She jabbed the down button and flipped her hair over her shoulder, noting the frayed ends. Espresso wasn’t the only cosmetic company in the world, she told herself. Once word got out she was available, there would be plenty of offers from rival brands.
“Wait!” A male voice rang out as she boarded the elevator.
Humph. It didn’t take them long to realize they’d screwed up in letting her go. Lola pressed her lips together to stifle a grin. Triumphant, she spun around, only to see not a member of her family, but one of the building’s maintenance crew carrying a ladder.
“Thanks for holding the elevator, Miss Gray.”
Remembering the employee was a newlywed, Lola inquired about his wife on the ride down to the lobby. Making small talk kept her mind off the fact that the sense of satisfaction she’d gleaned from her parting shot at her family had diminished. So had her confidence she’d ever be offered another job as good as the one she’d just lost.
In reality, with the exception of some runway work during New York and European Fashion Weeks, there was only one segment of the market vying for her face. At her age, a very unappealing market.
The elevator pinged.
“See you around, Miss Gray,” the coverall-clad worker said.
Putting one foot in front of the other, Lola walked in the direction of the building’s exit with her head held high, as her insides began to cave over the morning’s events.
She stopped short when she spotted through the lobby windows a man she’d recognized. He was standing in front of the parking garage across the street. The slimeball was a cameraman for the reality show Celebrity Pranks, and he appeared to be in deep conversation with a guy dressed in a clown costume.
Lola bit back a curse. That stupid show had been out to trip her up since the airplane incident. She’d first seen the cameraman lurking outside a boutique in Atlanta three days ago, only that time his partner had been dressed in a gorilla costume. Fortunately, another shopper had come in and mentioned a Celebrity Pranks SUV parked around the corner.
It would serve them right if she marched across the street, snatched the big red nose off that clown and stuck it...
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Lola muttered, this time allowing the voice of common sense to overrule her impulse.
Unemployed or not, the last thing she needed was to be caught on video getting in that clown’s painted face. The footage would fuel the reality show’s ratings better than any stupid prank they had up their sleeve to make a fool out of her.
Lola continued to watch them through the lobby’s floor-to-ceiling windows, debating whether to have Espresso’s building security escort her to her car in the parking garage. Maybe she should just tuck her hair under the baseball cap in her bag and try to slip past them unnoticed.
Her phone buzzed, and she shrugged the massive designer tote off her shoulder. Rifling through it, Lola unearthed a curling iron, packets of protein-shake mix, a plastic blender bottle and the remote control for her television that had somehow made its way into the black hole of a bag. The ringing had stopped by the time she’d retrieved the phone, nearly nicking her fingers on a pair of scissors she’d used to cut crochet braids from her hair a few weeks ago.
Lola swiped the screen with her thumb. Her tote weighed down the crook of her arm like a bowling-ball bag. She listened to the message, gave the phone a quizzical glance and then frowned.
Her agent, Jill, had said it was urgent she return the call, but not much else.
“Lola, honey.” Jill bubbled enthusiastically through the phone moments later. That saccharine-sweet voice laced with faux cheer could mean only one thing, Lola thought. She stifled a grunt. Here we go. Another offer to advertise something aimed at the AARP crowd.
“You won’t believe who just called. They want you to—” Jill started.
“No.” Lola cut her off. Usually, she would have heard the agent out and then politely declined, but after getting shafted by her family in the company boardroom and being stalked by that silly tabloid show already today she was in no mood.
“But you haven’t even heard what the job is...”
Rolling her eyes, Lola tapped her foot against the lobby floor. She had a pretty good idea. Espresso’s senior-citizen image clung to her, and no one seemed to care that she was only in her twenties.
“Look, I thought I already made this clear. I’m not interested in being the face of a denture adhesive, walk-in bathtubs or doing commercials where I’m snuggled up to some old dude with an idiotic grin on my face because he popped a pill to get a hard-on.”
“I promise, this one is different. It’s a fantastic opportunity and absolutely perfect for you,” Jill insisted.
Lola grunted again. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“Please. Just hear me out.”
Lola shrugged. At this point, she had nothing to lose by listening. She leaned against the wall near the windows and faced the lobby’s interior. “Fine, go ahead.”
The agent filled her in on the details, and Lola broke out in a huge grin. If she played her cards right, this wouldn’t be just a job, but the opportunity of a lifetime.
She ended the call and dropped the phone into her pit of a bag.
“Boo-yah!” Pumping a fist in the air, she whispered the words she wanted to scream loudly enough for her family to hear on the tenth floor.
“I’m back!”
Nothing could bring her down now, Lola thought. Not even the sight of the maintenance worker from the elevator removing the giant poster of her that had hung from the lobby’s rafters for years, and replacing it with one of a man wearing a blond wig and lipstick.
Police Chief Dylan Cooper hadn’t seen faces this unimpressed with what he had to say since dealing with his ex-wife.
“I hauled ten bad guys to jail last night,” someone yelled from the back of the room. “Didn’t even have to call for backup.”
“Is that all?” A snort accompanied the shouted question. “I made over fifty arrests this week, including Big Moe, from the top of the most-wanted list.”
Murmurs of approval echoed off the walls at the capture of the elusive Big Moe. They fueled the fervent bragging, each person who chimed in boasting bigger arrest statistics than the last.
“What about you, Chief? How many bad guys you take off the streets this week?”
Dylan had hauled the Henderson brothers to the county jail after they’d started a brawl at the sports bar to avoid making good on a wager. His efforts had earned him a sucker punch to the jaw from one of the lumberjack-sized brothers, while he’d been busy subduing the other two.
However, those arrests had been two weeks ago.
The metallic gleam of the badge pinned to his uniform caught Dylan’s eye as he glanced at the worn carpet. He raised his head slightly to meet the dozens of expectant faces awaiting his reply.
“None,” he said finally.
A chorus of gasps erupted, quickly followed by muffled giggles.
“However,” Dylan interjected over the din, “I run a small-town police department, not a video game controller.” He eyed the classroom of fourth and fifth grade Cooper’s Place Elementary School students gathered for his day-in-the-life career talk. “So those