“Happy birthday to me,” Madison Delaney muttered glumly to her enormous and beautiful bedroom in which she slept alone. It was the second of March and she was officially twenty-seven years old. “Big whoop.”
Still lazing in bed at ten in the morning, Madison finished the delicious almond essence latte whipped up for her by her excellent housekeeper, Ada. She set the coffee tray on the bed table and considered getting dressed.
But seriously, why rush? She had nothing to get dressed for. This year, she was spending her birthday at home—if you could call her huge, gorgeously decorated but essentially empty hilltop mansion in Bel Air a home. Really, she was almost never here. But due to a perfect storm of scheduling conflicts, ongoing script changes and a bunch of big-time special effects set pieces that required “further development,” Madison found herself with time off.
She didn’t like it. Working, after all, was what she did. Time off made her feel all prickly inside her own skin, like there was something she should be doing but she couldn’t quite remember what.
Maybe she ought to call a couple of friends and go out this evening. But then again, there was no one she wanted to hang with all that much. She got along with everyone, but that didn’t mean she felt close to them. And too often when she went out for a good time, it ended up with her surrounded by photographers barking rude questions at her and her security team keeping them at bay. What fun was that?
“Goals,” she grumbled, and climbed out of bed to rummage through the drawers of the central-island dresser in her embarrassingly large walk-in closet full of fabulous clothes and designer shoes.
She didn’t have to rummage long. Her notebook was right where she’d put it a year ago today, in the back of a lingerie drawer beneath a blue silk La Perla corset she’d yet to wear. The pink spiral-bound notebook had glittery butterflies on the front. Stuck in the binding coil was a purple pen. The pen, which produced glittery metallic ink, was relatively new.
The notebook? A little tattered around the edges, with a lot of the glitter worn off the butterflies. Her mom had presented it to her the day she turned six.
Today, as she had every birthday since then, she took the notebook and the pen and returned to the bed. Sitting cross-legged on top of the covers, she pulled the pen from the coil and opened the notebook to the next empty page. Her objective: formulate three main goals to accomplish during her twenty-seventh year.
Frankly, she had zip on the goals front this year and she fully expected to squander a large amount of time staring at a blank page and trying not to think how uninspired she felt about life and work and just about everything else lately.
But then the weirdest thing happened.
Her pen seemed drawn to the page of its own accord and her three goals materialized as if by magic:
Lose virginity.
Retire from acting.
Get a life.
Whoa. Who knew? Apparently, this was a banner year. Up until this moment, she’d had no clue.
As she sat frowning at her totally unexpected annual objectives, she heard a faint sound downstairs.
Was the doorbell ringing?
Not that it mattered. Now and then an especially enthusiastic fan got past the front gate and made it to the door. Someone would answer, give the fan something with Madison’s autograph on it and call security to escort the trespasser back outside the gate.
Madison recommenced staring at her new, glittery goals and wondering why she wasn’t more upset at the very thought of turning her back on her mega-successful career. After all, it was a career she’d pursued with single-minded purpose since her first set of goals written down slowly and laboriously with her mom’s help in this very notebook on the day she turned six.
As for getting a life and dispensing with her V-card? Both of those made perfect sense. She would be thirty in no time at all. She needed a life and a sex life. She needed them yesterday, maybe sooner.
At the sound of a gentle tap on the outer door to the upstairs hallway, Madison glanced up. “Come on in!”
Ada, in a calf-length linen dress, her graying brown hair piled in a messy bun, bustled in through the sitting area. She marched to the bedside table and picked up the coffee tray. “You need to eat.”
“I will.” Madison chewed thoughtfully on her purple pen. “Soon. Did the doorbell ring?”
“Yes. Jonas Bravo is here.” Ada wore a bemused sort of frown.
Madison frowned, too. “Did you say Jonas Bravo?”
“That’s right.”
Madison had never met the man. But she did know of him. Everyone knew about Jonas Bravo. His family was Los Angeles royalty. He had billions—the paps even called him the Bravo Billionaire. And he was her neighbor, more or less. He lived with his beautiful wife and their children in an even bigger house than Madison’s, also in Bel Air, a world-famous house called Angel’s Crest. Jonas Bravo was not in the movie business, but he and his billions were involved in just about every other industry in LA. And he sometimes invested in films.
“Sorry.” Ada shrugged. “I don’t know what got into me. I’ve been reading the stories about him since I was old enough to get a copy of the National Enquirer and I was so surprised to see him on the security monitor when he buzzed the front gate that I told Sergei to let him in.” Sergei was on Madison’s security team. “Then, when he rang the doorbell, I just stepped back and ushered him inside. He asked to speak to with you, so I put him in the sitting room. I really do apologize, Mad. It was not my call. But I mean, he is the Jonas Bravo.”
“No. It’s okay, really.”
“He looks just like his pictures.”
“It’s fine,” said Madison. “I hear you. You did the right thing.” Madison glanced down at her rumpled pink sleep shirt and gray sleep shorts. “I need to change.” She dropped her butterfly notebook and jumped from the bed. “Just let me put on a decent pair of jeans and a top that doesn’t look like I slept in it. Go ahead and tell him I’ll be right down.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, Madison was shaking hands with the legendary Bravo Billionaire. He looked good, she thought, tall and broad-shouldered, with striking dark blue eyes and thick graying hair.
Once they’d said hello, he wished her a happy birthday. She thanked him, not finding it especially strange that he knew. The date of her birth was public knowledge, after all.
After the birthday wishes, the first words out of his mouth were, “Let me congratulate you on the protectiveness of your staff.”
She backed off a step. “You’ve been trying to reach me?”
“This is my first attempt. But rumor has it you’re a very hard woman to get in touch with. I confess, I hoped the element of surprise would work in my favor, that someone might just let me in.”
“And someone did—coffee or something? Ada makes an amazing latte.” When he shook his head, she cut to the chase. “What can I do for you, Jonas?”
“I was recently contacted by an elderly gentleman named Percy Valentine.” Jonas said the name slowly and then fell silent, apparently waiting for her reaction. When she gave him none, he asked,