Chapter 1
The bass, in what was generously described as a “club,” throbbed with the subtlety of a jackhammer, a sensation Candace felt mostly in her meticulously sculpted cheekbones.
Around her, the elite of... well, something, gyrated with the practiced abandon of people who’d paid good money to forget they had mortgages.
Candace Marlow, a popstar princess (a title she suspected was trademarked by some shadowy corporation), watched with the weary detachment of a seasoned zookeeper observing particularly enthusiastic primates.
Her current “boyfriend,” Liam, a fellow actor whose primary talent seemed to be maintaining a perfectly tousled head of hair, was attempting to seduce Tiffany, her co-star, with a dance that suggested a seizure set to music.
“Charming,” Candace murmured to her champagne flute, the only thing in the room that seemed to understand her ennui.
“Enjoying the spectacle?” a voice dripped with amusement.
It was Julian, another actor, leaning against the banquette with the air of a bored aristocrat at a peasant uprising. “They move with the grace of a newborn giraffe,” he observed.
“It’s performance art,” Candace deadpanned. “A commentary on the fleeting nature of fame and the human capacity for self-delusion.”
“Ah, yes,” Julian nodded sagely. “I believe it’s called ‘Drunk People Dancing.’”
Candace sighed, a sound that could have wilted orchids. At twenty-three, she was already a veteran of an industry that ran on manufactured emotions and even more manufactured relationships. She’d worked with “big names” like Daniel Harris, a producer whose name was synonymous with both “blockbuster” and “questionable toupee.”
Her personal life was a carefully constructed facade. The tabloids had linked her to a string of eligible (and aggressively bland) bachelors, each relationship a contractual obligation with a built-in expiration date. The truth? Candace was still a virgin, a fact that would likely send her publicist into a spiral of existential dread.
Her family was... complicated. Her mother, a former actress with a revolving door policy on marriage, had provided Candace with a colorful collection of stepfathers, each one more forgettable than the last. (“Was that Richard the investment banker, or Richard the guy who collected porcelain unicorns?” Candace often wondered.) She also had two siblings and one a toddler to support, making her less of a pop star and more of a one-woman social safety net.
“You know,” Julian said, watching Liam nearly clothesline Tiffany with an ill-advised spin, “for someone who spends her days simulating orgasms for a living, you seem remarkably... unaroused.”
“It’s called professionalism, darling,” Candace said, taking a sip of her champagne. “And years of practice. I can fake enthusiasm for anything. Award shows, press junkets, the concept of a ‘Space Ninjas’ franchise... the list is endless.”
“Ah, yes, ’Space Ninjas 7: Laser Katana Boogaloo,’” Julian shuddered. “I heard they’re making you do your own stunts this time.”
“Don’t even,” Candace groaned. “I’m pretty sure my contract stipulates I have to be able to breathe in zero gravity. My agent calls it ‘expanding my range.’ I call it cruel and unusual punishment.”
Liam, in a moment of unexpected coordination, dipped Tiffany with the dramatic flair of a telenovela star. Tiffany shrieked with delight, a sound that, in Candace’s expert opinion, was indistinguishable from a small animal being vacuumed.
“They’re a modern-day Romeo and Juliet,” Julian mused, “if Romeo was perpetually off-balance and Juliet communicated exclusively in dolphin noises.”
Candace stared at the swirling dregs of her champagne. “You know,” she said slowly, a dangerous glint in her eye, “maybe I should join them. For research. Method acting and all that.”
Julian raised an eyebrow. “I’d pay to see that. Just try not to break anything. Preferably not your own dignity.”
Then, her gaze landed on him. Kevin McGregor.
He was a creature of myth in Hollywood – a producer’s “elite” friend, which Candace suspected meant he had a really good poker face and an even better accountant. While lesser men in the room were practically drooling on their designer shoes, their eyes doing the visual equivalent of a full-body scan, Kevin remained...impassive. It was as if he’d wandered into the club by accident, mistaking it for a particularly dimly lit library.
Candace was accustomed to reactions. Paparazzi flashes, fawning fans, and the barely concealed lust of studio executives – it was the oxygen she breathed. Romano and Daniel, her producers and their equally vapid wives, were too busy canoodling to notice her, which was insulting in its own right. But Kevin? He was a challenge. A beautiful, infuriating challenge.
She’d deployed her arsenal of practiced flirtation: the lingering gaze, the subtle lip-bite, the accidental brush of his arm. Nothing. It was like flirting with a particularly handsome statue.
His “circle,” as the tabloids so breathlessly described it, was indeed populated with women who looked like they’d been genetically engineered in a lab specializing in “maximum allure.” Candace, in a moment of dark whimsy, imagined the ultimate test.
“If I walked through this club stark naked,” she mused to herself, “would he even blink? Or would he just adjust his glasses and ask me if I’d read my screenplay?”
The sheer absurdity of the thought made her smile. Kevin McGregor. The man had to be some kind of anomaly. The whispers in the industry painted him as either a repressed monk or, even more ludicrously, demisexual.
The very idea! In a town where “relationship” was a euphemism for “strategic alliance,” the notion that someone needed an emotional connection before... well, anything, was practically a plot twist worthy of a best film.
A slow, wicked grin spread across Candace’s face. An idea began to form, as insidious and sparkly as a glitter bomb.
“What if,” she mused, her eyes gleaming with mischievous intent, “I gave him a trigger?”
The possibilities were endless, each one more outrageous than the last. Should she launch into a heartfelt monologue about her childhood dreams? Quote obscure poetry? Stage a dramatic fainting spell in his general vicinity? The possibilities were as vast and ridiculous as the combined budgets of her last three movies.
This wasn’t just about ego. This was about... scientific curiosity. Yes, that was it. A purely scientific endeavor to understand the enigma that was Kevin McGregor. And if, in the process, she managed to inject a little chaos into her perfectly curated, soul-crushingly monotonous existence? Well, that would just be a happy accident.
