Playing for Love Read online

  Playing for Love

  Breaking the Rules: Book One

  Melinda Curtis

  Copyright © 2011 by:

  Melinda Curtis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Second Edition 2013

  This book was built at IndieWrites.com. Visit us on Facebook.

  190918.012356

  Chapter 1

  L.A. Happenings by Lyle Lincoln

  …Kent Decklin, that movie star heartbreaker, is back on the open market. Seems he broke up with starlet Mimi Sorbet two days ago at Mr. Chow over garlic noodles…and over being caught with his hands full at a Malibu beach party last week. No dessert for Kent. And Mimi? Hollywood’s ping-ponging man-eater can’t seem to put herself on a diet. She was spotted at the Forum the next night nibbling on the ear of one soon to be NBA bad boy, Evan Oliver.

  And finally, this column bids adieu to Dooley Rule, creator of the celebrity-embraced Rules of Attraction. Dooley died yesterday, just days after learning he had an inoperable brain tumor. Although his multimedia empire may continue, it’s questionable whether the unorthodox personal life coaching program Dooley offered to the likes of basketball superstars and mega Hollywood forces will continue. Can anyone fill Dooley’s shoes? Or keep his Hollywood secrets? Certainly not one of his estranged children, of which there are many. And yet one wonders…can the surviving Rules afford to lose their meal ticket?

  “…And when it comes to my children…”

  The wait was finally over. In the Beverly Hills offices of Kremer, Hurley & Smythe, Amber Rule stopped shredding the tissue in her lap and waited to hear if her father loved her or not.

  To her left, her half-sister Cora released the stranglehold she had on the platinum pendant about her neck and leaned forward, sparing a disparaging glance at Amber’s mess. To Amber’s right, her half-brother Blue positioned his chair ahead of them both.

  For twenty-seven years, Amber hadn’t known where she stood with her father, Dooley Rule, never knew if she’d be greeted with a smile and a bear hug, or a reprimand for some unknown transgression. And now…

  Franklin Kremer, her father’s ancient attorney, paused to adjust his thick trifocals.

  The echoes of the hungry paparazzi three floors below drifted up on the spring breeze. Lacing her fingers together, Amber imagined a plump water balloon arcing through the air, scattering Hollywood’s bottom feeders.

  The so-called press weren’t as anxious as the Rule siblings to discover the heart of Dooley Rule or the fate of the Dooley Foundation and its fortune. They hunted the person who’d possess the celebrity secrets rumored to be in Dooley’s files with one question: Could they be bought?

  Amber, who worried some of those secrets might well be her own, would do anything to protect the Foundation’s integrity. She couldn’t say the same about her two younger half-siblings. They’d divulge secrets like inside traders if it meant their Hollywood stock went up.

  “…Each of my children age twenty-five and older shall be required to work at the Dooley Foundation for one year, generate at least one million dollars in revenue, and fulfill a task I have assigned them.”

  Shock dropped in Amber’s belly, sending ripples of unease through her system. Tissue snowflakes drifted to the Oriental carpet.

  “What task?” Blue demanded, glaring accusingly at Amber. “Someone set this up with Dad.”

  Amber opened her mouth to deny it, but their father, or at least his lawyer, wasn’t done yet, having flipped to the next page of the will and tilted his chin just so in order to make out the rest of their sentence. “If they complete both sales goal and task to the executor’s satisfaction they will receive three million dollars a year from the estate as long as the estate is able to provide said funds. And if – ”

  Three million dollars? If Amber’s father thought he could buy her love for three million dollars a year…Well. She squared her shoulders. She hoped he was wrong.

  Evan Oliver, the newest bad-ass of the newest NBA expansion team, the L.A. Flash, elbowed a defender out of his way, planted his size thirteen Nike’s two feet from the basket and launched himself in the air in front of a seven-foot tall Korean, fully expecting the giant to swat him like a bug. Instead, the Korean center stood like a wide frozen X leaving Evan plenty of space to dunk between his freakishly long arms.

