Fluffy Published by Prosaic Press, Inc. by Julia Kent
on April 30, 2019
Find the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
ISBN: 1950173925
An all-new STANDALONE from New York Times bestselling author Julia Kent
It all started with the wrong Help Wanted ad. Of course it did.
I’m a professional fluffer. It’s NOT what you think. I stage homes for a living. Real estate agents love me, and my work stands on its own merits.
Sigh. Get your mind out of the gutter. Go ahead. Laugh. I’ll wait.
See? That’s the problem. My career has used the term “fluffer” for decades. I didn’t even know there was a more… lascivious definition of the term.
Until it was too late.
The ad for a “professional fluffer” on Craigslist seemed like divine intervention. My last unemployment check was in the bank. I was desperate. Rent was due. The ad said cash paid at the end of the day. The perfect job!
Staging homes means showing your best angle. The same principle applies in making a certain kind of movie. Turns out a “fluffer” doesn’t arrange decorative pillows on a couch.
They arrange other soft, round-ish objects.
The job isn’t hard. Er, I mean, it is — it’s about being hard. Or, well… helping other people to be hard.
Oh, man…
And that’s the other problem. A man. No, not one of the stars on the movie set. Will Lotham – my high school crush. The owner of the house where we’re filming. Illegally. In a vacation rental.
By the time the cops show up, what I thought was just a great house staging gig turned into a nightmare involving pictures of me with an undressed star, Will rescuing me from an arrest, and a humiliating lesson in my own naivete.
My job turned out to be so much harder than I expected. But you know what’s easier than I ever imagined?
Having all my dreams come true.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“How do you know that’s what I’m doing?”
“Because you have this thing you do when you get nervous. You did it in high school and you’re doing it now.”
“What’s that?”
“You start cracking your knuckles. One by one.”
He halts mid-crack on his ring finger. His bare ring finger.
Will looks down. A slow smile pulls at his lips. “You’re right. I do.” Our eyes meet. “How did you know?”
“I sat behind you in nearly every honors class, Will. I’ve watched you answer countless questions from teachers. And every time you didn’t know the answer, you cracked your knuckles. One”–I crack my index finger–“by”–I crack my middle finger–“one.” My ring finger won’t snap.
He waits.
“You spent a lot of time paying attention to me, Mallory.”
“I sat behind you. It’s not like I could stare at your ass all day. I had to have something else to look at.”
“You stared at my ass?”
“It was two feet in front of me! Four classes a day!” I start to sweat. The memory of him in football uniform pants. Oh, sweet ice cream fairy, deliver me from evil.
“You okay? You look,” he says, stepping closer, “a little disturbed.”
“I’m fine.”
“Hot, even.” The rise and fall of his chest pauses after those words, as if he’s holding his breath, too.
