Chapter 1

chapter

one

Maxine

The thing about romantic comedies is that anything seems possible for the hour and a half that you're watching them. Then when the credits start to roll, the bubble bursts and you go back to the real world where there's no such thing as love like that.

My family has been peddling the myth of happily ever after since long before I was born. It's hard not to be cynical about love when you grow up in the movie industry.

That's just one of the reasons I'd promised myself a long time ago that I would never work on a movie set.

When you come from a movie family, people expect it of you, but I had zero interest. Between my grandfather (movie producer and President of the company), my uncles (all producers), my dad (a director), my mom (movie starlet) and my cousins (also actors), I spent more than enough of my childhood on sets and various locations, thank you very much.

When people find out who my family is, the initial reaction varies. I've gotten everything from a startled laugh to a confused slow blink. But they always end up in the same place: Wait. Why don't you want to work in the movie industry?

Believe it or not, some people don't want to be surrounded by the vain and self-centered. Okay, maybe that's not the entire industry. Maybe it's just my family.

Thankfully I'm unattractive enough by Hollywood standards that I've been kept out of the press. I was able to go to medical school and do my thing and everything was peachy until I pissed off my grandfather enough. I finally crossed the line. He cut me off and now I've been forced to take a semester off.

Which is why I'm breaking the promise I made to myself and going to work on a movie set. A job I had to beg a friend for, because … you know, college debt is a real thing.

I blow out a breath and quickly swerve into the other lane. No using turn signals in LA; that just gives all the asswipes behind you enough time to speed up and close the distance between them and the cars in front of them.

Where was I? Oh, right, pissing off the patriarch of the family.

I knew I'd never been the old man's favorite. Thankfully there were always some other family members that were willing to lay prostrate at his feet and fill his ears with bullshit confirming his illusions of grandeur. Mostly, I stayed out of his way, even after he got custody of me when my parents died in a small plane crash. I grew up in Hollywood Hills, but mostly flew under his radar.

He was kind of like a cross between Hugh Hefner and James Cameron, eccentric and ridiculously wealthy to a degree that complete strangers indulged his every whim.

There's a slight chance he actually forgot I existed, even though I lived in his house and paid for my med school out of the trust he'd set up for me. Maybe that was why he seemed surprised to find me making myself a pot of tea in the kitchen one night last month.

You're supposed to be the heiress to Lionheart Productions. Look at you. I can't tell anyone you're my granddaughter.

My fat ass isn't what got me cut out of the will and my monthly allowance revoked. Nope, that had been my big, fat mouth. Because I'd heard his old scratchy voice say that from behind me and when I spun around to face him, I promptly told my grandfather he could fuck right off if he didn't like how I looked.

I didn't give a shit about being his heiress. I didn't even care about having a monthly allowance. I didn't need to be a kept woman. Yes, it had been nice, I can't lie about that. But I was smart enough to make my own fucking money.

Since I still have a year of med school left and I don't want to drown in an ocean of debt, I need a job.

So, when a friend of mine had called begging me to help him out, I readily agreed. Even though the job was on the set of a movie.

It's a temporary gig, but I'm currently the set medic for A Heartwarming Christmas Movie, which is a terrible title. I mean really, let's be a little more clichéd. More like A Heartwarming Christmas Movie set in a charming small town with snowball fights and hot cocoa in front of the fireplace where everyone falls in love and lives happily ever after .

Gag me!

But if it means spending my winter break making money that will help pay for my next semester, I will swallow the Alka-Seltzer, stifle my gag reflex and spend Christmas with the beautiful people. It won't kill me.

Probably.