  It should have been beautiful. A triumph. The proof that Evan was worth the four million dollars the Flash was going to pay him for joining them during the last month of the regular season, replacing Zee Johnson, who’d blown out his knee against the Lakers.

  Adrenaline kept Even soaring upward, arms stretched like Superman launching in the blue sky, ready to save the world. Or at least a struggling basketball team.

  Evan extended one of his nearly freakishly long arms (he was as tall as his six and a half foot wingspan) toward the basket. The Korean’s eyes widened in surprise and then fell in disappointment as he realized Evan was going to score on him. For a moment, Evan felt sorry for the guy.

  And in that moment everything went wrong.

  A sweaty body jostled Evan’s left side. A hand closed around his right bicep just before Evan put the ball in the hoop.

  Shit-fuckin’-damn.

  The orange rock clanged against the rim and bounced into the air as four bodies, including Evan’s and the Korean’s, tangled mid-air…and then thundered onto the hardwood at the L.A. Flash’s practice court.

  Whistles blew. Limbs flailed. Obscenities echoed.

  Somebody’s elbow jabbed its way into Evan’s right thigh, nearly to the bone. Somebody’s knee tried to find a home inside Evan’s spine. He yanked his face out of the Korean’s rank armpit and rolled away from the initiation melee.

  Adrenaline sparked angrily beneath Evan’s skin, demanding an outlet, demanding retribution. His fingers curled, anticipating a fist-to-face release. All he needed was a target.

  “God damn it, Oliver, finish! Two feet from the basket and you can’t score? This ain’t no sissy streetball game where players stand by and watch you score. This is the fuckin’ NBA. Pick up the pace and run it again.” The gravelly, booming voice of the Flash’s coach didn’t worry Evan, but it did remind him what was at stake.

  Clamping down the need to bash someone, Evan hid his muscle tremble by scrubbing his face with the inside of his black mesh practice jersey. He returned to mid-court with controlled steps, ignoring the cramp in his thigh and the spasm in his back. Another league, another rite of passage. Two weeks from now the other Flash players would see he was worth the money. If Evan could hold onto his temper they’d quit trying to use him as a punching bag.

  If they didn’t break one of his bones first.

  “Run it again,” Coach Spinks bellowed, leaning against a table near the middle of the practice court. The tall, wide black man shook his head and mumbled something to the rest of the coaching staff that had them shaking their heads, too.

  All coaching eyes swiveled to Evan. This workout was just a formality before his deal was inked. He’d been offered a contract by the Flash’s headstrong owner, Jack Gordon, without input or approval from Flash coaches. That had to suck, explaining the sideline Evan Oliver hate-a-thon.

  “You are smoking from all seven upper orifices,” the tall Korean said, pointing at Evan’s face. “It does you no good that they see they make you mad. We will score many points, you and I. If we are on the same unit and you can’t score, pass the ball to me. I will finish. I am Ren Du, pride of South Korea.” Ren thrust a hand the size of a baseball mitt at Evan.

  Evan was torn between thanking the too skinny, too nice Korean and swat
ting his hand and offer away. Evan Oliver didn’t need anyone finishing for him. That’s what his father had told him for years and that’s what his agent said now. And, admittedly, there were days when Evan believed his own PR. Not that it looked like today was going to be one of those days.

  “Hey,” Spinks interrupted them before Evan could reply. “This ain’t no boys club. Run the fuckin’ play again.”

  With a puppy-dog grin, the Korean loped ungracefully back to his position on defense with the first unit, where he’d try his best to keep Evan from scoring.

  Fuck that.

  Evan nodded to the point guard on the second unit and dribbled toward the basket.

  Chapter 2

  There were three million cold-hearted reasons Amber couldn’t move in her chair. Three million excuses to return to work for the Dooley Foundation. It made her one reason to refuse – her hard won privacy – seem penny poor.

  “Daddy didn’t love anyone.” Cora, the youngest of them at age twenty-five, kept Mr. Kremer from continuing.

