All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

brownish orange oozing from my every pore. Because like some kind of self-tanner novice, I’d just violated my fourth commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Use a Sauna for the First 48 Hours After Application.”

Only this perfectly timed violation had just given me what I needed most: a way out.

I locked gazes with Truella. “I’m so, so sorry to do this, but I’m not going to be able to finish the shoot today. There’s been a big misunderstanding that I’ll leave my agent to explain. But please give my sincerest apologies to Sophia.”

Without stopping to look back, I snatched up my purse, flung it over my shoulder, and fled the pool area. With shaky hands I fumbled in the depths of my handbag, searching for my phone. The instant I found it, I scrolled to the only app I knew that could send a getaway car in a matter of minutes. I typed in the airport as my desired destination, and the app quickly provided my rescue—a Maria in a tan four-door sedan, who was only six minutes away.

It would likely be the longest six minutes of my life.

“What do you think you’re doing?” It was a hiss more than a question, but I refused to face Ethan. I refused to look into his lying eyes.

“Leaving,” I said with a calm I did not feel.

His hand gripped my bicep and spun my flip-flop feet on the slick concrete to face him. “Don’t be ridiculous, Molly. You aren’t leaving. Your tan can be fixed—”

“My tan? I don’t care about my tan! I care about my reputation, my value as a woman, and as a—”

He laughed as if I’d gone completely bonkers. “Your value as a woman? Are you hearing yourself right now? Molly, you promote beauty products. Nobody is asking you to dance on a pole or become a lady of the night.”

“Let go of me,” I said, raising my volume higher.

He didn’t let go. “You are embarrassing yourself—and me.”

“Oh?” Fury shot from my glare. “Is my diva tantrum too much for you, Ethan?”

For a minute, he had the audacity to look confused, as if he’d completely forgotten the dozens of times he’d spoken that phrase to me in regards to his problematic ex-client. Or perhaps, I realized with shame-induced clarity, his problematic ex-girlfriend. “You dated her, didn’t you? You dated Felicity Fashion Fix, and then you cut her as a client when I came along.”

“Are you serious right now?” He fisted his hair and lowered his voice even more. “You’re about to walk out on a six-figure paycheck because of a past girlfriend who doesn’t even matter? Who never mattered?”

The confirmation made me want to retch. How many other lies had he told me this year? How many other compromises had he made on my behalf? How many other times had I been an oblivious accomplice to . . . no.

“Did you . . .” But the words logjammed in my throat. “Did you steal Felicity’s vlog series idea and then pass it along to me after I signed with you?” Worse, had I participated in a witch hunt based on a false accusation?

“Those products were sponsored by a company I found for her—a company she lost when I signed you. She had no right to post that vlog series.”

I closed my eyes, dizzy from the mountain of deception I’d just been pushed from.

“She was the one in the wrong, Molly,” he continued, stepping closer to me, his breath hot on my cheek. “I gave her a more than fair Plan B option, and she refused it. But you’re too smart to follow in her footsteps. You and I—we’re the same, baby. The reason we work so well together is because we know how to put all the other stuff aside and focus on what needs to be done in the moment. And right now, what needs to be done is for you to go back inside Sophia’s mansion, put on that million-dollar smile of yours, and finish up this shoot. I’ll smooth it all over and then we can go somewhere private and—”

Maria pulled up at the gate, waving at me from inside a beige sedan I could have purchased ten times over with the paycheck I was about to give up.

I broke Ethan’s hold on my arm as tears tiptoed up my throat. “You’re wrong. We’re not the same.” Not anymore.

“Molly.” The warning in his voice was clear. “If you step foot off this property, Sophia Richards will sue you for breach of contract, and given the assets inside her home, you will stand to lose every cent you’ve ever made.”

And yet, as I looked into the back seat of Maria’s car, and as I slipped my shaking fingers under the door handle, I knew which option I’d advise my girls at The Bridge to take given the same compromising scenario.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m signed to an agency that shares my paychecks and my liability.”

17

Molly

I hadn’t spoken to Ethan in nearly thirty-two hours.

I hadn’t returned his calls, his texts, his emails, or posted a single picture of the giant bouquet of orchids he’d sent to my house this morning. Because not even a three-hundred-dollar flower arrangement was enough for me to contact him.

This wasn’t fixable. Not our personal relationship, and likely not our professional one, either, though that would be harder to terminate, seeing as I was still bound to him by a contract. Or at least Makeup Matters with Molly was.

Whatever issues Truella or her boss had with me departing from the set so quickly after my self-tanning blunder and escape, she and her team could take those issues up with Cobalt Group. Or, more specifically, with Ethan. After all, he’d been the one to misrepresent his fancy new sponsor and his client whose net worth was far too great for him to cut. Hence the apology flowers and phone calls.

I dropped my head into my hands. My eyes were glazed over after trying to review two legal contracts that may as