Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 41935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 210(@200wpm)___ 168(@250wpm)___ 140(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 210(@200wpm)___ 168(@250wpm)___ 140(@300wpm)
Farrah Reed is an stunning, confident and poised. Even though this show isn’t as real as the producers want viewers to think, I move into the Malibu beach house hoping to leave with a famous fiancée I’m genuinely in love with.
But then I get to know Farrah’s assistant Alice. Alice is everything her demanding boss isn’ sweet, shy and humble. The more time I spend with her, the more I want her—and only her. But the producers and Farrah want an ending for the show that doesn’t include Alice. I’m left with two go along with what my team expects of me and hurt Alice, or risk everything for the woman I burn night and day for.
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one
Alice
“Are you serious? This room is the size of my closet at my beach house. And my closet has more windows,” my boss Farrah, says cringing dramatically as she looks around the space.
It’s a beautiful room decorated in white with pops of pale yellow. The queen bed is layered with pillows and a crisp, bright-white duvet. A few framed vintage travel posters for coastal California are perfectly lined up on the walls.
“Check out that view, though.” I walk over and open the doors that lead onto a small balcony with two chairs and a tiny table, letting in the sound of the crashing waves.
She sighs, unimpressed. “Yeah, it’s nice. And I guess I won’t be in here much, anyway. I’ll be too busy with JP.”
“Exactly.” I side-eye the room’s small closet. “Which clothes are most important for the next few days? I’ll unpack what you’ll need and store the rest of the luggage in my room.”
Not that I have any extra space. The producers of Celebrity Love Malibu, the show Farrah is about to start filming here, balked when her agent told them she’d need a room for her personal assistant. The other fifteen celebrities on the show will all manage the five-week stay here without someone to bring them Starbucks and puree fresh fruit face masks, but not Farrah. And since it’s a sixteen-bedroom house and there are sixteen contestants, the producers had to squeeze me into the house’s staff quarters by moving a chef’s assistant to a hotel. My room is roughly the size of a postage stamp and it smells like fish.
“I don’t know yet.” Farrah shrugs. “The producers said they want their wardrobe people to dress me, but I’m thinking no. I’ll probably need Cara.”
My brows fly up in alarm. “Cara? Have you talked to her about it?”
Farrah laughs. “Of course not, that’s your job.”
I suppress a sigh and start typing out a text to Cara, a boutique owner who has been helping choose and order clothes for Farrah for more than a year. She’s in demand and her schedule is always booked, but Farrah expects her to be available anytime.
This is my own fault. I know how Farrah is about clothes. I should have asked her about it when she signed the contract to do the show.
“I’m starving,” Farrah says, sitting down on the bed to look at her phone. “Can you get me some tuna sushi? And a lavender water?”
“Of course. I’ll go right now.” I duck out of the room as quickly as I can, eager for a break.
Some people think actors hardly work, but the ones at the top of their game, like Farrah, work very hard. She starts her days at sunrise with yoga and meditation, which she insists I do with her. Then, a small breakfast and a ninety-minute workout. Those things are nonnegotiable unless she’s filming and the director can’t accommodate it.
When she’s not filming, her schedule is still full. She’s developing a line of cosmetics, and she has meetings for that and all sorts of other things, lunches and dinners with friends, and parties.
So freaking many parties. I’m an introvert and I hate everything about them. The cackling. The frivolity. The phoniness. Farrah rarely asks me to go to those with her because she doesn’t want to seem high maintenance.
Those are the evenings I recharge in bed with a book or catch up on her emails. Working for Farrah is demanding. We tried splitting it into two jobs--both of which were still a lot--but she complained so much about the other assistants that after going through several, she offered to triple my salary to work for her basically around the clock.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. When she’s filming, she’s sometimes occupied for sixteen hours a day or more, and I can pretty much do what I want as long as she can reach me by text. And it’s worth it to make the money I do at age twenty-six.
“Hey...Farrah’s assistant, right?” A middle-aged man with a baseball hat and a beard stops me as I’m about to walk out the beach house’s front door.
“Alice. Yes.”
“Can you ask her to meet us in the library for a production meeting at two?”
The what? Did he just say there’s a library here? Is this heaven masquerading as a beach house?
“Sure can.” I smile and wave at him, texting Farrah on my walk to the car.
Occasionally Farrah likes to ride places with me, even though she has a driver. She needs to wear a hat and glasses to disguise herself when we go, but she still likes to get out. That’s why I always get a rental she’d enjoy, and this time, I went with a white convertible Bronco.
I had to park more than a quarter of a mile from the house because of the show’s filming and security zones, but the walk to the car is nice on this bright June day.