  “He loved himself.” That was Blue calling the kettle black. Leveraging his job at a production studio, Blue had become a serial dater of star-reaching actresses and reality show celebs. “Why else would Dad call the press instead of us when he learned he was dying?”

  “He didn’t even text me. The shoe salesman at Barneys told me he’d died while I was trying on these Giuseppe Zanottis.” Cora angled her feet to display a pair of beautiful black sandals.

  It was hard for Amber to tolerate Cora’s debutante misery on a good day, yet she had to admit those were some knockout shoes. But now that their father was gone, they needed to set their differences aside, become a real family. Hope thawed Amber’s limbs. Maybe something good could come out of this. She reached out, intending to gently squeeze Cora’s hand.

  Cora recoiled, glaring. She was everything Amber wasn’t – tall, slender and confident with tamable dark brown hair and that superior L.A. attitude that meant she was never happy. Classically beautiful and draped in a form-fitting black beaded cardigan and gunmetal gray pencil skirt, Cora fit into the somber lawyer’s office. “Daddy gave you everything when he was alive.”

  “He was contractually obligated.” Amber forced the words past a throat wound tightly with rejection.

  “You got paid because Daddy transformed you from a fat, social reject into a passably pretty, celebrity-dating disaster.” Leave it to Cora to view Amber’s purgatory as Shangri-La. “Why he chose to feature you in all those motivational books and DVDs is beyond me.”

  Knowing the answer, Amber clenched her hands in her lap.

  Cora’s eyes narrowed when Amber didn’t rise to the bait. “I mean, everyone knows you had sex with Sam Slade in the back of his limo after the Golden Globes…”

  Wrong. While Amber dealt with a wardrobe malfunction (no one told teenage Amber that there were bras for bareback gowns), Sam tried to taste her panties. She’d planted her knee in the horny young star’s face, which was still red when she kicked him out of the limo at the after party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

  “And you had something going on with Ashton Langley before Mara uncovered him…”

  Wrong again.

  Nous permettre d’avoir le sexe did not mean I think you’re sexy in French – thank you, Cora, for leaving that false translation where Amber would find it the night she and Ashton were introduced.

  Cora arched one thin brow as she delivered her coup de grâce. “And then there was Kent Decklin.”

  A flicker of heat in Amber’s cheeks confirmed Cora’s barbs finally struck a nerve. Her former lover had filmed Amber naked and at her most honestly vulnerable, posting it to the web. Amber redraped the lavender Pashmina over the scoop neck of her dress so that it fell to her waist in an unflattering vertical sheet.

  Blue came to Amber’s rescue. “Cora, would you rather discuss why you weren’t featured as a train wreck in any of the Dooley Foundation programs? You were probably more qualified to be his guinea pig than Amber was.”

  Cora managed to glare and pout at the same time, unaware of how lucky she’d been.

  For years, Amber was the main attraction in Dooley’s infomercials, his personal before-to-after example of how to transform your life: fat to thinner, dependent teen to independent adult, social dork to paparazzi princess. Dooley Rule pointed out all of Amber’s failings – on camera no less – and then made it appear he’d fixed them. He used Amber to hawk his personal life coaching services and peddle his motivational books. She had no interest in the Dooley Foundation and the Rules of Attraction it hawked: Choose, Voice, Trust, Welcome.

  Mr. Kremer cleared his throat, opened his mouth and said –

  “Why would Daddy do this to me?” Cora whined.

  There was no family for Amber here. No answers either. Amber nodded to the lawyer. “Please finish.”

  Cora smirked. “Can’t wait to return as the Foundation’s star, can you?”

  Amber clamped her lips, saving her from wasting breath. Over the past few years, Dooley had tried several times to lure Amber back to the Foundation, first with promises, then with gifts and, finally, with very loud ultimatums over the phone. But she’d come to like her freedom and her privacy.

  “And if they do not fulfill both obligations – task and sales goal…” The old lawyer droned loudly as if their interruptions annoyed him. “They will receive nothing from the estate.”

  Had Dad loved any of them?

