Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013 Read Online Free Page A

restaurant with Keith, then you can give me a lift home? Seems a lot safer than the other way ‘round.”
    They both agreed to that, which cut my little video short, but at least I had something fun to show Shayla when I got home.

    When Keith led me to his vehicle, I thought he was playing a joke on me. It was an old van, painted a vivid sea green.
    “Is this thing a movie prop?” I asked. “Does it actually run?”
    “Don’t laugh, it’s paid for,” he said, holding open the passenger door. An earthy scent wafted out.
    “I wasn’t laughing,” I said as I stepped in. “This funky green van is better than what I drive, which is nothing.”
    As he circled around to the driver’s side, I glanced into the back, which held plants in green plastic pots along one side, and bags of soil along the other side. No wonder the van had an earthy, yet pleasant, scent.
    “I’ve been running a landscaping business with my sister,” Keith explained as he got settled into his side and started the engine.
    “In addition to being an underwear model.”
    He flashed me a grin. “Modeling is nice work when you can get it. In between the days spent in see-through briefs, playing make-believe with luscious women, I muck around in the dirt.” He pulled the van out of the parking lot, following Mitchell’s blue Miada. “What about you? When you’re not shaking your fruit for the camera, what do you do?”
    “I manage a bookstore called Peachtree Books.” I stared out the window at the billboards and passing traffic. “That’s where everything started. I met Dalton Deangelo when he came running in, looking for a place to hide. Then we talked for a bit, and he said he wanted to get to know me. Little did I know—”
    My throat started to close off, stopping my anecdote short of where I’d thought it was going. Dalton had only wanted to know me so he could use the research for his movie role. His sudden interest had seemed so romantic at the time, like the foolish notion of love at first sight, but now all I felt was the shame of being so naïve.
    Keith didn’t need to know the details, and he didn’t seem to be asking.
    “I’m just having fun now,” I said. “That’s the most important thing.”
    “If I saw you fully clothed in a bookstore, I wouldn’t have looked twice at you,” Keith said, staring straight ahead at the road.
    “Um. Thanks? Thanks for your honesty, I guess.”
    “No, I’m sorry about how that sounded. I meant it as an admission of my shallowness.”
    “Okay.”
    We drove in silence for a few minutes, until finally it became so awkward, I reached for my phone. No new messages from Dalton, which was a relief. I wanted to confront him in person when he came back to LA on Wednesday, and I didn’t want lovey-dovey text messages to weaken my stance. He had strung me along, using lines cribbed directly from his indie film script, and I deserved an explanation. I would officially end the relationship with him, but first I wanted to see him squirm.
    Keith broke the silence, saying, “You scare me. My confidence is all an act. Even after hours and hours of meditation and self-reflection, I’m as insecure as fuck. But you’re just… you. And even when I tried to intimidate you on the set, you never backed down. What’s your secret?”
    “I’ve got nothing to lose.”
    “Explain.”
    “Nobody expects me to be good at any of this. I know I’m a colossal joke, a publicity stunt. I’ve got nowhere to go but up.”
    “The whole thing is a publicity stunt. I knew it.”
    “At least I’m getting paid,” I said.
    “What’s the going rate for something like that? For being someone’s pretend girlfriend?”
    “You tell me,” I said with a laugh, pretending to know what was going on.
    What the hell was Keith talking about? Not that it really mattered what he thought. His job was to stand next to me and fill out underwear, and he was more than qualified for that. Perhaps a little overqualified. My