A Taste of Pink (Shades Book 4) Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Stephanie Hoffman McManus

  Cover images used under license from Bigstock and Depositphotos

  All rights reserved by the author, including the right to reproduce,

  distribute, or transmit in any form, by any means.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  For Prince Charming,

  Hurry up, would you?

  Prologue

  Any time now . . .

  The room continued to fill up with party goers. A string quartet played softly in the corner. Guests indulged in the open bar, waiting for her grand entrance. The precious birthday girl.

  I glanced at the time, not for the first time, and then fixed my eyes on the staircase. Wouldn’t be long before they realized she wasn’t timing her entrance for dramatic effect. She wasn’t coming at all.

  It was going to be a night to remember.

  It really shouldn’t have been this easy. She was so predictable. So easy to play. She never even saw what was right in front of her.

  A-listers continued to pack the spacious beach house. The who’s who of Hollywood. No one wanted to miss this party. The princess’ big night. All eyes had been on her lately, and after tonight, she’d be the biggest story on every news site. A victim of her fame.

  Tapping my finger against the glass in my hand, I surveyed the faces in the room. Oblivious smiles and laughter all around. Who would be the first to go looking for her?

  Would it be dear old Dad, as out of place here as a tractor at a car show?

  Lover boy? So protective and possessive, he’d been a constant hinderance. But not now. Now, he was alone at the bar, completely unaware. It would destroy him to learn that it’d happened right under his nose. That’d I’d been here right in front of him. That he’d failed her. I hid my grin with my glass, taking a premature celebratory drink.

  Conversation in the room paused as heads began to turn. I followed their gazes to the top of the staircase. There she was, like an angel in soft pink. My eyes widened as I choked on the champagne and my body went rigid. I silently cursed. She was not supposed to be there. There wouldn’t be another chance as perfect as this one.

  All attention in the room shifted to her. No one noticed my panic setting in. How was this happening? There should have been no mistakes.

  The music swiftly changed, and the room broke into the first line of “Happy Birthday.”

  I watched, frozen in place, as her hand reached for the railing, and then she swayed, unsteady on her feet. Her legs gave out on the first step and her body crumbled, tumbling down the steps to the landing where the staircase curved. The singing cut out, replaced by a collective gasp.

  “Riley!” One loud and desperate voice rang out above the music just before the musicians realized what was happening and ceased playing.

  The rest of the room was paralyzed for a moment as he shoved his way through the crowd to get to her. And then they snapped out of it and the room was thrown into chaos.

  “Happy birthday, Princess,” I muttered to myself.

  One

  Riley

  6 weeks earlier . . .

  There are certain moments in life that stick with a girl and carry her into womanhood.

  I remembered being six years old, prancing around in my mother’s high heels and pearls while I watched her at her makeup table getting ready for the firemen’s ball she attended every year with my dad. She taught me how to put on lipstick for the first time that night and told me one day I would get to go to a ball. Life for a six-year old was perfect then.

  Fast forward a handful of years and our places swapped. She watched with happy tears in her eyes as I got ready for my first homecoming dance at that same makeup table, the same string of passed down pearls around my neck. Mom took a million pictures and Daddy threatened my date if he didn’t have me home by eleven. He said nothing good happened after eleven. That was before I discovered for myself that all the good stuff happens after eleven. My date was shy and nervous, but sweet. We danced and laughed and when he tried to kiss me goodnight, we smacked our teeth together, but that night was still magical, and life was still perfect.

  For a little while anyway.

  Then Mom left Dad. And took me with her.

  California was going to be our grand adventure. And it certainly was that.

  At seventeen I found myself wearing the most beautiful and expensive gown I’d ever seen, surrounded by the glitz and glamour of Hollywood as I attended my first Oscars. I was still nobody then, a nobody in a sea of stars. I’d been in awe. It was right after Mom married Luis and just before everything changed in ways I’d only dared to dream. I’d told myself that night that someday I wouldn’t be nobody. Someday I’d be one of the somebodies.

  So why didn’t this moment feel like all the others? I had the fancy dress. I was going to one of the biggest events of the year. And I certainly wasn’t nobody anymore.

  It was the culmination of everything I’d hoped and worked for.

  Somebody back then should have told me the magic would wear off eventually.

  More precisely, reality mercilessly ripped it away like an angry esthetician waxing your lady bits. Paints a colorful picture, I know. I was still feeling my recent wax treatment.

  Not what you picture when you imagine getting ready for the ball? Cinderella didn’t have to go through this shit. Waxing, plucking, buffing. Nope. She got bippity boppity booed.

  Oh well, I didn’t feel like a princess anyway. Unless it was that one from Mario. Peach, or whatever.

  “I look ridiculous.” I cringed at my reflection in the full-length mirror.

  “You look beautiful,” Jayne sighed wistfully.

  “I look like cotton candy.” I turned away from the mirror and plopped dramatically into my armchair.

