Page 8 of Dirty Like Dylan
Scripted lettering tattooed in a band around his right bicep said: Fuck Bitches. A matching band around the left said: Get Money.
Clearly, this guy was all class.
When he glanced up and saw me approaching, his posture didn’t change. He didn’t turn to face me. The only acknowledgment of my presence was the movement of his blue, blue eyes as they skimmed down my body.
There was no sign of recognition in his chilly expression.
Okay; so he definitely didn’t remember me. Not like I really expected him to. We’d met for like five seconds four years ago. And I wasn’t gonna kid myself that I was as memorable as he was.
Though he definitely hadn’t seemed this cold the first time we’d crossed paths. As he looked me over now, his gaze was so frigid, my nipples actually pricked. I kind of shivered, and it wasn’t a good shiver.
Or so I told myself.
When I stopped a couple of feet from him, camera gripped tightly in hand—kind of like a security blanket—I could feel the hostility rolling off of him before he even opened his gorgeous mouth.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I choked a little, torn between answering that and telling him to go fuck himself. The words rose up in my throat, but got stuck there. I swallowed the mild humiliation and managed, “Amber.”
“Amber who?” He was examining my blouse with distaste, like the rosebud embroidery personally offended him.
“Amber Malone,” I said, deciding to drop my sister’s name again. It killed me a little every time I had to do it, but in this world, my sister’s name carried far more weight than mine ever would. In this world, I was a nobody, as evidenced by Ashley Player’s perusal of me: brief, critical and dismissive.
“Malone?” He returned his cold gaze to his iPhone. “You related to Liv?”
“I’m her sister.”
“What’s with the camera?”
“I’m the stills photographer. I’ve been asked to escort Dylan to set.”
He flicked a glance at my camera, eying my beloved 1D X Mark II like it was garbage. “Yeah? You just find that in the gutter?”
“No… I mean… I travel with it a lot…” I blathered defensively.
Shit. How fucking rude was he?
Was I actually going to stand here and explain to him where this camera had been with me, the things we’d been through together these last thirteen months, the things we’d seen and experienced… or the fact that making it look like garbage was kind of the point—meant to deter would-be thieves on my travels? Not to mention that this camera, brand new, cost me over six thousand American dollars—I’d bought it down in Portland to save the sales tax—which for me was a shit-ton of money. Several months’ worth of travel money.
No. Why bother? Clearly, this guy was a professional asshole. Explaining myself wasn’t gonna change that.
“Trust me,” I said instead, “I could do more with your iPhone camera than you could do with a Hasselblad and a full support crew.”
“Is that so?”
“Yep.”
Finally, his cold blue eyes met mine again. “You don’t know me, sweetheart.”
“You don’t know me.”
“And neither does Dylan. So you can go back where you came from and wait just like everyone else.”
“What are you, his bodyguard?” I looked him over, trying to appear as unimpressed and dismissive as he’d been of me. “The rock star gig didn’t work out for you?”
Ouch. That hit a raw nerve.
His shoulders drew back as he turned toward me, the general air in his vicinity shifting from irritable to motherfucking pissed.