Famous for a Living
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Synopsis
She’s Insta-famous. He uses a flip phone.
When her business partner is accused of serious financial crimes, superstar influencer Cat Cranwell—an engineered marvel of beauty, energy, and fun—falls from her penthouse perch. Desperate to get away from the online trolls and paparazzi documenting her disgrace, Cat accepts her uncle’s offer to work with him in Kannery National Park, Montana. About as far as possible from life as she’s known it.
Cat’s world shifts from the swirling haze of likes and comments to literal blizzards of frostbite temperatures and waist-deep snow. In place of negotiating brand deals, she finds herself negotiating at the ledge of a frozen lake with her die-hard Polar Bear Plunge coworkers. Instead of padding through the marble kitchen of her Manhattan loft, she’s sharing a tent-sized cabin with a roommate eager to bond like characters in sitcoms. But something curious is also happening in this overwhelming breath of fresh air as she reacquaints with the most honest parts of herself and begins to ask the hard questions. Can Cat love herself with, and without, the world watching?
Then there’s that other tiny problem—she’s falling for Zaiah, the ruggedly handsome park ranger—and he hates anything remotely connected to social media, quite possibly her included.
Written with bestselling author Melissa Ferguson’s signature wit and charm, this laugh-out-loud romantic comedy of opposites attract is full of hilarious romp and a romance that will melt readers’ hearts.
- Sweet romantic comedy
- Stand-alone novel
- Social Media Guidelines and a quiz are included in the audiobook PDF download.
Release date: May 16, 2023
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Print pages: 336
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Famous for a Living
Melissa Ferguson
The Launch
One doesn’t intentionally wear itchy, viridian-green jumpsuits to match the elaborate wainscoting on the walls around oneself.
Did I know it would match?
Of course.
Was I aware it would look fantastic in pictures?
Naturally.
But to actually pick out my birthday-party-turned-surprise-launch-party ensemble for the sake of matching the walls? That’d be ridiculous.
I did it to match Bobby.
More specifically, I did it because viridian green is Bobby Braswell’s personal color of choice for the year.
And when your birthday-party-turned-surprise-launch-party partner is the Bobby Braswell, designer and partner of Club, the social media app forecasted to, as Bobby liked to say, “make Instagram and Facebook a distant and unsettling memory,” you dress accordingly.
“Cat’s turning thirty. She doesn’t need to broadcast it with a thousand candles.” Serena hip checks Kiel, one of the most renowned caterers in the city (who also happens to be a foot taller and a solid hundred pounds heavier than Serena), out of the way.
“The icing!” Kiel protests, as Serena begins plucking the glittering golden candles out one by one as though defeathering a dead chicken.
She doesn’t budge.
And, just as this scenario has gone between them the past three catering events, he throws his hands in the air.
As Kiel shuffles down the spiral staircase of the loft overlooking my living room, muttering the same murderous phrases he always does in his thick German accent, Serena works.
Her auburn hair curls around her shoulders, pushed back just enough from her face to highlight a delicate jawline leading to lips that, instead of being artificially plumped to one degree shy of clown-sized proportions—as was the way of 99 percent of the forgettable faces walking the streets of Manhattan these days—are magnificently thin. On her head is perched a silky cream top hat, matching a cream pantsuit and four-inch heels, and on her ears twinkle Daddy’s latest little trinket: a six-thousand-dollar pair of earrings he spotted in a shop window on the way to a business lunch, dropped in, and purchased, all because he thought they would look nice on his little princess.
And they do.
Simply put, Serena Whitman is my best friend. Has been since that very first day we met at a fundraising event for childhood diabetes when, upon hearing my name, she lost that vague my-manager-said-I-should-be-here expression in favor of an enthusiastic handshake.
I couldn’t shake her that evening.
Or the next.
And eventually, I gave up trying.
And while her interest in becoming an influencer has long passed, our friendship—nearer to sisterhood level at this point—stuck.
Serena blows a strand of hair from her eyes as she plucks the three-tier cake with surgical-level intensity. “Bobby’s still missing.”