  “You look like a sugar-plum fairy,” Jayne argued.

  My face scrunched up. “That does not make me feel better.”

  “I think the dress is amazing.” She lowered herself onto the ottoman.

  “Then you wear it.”

  “Can you imagine the fit Alexandre would throw if I showed up to the Golden Globes in his dress instead of you?”

  “What would be new?” I rolled my eyes at the thought of Alexandre Chastain throwing one of his hissy fits. Designers could be such divas, worse than actresses sometimes. But when you’re the best, nobody cares. Alexandre could release a line of burlap wear and they’d still call him a genius, inspired, original. It was an honor for me to grace the red carpet in his latest masterpiece de
signed specially for me. At least that’s what I’d been told by my manager and publicist when I said I didn’t like the gaudy, pink disaster.

  Would he notice if I tore off the stupid, frilly tulle bunched up at the collar like some terrible choker with a big ass flower poof on it?

  I kept batting at it.

  “Stop, you’re going to rip it,” Jayne chastised.

  “It would be an improvement,” I mumbled.

  She rolled her eyes. “You look amazing. You always look amazing and there are people who would kill to be in your shoes right now, so suck it up and shut up. This is the life you wanted, remember?”

  She was the only one who could get away with talking to me like that. I saw in the mirror the faces of Lacy and her team of beauty professionals as their eyebrows shot up and they appeared anxious as if waiting for me to have a fit. I suppose Alexandre wasn’t the only one who could be a bit of a diva, but I wasn’t a bitch. I didn’t get off on making people cry like other actresses I knew. And Jayne wasn’t just my assistant. She was my best friend. The only person I could count on to be real with me. I needed her to tell me when I was being a brat.

  “I’d feel better if you were coming as my date tonight.”

  “I’ll just watch from home like the rest of the little people.” Jayne preferred it that way, avoiding my spotlight when she could get away with it.

  “What if I need you as a buffer for Luis and Angela?” On their own, my publicist and manager were overbearing. Stick them together and they required zero input from me to run my life. Sometimes I swore Luis still thought of me as the naïve seventeen-year-old girl I was when he met and married my mom. I was far from that wide-eyed child. Even for a girl from Nowhere, Montana, with stars in her eyes and dreams of grandeur, Hollywood loses its glamour after a while. Not that I would have listened to anyone who told me that at eighteen, when Luis landed me my first starring role on a little show called Venice Beach Diaries. It was the number one teen drama for four seasons straight, until the show ended, and the launching pad for my bright and shining career.

  I’ll let you in on a little secret; sometimes I hated it. Mostly because I couldn’t leave Laney Pierce behind—my character from VBD. The quintessentially smart, wholesome, good girl. Viewers, and there were a lot of them—adored her. Guys wanted to marry her.

  I know what you’re thinking, poor me, it must be so difficult.

  But producers and directors don’t take girls like Laney Pierce seriously. In turn, they didn’t always take me seriously. I may as well have just changed my name to Laney Pierce.

  Image is everything, baby, and I was desperate to reinvent mine.

  “Stop it,” Jayne chided. “You’ll have fun, and you might even win.”

  Not likely, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “You really do look beautiful, Ri.” She nudged my shoulder with hers.

  “Thanks.” I squeezed her hand and stared at my reflection. Flawless porcelain skin that had been buffed baby smooth. Nude glossy lips. Sparkly, shadowed eyes, but not too heavily—that wouldn’t do for my girlish image. I was twenty-five and Luis and Angela still wanted me to play the same part of fresh, young, doe-eyed Hollywood princess. The good, sweet girl still being cast as a high schooler. Going on twenty-six, but forever sixteen.

  I didn’t know how many more times I could step into the role of lovestruck teen and fall for the high school jock, or the troubled outsider in detention, or the quiet, mysterious, misunderstood kid in the back of the class. Those parts were fun for a time, but I felt like I’d outgrown them and was ready to move on.

  Red Red Rose was meant to change that. It was my first step into something new. I’d jumped at the role, even though Luis and Angela wanted me to turn it down. A suspenseful thriller didn’t fit with their idea of who I should be as an actress. They still wanted to market me as a teen idol, but what was the point of all of this if I couldn’t take roles that interested, moved, and inspired me? Or at least gave me the chance to explore my acting scope.

  Would Red Red Rose be nominated for any Golden Globes or Oscars? Probably not. But still, it showed I was capable of more than playing a teenager for the rest of my career until I was too old and no longer relevant and then cast only in supporting roles until I faded from the scene entirely. Only to come back twenty years later on the Lifetime channel.

  I sighed, looking away from my reflection and then dismissed everyone except for Jayne.

  “Feeling sorry for yourself again?” she asked knowingly, once it was just the two of us.

  “I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” I snipped.

  She raised her brow.

  “Okay, fine, a little bit. I just want to do my own thing. Maybe shake things up. Shock a few people.”

