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Chapter One

Hopes and aspirations – she had them. She had big dreams of becoming the next big fashion photographer. She took the classes in college. She got a degree. But really, there was nothing out there. You needed to have connections to get into the business – and strong ones at that. You don't just start out photographing for top designers. You have to pay your dues. Put in your blood, sweat and tears. And that was what she was doing.

Elle started out working in a department store taking senior portraits and ridiculous amounts of pictures of crying babies and bored families. Her life was so boring she could have gone insane in the clutches of normalcy. From there, she moved on to doing some landscape photography for a gallery in downtown Los Angeles. But she was literally drowning in student loans and she needed to get her head above water – fast.

That was when she met some guys at a club that worked freelance as paparazzi. They turned her on to all the financial benefits of the job and she jumped in head first. Her first big win was getting pictures of up-and-coming pop music sensation, Brayden Fields, feeling-up his remotely famous model girlfriend, Nina Kendall, outside a club. It wasn't her proudest, most shining moment, but she got some fast cash, and a lot of it for the pictures. After that, it was like a drug to her – a rush of adrenaline and she was hooked.

The first time Elle saw Julian Reed – like, truly saw him – was when she really started enjoying her job. She'd known who he was from early on in his career. If you were younger than the age of thirty you knew who he was. His face was plastered all over the TV in one teen show after another in his youth. Although the most controversial and bold thing he did with his career, and what he was most well-known for, were the string of safe-sex/abstinence commercials and PSA's he did in his early teen years.

But now, as a twenty-something year old man he had an entirely new image, starring in action movies and romantic comedies that – yes, of course – featured him in sexual scenes. He was no longer the squeaky clean, virgin boy. He was a scruffy, extremely sexy man who partied and drank with his friends and was known to break a heart or two throughout Hollywood. Taking pictures of that man and his entourage became high on her priority list.

Elle didn't particularly find deep meaning in her job. She didn't get the satisfaction that most people did from a hard day's work – not in her chosen field. A lot of the time she felt like a complete asshole. But she did it because she had to. And there was something about that man that kept her coming back, time and time again. If she could have solely followed him, she would have – and for the most part, she did.

Having grown up in Los Angeles, Elle had never really been star-struck before – and doing what she did for a career – but there was something about Julian that made her take a step back and take a look around every time she was in his presence. Maybe it was because of the way their eyes would catch and the smile on his lips would form only for her. She was convinced that for the longest time he just assumed she was one of his many adoring fans who followed him around taking pictures of him. Well, up until that night.

There were rumors swirling around the internet – rumors Elle didn't care to pay attention to, but ones her agent did. She suggested that if Elle was so keen on chasing this one celebrity around, she needed to really dig up the dirt and get a story out of him. Otherwise she needed to move on to someone like Brayden Fields who had brought them the big bucks before. Elle cringed at the thought of following that little adolescent boy around. She got absolutely no gratification, no stimulation from that sort of work. No, not like she did with the illustrious Julian Reed.

"Hey, Julian... Julian, over here," Elle shouted through the group of her fellow cameramen. Julian's head turned in the direction of the only female voice in the crowd – hers.