CHAPTER 1
Cassie Carroll rolled over and burrowed her cheek back into her pillow. She sighed. Nothing felt better than waking up on a Saturday morning, knowing she could catch a few more—
“No!”
Her eyes flew open. It wasn’t Saturday. It was Friday. She had to be at work in . . . when did she have to be at work? The clock beside her beside blinked 4:47 in large numbers. The electricity had gone out. Again. She knew she’d paid the last bill, late maybe, but it got paid. At least she thought it was last month’s. And that she’d paid it. Or had it been Jolene’s turn and her roommate had forgotten again?
It didn’t matter. The power had come back on, else the clock wouldn’t be flashing now. It had to be later than 4:47 with the strong light streaming into her bedroom.
She threw back the covers and heard a muffled sound, something between a yawn and a growl. Cassie stood and yanked the comforter away, unearthing TJ. The orange tabby looked at her with disdain and closed his eyes before resting his face atop his front paws.
“You always wake me up for breakfast at six-fifteen, TJ. Always. Except this morning, of all mornings.” She wasn’t going to work this morning. She had a job interview. “Why did you decide to catnap this one time?” she accused the cat.
Grabbing her cell from the battered nightstand, she saw it was 8:15. Normally, she’d set her phone alarm but the battery had been draining fast lately and she didn’t have the extra money to buy a new one, much less invest in a new phone. Which was why she’d depended upon the clock alarm—or TJ—to wake her in time. She needed to move. Fast. Scurrying from the bedroom, she stripped off her man’s XL army green T-shirt. As she reached the apartment’s only bathroom, a man with a scraggly beard walked out, scratching his head with one hand and his crotch with the other. He gaped at her.
“Out of my way!” she commanded, pushing the stranger aside and slamming the door. She started the shower, squeezed artificial tears into each eye to wake up, and grabbed her toothbrush. Cassie muttered under her breath about Jolene bringing another strange guy home as she jumped into the still-cold shower and shouted an expletive when the freezing water hit her in the face.
Squirting shampoo into her hair, she tried to lather it up with her right hand as she brushed her teeth with her left. Pulling back the curtain, she tossed her toothbrush into the sink and rinsed the shampoo from her hair. No time for conditioner today. Or shaving. She ran a hand along her leg and knew she could get by without the two minutes it would take to zip a razor along it. She decided to throw on a pair of textured tights. Not that anyone in Southern California ever wore them, but it was the first week in December and she was one of those redheads that pale didn’t even begin to describe. Cassie refused to have marble-white legs sticking out from her suit skirt. She had good legs, long with terrifically shaped calves from years of running. She would show them off in the best way she knew how, with navy blue tights. If tights were good enough for the Duchess of Cambridge to parade around Merry Olde England in, then Cassie Carroll could wear them to her job interview.
She shut off the water that had never totally warmed up and toweled off quickly. The light was better in her bedroom so she wrapped the towel around her and returned there to do her makeup. Thank goodness she didn’t suffer another close encounter with Mr. Scratcher.
She swiped on deodorant and spritzed herself with perfume. No time for sunscreen on her face. She’d have to chance a few freckles popping out. Cassie completed her makeup in under five minutes and wrestled into a white silk blouse and her tried and true, classic navy suit. The one that she hoped would make her look chic and sophisticated and help her land the job she desperately needed.
As she was about to slide her feet into her slightly worn pumps, she remembered she hadn’t slipped on the tights. With the clock ticking, she decided the fashionable tights would have to bite the dust. Cassie threw them into her purse anyway. She might have time to put them on in the car if she caught a really long light.
Her hair, still damp, was easy to slick back. She wound it into a smooth chignon and admired it for two seconds in the mirror. Earrings. She needed something in her ears for that pulled-together look. She found one faux pearl and slid it into place before TJ began yowling for his breakfast.
“All right, all right,” Cassie complained, slipping the other earring into her pocket. She would put it on in the car. She grabbed her purse and hurried down the hall to their tiny kitchenette, smelling coffee the entire way.
“Caffeine. Please.”
Jolene handed her a full mug. Cassie took a few quick sips of her roommate’s heavy-duty Brazilian blend to rev up her insides before grabbing her travel mug and transferring the coffee to it.
“Would you feed TJ?” she asked Jolene. “And who’s the guy I danced around in the hall with this morning? Naked, by the way. Both of us.”
Jolene thought a moment. “Howard Something? He laughed the loudest at my jokes last night. I had to bring him home.”
“When are you going to stop dragging strangers back to our apartment, Jolene? One of them could turn out to be a serial killer. We could be murdered in our beds. Or robbed, at the very least.”
Her roommate snorted. “We’d have to have something worth stealing.” She eyed Cassie. “You look good, Cass. What’s up?”
Cassie rooted inside her purse, looking for a tube of lipstick from Nordstrom’s that she’d been saving for a special occasion. The color would make her mouth pop and give her the final bit of polish she needed.
“Manny thinks I’ve got a dental appointment this morning but I’m going to interview for a job at Merriman Smith.”
“Hmm. Sounds like a law firm.”
“They’re a new entertainment agency. Several agents from top agencies defected and started it about two months ago. Tell me you’ve heard of them. It was all over the trades.”
“If you land a job with them, you can sign me as a client,” Jolene suggested. “I’m sure they rep comics. I’ve got to get another agent, Cass. Manny isn’t doing it for me anymore. Not that he ever did.”
“It’s an interview to be an assistant, Jolene, not an agent.”
“You were a casting agent before.”
“That went nowhere. Like every job I’ve worked since I hit California as a starry-eyed, eighteen-year-old. Even being Manny’s administrative assistant has done nothing for my career. He pays me squat, he has no good clients left—present company excluded—and I know he’s snorting again. Caught him at it twice this week alone.”
Jolene took a sip from the mug she’d poured herself. “Shit. I knew he was high when we talked yesterday.” She removed a can of cat food from the refrigerator and took off the plastic lid, dumping the fish stew onto a plate.
As Jolene started to set it on the floor, Cassie warned her. “TJ likes it microwaved. He refuses to eat cold from the fridge food unless it’s interesting people leftovers, like orange chicken or pepperoni pizza.”
“Spoiled beast.”
Cassie finally retrieved the lipstick and glanced at the microwave clock. “Yes, he is. Gotta run. Later.”
She raced to the parking lot of their apartment complex. Her aging Honda Civic sat innocently, waiting to give her trouble. Cassie begged it to start as she got in, pushing aside fast food wrappers and empty water bottles.