Page 1 of Never Forever

PROLOGUE

Dumont Hotel

Last Christmas

Carrie

Twenty feet to the elevators.

I smiled. I waved. Cameras flashed.

Fifteen. Fourteen.

The hard part was over and I was almost done. Home free. In my room I’d peel off these Spanx, take my first deep breath in ten hours, and fall, headfirst, into my bed. I didn’t sleep at all last night because I’d tortured myself, imagininghimthere. Standing in the back of the ballroom, his green eyes narrowed in scathing disbelief.

But if he’d been there, I didn’t see him.

Of course, I knew I was going to see him. Calico Cove was a tiny town…I just wanted to put it off as long as possible.

A small group of young fans was standing at the edge of the Dumont Hotel lobby and I could smile and wave at press and paparazzi but I couldn’t walk by fans. Especially the young ones.

“You’re Carrie Piedmont,” a teenage boy said with hair drooping deliberately and artistically over his eyes.

“I am.” I crouched to take a selfie with him.

“And you’re really from Calico Cove?” A girl asked. She had bright blue streaks in her hair. A pierced nose. Big eyes full of bigger dreams.

Theater kid. I’d bet a million bucks on it.

“Sure am. Go Lobsters.” She held out a napkin she’d swiped from the bar and I signed it.

“And you’re really filming a movie here?” Another girl asked. She sounded more skeptical, and I didn’t blame her. Calico Cove was the kind of place where nothing exciting happened unless you counted the Fall Festival. Or the one time a giant whale washed on shore and the whole town worked together to roll it back into the ocean.

Calico Cove was a small lobster town. A beach town.

And now it was a movie town.

The production company just finished the big announcement about the movie in the ballroom. A whole splashy thing. The mayor was there. A few news outlets. My sister. But we hadn’t let in the public, so I was happy to answer a few questions from the locals who’d come to the hotel lobby to see what the excitement was all about.

“We really are,” I said with a smile.

“And Jake Foxhall?” Blue streaks asked. “For real is going to be here?”

Jake was my costar. A hot young thing fresh off a Netflix movie that girls like the ones standing in front of me sky-rocketed to number one.

But if I was being honest, he gave me all the wrong kind of vibes. I didn’t like the way he looked at the young female assistants and wardrobe techs.

This movie was my baby. I wasn’t going to tolerate bad vibes.

One of the members from the press we’d invited slipped in beside the teenagers. A giant bearded guy who was the reigning king of Hollywood gossip.

“Would you say this movie is a…step down for you?” he asked.

The teenagers gasped and pointed their phones at him.

“Step down?” I said with a dazzling smile. “Hardly.”

“Really? A made-for TV movie called Snowman Magic?” He asked, his eyebrow arched dramatically.

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