Cover reveal: Try A Little Tenderness

If you read Send Me an Angel, you have met a few of these folks. In Send Me an Angel, Marty, Alan's sponsor, was struggling to get his sci fi show off the ground and Angie, the heroine, ended up with a part in it. In Try a Little Tenderness, the show is on the air and child star Taylor Elgin is barely clinging to her part she's good, great even, but not a fan favorite. That distinction falls to Ryan Asher, terrible actor with a dark past. Ryan can't act his way out of a paper bag, but he's so hot his fans would watch him read the newspaper. Think Jason Momoa, but blond. Marty, ever the cupid, thinks he can save Taylor's part and improve Ryan's chops by throwing them together in a character arc on the show. Knowing Marty, he was probably betting on a little off screen chemistry too.

They all got more than they bargained for.

Unedited excerpt:

“I talked to Grey about the script. He said he forgot about the claustrophobia in the last scene.” Taylor sighed. “I told him what we had discussed and he’s going to go through the whole script again and angle it so that Kol is noticing Amelia and Amelia is clueless as usual. He thinks it will make more sense that way because Amelia is so terrible about picking up on social cues.”

“She is?” Ryan tried to remember. He’d started watching the show when she came on last season and since he started this season, he’d watched all of them being shot whether he was in the scenes or not and then watched them when they aired.

“I play her very oblivious. Dr. Clare is always explaining interpersonal things to her.”

“Is that part of the backstory you wrote for her?”

“Yes.”

“I really should do something like that. It would make the character better. You guys have all done it.”

“I’m the only one who wrote anything down. Angie kind of feels things out. She’s very good at improv. Trey has a completely different approach to acting that I couldn’t explain without a textbook and a slide show.” She smirked so he assumed that was supposed to be a joke and laughed.

“Where would I start with something like that?”

“What of Kol’s past is already in the script?” she asked.

“Just that he was a bounty hunter for the Overlords.”

“Why did he defect?”

“It was on the first show I was on. The season premier.” She read the same script he did. She should know all this. Unless this was more acting stuff. Backstory.

“I know, but I want you to tell me why you, as Kol, defected to our side.” She leaned forward, folding her hands on the table.

Ryan leaned forward too. The brightness in her eyes was intoxicating. “On the show, the team crossed paths with him because you were trying to contact someone in the resistance and he was trying to catch him. Kol got hurt and Dr. Clare insisted on treating him. You guys were all fighting about whether or not to bring him back to the Earth base. Dr. Clare said she wasn’t leaving me to die. Trey said I’d be a security risk. You said I would be a risk either way because if I lived I’d be able to tell the Overlords Earth existed so you brought me back to the base and I was locked up in that room for two episodes.”

“Okay, what were you thinking during those two episodes?”

“I was thinking I was the luckiest fuck in the world to get on a TV show.”

She tensed.

He was an idiot. Her character was at risk because she was unpopular and he’d fallen ass backward into the career she wanted. “That was stupid, wasn’t it?”

“No, not at all.” She held herself upright as if she were having trouble breathing. “It’s kinda true, but let’s focus on what Kol would be thinking.”

He licked his teeth. “Kol was probably thinking he was pretty lucky, too. Those Overlords are pretty scary dudes and he wasn’t having to deal with them. He was still alive and he was safe for the first time in his life.” Safe. He and Kol had both been safe for the first time in their lives and nobody was making them do anything they didn’t want to do.

Can't wait to meet the guys? What to know what that little cliffhanger is about? There's a preview of the first five chapters of the third book in the series available through Instafreebie.