Home Matters (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella, Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

she could believe what he was saying. Except that agonizing voice inside her head continued to wail that she was ruined. And her undoing had been… All. His. Fault.
    She wiggled out of his grip. “Why would you do that?”
    He shoved his hands into his pants pockets and glanced away. “You remind of someone, I guess.” A shadow of sadness skittered across his blue eyes, but that mischievous look of his returned before she had a chance to consider what it meant.
    “So what? You’re saying I should be thanking you?” she said, to which he simply lifted a shoulder. “Unbelievable. You actually expect me to be grateful to you for provoking me during the most important—”
    “Miss Pembroke?” a voice called from the reception area. “Is Olivia Pembroke still out here anywhere?”
    Olivia swallowed back her venom. She stepped out from the alcove that concealed the restroom doors to see the director’s assistant searching the faces of Baron Broadcasting’s next victims.
    The assistant spied Olivia and motioned for her to follow. “Come with me,” she insisted, then turned, heading back toward the soundstage. “Pete, you too,” she called over her shoulder.
    Olivia’s tantrum backpedaled a half step. Could it be that Pete had been trying to help her after all? The mere possibility made her even angrier.
    She lobbed a suspicious look over her shoulder at him.
    His face stretched wide into a Cheshire grin. “You’re welcome.”

The Savannah air was moist against Olivia’s skin as she leaned over the drafting table, studying a current floor plan for the house the show planned to remodel. The main floor consisted of a maze of small rooms connected by thin hallways. Looking back to the electronic tablet she had cradled in the crook of her arm, she ran her lines in her head while trying to remember which walls she needed to delete, and which ones she was supposed to simply move, once they started shooting.
    “Eleanor?” Olivia pointed to the wall separating the kitchen and family room. “Why can’t we just take out this wall but leave the back façade of the fireplace, exposing the brick, and add some wrap around shelving?”
    A petite woman who chronically dressed in black, with spikey hair and wire eyeglasses, Eleanor was Olivia’s “on-screen” design assistant while in actuality, the show’s “real-life” designer. As it turned out, the show’s execs hadn’t been concerned with her lack of design experience, nor had she needed to exaggerate about her design training, because she wasn’t being required to actually do any… designing.
    Eleanor’s beady eyes gave Olivia a look that said Are you dumb or just pretending to be? “Why on earth would we want to do that?”
    Olivia tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She hated the way people in general tended to pay blondes more notice while, at the same time, treating them with less respect. She’d made it her life’s mission to prove to the world that hair color and intelligence were not mutually exclusive.
    She soldiered on. “Well, for starters, it would block the sightline from the front door to the sink?”
    “Look Olivia, I appreciate your input. I really do,” Eleanor said, though she looked more irritated than grateful. “But like I told you yesterday, when you wanted to move the kitchen sink to the island, and the day before that when you thought removing the butler’s pantry would compromise the historical integrity of the home,” she recapped, “I’m the designer, and you’re my… window-dressing, so to speak.” Before Olivia had a chance to respond, she turned on her heel toward the front door and headed outside to where the film crew was in the process of setting up to shoot their segment.
    Olivia didn’t appreciate being demeaned to an ornament, and normally she would have protested, but she had a more pressing issue to contend with at the moment. It was Thursday, the third day of a very tight shooting schedule, and given