Flipped (Better With Prosecco Book 1) Read online

  Flipped

  Lisa-Marie Cabrelli

  To Borgotaro

  Contents

  1. Hazel

  2. Dean

  3. Hazel

  4. Dean

  5. Hazel

  6. Dean

  7. Hazel

  8. Dean

  9. Hazel

  10. Dean

  11. Hazel

  12. Hazel

  13. Dean

  14. Hazel

  15. Dean

  16. Hazel

  17. Hazel

  18. Hazel

  19. Dean

  20. Dean

  21. Hazel

  22. Dean

  23. Hazel

  24. Dean

  25. Hazel

  26. Hazel

  27. Dean

  28. Dean

  29. Hazel

  30. Dean

  31. Hazel

  32. Dean

  33. Hazel

  34. Hazel

  35. Dean

  36. Hazel

  37. Dean

  38. Hazel

  39. Dean

  40. Hazel

  41. Dean

  42. Hazel

  43. Dean

  44. Hazel

  45. Hazel

  46. Hazel

  47. Hazel

  48. Hazel

  49. Hazel

  50. Dean

  51. Hazel

  52. Dean

  53. Hazel

  54. The Lit Chicks

  Also by Lisa-Marie Cabrelli

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Hazel

  Hazel Blackmore, was late. She was never late. Hazel prided herself on the fact that she was obsessively early. Like, bring a book and find somewhere to sit and hide, so you don’t look like a nerd, early. She bristled at the nerd label. So what if she tended to err on the nerdy early side? Early was responsible, and early was respectable. Late was for losers. Today, she was a loser. A loser on the most important day of her career thus far.

  After spending hours on her finishing touches for the presentation, she had set her alarm before she crashed into bed. She had set it loud enough to rouse the dead, but she’d somehow slept through it. Maybe she should get a roommate. She swallowed a surge of anxiety and picked up her pace as the Florida sun pounded down on her loose, blonde waves. Wasn’t blonde supposed to reflect the sun?

  Her heels clacked a determined rhythm on the sidewalk as she hurried toward the office of Blackwell and Crawley. She tripped around a small construction site, a manhole surrounded by a few traffic cones, and there was a long, deep whistle.

  “Hey, sexy lady!”

  Hazel hated tardiness but thought disrespect was worse, so even though she was late, she stopped on the sidewalk. What was it with these men and their strange desire to express their masculinity through harassment? Did guys really think a wolf-whistle would turn a woman on so badly that she’d feel the need to stop in her tracks, throw her arms around him and thank him for the validation? The construction dude was surprised when he noticed her halted step. He looked even more surprised as she shifted her laptop case and bulky design portfolio so she could place her hands on her hips in what she considered a threatening manner.

  “Button it, you! I’m not in the mood.”

  Hazel turned away and clacked on. Duty done. She heard his laughter behind her but refused to turn around. Maybe later, the echo of her tough words would help him recall his bad behavior. Maybe he would regret it.

  The sweat was starting to trickle into her freshly ironed collar as she pushed her way into the lobby of Blackwell and Crawley. She felt a strand of her hair stick to her neck and felt a jolt of panic. She hadn’t put her hair up! It was so unprofessional to have loose hair in front of a prospective client. She dug into her bulging purse, pushed past her wallet, her makeup bag, a box of Band-Aids… hey, you have to be prepared for everything, and grabbed the hair clip that was gripping to the bottom. She placed her briefcase and portfolio carefully on the floor, against the wall where no one was likely to have walked, and using the interior glass door as a mirror, she whipped her hair into a tight bun. She smiled and nodded at her reflection. Now that was more appropriate.

  The door of the stairwell just outside the second-floor conference room stuck as usual, so she used her left hip to give it a sharp shove and it swung open. Voices.

  “So, let’s start with our initial branding concept, and we can delve deeper from there.”

  Wait! Was that Samuel speaking? Why was Samuel speaking?

  She rushed toward the room, glancing frantically through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Liz was sitting across from Samuel who was indeed talking; she gave her an apologetic wince of a smile.

  “Ah, here she is,” Samuel said. “So nice of you to join us, Hazel. We thought we’d just get started.”

  Since the day she started working as a “Partner Consultant” for Blackwell & Cromley, her best friend Liz had had her back. When the popular marketing firm had too much work for the partners, like Liz, they frequently outsourced projects to freelancers they called “Partner Consultants.” Liz had managed to keep Hazel pretty busy by having her as the only freelancer to pitch for projects that came across her desk, but all that had changed when Samuel had come along. A Board Member had informed Liz that Samuel was to be permitted to compete for all projects. He was a best friend of a son, or the nephew of a brother, or the alumni of an alma mater, or something. Supposedly he was an “impresario.”

