cain.
The contriteness in his expression is all the confirmation I need.
And I feel sick.
There’s commotion all around. I can hear people yelling from off camera. Piper is screaming for them to turn the cameras off.
That’s what she cares about right now.
Not me. Not the fact that my heart is being broken on live television by my cheating-ass girlfriend. But, worse, by my friend, whom I trusted. The guy I’ve known for ten years.
Ten fucking years.
My head starts to cloud.
I’m no longer on live television with an audience of people sitting there.
I’m staring at my best friend, and rage is firing in my bloodstream.
I get to my feet. “Is it true?” I say to him, my voice trembling with anger.
Cain gets to his feet, facing me. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Sorry?
“You’re sorry?” I laugh without a trace of humor.
Then, I punch him.
Hard. In the face.
Three Months Later
Vaughn
“Up and out!”
The sound of hands clapping and Jack, my manager’s, voice split through my head like an ax on wood.
Groaning, I mumble, “Fuck off, Jack. I’m sleeping.” My voice is muffled by the pillow my face is buried in.
Sunlight and warmth hit my back a second later as the curtains are pulled open.
“For fuck’s sake,” I grumble.
“Ladies, get dressed, and be on your way. A car is waiting for you downstairs to take you home,” Jack says with that no-nonsense tone of his.
I feel movement on the bed. Limbs and bodies climb over me and off the bed.
Last night…
Oh, yeah.
A party.
Alcohol. Lots of alcohol.
A redhead who could deep-throat like a champ and a brunette with legs that went on for miles.
Sex.
Lots of it.
At the party. In the limo on the way back to the hotel suite I’ve been living in these last few months. The sofa. The bed.
The usual.
Well, the usual for me now.
Stretching my aching body, I lift my head. The sunlight blinds me. Rubbing a hand over my face, I blink through the haze. My eyes meet with Jack’s.
He’s standing there, his arms folded over his chest, a disapproving frown on his face.
He wears that look a lot when looking at me nowadays.
The girls are moving around the room, picking up the debris of their clothes from last night’s activities.
“What?” I bite at him.
He says nothing. Just shakes his head.
His stare is making me uncomfortable. It’s the disappointment in his eyes that bothers me the most.
In a business filled with sharks, Jack isn’t one. He’s loyal. To me. His wife. His kids.
For all these years, I’ve stayed clean in a city full of dirt with his help and because of my family back home.
Well, I was clean. Now, I’m a helluva lot dirty.
My eyes flit to the girls as they quickly dress.
Shame spreads through my chest.
This isn’t me…
At least, it wasn’t me.
Sure, I’ve done one-night stands in the past. I’ve slept with women with no promise of more.
But this—the endless nights of drinking and fucking, and then rinse and repeat—isn’t me.
But, right now, it’s the only thing that makes me feel better.
Well, for a time anyway.
Shame has me getting to my feet and snapping out, “Jesus, Jack, stop fucking looking at me like that.” I walk my bare ass over to the closet where I pull out a pair of black lounge pants and slip them on.
“Like what? Like you’re a mess?” Jack states, like he doesn’t care that other people are in this room.
I can just see the headline now…
VAUGHN’S MANAGER CALLS HIM “A MESS” IN HEATED ARGUMENT
As I grit my teeth, my angry eyes quickly flit to the girls leaving my room. Neither looks like they heard or care about what Jack said, but you can never be too sure in this town.
My eyes meet with the redhead’s. She gives me a smile that says she wants a repeat and drops a slip of paper on the dresser before she leaves with the brunette in tow.
Sorry, love, no repeats.
Jack walks over and shuts the door behind them.
“Since when do you mouth off in front of people?” I fire at Jack.
He’s the one who always tells me to be careful what I say and to whom.
“Since you clearly don’t give a shit about your career anymore.”
“I care.”
He laughs. “Then, sort your shit out.”
“Give me a fucking break.”
“That’s all I’ve done for the last few months. That’s all anyone’s done. We get that you’re hurting. What they did…it was shit. But shit happens, and life moves on. You move on, Vaughn.”
“I’m moving on,” I growl.
“Yeah, looks like it.” He gives a pointed look at the empty box of condoms on my nightstand and the bottles of Jack littered around the room.
I feel ashamed again. I shouldn’t. I’m a grown fucking man, but I know this isn’t me. It isn’t what I’m about.
