Author: Tracy Wolff
Publisher: Loveswept ( Random House)
Date of publication: June 2016
True
Crime novelist Ian Sharpe has spent his career writing about serial killers for
very personal reasons. For his latest exposé, he is taking on the sadistic
madman known as the Red Ribbon Strangler, and when his research leads him to
Hollywood’s most private and provocative actress, he will break every rule to
uncover her truth.
The
daughter of one of Hollywood’s golden couples, chased by paparazzi and treated
as a commodity her entire life, Veronica Romero wields her sex appeal like a
weapon. She expects Ian to be as easy to control as every other man she’s ever
known. But from the beginning, he refuses to fall into line. Mysterious and
cool, challenging and just a little bit dangerous, Ian somehow makes her feel
safe—even as he digs into the deepest secrets of her life and pushes her to the
breaking point.
As raw
ecstasy gives way to agonized truths, their dark obsession exposes secrets that
have been buried for far too long. Ian wants to tear down her walls and heal
the sensual woman underneath. But if Veronica’s learned anything, it’s that the
line between pleasure and pain is a narrow one—and when caught between them the
only thing that matters is how you play the game.
Excerpt:
I take picture after picture, with a vintage champagne glass
in my hand or my face buried in a huge bouquet of dahlias. Toward the end, Marc
has the stylist and his assistant wrap me up in a long string of artificial
belladonna since the real stuff can cause problems if it touches the skin. Then
they heap my gloved hands with a mountain of the poisonous black berries and
Marc has me hold my hands out to the camera in a deadly macabre offering.
Again and again Marc shoots me like that, taking pictures
from every possible angle. On his knees in front of me, looking up. From a
ladder above me, looking down. Beside me. Behind me. Across the room. Up close.
Again and again he points and clicks. Again and again, I smile and pout and
make every other expression he asks for. I even take his suggestion to tilt my
head back with my mouth open wide and hold one of the berries between my thumb
and index finger as I pretend to be about to drop it in. As I do, I close my
eyes and pretend not to be totally icked out.
When I open them two minutes and twenty shots later, the
first person I see is Ian. He’s leaning back against one of the mirrored walls
and for once his omnipresent notebook is nowhere to be seen. Instead he’s
staring straight at me, a half-snarl on his normally calm face and his eyes
burning with a mixture of contempt and desire.
It’s the first time I’ve seen anything but pleasant or
puzzled interest from him and it has the tiny hairs on the back of my neck
standing up. Has ice skating down my spine and a desert taking up residence in
my mouth. Because, in that moment, as our eyes lock and his turn impossibly
darker, impossibly blacker, I don’t know who he sees. Can’t tell who he wants.
Me or her?
Actress or murderer?
Sentient being or a character he helped create?
It’s just more fuel to add to the fire of my earlier doubts
and in that one tense and electric moment, it comes to me. What the cover shot
should be.
What I need it to be.
Marc backs off a little, has his assistant come forward with
a trash bag for me to throw away the last of the berries and the gloves I’ve
been wearing. As she pauses to tie up the bag in front of me, I ask her for a
couple wipes.
She quickly returns with a box of baby wipes and I smile my
thanks even as Marc instructs me back against the mirror for what he calls “the
last series of shots.”
I do as he instructs, but as he’s fiddling with the
lighting, I turn toward the mirror and swipe the wipe over the right half of my
face.
“What are you doing?” my makeup artist squawks as he comes
racing across the room at me.
“Trust me, Dalton,” I tell him as I continue to scrub.
“Stop doing that!” he orders as he grabs on to the end of
the wipe and actually tries to wrestle it away from me.
“Just wait,” I instruct, refusing to let go no matter how
hard he tugs.
“But—”
“What are you up to, Veronica?” Marc asks. He sounds more
intrigued than annoyed.
“I’ll show you,” I tell him, pushing gently at Dalton’s hand
until he finally lets go with a whimper.
And then, with the whole room—including Ian—watching me intently,
I wipe the entire half side of my face clean of any and all makeup. I do it
carefully, making sure that the line that runs down the center of my face is
exact so that both sides are completely symmetrical.
When I’m done, I reach up and take off my right earring and
hand it to Dalton who still looks slightly shell-shocked. Then I step back and
stare at this new reflection of myself in the mirror.
Half me at my most natural, half her at her most armored,
it’s a devastating look. Made even more so by the elaborate fifties makeup
Dalton has me in—all red lips and thick black liner and long, long lashes.
There is a difference, I tell myself fiercely as I study
myself. I am not her. I will never be her, no matter what it felt like four
months ago.
In the background I’m aware of Marc cursing softly, of him
snapping picture after picture. I don’t turn around, instead continuing to give
him my back so that he gets both me and my reflection in each shot.
“Turn around,” he breathes after he’s taken at least three
dozen pictures.
Reluctantly, I do as he requests, then follow his impatient
gesture for me to move away from the mirror. I step forward and then the camera
starts again, clicking away to get the shot from this angle as well.
At that moment, Ian moves and I make the mistake of glancing
his way. Our gazes lock and heat slams through me at the look he’s giving me,
has my eyes widening and my lips parting on a gasp as I struggle to draw air
into lungs that have abruptly forgotten how to work.
“Fuck,” Marc breathes from where he’s narrowing in on my
face. “That’s it. That’s the money shot.”
I drag my eyes away from Ian, but it’s too late. For the
first time in a very, very long time, I feel vulnerable. And I hate every
second of it.
About Tracy
Wolff:
New
York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Tracy Wolff collects books, English
degrees and lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she
is when immersed in a great novel. At six she wrote her first short
story—something with a rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the
wonderful world of girls lit with her first Judy Blume novel. By ten she’d read
everything in the young adult and classics sections of her local bookstore, so
in desperation her mom started her on romance novels. And from the first page
of the first book, Tracy knew she’d found her life-long love. Now an English
professor at her local community college, she writes romances that run the
gamut from sweet contemporary to erotica, from paranormal to Urban Fantasy and
from young adult to new adult.
