Win a Date with Julian Austin

CHAPTER ONE

"Is that supposed to happen?"

"Pretty sure it isn't." I answered my best friend, Maddie Roy, through gritted teeth as the zillionth massive truck hauling a double-wide trailer turned down our driveway and promptly ran over the Matthews Family Ranch sign and yet another flower bed. With the movie production crew's hit rate, I was surprised any flowers were left. Given that my family ran a you-cut flower farm, this was an issue.

When I'd suggested Maddie pick me up early for school so we could watch the film crew arrive, I'd imagined more us drinking Grandaddy's peppermint tea and relaxing on the porch while Hollywood magic sprang up all around. I'd even picked out a cute outfit-a violet cropped sweater and my favorite jeans-and spent actual time on my hair and makeup on the off chance that Julian Austin happened to arrive.

Not that I expected a movie star to fall in love with me or anything. But first impressions are forever and all that.

Turns out, if Hollywood had any magic tricks at all, it was the magic of being very loud, very early in the morning. Instead of Julian Austin's chiseled jawline, we were watching a bunch of sweaty middle-aged men do their best to induce a migraine using a backhoe as they threw some kind of weird turf over one of our fallow fields while big rigs crushed everything near their path.

I was just contemplating whether it was too late for me to run upstairs and swap out my cute little sweater for a T-shirt when Maddie asked, "How are we supposed to get out? There are like fifty trucks in the driveway."

"I don't—"

"Drive on the grass, girls. The trucks are going to ruin it anyway," Grandaddy called to us through the front door. Like all Black grandpas everywhere, this man was no-nonsense about my education. Literally, he once drove me to school in a flood only to realize that we'd missed a text about classes being canceled. He was so mad about the educational disruption that I thought he was going to try to teach me himself.

"I don't know." I frowned, looking at the lumpy half mile of grass between us and the road, then back at Maddie's beat-up old Chevy sedan. "I mean, that can't be good for the car, and-"

"I could drive you to school on the riding mower," Grandaddy said, knitting his eyebrows together.

"We'll take the car, thanks, Grandaddy Oliver." Maddie waved, then looped her arm through mine.

"Have a good day, girls. Learn something," Grandaddy called like he hadn't just sent me into a potential death trap. Maddie was a lot of things, but a good driver wasn't one of them, and that was when she was on an actual road.

"Bye, Grandaddy. Love you."

"Bye," Maddie called as she tried to start the rust bucket that she'd borrowed from her mom. Usually, her brother, Tyler, drove us, but since Maddie was coming to my house early, Mrs. Roy gave up her ancient car for the day. The car wheezed as Maddie jerked it off the gravel drive and onto the narrow strip of grass between the driveway and what was left of the rows of ranunculus, tulips, and daffodils. I reached for the hand crank and began rolling the window down, then whispered an unintelligible prayer to the car gods that the thing would make it across the yard.

"Come on, buddy," Maddie said, stomping on the gas and causing the car to lurch forward in protest.

"Slow down," I hissed.

"Sorry. You know the accelerator is touchy," Maddie huffed, as if the car, and not her, was the problem.

"Just don't get us killed before we meet Julian Austin." I poked my head out the window and caught sight of myself in the side mirror. My usually golden-brown skin was flushed pink as Maddie careened around another trailer, my big curls tossed by the wind whipping past the car.

"Ugh, can you believe this guy?" Maddie growled.

Bouncing past semis and feeling like I was trapped in a popcorn machine, I watched as a giant black SUV emerged from behind the line of waiting tractor trailers and began to follow our lead, driving over the front lawn and going even faster than Maddie. I mumbled, "Just pull into the break between fields so they can get through."

"They should move over." Maddie snorted, then pressed harder on the gas. "There's a break right there."

In front of us, a woman wearing giant, bug-eyed sunglasses appeared to be talking on the phone, drinking coffee, and driving the two-ton SUV with her elbow while looking at something in the back seat.

I closed my eyes. "Please, Maddie. Just move."

"Can you believe this person?" Maddie said. They were still barreling toward us. "Who holds a phone? Everyone knows you put it on speaker and stick it in your bra if you can't get Bluetooth to work."

"You know about the boob pocket, but clearly this person doesn't, so let's just-"

"Watch it, lady!" Maddie yelled, laying on the pathetic horn. While I wasn't particularly fond of Tyler, I really did miss his driving right about now.

"Maddie." I braced for impact. At the last second, two things happened. The elbow-driver finally looked up, horror written on her face as she swerved into our flower beds, and Maddie slammed on her brakes, triumph crossing her face even as our car shuddered from the force.