  He was also a sleazebag. And a skinny-mustached 25-year-old who couldn't grow a mustache more robust than a plucked eyebrow, in Hazel's mind, didn't deserve such an adult moniker as "impresario." Plus, she hadn’t seen any proof that Samuel was good at anything other than swiping the last donut from the break room and snapchatting through meetings. But, Liz had been forced to invite him in to bid on this job. This job, the job that was Hazel’s golden ticket to an equity partnership. Sometimes, “Partner Consultants” got an offer to join the firm as an equity partner. Rumor had it that the next invitation would come at the end of the summer. Sure, you had to “buy in” to become an equity partner (i.e.: give the company money) and it would cost Hazel about $20,000, but she would easily be able to save that from the wages earned on this project. Liz and Hazel and had been setting up the “Pelican Key Condos” project as Hazel’s project for months. Hazel would blow the Board away with the results she achieved for Pelican Key, and Liz had confidence that they would be offering Hazel a partnership before the end of the summer.

  Hazel stared at Samuel now in shock. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

  “Get started?” Hazel turned toward Sharon of “Pelican Key Condos,” the client for her future career-defining project. Sharon was on her side. Two nights ago in a margarita-fueled night out they had bonded so quickly that Sharon had told her how she hated her boyfriend and their crappy sex life. “I’m so sorry I’m late, Sharon. Samuel’s new. He wouldn’t know that I always go first. Just give me a few minutes to set up.”

  Sharon smiled at Hazel and shook her head. “No, it’s fine. We don’t mind hearing Samuel first.”

  Okay, so maybe she wasn’t completely on her side. Perhaps she regretted the sex life confession. Anyway - did it matter if Samuel went first? Samuel’s ideas were terrible, and his presentation skills were worse. He hadn’t won a single project yet. If he went first, he would just make her ideas shine all the brighter. Still, that thought didn’t calm the angry butterflies that suddenly swarmed her stomach.

  Hazel smiled and gave Sharon her best, “I’m not concerned” shrug. “Sure. Whatever you’d prefer, Sharon.
You’re the boss.” She made her way quickly to a seat at the conference table scowling in Samuel’s direction. He pointedly ignored her. As she was trying to untangle herself from her bags, she glanced around the room at the easels she had come in to set up the night before. Easels she’d spent hours placing at just the right angles to show off her stellar design concepts and blow Sharon away. It wasn’t fair that Samuel would get to use them before she did.

  She stopped, her butt hovering just above the leather seat, her briefcase dropping to the floor with a thud.

  Hang on a second. Were those her designs? She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Nope - she hadn’t been seeing things. Those were her designs. What were her designs doing on those easels when she knew for a fact they were in the portfolio case at her feet? She leaned toward the easel closest to her to get a better look, and Samuel turned toward her and out of Sharon’s line of sight. He grinned, his eyebrow mustache curling creepily, and gave Hazel a surreptitious wink.

  A wave of impending doom rolled down the conference table toward her. She stared at the easel. Well, for sure the graphics displayed weren’t the ones sitting in the portfolio at her feet. The work was executed sloppily; she would have never presented it in that state. It had obviously been created without care and attention to detail. The wobbly edges and blurred pixels set her teeth on edge. But they were her designs, all right. She glanced around the room again, and the easels wavered. Her brain felt fuzzy.

  What the hell was going on?

  2

  Dean

  Dean McLean pulled his BMW in front of the “No Parking” sign at the entrance to the film set, got out while it was still running, and tossed the keys to the PA who had been alerted to his arrival and was waiting for him.

  “Be careful, it’s new,” he told the white-faced boy with a grin. When he’d replaced his old Toyota last week, Isabella had begged him to go for the Ferrari, but he couldn’t do it. Even the BMW felt over the top.

  The kid nodded.

  “Thanks, buddy,” he’d seen this young guy before. He would have loved to have called him by name and given him a thrill, but when he fished around in his exhausted brain, he came up with nothing. “When you bring it back for me this afternoon, bring the keys to my trailer. We can have a beer and a chat. You guys work too hard around here.”

  The kid took a step back in surprise and flushed a deep magenta. “Yes sir, thank you, sir!”

  Dean chuckled. “As if this business isn’t making me feel old enough already! Enough with the “sir” crap, okay? It’s Dean. And I’ll see you later.”

  The kid didn’t answer. Just nodded his head frantically as he rushed to jump into the driver’s seat. He’d be driving around the lots for the next hour looking for a parking spot. The least Dean could do was offer him a beer.

  He headed on to the lot and toward his trailer. The crowd waiting outside his trailer door made him sigh. He was bone weary and just wanted to get inside. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a crowd, at least not as big as the crowds used to be, but he had asked Adam to quit inviting extras to the trailer. His manager, Adam, said that personal interaction was essential to build loyalty amongst his fan base, and he agreed. It was hard not to agree with Adam. He just wished he wouldn’t throw his fan base at him when he was working. Playing one character all day on set was hard enough, but when Adam brought over the fans, he had to play two. His fans were lovely ladies, but they weren’t interested in meeting the real Dean. They were eager to meet Dean McLean, star of Rolling Thunder One, Two and Three, and now, God help him, Rolling Thunder Four.

