LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 1

      Roxanne Deveraux sat at her dining room table, genealogy charts spread out around her. The front door to her house slammed. No one slammed a door like her sister, Portia.

      Portia stormed into the dining room, thumped her purse down on the table and glared at her sister. She dropped a pile of scripts down on the table. “Here’s your weekly pile of scripts from Mom and Dad.”

      “What’s wrong?” Roxanne asked in a mild voice designed to calm her sister. For almost the first half of her life, she had been the peacemaker, the problem solver in a family that thrived on chaos.

      “I’ll tell you in a minute. Did you know you’re trending?” Portia asked, as she pulled out her iPad, woke it up and scrolled through the screens. “In fact, you have been for the last three days.”

      “I really haven’t done anything.”

      “You play a corpse for five minutes on Bayside PD and people take notice. After all, it’s the number one cop show.”

      “I was alive for thirty seconds before I was a corpse.” Acting was now her creative hobby and she used her gigs to get celebrity clients for her genealogy business and keep her SAG membership active. “Even a corpse on a number one show gets paid and I get to look at hot actors.”

      “Mom and Dad weren’t impressed.” Portia took several deep breaths, as though willing herself to calm down. The anger in her dark brown eyes slowly faded and her breathing evened out.

      “I do it just to irritate them.” Roxanne stood and neatly gathered up the charts and placed them in a folder next to her laptop.

      “Mom says it’s a waste of your talent.” She gestured at the pile of scripts. “Plus even a bit part is going to give you money that isn’t going into their pockets, which is also a point of contention.”

      “No, it’s not. I get exactly what I need out of it.” Even though she hadn’t talked to her parents in years, they still felt the need to meddle in her life.

      Portia’s phone chimed and she rummaged in her purse for her phone and turned it completely off.

      For two women from the same parents they were as dissimilar as two sisters could be. They resembled each other in their facial structure, high cheekbones, large brown eyes and elegant lips.

      Roxanne stood five foot ten in her stocking feet, slim and trim from all the jogging and yoga she did. Portia, at twenty-two, was six years younger, five inches shorter, curvier in the bosom and hips and in some ways more volatile. She was into kickboxing and tae kwon do. While Roxanne’s hair was cut into a fashionable shape and left in its natural curly state, Portia had gone for a straightened hairdo, cut into a stylish bob in a Naomi Campbell way. Portia’s tawny skin tone and amber eyes were slightly darker than Roxanne’s.

      Roxanne liked to dress in casual clothing, though today she wore a black pencil skirt with a scarlet leather jacket belted around the waist, black kitten heel shoes and a gold locket nestled against her throat. Portia, who was more fashion conscious and usually wore clothes more cutting-edge in the latest trend, had chosen an ivory pants suit with a short black jacket and a colorful Hermès scarf. A platinum necklace in the shape of a panther with emerald eyes winked against the darkness of her jacket.

      “Going back to why you’re angry at Mom and Dad.”

      Portia sighed. “Among many things, they want me to convince you to let them be your agents again. Even the residuals from your old sitcom still bring in a lot of money and they want to capitalize on it.”

      While the residuals were okay, each year brought a little less since the show wasn’t always on the schedule as it became dated and secondary networks had more choices. She was still dependent on her parents sending her the money since it went to them first. She couldn’t always depend on them paying out in a timely manner.

      Portia gestured at the pile of scripts and picked up the one on top. “I’m supposed to talk you into this movie.”

      “I was in a movie last year.”

      “You played a salesgirl. You were on screen for exactly four and half minutes.”

      “I enjoyed that role, small as it was.”

      Portia issued another sigh. She picked up the script and held it out to Roxanne. “If you accept this role, their commission will pay the balance of Dad’s past-due taxes. You’ve always been the big moneymaker in the family. Me, I’m just a minor actress who does commercials and voice-overs. Plus the positive media they’d get from having you involved with one of their projects—especially since things have gone downhill since your emancipation—would go a long way into reviving their business reputation.”

      “I’m not interested in helping him pay off his back taxes. Dad’s IRS problem isn’t our fault,” Roxanne said. “He did it on his own. If he’d filed properly and claimed all the income he was supposed to claim, he wouldn’t be in this fix.” Instead of trying to hide the fact that he’d borrowed heavily from her trust fund for reasons he’d never totally explained.

      “His scheduled payments are going to last at least another two years. Failure to make any of his payments on time could land him in jail. I’m counting the days until I can stop working and maybe get in to UC Davis.” Portia had always been into animal rescue and her dream was to be a veterinarian. In her spare time she volunteered at the Los Angeles Zoo.

      “But...” Roxanne coaxed. She’d offered to pay for her schooling, but Portia turned her down time after time because their parents already exploited Roxanne for money and Portia felt accepting money from her sister would make her just like them.

      “They’re pressuring me to sign another two-year contract with them. I feel guilty because I don’t want to stay in this business and yet—” she paused, the conflict she was feeling showing on her face “—even I can’t argue with the money. I have almost enough put away for school.”

      “You always were the nice daughter.” Roxanne gave her sister a kiss on the cheek.

      Portia rubbed her forehead and Roxanne hoped one of her migraines wasn’t about to start.

      Portia frowned. “I’d rather be like you—the smart, stealthy daughter who got away.”

      Roxanne’s parents had never forgiven her for emancipating herself when she was sixteen and all but walking away from the business. After eleven years on a popular family sitcom, she hadn’t wanted to be a full-time actress anymore. The industry had become more and more obsessed with an actress’s physical appearance and less appreciative of a woman’s talent, and Roxanne was tired of fitting into someone else’s mold. With her grandmother’s encouragement, she’d won an early admittance to Berkeley and eventually earned a degree in history at the age of twenty and her parents hadn’t spoken to her since.

      Roxanne, who’d always been interested in genealogy, had taken her hobby and turned it into a small business that she’d been trying to expand into something more the past couple years. She used her own colorful ancestry, which had turned out to be filled with swindlers and con artists, as part of her sales pitch to her clients to show them what could be found.

      “You look really nice.” Portia motioned for Roxanne to turn around, studying her clothes. “You should have worn those stilettos instead of the shoes you’re wearing. I know they add inches to your height you don’t want, but they make your legs look really long and sexy and every man in the restaurant will be watching you.”

      She didn’t want every man in the restaurant watching her—especially when she might fall on her face walking in stilettos. She wouldn’t consider herself the most coordinated.

      Portia reached behind her neck and unfastened her panther necklace. “Take off that locket and

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