He's So Fine by Jill Shalvis Read Free Book Online

the victim. But Olivia had been in touch with the doctors herself and knew that no matter what Tamilyn wanted people to believe, she was fully recovered. “Hi, Mom.”
    “Finally, Sharlyn. My leg’s killing me and you’re taking your damn time picking up the phone. You’ve gotten my texts?”
    “Olivia,” she said, as she’d had to for years now. “You know I go by Olivia now.”
    “I like Sharlyn better. It’s my favorite name. As a baby having a baby, it was the only thing I could give you.”
    How about loving her for who she was instead of what she was worth? “We’ve been through this,” Olivia said. “I needed the change.”
    “You mean you wanted to get away from the paparazzi and the life.”
    The life being the craziness, and yeah. Especially since it’d been of her own making. Fact was, she’d been a Hollywood has-been before she’d even been legal. That she’d stayed in the public eye past that time had been due to—as her mom called it—living the life. Aka, being stupid. “How are you doing?”
    “You know how I am,” Tamilyn said. “So broke I can’t even pay attention.”
    This was nothing new. Her mom had always been terrible with money, always looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme. She’d lucked out once and only once, and that had been the day that she’d heard about the open casting call in Lexington, Kentucky, where she’d been a housekeeper on a horse farm. A director had been looking for an “adorable young girl” for a commercial, and Jolyn had begged and begged to go audition.
    Olivia had been dragged along. She could still remember being on the floor reading in a corner when the casting director had noticed her.
    The next thing she knew, she’d filmed a commercial that had gone national.
    Jolyn still hadn’t forgiven her for that.
    Or for all that came after. Not Again, Hailey! had catapulted them to Hollywood and changed their world, a world that then depended on Olivia.
    “Doing this retro show won’t change your life,” Tamilyn said, “but it’ll change mine. I need a girly surgery.”
    “Save it, Mom. Jolyn already told me you want another boob job.”
    “Well, damn it, they don’t stay perky forever. You’ll see.”
    “If you need money for living expenses, I can help you a little bit,” Olivia said.
    “Oh, no. I’m not a charity case. I just want what’s mine. A fair cut as your manager, is all. Do the damn show. It’s one day of filming. TV Land can start rerunning the series, and we’ll be rolling in the royalties, and you can go back to hiding beneath a rock in Lucky Rock.”
    “Lucky Harbor.” And she wasn’t hiding. She was living. “It isn’t just one day, Mom. If I do this, we both know the drill. TV Land’s going to want a full-blown reunion show, and TV Guide ’s gonna want to do a big deal on it, and…” And people here would realize who she was, and then she’d cease to be Olivia. She’d go back to being Sharlyn Peterson, a washed-up child star, complete with the humiliating public shenanigans.
    Okay, maybe she was hiding just a little bit. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
    “Well, think fast. Jolyn’s talking of heading out there to see you.”
    Olivia’s gut hit her toes. “Tell her no. I’ll call.”
    “Soon?”
    “Yes. But right now I’ve got to get to work.” Olivia cut off the call and the usual wave of guilt rolled over her.
    Damn it. She so didn’t want to do the retrospective show. She liked her life just as it was right now.
    Crossing the alley from the docks and beach, she came to the warehouse building she lived in. Once upon a time, it’d been a cannery, and then a saltwater taffy manufacturer, and then an arcade. Sometime in the past thirty years it’d been divided into three apartments.
    Three poorly renovated, barely insulated, not-easily-heated apartments.
    But there were bonuses. The ocean-facing wall was floor-to-ceiling windows that, yes, let in the cold wind, but also let in the