Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
One mistake. One viral video. One ruined career.
That's all it takes for the world to turn on Hollywood's former golden boy.
Now I'm hiding out in a rundown bungalow on Dreamwood Isle, praying the paparazzi won't track me down.
I need safety. Solitude. Anonymity.
What I get instead is the son of my bungalow landlord, charming, adorably clumsy - and the one man alive who doesn't care that I'm River Wolfe, fallen angel of the big screen.
Which only makes me want him more.
And that is far more dangerous than any scandal.
FINN
I'm fresh off a breakup and barely keeping it together. My family's Fair is struggling to stay afloat.
The last thing I need is a movie star crash-landing in my family's bungalow.
I hardly watch films. Don't care about red carpets. To me, River is just the insufferable, handsome guy turning my quiet island life upside-down.
But the more time we spend together, the more I see the man behind the headlines. Behind the scandal.
A man who just tried to do the right thing - and is now being crucified for it.
Between meddling sisters, paparazzi, and the rest of the world, I start to wonder if the safest place for both of us is right here with each other.
Or is this exactly the kind of situation that's doomed to break my heart all over again?
From USA Today Bestselling Author Daryl Banner comes a steamy, page-turning installment of his Texas Beach Town Romance series.
✔️ Forced proximity / Secret relationship
✔️ Celebrity hiding in small town
✔️ Beach vibes
Though characters from past Texas Beach Town books are referenced, this book can be read comfortably as a stand-alone with no prior reading of the series
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1 - River
Yep, that’s me, looking like I’m gonna rob a bank.
That’s what fame does to you, my agent once warned me over drinks, long ago. You start off as the hot shit new actor in town. Photo shoots peel you down like a potato, sex you up, set you on fire for the cameras. Everyone wants a piece, your phone’s blowing up, countless DMs a day of nameless faces wanting to fuck you in every way. You can’t believe this is happening and never feel like you deserve it, but everyone keeps insisting you do while they powder your nose in front of different makeup mirrors.
Fast-forward to present day, and you’re asked to sit at a table in front of six thousand microphones and a room full of journalists to address a crazy rumor that you’re having a secret baby with the new assistant to one of Hollywood’s biggest directors whose set you just stormed off of. Your agent is in your ear, asking over and over if you’re ready, if you remember your script, because ever since signing with him, everything in your life has become a script, on and off set. There are no boundaries anymore. No personal space. Your own life is the role you’re playing now.
Listening to the hum of the reporters in that room, you wish you peed when you had the chance. There’s no way in hell you’re gonna hold it through whatever interrogation awaits you in there.
“Just a sec,” you tell your agent before heading for the bathroom—then passing it entirely and bolting.
Your new role: a celebrity fugitive.
That’s me, driving in a cheap rental down the coast of the Gulf of Mexico from a remote location in Texas where we’d been filming, salty air whistling through the cracked windows, enormous sunglasses covering my eyes, wearing a hoodie with its hood drawn over my head and pulled so tight, my pretty face is reduced to a tiny, squished circle of secrecy, and the radio is blasting 90s rage music.
And when I stop at a red light, a lady in the car next to me looks over, and I don’t blame her for the expression she gives. I’d be afraid of me too, how I’m dressed in this heat, coursing suspiciously through a quiet beach town like a creep tracking down his ex-boyfriend.
My disguise is absolutely necessary. No one can know who I am—for a few obvious reasons. A nonstop ringing phone sitting in the passenger seat next to an untouched bag of hot Cheetos is one reason. And the seventy urgent emails flooding my inbox are seventy other reasons. Right, and let’s not forget a growing mountain of unread text messages, most of which are from my agent threatening to end our “long and beautiful journey together” if I don’t return his calls right-the-fuck-now. There’s no telling how ass-deep I am in contract and union violations at this point.
But I couldn’t stand by. I had to do what I did. Even if it blew up my career and turned me into a trending hashtag.
Now I’m a creeper in a hoodie and shades in hundred-degree weather, slowly navigating down the backstreets of a weird beach town looking for an address, which I swear is not the address of a bank to rob.
And before I know it, I’m there—right in front of the bungalow I rented under the name Cal Mason. Not my real name, obviously. Cal’s my childhood cat that hated me and tried to gouge out my left eye when I was eight, and Mason is my brother whom I haven’t spoken to in over a year, and I guess when I’m under pressure, the first thing that pops into my head is what flies right out, and now Cal Mason’s renting an old bungalow in a place called Dreamwood Isle.
Doesn’t look the way it did in the ad. What really ever does? But its rotted wooden siding and depressing front porch has an undeniable charm, I have to admit. One of the front windows looks shinier than the other, suggesting it’s been recently replaced. I bet a local kid threw a rock at it on a dare. Buried deep in the comments section was some nonsense about this bungalow being cursed—“love begins and ends in that nook”—“its walls absorb heartbreak”—“if you put an ear to the floorboards, you can hear evil spirits whispering”—it goes on and on. No one ever rents it. Even the locals go out of their way to avoid the place.
That last part’s exactly what sealed the deal for me.
When I’m certain no one’s outside, I slip out of the car, tug my backpack over my shoulder, and scurry up a set of creaky front steps. I check under the third potted geranium as instructed, fetch the little key, then pop it into the door.