And I care about what Jack thinks of me. I respect him.
And I know my family is worried about me. I know I’m letting them down.
I’m letting myself down.
Sighing, I drag my hands through my hair.
“You need to get it together, Vaughn.” He reaches inside his sports coat and pulls out his phone. He turns it, showing me the picture and headline.
OUR STAR HAS FALLEN
Unrecognizable, Vaughn West is seen falling out of a club, held up by two women he spent the night partying with in Van Helden, along with renowned party boy and A-lister Gabriel Evans and TV star Julian Jacob.
The brokenhearted star’s behavior has worsened since the outing of the affair between his former best friend, Cain Acton, and ex-girlfriend, Piper Watts, which was revealed on Digby’s Dirt, the popular late-night show hosted by Bradford Digby, where West physically assaulted Acton. No charges were filed.
The affair between Acton and Watts allegedly began on the set of the film, Treason, which the three actors starred in together.
I barely recognize the bloodshot-eyed mess of a man staring back in the photos. Propped up by the two women who just left my bed, my hand clearly up the back of one of their skirts in one of the shots.
Jesus, I’m a fucking mess.
Jack swipes the screen. The next headline…
VAUGHN WEST. SEX ADDICT AND ALCOHOLIC? OUR EXPERT SAYS YES.
And again…
A picture of me from another night, looking wasted, flipping the bird to the press, with another woman holding me up.
Then, there’s a picture of Cain and Piper, the one that was used to expose them on Digby’s show—the source of my pain and humiliation.
The betrayal hits me all over again.
Sighing, I turn away from Jack and look out the floor-to-ceiling window, dragging my hands through my hair again.
I hear the creak of the bed as Jack sits down on it.
“I know what they did stung like a motherfucker—Cain stung me, too—but you can’t let this destroy everything you’ve worked for.”
When Jack took me on as a client, Cain was already his client. I needed a place to stay, so Jack put me in touch with Cain, who was looking for a roommate at that time. That’s how we met.
Even with the scandal, Cain was still big money for Jack, but he dropped him as a client and stayed with me.
I know I should feel thankful for that, but I don’t feel thankful for an awful lot
right now.
“Drinking and screwing random women isn’t going to fix this, Vaughn. Getting back to work is what’s going to fix it. We need to get the press and fans focused on your next movie and not your personal life.”
“Personal life?” I laugh. “What a fucking joke that is! I don’t have a personal life because everyone in the world is fucking privy to what goes on.”
“And you’re not exactly making it hard for them right now, are you?” he throws back at me.
I narrow my eyes at him. “What if I don’t feel like making a movie right now?” I fold my arms over my chest, pressing against the dull ache there.
He laughs. It’s not a humorous sound, and it makes me turn to him.
He gets to his feet. “They screwed you over, and it hurts like fuck. I get it. But you think this is the way to get back at them—drinking yourself into a coma and banging anything with a vagina? Get fucking real. You know this business, Vaughn. It can turn at the snap of a finger. At the moment, their popularity has crashed. They can’t get work for shit. No one will touch them. They couldn’t even get a call back for a toilet paper commercial at the moment…but it won’t last. We’ve seen it before. Angie and Brad each made twice as much in the year after their affair. They skyrocketed because their publicist swung it the right way. And the way you’re acting now is giving Piper’s publicist her meal ticket back to success.”
He swipes his finger over his screen and turns his phone to me again. There’s a picture of Piper, looking tearful.
Bitch.
PIPER WATTS SPEAKS FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HER AFFAIR WITH CAIN ACTON WAS REVEALED
“Vaughn’s alcoholism and constant womanizing pushed me into Cain’s arms,” a tearful Piper said. “Vaughn has a vicious temper.”
“You were scared of him?”
“Yes,” she answered softly, head bowed.
“Did Vaughn ever hit you?”
“Yes.”
So, ladies and gentlemen, when Piper was faced with a violent alcoholic who cheated as much as Vaughn West did, then I guess it is understandable that she sought solace in another man’s arms.
We’d like to hear your opinions on this. Vote on our poll: Was Piper right to cheat? Yes or no?
“That lying bitch,” I seethe, my hands curling into fists. “I never touched her.”
“I know that, but you hit Cain with the world watching.”