“He’ll be here.” While my words come in a breezy haze, I’m well aware my heart is pounding twice as fast as the seconds ticking on the countdown clock on the wall opposite. And that my business partner—the one who thought of this whole plan to reveal the release of Club at the most extravagant birthday party I’ve ever thrown—is still nowhere to be seen. And that the guests are flowing into the living room below, the room now bobbing in a sea of ruched bodices and dark satin.
Gold and viridian-green balloons hover overhead in their net, ready with a pull of a string to be dispensed on the many guests below. The new long, white sectionals quickly fill with glossy legs exposed by the deep slits of cocktail dresses.
Everywhere there are cameras.
Cameras aimed at oneself as guests grin, chins raised for the best angle.
Cameras panning the
room, taking in the scene.
Cameras aimed at others—even a few, I notice as I pull my shoulders back and give my public smile, trying to capture me.
My penthouse, the one I got the keys to just four weeks ago after two years of anticipation and waiting during the Montana’s construction, is ready, is perfect.
A projector screen covers the two-storied wall above the glowing white crystal coals in the gas fireplace. On the screen the digits blink as the clock counts down to showtime.
Even the twinkling skyline seems somehow twice as bright tonight—all evidence that in just a few minutes, my life will change forever.
My fingers tingle. As they do a hundred times per day. I rise and slip the phone out of my jumpsuit pocket.
How will I do it now?
With one glossy nail my finger slides and taps so quickly across various screens the phone struggles to keep up. I capture two still-frame photos of the banquet spread covering the long table splattered with brilliant hesperidium-orange roses and golden cutlery. One close-up of my fingers—polish a gentle gold matching perfectly with my glass of bubbling prosecco—the backdrop of the skyline blurred behind.
Brighten the exposure just a touch.
Duplicate the prosecco shot and flip to black-and-white. A simple caption, and yet it does the trick:
To thirty, still a little flirty, and fun. Big news coming in 10 minutes!
Tap.
Tag.
Post.
I take in a small breath as I watch the replies immediately flood in. The hearts. The likes. The overflow of comments—people particularly zealous to compliment me on such a special occasion.
Feel my heart filling up as I see it. Feel my energy rise.
Drinking in the words, the love, as it feeds my soul.
Even if just for a few blissful moments.
Then I’m aware of a sharp jab, and I pull away from my phone to scratch the spot on my wrist where the hem of my jumpsuit is gaily stabbing with a thousand tiny daggers. As it has all evening.
The thread of this suit must be made of razor wire. It must.
“I told you not to partner with Hemms,” Serena says, her eyes on the cake as she plucks off a candle.
I slip my phone in my pocket and sniff. “I don’t recall.”
“I said every time you work with them you end up with some hideous outfit made of something ridiculous like duct tape or entirely of zippers. But do you ever listen?”
“This is a delightful jumpsuit.” I lift my chin. “It’s positively”—I hunt m
entally for the phrases in the campaign brief—“luxurious. The pure silk shantung is not only timeless but downright snuggly.”
I say the last word just as the hem drags simultaneously along collarbone, ankle, and the length of my left leg, and my entire body shudders.
“Cozy as a bug in a rug . . . one might say.” Serena rolls her eyes.
I don’t respond.
Serena’s eyes shoot to mine, and for about thirty seconds we’re locked in her challenge. I dare not move. I dare not breathe.
Just as I’m about to give up and inhale, accepting whatever viper bites the suit lashes out with as my rib cage expands and dares touch it, she relents and returns her attention to the cake. “Fine. For your birthday I’ll pretend I don’t see you rubbing your skin raw for the sake of a crap company that makes crap clothes.” She raises her hand, stopping me before I can protest. “And no, I don’t care if they fitted half the people at the Met Gala. Just”—she waves a shooing hand at me—“get it all out now, before you’re covered up in cameras.”
And as I move beyond the railing into the shadows and begin scratching to my heart’s content, icing-covered candles fall like bombs onto the terra-cotta tile all around me. After a near hit, I step to the left.
