Her eyes sparkled as brightly as the stars overhead as she looked up at him. “Guilty,” she admitted, a runaway smile quirking the corners of her lips. “But I had you going for a moment, didn’t I?”
“More than a moment. You should have seen your father’s face when I asked him if he thought of Tallulah as his daughter.”
“You did not!”
“I did,” Donovan said. “Causing your father to look at me as if I’d lost my mind.”
“I told you not to mention it to him,” Lani reminded him. “But you needn’t worry. My father’s a very tolerant man.”
The warm water lapped against their legs as they waded in the foaming surf. She’d been secretly pleased when Donovan had taken off his loafers to join her. Sometime during the day Lani had decided to make Donovan Quinn her new project. She would, she vowed, teach him to relax and learn to enjoy the simpler things in life. And if that included some bumping of happy parts, so much the better.
“And of course my brother thinks you walk on water.”
“The feeling’s mutual. I’ve been a fan of his ever since he rode with me researching The Haunting of Hannah Grimm .”
“My brother has a great many fans. He’s choosier about his friends. He has to be.”
During those times she’d visited Nate in California, Lani had watched so many insincere industry people fawning over him. Movie studio executives, who saw a gold mine in his vastly popular occult novels, along with starlets, would-be starlets, and established stars, all wanting to be seen out and about with the country’s hottest novelist.
Then there were all those entrepreneurs wanting licensing rights for everything from the she-wolf vampire dolls to a Day-glo poster series depicting the savagely avenging spirits of a fictional California serial killer’s victims.
Eventually, Nate had left California for Oregon. Which, in turn, had led him to Tess Lombardi.
The ironic thing was that before things had come tumbling down around her, Lani had gradually slid into that Tinseltown mentality. The entire life-changing event had begun during one of those visits to her brother during the filming of one of his novels for which he’d also written the screenplay.
It was at the Sony studio in Culver City, that she’d met a producer of Jeopardy! , which just happened to be not only America’s favorite game of answers and questions, but hers, as well. After attending a taping, when asked how she had enjoyed the show, Lani had offered a hesitant opinion that the audience, as well as the contestants, was capable of enjoying a wider range of questions. Questions that required additional thought, more depth.
To Lani’s astonishment, the producer had invited her to apply as a researcher, which included taking the same test as potential contestants. Passing with flying colors, she’d been hired. Then promoted to a writer less than a year later. Three years after that, she’d been plucked from TV obscurity by a top producer known for over-the-top reality shows.
The concept of Beauty Tames the Beast was for a cast of beautiful women to instruct hottie blue-collar guys (who, each week would find various contrived reasons to appear without shirts) on various social graces, such as wardrobe, grooming, and planning romantic dates for the beauties. Each week there would be two tests, and at the end of the episode, the home audience would vote for which hunks had shown enough potential to continue on for another week.
It had, admittedly, been a long way from Masterpiece Theater , but as a rule, in real life, the participants were actually nicer and more intelligent than some of the editing showed. The best part had been creating challenges that would not only entertain but give the men skills they could take back home to the real world. What woman wouldn’t love a man to surprise her with a romantic breakfast in bed? One he’d actually made with his two manly hands. Or who could actually discuss, with some authority, the topics of love, class, family, and self-deception in Pride and Prejudice ?
With the exception of a few male reviewers—whom she’d always suspected were secretly jealous of the hottie cast of firemen, cops, cowboys, fishermen, construction workers, mechanics, and even a movie stuntman—most of the entertainment press recognized Beauty as bringing a level of intelligence and behavior not often found in the typical, overly voyeuristic reality-programming genre.
The show also earned an Emmy nomination, and although it ended up losing to The Amazing Race , wearing a designer gown and borrowed jewels for the awards show red carpet had made Lani feel like Cinderella. Sans the Prince Charming, since her brother had been her date.