The Princess and the Porn Star (2 page)

You’re going to wear those?
he cried in my head, tearing at his curly gray hair.
You’re going to
dance
in them? Oh, Rachel…

Oh, Rachel, indeed. But if Olivia Taylor was going to make any kind of comeback, that meant doing what the record label demanded. And right now, the record label demanded that Olivia dance with a porn star in a skintight dress and skyscraper heels for the next few hours, no matter how that left Rachel’s ankle feeling tonight.

“Okay.” Quinn sat up. “Shoes are on.”

“Goodie.” I took as deep a breath as the dress would allow. “Now let’s see if I can stand.”

He held out both hands. With his help, I stood carefully.

“Oh my God.” I looked around. “I think I’m a story taller than I was earlier.”

Quinn looked up at me, then down at my legs. “You don’t have any Tonya Hardings in your world, do you?”

“None that I’m aware of.”

“Good. Because if someone took out one of those heels…”

“I’d be fucked.” I carefully took a step. “Okay, time to walk.”

He didn’t let go of my hands yet. “You good?”

I nodded. “Just need to practice for a few minutes.”

“Probably more than a few minutes if you’re going to dance in them,” he muttered.

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

He let me go, and I took a few steps. I thought I was doing okay, but then I wobbled.

“Shit!” I squeaked and grabbed the edge of a table for balance just before I would’ve fallen.

Quinn sighed dramatically and shook his head. “Really?”

I glared at him. “You want to walk in these?”

Both eyebrows arched. “Bitch, please.” Folding his arms across his chest, he nodded toward the white pair I had to wear tomorrow. “Fifty bucks says I could put those things on and do motherfucking Riverdance while you were still limping around like a drunken goat.”

“A drunken goat?” I laughed so hard I had to tighten my grip on the table so I didn’t fall on my butt. “Do I really look that bad?”

“Worse.”

“You’re a little shit, you know that?”

“At least I can walk in heels.”

“Show-off.”

He just snickered while I continued trying to keep my feet under me. I took a deep—sort of—breath and started walking again.

While I made slow, awkward laps back and forth across the room, he said, “So you really didn’t know there was a porn star involved in this whole thing until today?”

“Are you kidding? I didn’t even know they’d canned the other director and scrapped his entire idea until yesterday. This is all news to me.”

He walked back to the folding table where he’d left his iPad. “And you’re supposed to learn whatever choreography today and be ready in time to film tomorrow?”

“Doesn’t sound like there
is
much choreography.” I wobbled again but didn’t have to grab anything this time, so I took another step and caught my balance. “The backup dancers are doing their original choreography, except with a different background and costumes. I’m just supposed to do, I don’t know, something sexy and sort of rhythmic in front of the camera while this porn star feels me up.”

“Something sexy and sort of rhythmic?” Quinn laughed. “Well, I guess you can’t ask for much more when you’re going to be dancing with a straight guy.” When I glared at him, he put up a hand. “What? Have you
seen
the way straight men dance?” He waved his arms in the air and shook his whole body in a ridiculous frog-in-a-blender fashion. Then he stopped abruptly, peered at me, and said, “Um,
no.
”

I snickered and kept “walking”. God, where would I be without Quinn and his warped sense of humor?

In a pretty bad place, actually. He and I both knew I’d have gone a whole lot further off the deep end three years ago if I hadn’t had him there. Quinn was the only reason I made it to—or through—anything toward the end, and that usually meant he spent half the morning holding my hair while I puked and the other half pouring espresso down my throat while he talked me off whatever ledge I was on. He stayed with me longer than my record company and my fiancé. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the man who’s picked you up a thousand times is dropping you off at rehab and telling you he won’t come back until you pick yourself up this time.

Lost in my thoughts, I misjudged a step and very nearly rolled my ankle, but I caught myself.

“You okay, love?”

“I’m fine.” I put my arms out for a few seconds to give my balance a chance to level out. “Yeah, I’m fine.” I took another step and grimaced. Five minutes into wearing these things, and my right ankle was
not
happy. I’d be lucky if I could walk after this rehearsal.

“Hey, Quinn?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Yes’m?”

I gingerly took another step. “Could you call and make me an appointment for a cortisone shot this afternoon?”

“Ankle?”

“Yep.”

“On it.” He paused. “Want me to get some icepacks ready too?”

“That would be awesome.” I glanced back at him. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“It’s what I’m here for, love.” He polished his flawless nails on his shirt. “So have you seen this guy you’re working with today?”

Wincing, I turned around. “No. Why?”

“Oh.
Honey
.” He grinned over the top of his iPad. “You need to research these things.”

I rolled my eyes. “I just want to get in and get it over with before these shoes murder my feet.”

“You’ll be fine, babe.” Quinn waved a hand. “You just haven’t worn heels in a while.”

“Right, so should I really be wearing
these
”—I pointed at my feet—“when I haven’t worn anything above two inches in like three years?”

“Just be careful. You’ll be fine.” He shifted his gaze to his iPad. “Especially once you see what you’re dancing with today and tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.” He moved his hand rapidly over the screen. “And thanks to your darling assistant’s third degree black belt in Google-Fu, you may now feast your eyes on your dance partner. I present to you”—he turned the iPad around—“the one and only Buck Harder.”

“Buck Harder,” I muttered as I took the iPad from him. “What a name.”

“And what a
body
,” Quinn mused.

Staring at the screen, I said, “Can’t argue with that.” And I couldn’t. Wow. He was… Well, I could see why he’d apparently done so well in his line of work. He was broad-shouldered, tanned, with flawlessly defined, hairless abs. He obviously spent a good chunk of his time at the gym, but he wasn’t huge. Not a bodybuilder or a steroid junkie, just fit. Very,
very
fit.