My new heels are a golden suede, shimmering from toe to heel in Swarovski crystals, topped with the most beautiful bouquet of iridescent gemstones on both toes that make each heavy step worth it.
A gift from Jacquie—my new manager, and one who’s been nothing short of amazing the past six months. On birthdays my old manager sent me a celebratory text. When, of course, he remembered at all.
Jacquie, however? When I pulled back the tissue paper this morning to see next season’s not-even-released-yet Jimmy Choos, I was floored.
I carefully lower myself in my heels and begin collecting the candles from the floor. In my periphery, the countdown clock turns. Less than twenty minutes to go. “Anyway, you know how Bobby is.” I turn back to the subject to comfort myself more than anything. “He lives by his own schedule.”
“Manipulates everyone into thinking he’s an eccentric genius with all his talk of ‘protecting one’s mind castle from the manufactured construct of time,’ when in reality he’s just a man-child who doesn’t have the brain cells to work an alarm. Yes. I’m aware.”
Serena and Bobby went to the same elitist school growing up. As best as I have been able to gather, Serena’s disdain was birthed around a certain swing set on a rubber-mulch playground where, during recess, the children took on the habits of their stockbroker parents, using mulch as currency while those with the fullest pockets ran the playground. Evidently one dark day
Bobby and his gang of fellow five-year-olds refused her access to a certain tire swing despite her healthy stash of rubber mulch.
The act was unforgivable.
All the candles mercilessly tossed aside, Serena picks up a butter knife. As she considers the pothole-covered cake, she tilts her head, the butt of the golden knife glinting as she taps her chin.
In this moment Kiel, carrying in a charcuterie board on a silver platter, steps up the top step, takes one look at Serena with the knife standing over his prized cake, and spins back around.
I hear the platter drop loudly at the bottom of the stairs and bite my lip. And there goes my favorite caterer.
And just then, the hum of commotion below alters.
It’s nothing that a typical person would notice, but like a dog aware of the high-pitched tune inaudible to the human ear, and with this many years in my line of work, I recognize a shift in atmosphere. I know how to read a room blindfolded.
I move back to the railing and search the gatherers below.
People milling around.
Pointing to my artwork on the walls.
Snapping up shrimp cocktails from passing waiters.
A girl inching toward the end of the hall where my bedroom door stands closed, clearly nosing around.
None of this raises any suspicions.
None of this is the cause.
But there.
Ah. Yes.
Her.
A girl has slipped through the doorway, her slim fingers loosely wrapped around the elbow of Travis Demurabi—a younger, handsomer version of YouTube success Finance Pete, who helps people open their one-participant 401(k), all while talking between bites of drunken noodle filmed by the dim light of his computer screen.
But people aren’t watching him.
It’s her.
The slender face of the girl making her way beside him through the crowded foyer.
From a single glance I can list the shops she called upon to make her ensemble. The simple black turtleneck curled loosely around the porcelain skin of her neck from Alexander McQueen. The leggings of equal nondescript simplicity from the same, giving her the air of Audrey Hepburn. The Gianvito Rossi suede and plexi pumps, of which Serena herself is wearing a sister pair. Then, of course, the bold red wing wool scarf from Ji Cheng that envelopes her, matching the dramatic Cassiopeia-red lipstick on her perfect, heart-shaped lips.
She owns the room.
She can’t be more than eighteen, and yet for a moment, she owns the room.
“Do you have any clementines downstairs? I want to add them around this corner,” Serena says, her brows knitted as she peers at the cake.
I move for the lotion in my purse, looking at the rapidly transforming cake as I do. Most of the icing potholes are smoothed over now; on one side she seems to be building a garland of fruit running all the way down to the cake stand.
“I don’t think so.” I rub lotion methodically over my fingers, forcing myself not to think about the concerning bluish vein that popped up along my outer thigh three weeks shy of my thirtieth birthday. Or the way the skin on my knuckles carries more and more cracks lately.
Just a little varicose vein.
Just dry hands that have seen a bit more wear and tear than the polished skin of the teenagers I seem to be perpetually surrounded by.
