Chapter 1
“I get that life sucks right now, but that’s never a reason to wear granny panties.”
Without warning, the helicopter dipped sharply, and Brooke Lemon’s stomach went along with it. Her view of a pretty sky shifted, and suddenly they were sideways and she was staring out at a craggy mountain peak, seemingly close enough to touch.
Compounding the terror, the previously benign sky had given way to a sudden cloud pack, dark and turbulent, and her heart pounded in tune to the thump, thump, thump of the rotors. The chopper shuddered, straining to right itself. Her palms went slick and nausea welled, making her regret that extra sleeve of cookies she’d inhaled at lunch, which now seemed a lifetime ago.
Struggling through vertigo, she swallowed hard at the sight of the jagged cliffs, shooting up thousands of feet into the air, vanishing in the clouds.
There was nowhere to land.
“Brooke.”
“Shh.” Afraid to so much as blink, she leaned forward, unable to tear her gaze away.
“You’re green, Brooke. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. In fact, you’ve been at this for ten straight hours. Take a nap.”
“I can’t nap! I have to stay awake for the crash!”
“There’s no crash this time, I promise.”
Pulling off her headphones, Brooke leaned back in her chair and gulped in a deep breath. The video paused, the lights came up, and a few words rolled across the screen.
Brooke Lemon, producer extraordinaire . . .
“Funny,” she managed, fighting her way back from the flashback.
“And true.” Cole stood and studied her for a long beat. “You okay?”
“You promised not to ask me that anymore.”
“You miss being out there,” he said. “Being the one shooting the footage instead of putting it all together.”
“No.” She still hadn’t taken her eyes off the screen, and the word producer was mocking her. Sure, it was safer on this side of the camera, but hell yeah, she missed it. She missed the old days like she’d miss air.
Not that she was about to admit that to her boss. Not only would Cole pity her, he’d want to talk about it.
And she never talked about it. What was the point? The only way to fix this was to face her past. Her mistakes. And she couldn’t do that. She didn’t know how. Avoiding Cole’s attentive eyes, she rose and grabbed her backpack just as Tommy poked his head into the editing room. “Hey, sweetness, how about some dinner?” His smile faded at whatever he saw on her face, and he exchanged a long look with Cole, who gave a slight head shake.
Tommy held out a hand to Brooke. “Come on, chica, I’ll buy.”
She knew when she was being managed. The three of them worked on a Travel Network show called Around the World, which followed adventure seekers, documentary-style, as they took on different goals such as climbing “unclimbable” mountains, rafting “unraftable” rivers . . . basically anything high-danger and high-adrenaline.
Once upon a time, Brooke had been the principal photographer, but these days she worked solely from the studio, editing the footage and writing up the scripts for the so-called reality show, living a very different life from the one she’d always imagined herself living. But it worked for her. It was all good.
Or so she told herself.
Cole was Around the World’s showrunner and director. He was also a friend and, when it suited them both, Brooke’s occasional lover. It’d been a month since the last time it’d suited them. The show’s funding had been cut, leaving them on a tight budget and an even tighter deadline, which meant they’d been at each other’s throats much more than at each other’s bodies. Lust tended to take a back seat to murderous urges, at least for Brooke. Men didn’t seem to have a problem separating the two.
Tommy was the show’s makeup artist and hairstylist, and Brooke’s BFF. They’d never been lovers. Mostly because Tommy preferred relationships with more than one person at a time, and she wasn’t wired that way.
Since both guys knew her way too well, she avoided eye contact by going through her backpack to make sure she had her keys and wallet. Which she already knew she did, because she was a teeny-tiny bit compulsive about such things. Still, she touched each briefly and then zipped her pack. And then, because she liked things in even numbers, she unzipped and rezipped it a second time.
Tommy turned to Cole accusingly. “Why is she upset? Did that new publicist cancel on her for that concert last night?”
“You actually went out with that guy?” Cole asked Brooke. “I told you I’d take you.”
“I canceled the date.” She shrugged. “He wears too much cologne.”
“I don’t,” Cole said.
Tommy still had his eyes narrowed at Brooke. “And the guy before him. Didn’t you say he had a crazy mother?”
“He did.” But that hadn’t been the only problem. Before the waiter had even brought them drink menus, he’d told her he wanted to get married that year. Preferably in the fall, as that was his mother’s favorite season, and also, his mother wanted a big wedding with all the trimmings.
The thought of being the center of attention like that had nearly given her hives, and at the memory, she ran the pads of her thumbs over the tips of her fingers, back and forth, back and forth. It was an old habit, a self-soothing mechanism. “Why are we even talking about this?”
Tommy caught the movement of her hands before she could stop herself and he frowned. “Because you’re upset about something.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I’m fine.”
“She had a flashback,” Cole said. “She always gets especially testy after one of those.” He met Brooke’s gaze, his own warm and full of concern. “Come home with me tonight. I’ll make you feel better.”
Though she knew he could do just that, she hadn’t shaved in a few days. “I said I’m fine.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder. To keep either of them from following her, she went up on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss first on Tommy’s scruffy jaw and then on Cole’s shaved one. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “I’m also out. Saving you some overtime.”
“You’re on salary.”
“Yeah, which reminds me, I’m due for a raise.” She shut the door before he could respond and exited the studio into the LA heat.
It was seven p.m. in Los Angeles, and ninety-eight degrees in late May. The humidity was high enough to turn her ponytail into something resembling a squirrel’s tail. Not that it mattered. She had no one to impress, nor the will to change that. Twenty-eight years old, and she was completely burned out on men.
And possibly on life.
She drove home, which was a rented bottom-floor condo in North Hollywood only eight miles from the studio—thirty minutes in gridlock traffic, like tonight. So she added LA to the list of things she was burned out on. She missed wide-open spaces. She missed fresh air and being outdoors. She missed thrill and adventure.
She parked in her one-car garage and headed through the interior door into her kitchen, mindlessly counting her steps, doing a little shuffle at the end to make sure she ended on an even number. Another self-soothing gesture. Some days required more of that than others.