His thumbs were hooked in the pockets of his jeans, his hands angled just right to direct my attention to his crotch, where the skintight denim clung to at least one reason he’d gone into porn. My God.

I made myself quit staring at his package and instead looked at his face. His sandy blond hair was neatly trimmed and perfectly styled, and those vivid green eyes might have been mesmerizing and knee-weakening if not for the arrogance radiating from them as well as that smarmy grin. Forget what he had in his pants. Something told me his ego was his largest appendage.

“Cute.” I set the iPad down. “Looks like he knows it too.”

“Of course he does.” Quinn scoffed. “He gets to have sex for a living, even if it
is
with women”—he stuck out his tongue—“and he’s one of the most popular and highest earning out of all the other men who have sex for a living. Of course he knows he’s hot!”

“Can’t wait to work with him,” I muttered.

A knock at the door turned both our heads.

Rich opened the door and leaned in. “You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

He tapped his watch. “Ten minutes.”

“I’m on my way.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.” Quinn held up his phone. “After I make your appointment.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.” I started toward the door, still wobbling a little on those ridiculous shoes. “I think I’m going to need it.”

“The way you’re walking?” He snorted. “Honey, I’d better get the paramedics on standby.”

“Oh, shut up. I can walk.”

“Uh-huh.” He snickered. “Have fun with Buck Harder, darling.”

“Shut.
Up.
”

By the time I was out in the hallway outside my dressing room, I was mostly balanced on the shoes. I’d walked in higher, skinnier heels before, and they just took a few minutes to get used to.

All the way to the room where we were rehearsing, I was still sure I’d need that cortisone shot later, but no longer afraid of breaking my neck. Or re-breaking my ankle. All I had to do now was get through this rehearsal, a day or two of shooting and hope the press didn’t go psycho on me for being on-camera with a porn star.

The thought made me roll my eyes. The media was already going to have a collective conniption when the video finally dropped, because right now, no one knew a thing. My comeback album was a closely guarded secret, and everyone involved, myself included, had signed ironclad nondisclosure agreements. One of those “go ahead, tell the media; we’ll sue you for anything they paid you and then some, and don’t think we won’t find out it was you” things.

The secret would be out soon, though. The release was coming up fast, and the video we were shooting tomorrow would drop within a couple of days of the album. The marketing twits said they were aiming for “shock and awe” by breaking out a brand-new Olivia Taylor album and video without any kind of lead-in hype.

“You’ve been off the radar for three years,”
one of the suits had said. Gesturing wildly like marketing guys always did, he’d added,
“Now you’re going to explode back onto the scene.”

My gut told me they just didn’t want to promote anything until they were absolutely sure the album would happen. An artist who was a way better gamble than me had fizzled out midway through recording a highly anticipated third album. She went to rehab—didn’t we all?—and the album never happened, so the record label wasn’t even giving me the chance to embarrass them like that. Not a word to the public until every track was cut and the video was in the can. Even then, total silence until the minute the album dropped.

Probably so they still had a chance to pull it if I did something “outrageously and typically Olivia” and wound up the laughingstock of the tabloids. Again. Which, the bigwigs had reminded me a hundred times over, would be in violation of the ominous morality clause they’d hammered into my contract when they re-signed me this year.

“Fuck up,” it said in not so many words, “and you’re not only dropped, you’re never signing with Risen Star again as long as you fucking live.”

This from the people pairing me up with a porn star.

I rolled my eyes again.

For all the business bullshit and the constant reminders that I’d screwed up before, I was still walking on cloud nine. In stripper heels, maybe, but even that couldn’t put a damper on my excitement about being back in the game. Every step of this album—writing it, recording it, and now this—had been like a dream, taking me back into a world I thought I’d never be a part of again, and I could not
wait
to get back onstage.

That thought made me shiver. The stage. Nothing beat the feeling of singing on a stage.

Yeah, I may not have been thrilled about some aspects of my current situation, and I was worried sick about it all getting yanked out from under me, but I was excited as hell. This was really happening. I was a signed, performing musician again.

When I reached the door to the soundstage, the security guards standing outside gave me a nod and let me in.

The set was still mostly plain plywood and sheetrock, and the room was packed with cameras, crewmen, backup dancers and enormous lights. The air was heavy with coffee, hot electronics, and fresh sawdust, and at least someone in the room must have been outside recently for a prescription smoke break. People shouted over equipment and chatted amongst themselves. Hammers banged. Saws whined. Crew members strode past with stern looks on their faces and coiled extension cords on their shoulders. A small flock of suits loomed in the shadows, peering at everyone and everything over their Starbucks cups. Dancers stretched beside the far wall, people with clipboards muttered and swore, and someone somewhere barked at someone about a missing gel for one of the lights. Typical set for a video.

I smiled to myself. This wasn’t the first shoot we’d done for this video—we’d shot some other footage last week—but walking into a music video set was like coming home. Despite all the chaos and insanity, it took me about three seconds to home in on
him
.

His back was to me. All in black leather, just like me and the backup dancers, but he stood out. I couldn’t put my finger on what set him apart from the other guys. They were all obviously fit, and he was probably just as limber as they were, given his profession, but he still looked…different. Like a runner compared to a swimmer. Just as fit, just as powerful, but honed for a different sport.

Or maybe my brain just couldn’t process him, or who he did or didn’t look like, because whatever his body was designed for, right then it was wrapped in skintight black leather. Nothing but skintight black leather. It covered his broad shoulders. Stretched over his biceps. Coated those narrow hips and that butt like it was painted on.