All things I just have to carefully blur to keep unnoticed by the world around me. All normal with age and the passing of time.
And yet.
“You, my dear, are forever and always going to be the face of Club. No question. Don’t even let any other thought linger in your pretty head.”
These were Bobby’s first words when we met at a party six months ago and he pitched me the idea for Club. That I would not only be partner, but my face would be the logo itself for the exclusive, audio-focused platform.
I’ll never forget his eagerness as he clenched my hands with that dramatic and yet compelling way of his and said with all the conviction in the world, “From the moment people crack open their eyelids and reach for their Advil and phones to the second it’s lights-out at each day’s end, you and your gorgeous smile will be right on the screen, beckoning them to click on that button and hold off on their to-do lists a little longer. You. Cat Cranwell. Our icon.”
Not only would I be the face, but with a bit of algorithm fine-tuning, the app was going to quietly and consistently boost me to the top of everyone’s page.
Over and over, day in and day out.
Until the thing that crossed everyone’s minds every single day, like a whisper in a breeze, was the question: What is Cat Cranwell up to today?
It was the win I needed.
I took a week to discuss with my finance team and another week to gather the strength to ignore their cautionary tales and plunge anyway.
And then, as if materializing from my thoughts, he’s here.
“Of course, they still haven’t gotten my headshot right,” Bobby says, the heels of his boots clicking against the last of the spiral glass steps as he winds up to the top, then snaps a magazine on the banquet table. It’s one of the magazines featuring our faces on the newsstand outside the Montana this morning. “You would think after three hundred articles someone could have u
sed the correct headshot . . .”
“Hey.” Serena swiftly picks up the magazine that had been tossed over a plate of fine cheeses. “No ink on the table.”
He briefly surveys her with a pinched frown, and I can instantly picture the two of them as five-year-olds going nose to nose on the playground. His eyes flicker toward the butter knife and the cake beyond.
“Overstepping your duties as always, I see,” he says.
“Late as always, I see,” she retorts sardonically.
I rub more lotion on my hands and wait while they embark on a string of insults, which, given past experience, tend to go on several minutes.
At last, with a triumphant smile and a can-we-be-done-now air, he shifts his attention toward me. Opens his arms. “My birthday girl.”
The square brass buttons the size of little doorknobs down his shirt quake at his movement, and several of his gold rings dig into my back as we hug.
It’s long. He’s a long hugger.
“This is cashmere,” he growls and pulls back as Serena pokes his side with the butter knife. He looks on the verge of jumping into another fight, but with visible self-control trains his eyes on me. “I come with news. Tremendous news.”
“Oh?”
And somewhere between Bobby’s blazer and silk button-down, like a magician, he produces a stack of papers. Takes away my lotion to set them in my hands.
As I turn the stapled pages, I see the writing is, quite literally, in another language.
“What’s this?” I look up.
“That”—he clicks a pen—“is yet another major marketing firm confirming they want in. And not just in, but saying they will expend everything they can to push it to the top in their regions.” Bobby smiles. “No other app has had this level of support out the gate.”
Serena frowns as she steps closer, looking over my shoulder.
“Really? Another one?” I flip through the indistinguishable pages and lines of small-text paragraphs. “What is this? The fifth?”
“Sixth.” Bobby’s eyes gleam as clear and bright as the tower of Perrier bottles on the table beside us. “Six major companies wanting a piece of the pie. I nearly had a heart attack seeing this last one.” He leans forward and taps at a line. “You only need to sign once for this one and we’ll be set.”
I hesitate. Flip through more pages.
I hate when he does this. Hate looking like I don’t trust him. “That’s great, Bobby,” I say as calmly as possible. “I’ll drop these by my lawyers’ tomorrow—”
Bobby’s expression immediately changes. “There isn’t time. They always make things more complicated than they are and waste two m
onths making us go back and forth over things like the exact meaning of the word advertisement. I hate them, if you must know the truth.”
I already knew the truth.
Bobby “confesses” his hatred for my lawyers every single time their names pop up.
