Page 5 of Catch Me (Townsend Legacy #4)

I vy

“I’m coming, Ms. Shelby,” I yell through the door of the L.A. loft apartment I now share with Mya.

After the fire, Mya let me move in with her since the spare bedroom had been vacant for two weeks once her last roommate moved out.

As soon as I open the door, Ms. Shelby lets out a meow that tells me she’s not at all pleased with my lateness.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her as she glares up at me with those big, blue eyes. Ms. Shelby is a British shorthair and one of the easier breeds of cats, but she doesn’t like not getting fed on time.

“You know how crazy traffic is, and I had to go to two different pet stores to get your special cat food,” I tell her.

“Are you explaining yourself to that damn cat again?” Mya asks as she exits her bedroom in just a bra and black leggings.

“She needs to know I didn’t abandon her.” I pick Ms. Shelby up once I’ve taken off my heels and placed them on the shoe rack we keep by the door.

“Mhm,” Mya says, grilling Ms. Shelby. “She’s too needy.”

I rub my nose against Ms. Shelby’s, making her purr. “She’s still grieving,” I remind Mya.

The firefighters believe it was an accident that started when a lamp in Ms. Baldwin’s bedroom fell over as she was sleeping.

I found out later that she likely died from smoke inhalation before the flames ever reached her. That was somewhat of a relief.

Ms. Shelby was able to escape through the pet door in the kitchen.

Mya sighs and approaches us, looking down at Ms. Shelby.

“Furball,” she snarks, but there’s a softness in her tone. Mya’s never been a fan of pets, but she didn’t bat an eye when she agreed to let me move in with her.

“Is there a reason you’re half-naked?” I quip, putting Ms. Shelby down and heading to the kitchen.

“Besides the fact that I spend way too many hours in pilates, twice a week with a trainer, and walking those damn L.A. hills with you on weekends to cover up this hourglass figure?” She strikes a pose, popping out her hip, making me laugh.

My friend is a gorgeous size fourteen, which for this city is considered plus-size, but Mya works out regularly to maintain her overall health and energy. She isn’t shy about telling anyone who will listen she’ll never go on another diet again.

“Babe and I are going out for drinks and then dinner with a few of his colleagues. Which one do you think works best?”

She holds up a short-sleeve black dress that stops right at the knee, then switches to an electric blue dress that’s sleeveless, but the bust is super low cut.

“What are you going for? Are these Jason’s clients?” Jason is the son of a well-known California real estate mogul. He works in the family’s business.

Mya shakes her head. “Not clients but they have done some deals in the past.”

“Which means he wants to keep them interested in future endeavors.” I think for a moment. “Blue is your color,” I remind her. “Wear the blue one, but put that black lace camisole underneath and pair it with the black Jimmy Choos Jason you bought last summer.”

“Perfect, I was going to ask what shoes to wear, too.” Mya runs over and kisses my cheek before she exits the kitchen.

Another meow from Ms. Shelby reminds me to get in motion. I put away the groceries I bought, and then pull out the specialty cat food and serve it in Ms. Shelby’s silver bowl before placing it on the floor for her.

After changing out her water, I head to my bedroom to change out of my work clothes.

“How’d the fitting go?” Mya calls from her bedroom.

“Strange,” I reply without thinking.

“What happened?” The closeness of her voice prompts me to look over to see her leaning against my bedroom door frame, fixing her earrings.

“Are those the diamond studs?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Silver.”

“Wear the diamonds.”

“Your fashion advice is better than mine,” she murmurs, removing the earring she just put in and going to switch them out.

“Did you meet Andreas Knight?” she asks excitedly when she returns to my room.

“You could say that.”

She gives me a look. I give her a brief rundown of what happened at work.

“That bitch. I knew that damn Rebecca was going to be a problem,” she says fiercely.

“She’s fine.” I do my best to calm my best friend down. “I can handle Rebecca. At least, I still have a job.”

“Thanks to Andreas. And he wants you to call him by his first name.”

I hold up my hands, waving her off. “He was probably being nice or something. The fitting is over, and this is likely the last time I’m ever going to see him.” I hold up my hand when Mya tries to intervene.

“I don’t have time to think about Andreas Knight or any other Hollywood star, unless it pertains to my job. The last thing I want to do is to look like some crazed stalker or like I only took the job to be some kind of Hollywood groupie. I need this job. I can’t afford to get fired.”

Mya’s face drops. “Ivy, you know you can stay here as long as you need. I just signed another twelve-month lease before Trisha moved out.”

Trisha is her former roommate who she met in law school. She moved to Northern California for a job, not long after they signed a new lease. Which is how I was able to take over so easily.

But Mya pays a larger portion of the rent.

My heart squeezes. I know she means every word she says, which only makes me feel worse.

“I know, and I love you for it, but I can’t be in your way too long. Jason’s practically begging you to move in with him already. You can’t keep putting him off on my account.”

Their wedding isn’t until next year, but Jason has been wanting Mya to move in with him since before he proposed. She had planned to break her lease, once her previous roommate moved out, but then Ms. Baldwin died which meant I had to move off of her property.

“Jason will be fine. Besides, as much as I’m over at his place, it feels like I live there already.”

I give her a small smile.

“Still, I need this job. The pay is better than I could have hoped for, and once I make it through these ninety days, I’ll get an increase plus benefits.”