Dust and chunks of grass flew everywhere as both cars came to a screeching halt next to each other. Irritation rolled off Maddie in waves, her face beet red as she furiously cranked down her window. Across from us, the driver did the same, albeit with a much cooler, and faster, press of a button.

"Are you out of your mind?" the other driver shrieked over the sound of our engine.

"Maybe try driving without your phone?" Maddie countered.

"Look, little girl, I'm transporting-"

"Little girl?" Maddie cut in as I leaned forward to better see the woman, biting back my own insults.

Raising her voice about three hundred decibels, Maddie continued, "You think that because you're some kind of movie person, you can just come and drive all over us? Well, I got news for you, lady. In Seaton, we aren't murderous jerks, so perhaps you could be decent and-"

"Seaton. Is that the name of this shithole town?"

"Screw you," Maddie cursed at the woman, undermining the be-nice speech she was working on. "What kind of big-city cliché—"

"Cliché?" the woman snarked. "Because a country bumpkin in a broke-ass car—"

"Please, let's just—" a voice from the back of the car started.

The sound of that voice snagged in my memory. I knew it from somewhere . . .

"Don't worry. I'm handling it." The woman turned to us as if the opinion of the person in the back seat wasn't particularly important. "I knew we should have done that superhero movie. Where was I? Oh yeah. You can take your homely, Walmart T-shirt-wearing—"

"We don't have a Walmart." Maddie's lip curled.

I took another calming breath. Maddie had been called names before, and I'd learned the hard way that she did not want me running to her defense when she was on a roll. But this ridiculous fight needed to end before we were late for school, which would raise Grandaddy's blood pressure high enough to get me in trouble with my dad later. And that would be after Mrs. Roy finished with us.

"Do you think I care? You're lucky that we'd even set foot within one hundred miles of this town. You could have killed us with your pitiful little—"

I cut the woman off. "If you two could stop fighting before we're late to school, that would be ideal." Fuming, I held up a finger at Maddie and the woman, as both tried to say something else. "Don't say anything, or I swear to god, I'll let the air out of your tires, and you can hitchhike back to whatever hellhole you crawled out of. Do you two—"

"She understands. Completely. Don't you, Mom?" the person in the back seat called again as their window began to roll down. It was a deep voice that had a gentle, almost musical quality to it . . . Slowly, my mind clicked the pieces into place.

You know how on kids' TV shows, characters will have the exact same expression to convey a surprise? That never felt believable, until I glanced over at Maddie and realized that both our jaws had dropped at the same time.

The voice was familiar because it belonged to Julian Austin.

Which meant that the woman across from us was his mother. And she was rude. Not to mention a bad driver. Suddenly, all the fantasy images I'd ever had about Julian rearranged themselves. I'd assumed he was nice because all his characters were so lik-able in that rom-com hero way. Like the one in Half of My Heart, who fell in love with his high school sweetheart and set about making all her dreams come true before he tragically died of some rare illness. Or the one in Times Two, where he befriends an elderly woman and helps her with her home chores all the while falling in love with her granddaughter. Or in Gridiron, when he was the only jock to stand up for the nerdy—

"Why don't you run along and get to school so my son can get to set?" Julian's mom interrupted my memories.

Summoning my best Matthews Ranch tour-guide tone, I said, "Ma'am, you could be the mother of the president, and I wouldn't care. This farm has some rules, which you'll see painted on signs all over the set-as you just called it. One, watch out for snakes, two, keep your hands to yourself, and three, be kind. If you can't do any of those, then I'll ask you once nicely to leave."

The woman's face wrinkled with surprise, as if she hadn't expected me to reply, let alone with Grandaddy Oliver's polite way of saying "shut up or I'll make you." Keeping my eyes on the SUV, I added, "Maddie, let's go."

Maddie stomped on the gas, barely inching forward. Julian's mom harrumphed and tossed her hair over her shoulders like Miss Piggy. I could just make out the square jawline of Julian Austin below a pair of big black sunglasses as he slowly sank down into his seat. I made sure I gave him my filthiest of dirty looks.

As soon as we were out of sight, Maddie squealed. "Ohmygod. We just met Julian Austin. Everyone at school will be so jealous."

"Yeah, until they meet him and find out he's a jerk." I crossed my arms. My best friend might not have been planning to hold a grudge, but I was prepared to take one to the grave. Julian Austin might have been unreasonable levels of good looking, but if this interaction were was indication, the next two months at Matthews Ranch were going to be very long.