Down below I hear the unmistakable and unexpected entrance of a woman crying out in a singsong tone to both everyone and no one in particular, “Look what I broooought!”
My eyes widen and shoot over to Serena.
Who invited Gabby Zegna?
Gabby is a sweetheart; she really is. But after she stumbled into fame a few months ago when a humorous little clip of hers went viral, the bewildered dietician found herself suddenly shoved offers from brands everywhere. It didn’t take a genius to see one ten-second post showing off dish soap would equal a month’s pay, and to commit to five such posts in a month would bring in five times her salary.
So she made a grave mistake. She quit her job.
And with each ensuing post that crashed and burned, Gabby discovered with sinking suspicion that she was a one-off.
A shooting star. Here one second, gone the next.
Which explains her new and desperate habit of trying to do anything, and everything, that works for other influencers, including bizarrely timed high kicks and unpredictable pranks, and doing both in an attempt to trademark herself in thigh-high boots and a red apron like some kind of 1950s veggie-loving pinup model.
The poor girl was desperate.
And there were far too many reporters and journalists with far too many waiting cameras for her to resist the temptation to do something drastic for the irresistible opportunity to snag the spotlight.
Not to mention, again, my new couches were white.
White.
“Serena, could you—” I start to say, but Serena is already moving for the spiral staircase.
“On it,” she says, winding down the stairs.
Bobby exhales loudly, and I turn my attention back to him. “Here’s the thing, sweetheart.” He rakes a hand through his black hair. “This is an incredible win for us. We need this.”
“And I’m excited.” I stare at the stack of papers I’ll have no means of understanding tonight. “It sounds thrilling.”
“No. Thrilling was three months ago when we opened up applications and fifty thousand people knocked one another sideways trying to get a golden ticket for release. This is extraordinary. Absolutely life changing. And we need it signed and sent tonight.”
My eyes tick to the countdown clock, the digits at 15:37 and dropping. “Bobby,” I say, leveling my voice. “We’re right about to do launc
h.”
“Precisely,” he retorts. “Which is why you need to sign it now.”
“Or what?” I say with deliberate calm, trying to get him to see perspective. “What could they possibly—?”
“Or we stall the launch.”
My jaw drops slightly.
No.
He can’t be serious.
But his eyes are steely grave.
A laugh bubbles in my throat. “Everybody’s here, though. The reporters. The papers. We have a two-week press tour starting tomorrow. Nothing is so important we’d stall.”
He taps the papers. “That’s the thing, sweetheart. This is so important we’d stall.”
“Surely they wouldn’t mind partnering a month or two after launch—”
“Of course they would.” His voice is so startlingly loud a few guests below pop their heads up. “Of course they feel it’s imperative they are anchored from the beginning.”
My cheeks warm as I become aware of the eyes on us. There’s a pause, and momentarily, I feel myself teetering.
Bobby frowns, disappointment in his eyes that I’m even questioning him. After a moment he shifts his posture, clearly trying for another angle.
“Trust me, Cat. It’s just like all the others. I’ve had my lawyers pore over it themselves. I’ve signed it,” he says energetically as he taps on his name beside where mine will go. “Now you sign and we can move on with the celebration.”
And it’s true. From what I can tell, it looks exactly like the others. The same graphs. The same heavy paragraphs and bullet points.
“And if we really want to launch in ten minutes—”
“I do,” I jump in.
“Then there isn’t time.”
We lapse into silence as a staring contest ensues.
Surely there must be another way. Surely we don’t have to have this tremendous setback. All the interviews. The anticipation. The depths and lengths gone to and dollars spent for this party . . .
I would never do it this way. I would never spring this on someone.
But . . . that’s just it, isn’t it?
It’s not just about my way.
I have a partner, and as such, we have to work collaboratively. Regardless of our differences.
For better and worse, we have to work together.
And yet . . . to sign anything without my lawyers . . . This is like the first episode of Travis’s Finances for Dummies 101.
The phone in my pocket begins ringing and I break eye contact, ...
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