  Well, exhausted or not, Dean McLean would have to make an appearance.

  “Well, hello, lovely ladies!” he called out, quickly adopting a relaxed, hip rolling stroll. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Dean was conscious of his effect on women. The day he turned fourteen his foster mother decided he was too dangerous to have around her two teenage daughters and kicked him out. That had been just one in a long line of foster families. It took him a long time to realize that his black, floppy hair and gasp-worthy, blue eyes were an asset and not a curse.

  As he closed in on the group of fans, Dean felt a nudge of disappointment under his ribs. It looked as though the demographic polling was correct. His fan base was aging. Not that Dean had any interest in a crowd of nubile twenty-somethings, but the studio did. The Rolling Thunder movies had made him rich and famous, and a lot of other people rich as well. There was a vested interest in keeping the films relevant - and it was a fact that the action movie demographic skewed younger. Lately, he had heard some barely disguised rumblings from the money guys that maybe, at thirty-eight, Dean was too old to continue the part. Maybe the films needed a little refreshing of the main character? As far as Dean was concerned he could play Jack Bane of Rolling Thunder for the rest of his life. He didn’t do any of the stunts or physical shots anyway, what did age matter?

  “Dean McLean!” squealed a woman clad in a silver, sequined ball gown with piles of makeup plastered on under a blonde wig. They were shooting a casino scene tonight, so these ladies were dressed to the nines. “I am so honored to be working with you, Dean. You are an inspiration, and I love your work.” As per usual, the coiffed blonde shoved a business card into his hand. It was a tiny headshot with her name in bold letters across the top. She was a brunette in real life and not a fan after all, but a “Desperado.” Adam had invented the label “desperado” early in Dean’s career when it had still been safe to go out to a regular bar and have a regular beer. Folks had rarely recognized him, but when they had it had always been a waiter or a bartender with a pile of headshots and resumes tucked nearby, ready to shove at anyone with a whiff of “useful connections.” In those early days of fame, Dean had been flattered and had doled out advice and encouragement to the “desperados” under Adam’s amused gaze. Now he knew better. No one in Hollywood gave a crap about him. Except maybe Adam, and perhaps Isabella, most of the time. He especially hated it when they referenced how inspiring his “work” was. He wasn’t an actor and had never claimed to be. He was an action hero with little talent other than looking pretty darn incredible on the big screen. It didn’t bother him to admit that. He enjoyed his work for the most part. It gave him enough money to have a comfortable life and a comfortable home, which is all he’d ever wanted.

  Dean eased himself away from the ladies, smiling and doling out hugs, and made his way into his trailer. Isabella was inside.

  “Hey, Baby!! Have you been to the set yet? It looks amazing! I can’t believe I have lines today!! Can we run them?”

  Isabella. The perfect image of what you expect a movie star girlfriend to look like. At six feet tall she was only shorter than he was by a few inches. She had long, red curls that were always bouncing around her shoulders, as if they were at a party of their own and green eyes thanks to an expensive contact lens prescription, as well as creamy, freckled skin.

  “Run your lines?” he said, wandering over to his couch and flopping down. Why was he so exhausted? “You don’t think we should be running mine?”

  Isabella sat on the couch and flipped her long legs into his lap. She leaned forward to sweep his hair from his eyes and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. “I know you were running your lines all last night. I heard you in the bathroom, and I was sad that you left me all alone in your big bed.” She waved the papers in her hand in front of his face. “Besides, isn’t this my day? My first day on a feature? You get to do this every day, so it’s all old hat for you. Don’t ruin my excitement, baby!”

  Maybe she was right. This was a big day for her. He and Adam had worked hard to get her this small role, and he wanted her to enjoy it. True, she never wanted to run lines with him when he needed it. But maybe he just had selfish timing. “Your wish is my command, Princess. Show me what you want me to read.”

  Isabella squealed and jumped up from the couch, dropping the script in his lap. She stood in front of him and fluffed her already fluffy hair. “Okay, you read
yourself and some guy named Casey. I think he’s a cop or something. Go!”

  Just as Dean took a breath to say his own line, one that was drilled into his head from his practice last night, the door slammed open, and Adam came storming through. Isabella gave him the look of death. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if his girlfriend and best friend even liked each other.

  “We are about to run lines, Adam. You know, for my part?” She put her tiny hands on her hips and threw her head back dramatically. “I think Dean needs a rest before he starts.”

  “No time for a rest, Princess” Adam drew out Dean’s nickname for Isabella, making it sound incredibly juvenile. “Dean’s expected on set right now, but he needs to sign these first.”

  Dean needed to do something about his lack of energy, so he got up and started to do a few jumping jacks, stopping only to sign the sheaf of papers Adam thrust in front of him.

  “Deeeeeeeeean.” Isabella walked over to the couch and picked up the script from where he had dropped it.

  “Sorry, honey. But why don’t you come out and watch this scene? You can use my seat.” She pouted. “It’s right next to the director.” She rewarded him with a smile.