Extreme Bachelor by Julia London Read Free Book Online

a stop
midstride and looked at Michele. “How do you know? And why isn’t he
already here?” Trudy demanded. “We deserve to have all of them
present and accounted for so we can make a fair comparison of who
is the hottest.”
    “I don’t know why he isn’t here,” Michele
said, and glanced over her shoulder, as if anyone could possibly
hear her in the din two dozen female voices created in the gym.
“But apparently, he’s a real player. I heard it from one of the
Serious Actresses—seems like a bunch of them know him. Some of them
have dated him, too. And get a load of this—they call him the
Extreme Bachelor. Isn’t that hilarious?”
    “Why?” Trudy asked.
    “Because he’s a serial
dater. A luuuv-ah ,” she added dramatically, making full use of her
lips.
    “When’s he coming?” Trudy
asked. “I want to see this luuuv-ah .”
    “Later is all I heard,” Michele shrugged.
“But I’ll get some intel this afternoon,” she added with a wink. “I
promised Katherine Hepburn over there that I would run lines with
her.”
    The four of them glanced at the Serious
Actress who they had dubbed Katherine Hepburn, based on her
intensity (extreme) and the fact that she studied her script all
the time.
    “Ladies, please split up into
your armies,” Eli was begging. “East on the left, West on the
right.”
    “Dodgeball, yes!” Leah said with a fist
pump. “I love dodgeball.”
    “How can you love dodgeball? The last time I
played it was the fifth grade,” Trudy said, staring at Leah through
her humongous black sunglasses.
    “Will you please take those off?” Leah
demanded, pointing at Trudy’s shades.
    Trudy pushed them up on the top of her head
and smiled. “Let’s decide who we are going to take out first. A
Serious Actress or a Starlet?”
    “Tamara,” Leah said instantly. “If she’s
even playing. She’s probably got an allergy to rubber.”
    “Oooh, you’re so snarky. I love that about
you,” Trudy said, and linking arms with Leah, Yin and Yang, and
Michele and Jamie went off to the left to play dodgeball.
    They lined up to wait for some instruction,
and when the guys finally got them to all stop chattering like a
group of mutant magpies, the song “Like a Virgin” began ringing on
someone’s cell phone.
    “Now come on, you guys,”
Cooper cried. He looked close to losing it completely. “We just had a chat about
this. No cell phones.”
    “Sorry,” a brunette called out, but she took
the call anyway.
    “Okay, attention, everyone,” Cooper went on,
with a glare for the brunette who held both hands up around her
mouth and the cell phone, “I think we all know the game of
dodgeball.” Eli walked over to a cage and began to toss red rubber
balls to Cooper, which he placed on either side of the center line.
“Why are we playing dodgeball?” he asked as he laid out the red
balls. “Because we’re filming it, and we’re going to use your
movements to craft some of the animation we’ll add to the battle
scenes.”
    Everyone instantly looked around for
cameras, and spotted one above them, the other at the far end of
the gym.
    “We play six on a side,”
Cooper continued. “When I blow the whistle, each team retrieves
three balls. If you’re hit, you cycle out, and the next person on
your team cycles in. You can eliminate a player in two ways—either
hit her with the ball, or catch her ball before it hits the ground.
Aim for the body, not the head. Anyone aiming for the head will be
eliminated from the game and may even lose a job, okay? Everyone
get that? Safety first, ladies. Remember that— safety first .”
    He paused, put his hands on his hips, and
looked at each team. “If you are taken out of the game, walk over
there,” he said, pointing to the bleachers. “And sit down. Don’t
talk. Don’t get out your cell phone. Don’t get out your nail
polish. No stopping to redo your hair like the incident we had
yesterday,” he said, looking pointedly at a Starlet who