Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Maisey Yates (inspirational books .TXT) 📗

“Yeah? Of the two of us, only one has demonstrated a disregard for social norms.”

A triple knock rattled the door. Kat called out to him. “Julian! I can get you a suite at the Fontainebleau.”

That was timely information. He liked having options.

“We could both leave,” he suggested to Ms. Taylor. “I’m sure there’s more than one available room at the Fontainebleau.”

“Or we could both stay.”

They fell silent and, in that silence, they reached an agreement. Still, there were some wrinkles to iron out. “Are you traveling alone?” he asked. “You booked this entire suite for yourself, or are you expecting a full bachelorette party?”

“Did anyone question you for wanting a suite to yourself?”

“It’s mainly for privacy reasons,” he said. “Which brings me to my one caveat.”

“Just one? I have a few.”

“You’re a writer,” Julian said.

“And you’re an actor.”

“You can’t write about me or anything that happens while you’re here.”

She eyed him with suspicion. “What do you think will happen?”

“Not much,” he said with a shrug. “I’m going to dive into bed as soon as everyone clears out. What are your plans?”

For the first time ever, she relaxed. Her rigid posture loosened, and her arms fell to her side. “Same. I’m exhausted.”

“All right, then.”

He went to open the door, but she stopped him. “Wait! Why are you being so nice?”

“This is not about niceness,” he said. “It’s about fairness. If I hadn’t showed up, you wouldn’t be in this position.”

“I got a good deal out of it,” she said.

“Yeah? What’s the deal?”

“Two free nights.”

“Not bad.”

“Right?”

Another loud, imperious knock, and the manager scolded him from the other side of the door. “Mr. Knight! This is not how we do things at Sand Castle. Let us handle it.”

This summit had to end. Julian was seriously sleep-deprived and all that knocking was drilling into his skull. He turned to her for confirmation. “Are we doing this?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll stay until my room becomes available. And don’t worry; I have no interest in writing about you. A, I don’t find you that compelling. B, I’m only really qualified to write about myself.”

“Not compelling?”

There were feature stories dedicated to the rise and fall of his career. A talentless hack to some, an action hero legend to others, but nothing if not compelling.

She rolled her eyes and murmured something about fragile Hollywood egos.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Open the door before they call the cops.”

“Fair point.” He’d sweep up the shards of his ego later. “Let’s face the firing squad.”

CHAPTER THREE

Ha! Joke’s on me! The second bedroom is actually a tidy study with an attached bath. All this opulence and I’m spending the night on a pullout couch.

Nina put aside her journal and closed her eyes. She’d kept a diary since childhood. An only child, her diary was often the guardian of her deepest secrets. When her fiction had failed to sell, she’d turned a year’s worth of old journals from her late teens into a memoir—a decision she now regretted. Regretting important life decisions was becoming a pattern.

She never should have come to Miami. What had she hoped to achieve? Closure? I mean…come on! This was life, not the Oprah show, and this trip was one big, unmitigated disaster.

Oh, but that wasn’t entirely true. There was one tall, dark and handsome mitigating factor.

Nina grabbed her phone and googled JL Knight. A torrent of results crowded the small screen. She started with the facts:

Julian Leroy Knight is an English actor. He is best known for his starring role in Thunder, directed by George Kirby.

Then she searched for the fluff. There was so much of it: fan art, photographs, video, essays and articles. Nina swiped through photos of the actor posing on the red carpet to snapshots of the man stretched out all but naked on a beach. However, the most recent photo was of him, hunched low, handing a handsome black cat to an ecstatic little girl. It had a clever little caption: JL Knight literally saves the cat! There were batches of cheerful on-camera interviews and one grainy thirty-second clip of a young JL Knight, drunk at a Hollywood party, with a message for the critics who’d panned his debut feature film: “Kiss my ass!”

Celebrity gossip sites provided relationship status updates (Love Is Dead: JL Knight and Bettina Ford Have Split) and chronicled professional setbacks (JL Knight—of “Kiss My Ass” Infamy—Gets His Ass Kicked at Box Office). A few more clicks and Nina landed on a blog dedicated to the film industry that put it all in context. JL Knight’s ex-girlfriend and former costar, Bettina Ford, had spearheaded a boycott of his latest release after most of her scenes were cut in postproduction. The movie had flopped.

And, to top it all off, she came across a devastating profile of the actor in Vanities, titled Nite Nite, JL Knight.

The star’s brand of toxic masculinity should have gone the way of the Hummer. His bloated films glorify violence, celebrate hypermasculine culture and belittle women. The actor is famous for his portrayal of an assassin for hire (code name “Thunder”) in the film adaptation of a once-popular video game. In the films, he stops at nothing to fulfill a contract, sometimes destroying entire cities to wipe out one target. Having not made much of his talent, content to feed from the bottom of the Hollywood swamp, JL Knight ought to retire.

Well, damn.

Nina, a reader, writer and theater geek, was not one to line up for a big Hollywood release. A regular at her neighborhood’s art house movie theater, she preferred her movies with subtitles. All this fuss about an action movie seemed a bit much. A fast-paced, high-voltage action flick served a purpose and had a place on the entertainment spectrum—particularly at the end of a long, hard day. On the other hand, why cut the scenes of a female character? Who’d made that call? Representation mattered, and she would’ve supported a boycott.

A new-message alert popped up on her phone screen. It was a