So what if I had to deal with a few verbal jabs from my boss in exchange for the job’s upside. I’m used to it.

“For someone without a degree in?—”

Mya holds up her hand. “Stop it. Do not start that mess again.” She glares at me. “You have two,” she holds up two fingers for emphasis, “degrees.”

I do have a bachelor’s and an MBA with a concentration in finance thanks to the intense five-year program I enrolled in at my university. However, my undergraduate degree in mathematics and my MBA weren’t degrees I wanted for myself.

“Don’t even go there,” Mya warns. “If you start getting all self-deprecating on me, I swear I will knock you into the middle of next week.”

Her words make me laugh. She hates it when I get down on myself. Her and Ari both.

I hold up my hands in surrender. “Yes, but the truth is, as far as my bosses are concerned, I’m unproven in this field, so I need to show them what I’m made of.”

She pushes out a breath. “I get it.”

With that, she pulls me into a hug I didn’t know I needed.

The doorbell rings, making Mya growl.

“That damn man is always on time.”

I snicker at her annoyance. “I’ll get it. You finish getting ready.”

I head to the door to buzz Jason in. A few minutes later, he knocks on the door.

“Ivy,” he greets with a warm smile.

“I assume the flowers aren’t for me?” I joke as I point at the bouquet of lilacs in his arms.

“They better be for me,” Mya says as she comes up from behind.

Jason’s eyes light up as soon as he sees her.

These two . They’ve been together since Mya’s first year of law school and sometimes it still surprises me how after going on six years of being together, they still look at one another like they were the only ones in the room.

Despite my parents being married for almost thirty-five years, I never knew this type of love existed.

Hell, I’m almost sure that it only exists for Mya and Jason.

“I’ll put these in water,” I tell Mya. “You go ahead.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” Never one to shy away from affection, she squeezes me and then takes Jason’s hand.

“Have fun.” I wave Mya off, knowing I likely won’t see her for the next few days. She does spend a lot of time over Jason’s. Which is a reminder that I need to do everything I can to save money so that I can find my own place eventually.

I won’t be the reason Mya hangs onto this apartment when she doesn’t have to.

That thought gets me in gear, and I grab my laptop from my bedroom and head to the little corner work desk in the spacious living room.

Mya and I take turns using this space as our office when needed. Most evenings, I utilize the area to work for my part-time job as a stylist for an online clothing delivery company.

The job entails curating outfits and looks for average people who want to spruce up their wardrobes or just need help finding the best looks for their body types.

I click on one of the new profiles that’s been uploaded and read over the person’s preferences and body measurements.

I’m given enough information from the application they completed to pick out a couple of outfits that they can mix and match to wear on the job, on a casual night out, or even on a date.

Smiling at the outfits and pieces I’ve chosen, I upload the selections and know that on the other end, in a warehouse, these items will be placed in the curated box and shipped to the customer.

I hope they like it.

A noise startles me, and at first I think it’s Ms. Shelby, who’s managed to curl up in my lap while I’ve been working. But it’s actually my stomach. A reminder that I’ve forgotten to eat again.

With a groan, I rise from my chair, stretch, and head to the kitchen. The thought of cooking anything physically hurts, which is why the idea of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich starts to sound enticing, until I open the refrigerator.

There’s a post-it note on the side of a takeout carton.

“I knew you would be tired and not in the mood to cook. Enjoy!” It’s written in Mya’s swirly cursive letters. I open the carton to pad thai from my favorite Thai restaurant. The second carton is a salad from the same restaurant. On top, Mya’s left another post-it reminding me to eat my vegetables.

I snicker as I pull both cartons of food from the fridge.

Just as I’m sitting down to enjoy my dinner, my cell phone rings. Ms. Shelby meows loudly, evidently not liking the sound of my phone’s ring.

She saunters off toward the kitchen.

“Hello? Rebecca?” I answer since that was the name that popped up on my screen.

A beat of silence ensues, and I start to hear my heartbeat in my ears. Is this the moment she fires me? Is that why she’s calling? To finish the meeting she never got a chance to in her office?

I thought that since I’d made it through the day after that encounter with Rebecca and Andreas in her office, that I was safe. Maybe I was wrong, got too confident.

“Your attendance is requested on set Monday morning, six, a.m. sharp,” she says without any preamble.

“I-I’m sorry?”

A forceful exhalation is my clue that I’m testing her patience.

“Michael Keith’s movie, Late Nights , begins filming on Monday. You’ll need to be there at six a.m. to assist with the costumes throughout the duration of filming.”

My head spins. Rarely do assistants to the assistant costume designer show up to the filming of the actual movie, at least that’s what I was told when I began working for the company.

“I expect that you will have all of the designs and costume changes for the movie memorized and ready to go for each day of filming.”

A number of questions swim through my mind. The variety of tasks she mentioned could easily fall into the realm of someone else’s job, but I don’t dare complain.

“I suppose even you can handle that,” is one of the last things she says before hanging up.

I allow the thinly veiled insult to wash over me. Mainly because my mind starts to work overtime with all of the tasks I need to do between now and Monday to be ready to work on an actual movie set.

But even as I work through the mental list of what I need to prepare, I wonder what brought on this about-face. Earlier, she didn’t want me anywhere near this project.

Even after the attempted firing that she never got around to completing, she gave me tasks throughout the day that were on side projects of the studio’s, not any of the major films.

What changed her mind?