Читать книгу Black Diamond - Havana Adams - Страница 16
Оглавление“Lola! Smile!”
Lola watched the look of derision that Amber shot at the lone photographer that greeted their arrival at the Chateau Marmont. Lola could practically read her friend’s mind. Paris would have twenty photographers; this lone snapper was an insult. Lola and Amber linked arms and together they walked into the infamous Hollywood landmark. It was a scorching Los Angeles afternoon and Lola pursed her lips, hardly bothering to hide her irritation.
“We should be by a pool,” she muttered. She tensed as she noted Amber’s frown. Too often, in the last few months, she’d seen her best friend frown at her. Lola was starting to worry that having her best friend as her manager was quickly going to become a buzz kill.
“Tyler wanted to meet,” Amber replied as they stepped into the ornate dimly lit lift that would take them down to the Chateau’s garden dining area.
“We could have met at his office, at least that’s by the beach,” Lola replied. Amber sighed and once again Lola felt that she was somehow failing to live up to expectations.
“What good would that have done?” Amber snapped. “The point is to be seen, to raise your profile.”
“I’m seen everywhere, I’m out every night,” Lola snapped back and she felt a dart of anger as she saw Amber roll her eyes. When did Amber start rolling her eyes at me? It used to be the two of them against the world. Silently, they stepped out of the lift and Amber waved across the dining area at Tyler who was seated at a prominent table at the centre of the garden. As they walked towards him, Lola was aware of a few surreptitious glances thrown their way. She recognised a famous Swedish actor that her mother had once worked with and an award-winning screenwriter who was tapping away into a laptop. As they approached Tyler, Lola took a moment to appraise him. In his pressed jeans, button-down shirt and sun-streaked blond hair, Tyler looked like every wannabe surfer dude that had ever walked the Thirty Mile Zone with a dream. By rights, like every one of those dreamers, Tyler should have wound up doing porn or working as a pool boy in Brentwood, while flirting with the co-ed daughter of the house. And yet, somehow, Tyler had shaken off the shackles of low expectations. He’d hustled his way up from runner to reporter at a cable entertainment station. He had tenaciously made the jump from reporter to presenter and, displaying the kind of smarts that no one would ever have suspected, given the artfully highlighted hair, he’d parlayed his way into producing. The Cable Network where he’d once been the go-to guy for coffees, now counted his production company and the revenue from his shows as the sole reason for its continued existence.
“Lola, Amber. Goddesses, as always.” Tyler stood as they approached, smiling with a flash of his blinding white teeth. “So how have you been?” Tyler directed his question at Lola as they took their seats.
“Good, we’ve gone out a whole lot,” she admitted. “And I checked, we were on one of those live blog things after the benefit last week. That’s good, right?” Lola asked. Tyler gave a non-committal nod.
“It’s a start,” he replied, leaning back in his chair and for just a moment Lola caught a flash in his eyes, a flash of the shark that must lurk beneath the laid-back, Californian beach boy exterior. “But the thing is, we’re not even in the ball park yet, babe. We want you to be everywhere, not just on blogs. We want you on TV, on magazines, on red carpets, at the Super Bowl and maybe eventually on movie screens.” Lola stared in dismay at Tyler. She thought her renewed push had been good. For someone who’d partied since she was thirteen, she hadn’t imagined that it could ever become a chore but in the last two weeks she and Amber had been to everything. What more could they do?
“How do we do that?” she asked quietly. Tyler nodded at Amber.
“Amber and I have been talking and we think what you need is a boyfriend. A celebrity boyfriend.”
Whatever Lola had expected to hear, this wasn’t it and she stared open-mouthed at Tyler.
