Read Extreme Bachelor for Free Online Page B

was looking at her. Eli was looking at her so
intently that she flinched a little. “Ah . . . I’ve really got to,
ah . . . take this,” she muttered, and flipped it open, whirled
around, and whispered, “ Hey .”
    “Bad news, sweetie.”
Frances had never been one to beat around a bush. “You got passed
over for the spot on Desperate
Housewives .”
    Leah’s heart sank. “Why? They said I was
perfect for the part of the preacher’s wife.”
    “I’ll put it to you straight. You’re too
fat. If you lost ten pounds, maybe. But don’t worry—we’ve still got
a couple of auditions outstanding.”
    “But what if I lose the—”
    “Ooooh, I really need to take this call,”
Frances said, and clicked off.
    Leah sighed, shut her phone, and turned
around. The meeting had resumed. Eli was explaining what the next
couple of weeks looked like.
    “Ohmigod, he’s so cute ,” Michele whispered
to Leah as she stuffed the phone back into her bag.
    “Question!” Tamara Contreras’s hand shot up,
as if Eli and Cooper didn’t know who’d be asking a question after
the two bazillion she’d asked every day. Tamara was an
ex-soap-opera diva (killed off by her murderous twin disguised as
her ex-husband on a remote island with an invisible and
impenetrable barrier, which naturally meant she could not seek
medical treatment) who had begun annoying Leah and Trudy on the
second day, when she announced she had a problem with perfume. Not
any particular perfume, but the amount of perfume that was being
worn. It gave her a headache.
    The entire cast spent an hour arguing about
it. The stunt guys had been so agitated that they’d had to caucus.
After fifteen minutes of shuffling feet and a lot of head
scratching, they had come back with, “Use your best judgment.”
    Trudy, Leah, Michele, and Jamie had howled
about that over drinks after work. Men could be so stupid
sometimes. But they decided that Tamara had so many things wrong
with her—perfume sensitivity being the tip of the proverbial
iceberg—that she wouldn’t last.
    “I give her two weeks on
set,” Jamie had said. Jamie was short and had red hair that in
concert with her boob job, preceded the rest of her when she walked
into a room. She was a great person, but all Leah could think
was, character roles .
    “I give her two weeks before someone kills
her,” Michele had responded before wrapping her collagen-enhanced
lips around a straw. Michele was really a beauty with long golden
hair and big green eyes, plus the requisite fake boobs and
lips.
    At the moment, Tamara’s arm was about to
come out of its socket as she tried to get Cooper or Eli to look at
her.
    “Yes, Tamara?” Cooper finally asked,
exchanging a weary look with Eli.
    “If the studio okayed the white-water
rafting, are they going to okay the wet gear? The water can be
pretty cold this time of year.”
    “We’ll worry about wet gear later,” Cooper
said.
    “Okay, well, I just want to go on record as
saying I’ll need full-body wet gear,” Tamara said, oblivious to the
sighs and eye-rolling around her. “I have a low tolerance for
cold.”
    Cooper and Eli looked at one another. “I’ll
tell you what, Tamara. Let’s just make sure we get to white-water
rafting first,” Cooper said. “So all right, ladies, let’s start by
breaking up into our armies. West team on that end, East team on
this end. We start in five minutes.”
    “You know what?” Trudy asked casually as the
guys began to try, enthusiastically and in vain, to corral them
into their respective armies, “I think I am going to have to change
my vote for who is the hottest stunt trainer.”
    It was a question they’d been debating for a
few days.
    “Don’t change your vote until we get a load
of the fourth one,” Michele advised Trudy as they strolled to the
team on the left.
    “A fourth?” Jamie exclaimed. “A fourth
what?”
    “A fourth stunt trainer guy. He’s coming in
later.”
    Trudy, Leah, and Jamie all came to