Bringing Down Sam by Leslie Kelly Read Free Book Online Page B

Eve said. "I guess the photo shoot brought a lot of it back. I thought I'd put it all behind me."
    The crap with the teenage boy and the magazine hadn’t helped. Because she’d had those kinds of run-ins in the old days, especially when she’d been recognized for the provocative blue-jeans ads she’d done as a teenager. What Brooke Shields had been to the eighties, Eve had been to the late nineties. No, she’d never looked at the camera and said nothing came between her and her Calvins, but the ad campaign had basically sent the same message: hot jailbait in tight jeans.
    She heard Leanne groan softly. "I can't believe how insensitive we were to ask you to do this. Eve, it just didn't occur to me. I thought it would be a perfect set up since you've modeled before. It seemed like a good idea at the time."
    Famous last words .
    Eve didn't reply. She heard the remorse in her friend's voice but couldn't quickly gloss it over and tell Leanne everything was okay. Because, she suspected, everything was not okay.
    It shouldn't have been any big deal, and actually, the photography session hadn't been. She'd liked being back in the spotlight. Eve's father, who had also been her agent, financial manager, and a convicted con man, had once told her she had a face the camera loved. A lot of companies whose products she'd sponsored had obviously felt the same way. And she'd learned as a child that, for the camera, she could be absolutely anyone.
    Unfortunately, her father had used the same line of flattery to bilk money out of the hundreds of clients who'd come to him, wanting him to make their babies super child-models the way he had his own daughter. He assured them he could do it, if they just kept paying. Of course, he never followed through on his promises. Not to his clients, not to his wife who'd left when Eve was five. And not to his daughter, who'd come to view herself as his cash cow by the time she was fourteen.
    It still sickened her to think she hadn't figured it out sooner. She'd never suspected her father used her career to bilk other people out of their money. She'd been his poster child, his success story, his big sales pitch.
    She hadn't found out until the day they arrested him.
    "Eve, if you want to back out of this, we will understand," Leanne said finally, breaking the silence on the telephone line. "It's a silly idea anyway. Just because the guy wrote a lousy book doesn't mean he's responsible for how people react to it."
    Eve thought about it. Part of her wanted to call it quits right now, just ditch the whole idea and scurry on back to her real life. But another part of her, she acknowledged, probably the part that had inherited the love for a thrill from her no-good father, wouldn't let her walk away.
     The main thing stopping her from giving it up was the crazy mix of memories of every moment she’d spent with Sam Kenneman. From the cute guy who’d flirted back a little in the green room, to the determined one who’d turned her down, to the one who’d accepted his boss’s order’s to take her out, to the smarmy jerk who’d made the obnoxious comment in the parking garage, Sam was a study in contradictions.
    She hadn’t quite figured out who he was. And for some reason, she wanted to. Whether to pay him back for Leanne and all the other women his book had screwed-over, or perhaps to vindicate him as a guy playing a massive joke on society, or just because her insides tingled and her pulse raced when he was nearby, she couldn’t back down now.
    What had started out as a reluctant dare had at some point become a personal mission. Eve just couldn't walk away without one more shot at understanding the man. 
    "Don't worry, I'm not backing out. I'm going out with him tomorrow night.”
    And once I’ve figured out which Sam Kenneman is the real one, I’m either going to walk away laughing, ready to admit he’s just a nice guy with a smart mouth, or I’m going to find out he is the sexist jerk the world