American Diva Read Online Free PDF

just as ruthless and hungry for notoriety as some of her old friends. She shifted uneasily in her seat. “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I love my life. Who wouldn’t love it?” She flashed a smile at Jack and clinked the top of her beer bottle against his. “I was just talking. Don’t listen to me. It’s just that I never get to do this.”
    “Do what?” he asked curiously.
    “This,” she said, gesturing to him and the beach. “Talk to people.”
    He still looked confused.
    Audrey sighed. “I don’t have many opportunities to meet people and just hang out.”
    Jack snorted and shifted his gaze to the ocean again. “Must be rough—big star, no friends.”
    “I didn’t say I had no friends ,” Audrey said. “I said it’s hard to meet people. It’s not like I can walk into a coffee shop like you and strike up a conversation with the girl sitting next to me. And if I did, forget it—the tabloids would go nuts.”
    “Well,” he said with a chuckle, “the last conversation I had in a coffee shop was with the girl behind the counter, who asked if I had exact change.” He glanced at Audrey from the corner of his eye. “I don’t think you’re missing much.”
    But he was missing the point. He didn’t understand—but no one ever did. Not her family or her old friends. They wondered what she had to complain about. And she wasn’t complaining, God no. She knew what a gift she’d been handed. It was just that she hadn’t been prepared for fame. “I can’t do what normal people do,” she tried to explain.
    “Yes you can,” he said.
    “No, I can’t,” she insisted, twisting in the chaise to face him. She was so close that in the moonlight, she could see the shadow of a beard that covered a square jaw. “You can walk down a street in L.A. and not worry about being accosted by photographers or fans. I can’t do that.”
    “Okay,” he said, nodding a little. “You can’t walk down a street. What else? Are you saying you can’t dine out? Go to movies? Drive your car?”
    “ No ,” she said, exasperated with her inability to get her point across. “But . . . but I can’t go into a burger joint without being constantly interrupted.” Her gaze inadvertently fell to his lips. “I can’t meet a guy and just dance if I want—”
    Oh Jesus, had she really just said that? She reluctantly lifted her gaze.
    She’d said it, all right—she could tell by the expression on his face. His gaze slipped to her mouth. “No boyfriend?” he asked, his voice warmer.
    “ Sort of boyfriend,” she said, feeling a vague and not entirely new regret.
    One corner of his mouth tipped up in a lopsided smile. He shifted closer, his gaze still on her lips. “What’s a sort of boyfriend?”
    Audrey had no idea what she was saying. She was only feeling, and at that moment, with the sound of the ocean luring her, the spicy scent of man filling her nostrils, and the aid of a buzz brought on by three beers, she felt like touching Jack Price. She wanted to put her hand on the dark skin in the vee of his shirt, to run her fingers over his nipples, to slip her arm around his waist. “You wanna dance, Jack?”
    He laughed. “There’s no music.”
    She picked up his iPod from his lap and showed it to him, then turned it on.
    “Hey, wait—”
    She smiled, yanked it out of his reach, scrolled to SHUFFLE SONGS, and selected that as she dislodged herself from the chaise. She put out her hand to Jack. “Come on, stranger. Dance with me.”
    His gaze traveled her body—she could almost feel it leave a mark—and he finally hoisted himself from the chaise . . . all six foot three, maybe four inches of him . . . and took her hand. When Audrey tried to lead him to the beach, he pulled back, forcing her to look at him. “I’ll take it from here,” he said, and put his hand out, palm up, for the iPod.
    Audrey deposited the iPod in his hand. He untangled the earbuds and winked at her as he stuffed one bud into her