  “I know.” She’d heard my melodramatic rants a thousand times. “You’ll get your chance, but for now, can you just be in this moment? You’re in a beautiful dress, going to the Golden Globes, where you’re up for best actress in a motion picture drama, for a film that is also nominated for best motion picture drama. So what if you had to play a high school girl. It was a great movie and a great part.”

  I couldn’t argue with her. Promise Me was more than the typical high school romance. It’s a beautiful and heartbreaking story of a girl who spends her senior year of high school caring for her terminally ill mother. She finds herself no longer able to relate to her friends focused solely on partying and choosing colleges, because her entire world is crumbling. As she pulls away from the friends who don’t understand and struggles with her fear and hopelessness as her mother loses her battle, she finds solace and a deep friendship, and then something more, with the handsome and young nurse who provides the care for her mother. It wasn’t sweet and fluffy and pretty. It was deep and dark and emotionally raw and angsty, and even uncomfortable at times, but it was the most real part I’d ever played. It had led to me being offered the part in Red Red Rose, so maybe things were moving in the right direction. Finally.

  “You’re right,” I capitulated.

  “I know I am. I’m also right when I say you look stunning, and no one will mistake you for a little girl with the way those layers of chiffon hug your body, and certainly not when they get a peek at your killer legs through that slit. I swear it goes right up to your coochie.”

  I shook my head and chuckled. Maybe the dress wasn’t all bad, but I’d like it better if I could tear off the poof, and if I could wear it in black, or red, or anything but this cotton candy pink. How did I end up with a signature color that I didn’t even choose?

  “If you had a date, he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off of you.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  She shrugged unsympathetically. “You’re the one who refused a date.”

  “Because Angela and Luis suggested I go with Adam Michaelson since he and Jennifer Delaney split for the hundredth time last month. I’m not about to get in the middle of that drama.”

  “You have to admit, you’d make a cute couple.”

  “I do not have to admit anything.” Adam was one of my co-stars in Red Red Rose. He played the overly-charming, slightly creepy, yet sexy killer—and ever since the movie and his new single status, Luis and Angela had been trying to pair us up. Good publicity and all that garbage.

  “Is your lack of interest in Adam due to you still pining over your forbidden love?” she grinned.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I did, but thinking of him couldn’t possibly lead anywhere good. Also, I wouldn’t give Jayne the satisfaction of being right. I grabbed my clutch and rifled through the contents, making sure I had all the requisites for tonight.

  “Of course you don’t.” Her tone said something else.

  “I’m supposed to be the dramatic one. Forbidden love?” I mocked. “Hardly.”

  “Fine, but you wanted that boy bad.”

  I huffed and tossed the clutch down. “Not a boy. A man.” And what a man he was. I’m talking perfect s
pecimen. The best kind of fodder for your fantasies. Too bad that’s all he’d ever be.

  “My mistake,” she giggled.

  “Is it time to go yet?”

  “I’ll check on the car.” She slid her phone from her pocket and stepped out of the room.

  What was he doing tonight? Would he watch the show?

  Don’t be stupid, Riley. Of course he wouldn’t.

  But if he did, he’d definitely make fun of this dress. He’d hate it more than I did. That thought actually brought a tiny smirk to my lips. For half a second I considered snapping a selfie in the mirror and sending it to him, but I couldn’t do that. I mean I could. His number was still in my phone, even though I hadn’t had cause to use it since filming ended and I came back to LA and he stayed in Washington. I couldn’t bring myself to use it or delete it. So, there it sat. In my phone. Mocking me. Teasing me. Tormenting me with what I couldn’t have.

  Jayne poked her head back into the room. “Your chariot has arrived.”

  I had the limo to myself, which made for a quiet ride, except for the soft music being piped through the speakers. A part of me started to regret refusing a date. Even if it was Adam. Suddenly the thought of showing up on the red carpet alone made my stomach sink. Would I look pathetic? Would it look like I wasn’t over that playboy prick Derrick O’Shaughnessy even though it’s been almost a year? Where had the strong, confident woman who’d reared her head and insisted I didn’t need a man on my arm gone?

  Did this limo have a mini bar?

  By the time I made it to the red carpet, I’d found and downed a tiny bottle of peach vodka. Gross, but it did the trick. The car rolled to a stop and I had just enough time to pop a strong mint in my mouth—Luis would be so displeased with me if he could smell the alcohol on my breath—before the door was pulled open from the outside and a hand reached in. I took it and was helped from the car only to discover the hand was attached to none other than Adam Michaelson.

  He grinned and gripped my hand like he knew I’d been conned and was afraid I’d jerk it right out of his grasp. I wanted to. Instead, I fought back a scowl, pasted a big grin on my face and hooked my arm in his, allowing him to escort me on the red carpet. On the inside, I was berating myself for not seeing this ambush coming. Luis and Angela had conceded way too easily.