  Gaze fixed on her hands, Amber knew her siblings were right. The answer had to be no. Dooley Rule was more interested in orchestrating their lives then ensuring their happiness.

  Amber unclenched her fingers and plucked a stray bit of tissue from the hem of her black Calvin Klein sheath, feeling guilty that she couldn’t dredge up more sadness about her loss. Over the past few days she’d experienced a nebulous emptiness when she’d thought about her father, whereas before there’d been a roller coaster ride of disappointing lows and exhilarating highs.

  Mr. Kremer reached into a drawer and withdrew three envelopes. “You may disclose your task to each other if you like. You have a week to notify me of your decision, after which time the offer is null and void. Should you decide to work you must show up at the Dooley Foundation on the next business day following your notification. While employed, you will receive a small salary and entertainment account to be used when entertaining clients.” He double-checked the names on the front of the envelopes and then handed them out.

  Amber’s fingers shook so badly she nearly dropped hers. She should leave now, offer unopened. If only Amber could be sure her siblings weren’t interested in selling what could be her secrets. If only…

  Cora gracefully retreated to the corner by a sturdy wooden bookcase filled with old law books. She’d inherited none of the Rule awkwardness and all of her supermodel mother’s expensive tastes.

  Blue leaned a bit away from Amber to read his missive, his untucked turquoise striped button down seriously rumpled. He enjoyed the spotlight and benefits of a Hollywood lifestyle, but like their father, fidelity and loyalty weren’t part of his vocabulary.

  Trust Blue and Cora? When it came to money, Amber didn’t trust either one.

  There was only one thing to do to ensure her privacy. Agree to the terms of the will and then destroy everything in the Dooley Foundation offices with her name on it, every note, every video clip, every file. And while she was at it, she’d shred and delete everyone else’s too. All those Hollywood celebrities, all those L.A. power brokers, everyone who’d ever been a client of Dooley’s would thank her. Once the sensationalism of Dooley’s death passed, Amber would no longer read the newspaper’s daily gossip column or check TMZ.com with trepidation.

  So what if Amber lost her father’s allowance and a chance at three million dollars? She’d live a quiet life in Pasadena, where she’d sought refuge three years ago, living off her Foundation royalty checks and her small investments. Focus on her charitable work. A few less di
nners out, a few more efforts to plunder Barneys clearance rack and she’d be fine.

  The unopened envelope in her lap beckoned. This was just like Christmas. There was either something really great inside or something she’d want to return. Her father delighted in creating surprises, reveled in carrying off the unexpected, and had no scruples when it came to exploiting his children – mainly Amber – for financial gain.

  Amber drew a deep breath and ripped her envelope open. If her father wanted to humiliate her for a year, she had to know what he had planned.

  Dear lovely Amber…

  How could she be lovely? Amber was short, size eight – a veritable whale by L.A. standards – with unruly, long red hair, pale skin that never tanned and naturally large breasts that drew double takes when she’d rather not attract attention at all.

  As I write this to you on my death bed, I find I must tell you that you’ve been my inspiration from the start…

  Because she was so not perfect and there was money to be made in “fixing” her.

  …and now you’ll be the Dooley Foundation’s CEO.

  Amber squinted at the page, certain she’d misread this last part. CEOs carried responsibility for making money. Despite her success in investing, Amber’s experience leaned more toward spending.

  Nope. There it was: C-E-O.

  I know you’re up to the challenge and care deeply about what happens to the Foundation’s clients.

  Okay…Amber had worried about Dooley’s clients. Some of them would be fine, having only paid him because it was fashionable to do so. But – amazingly – others she’d met benefited from Dooley’s influence and his Rules of Attraction. He’d helped child stars overcome addiction, movie directors control their anger issues and athletes burst their God-like ego bubbles and up their game. If pressed, Amber could acknowledge that her father somehow bumbled along and managed to make a difference in certain people’s lives, despite his unconventional ways and lack of fashion sense. It was his eccentricities that endeared him to his clients, leading to confidences that Amber suspected the opportunistic Dooley had noted somewhere.