“If you can’t behave yourself on set, you can fuck off back to the studios.”
“We were only talking! What would you like me to do? Tape my mouth shut?”
We simmer at each for a moment before he turns on his heel, dragging me after him. “I need to speak with you. Rachel will cover whatever ridiculous shit Max demands next. I’m heading back to the production office. I’ll fill you in on the way.”
Chapter Nine
“You want me to go to Los Angeles with you? Tonight?”
I’m in shock. I’m also in the passenger seat of Jake’s jeep and he’s driving like a maniac as usual. He only slows down to allow two stray dogs to cross the road in front of us. His bodyguards are in convoy again. I still don’t know their names, and he isn’t being very forthcoming with the introductions.
“Do you have a problem with that?” Jake is edgy as hell. He keeps running his hand through his hair and it’s stupidly flawless in its dishevelment today.
“But Rachel’s your assistant, not me.” His continual blurring of these lines is knocking me off-kilter.
“Rachel is needed here. She’s an integral part of my production team, and I want someone to keep an eye on Max.”
“You make him sound like a dog.”
“If the shoe fits…”
“What do you need me to do for you in L.A., anyway?”
“Carry out your job description. What’s the issue? It’s not like I’m whisking you away on a romantic city break. This is business for the movie. My business.”
My face flushes. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
“Surprised that I need an assistant with me when I travel? What a radical idea.”
Now he’s just being a dick.
“I don’t think much of these job-sharing opportunities,” I grumble. “Don’t you have a team in L.A. to handle all this stuff?”
“Max has already signed it off. Are you going to sort out the tickets or not?” Jake roots around in the dash pocket before chucking something shiny, black, and exclusive-looking into my lap. “Here’s my card. I need two first class tickets booked immediately. Next flight out.”
“What, no private jet?” I mock.
“It’s been grounded for maintenance. It’s quicker this way.”
He has his own jet.
Of course he does.
I take his card and slot it into the front cover of my notebook. “Fine, I’ll do it. Now will you please stop biting my head off?”
But Jake doesn’t seem to hear me. His mind is already hovering somewhere above the Atlantic. I have a sneaking suspicion that, for once, his black mood isn’t anything to do with me.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, frowning at him. He doesn’t look like his normal, icy-cool self. Up close, his T-shirt is uncharacteristically crumpled. Beneath his Ray Bans, his eyes are squinting from lack of sleep.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” he mutters, sounding anything but. “I need to be back in L.A. as soon as possible. This is important, Books.”
I’m not sure I like that nickname anymore. He’s making my most favorite thing in the world sound like an insult.
We screech to a halt outside the studios. After yanking on the handbrake, he chucks the car keys at me and exits the vehicle like he can’t get away from me fast enough. Sighing, I pick up my cell phone to call the airline and promptly get put on hold. I’m still waiting ten minutes later when Rachel’s jeep pulls up behind us. She disappears inside, only to reappear moments later with a wide-eyed aura of shock and awe.
“What’s going on with Jake?” she asks, peering in through the open window. “He’s sending me back to set to…um…take care of Max. Something’s wrong. He’s in his office right now yelling his head off at his lawyers.”
I blow out a breath. “He needs to fly back to L.A. He’s insisting I go with him.”
Will he try and kiss me again? Is this some elaborate orchestration of seduction on his part? Hell. No. I came here to find some direction in my life, not to let some Hollywood playboy spin me off course.
Rachel looks even more stunned. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe he’s planning to open the door mid-flight and lose me somewhere over the Canary Islands,” I venture with a grin. “At least my disappearance will spare him a union dispute should Max ever want to fire me.”
Rachel dissolves into giggles. The mutual antagonism between Jake and me hasn’t gone unnoticed by anyone. “Look on the bright side. Think of all that takeout waiting for you in California… I, for one, am sick of eating couscous every day.”
“I’d rather eat shit than endure Jake Dalton and his black moods for fifteen hours straight.”
“Hey, you can always pretend to be asleep.”
“He’d only kick me awake. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, you know? Right up Jake’s street. Do you think there’s an issue with Global Studios?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she says, straightening up with a wince. “He has so many business commitments these days, anything could have happened. His schedule is crazy… His body clock is working to four different time zones.”
“Serves him right for thinking he’s Caesar. Pro Hollywood et Patria and all that.” I put a finger to my lips as the call to the travel agent finally connects.
Four hours later, I’m basking in the first-class travel experience and knocking back champagne like it’s orange juice.
“Don’t you have any self-control?” says Jake, snatching up my empty glass on his way to the in-flight cocktail bar. I raise my eyebrows in challenge as I signal the flight attendant for another. It takes a while to get her attention. She’s too busy gawping at Jake. Why does he have to be so censorious? For the first time in my life I feel like I can finally breathe. Okay, so I may be working fourteen-hour days for his brother, for his movie, I might add. I really don’t think I deserve to have him critiquing my every move for that.
I wake several hours later. My eyes feel gritty and sore, as though I’ve had my face pressed up against a computer screen all night. The blinds are down and the cabin is dark. All around me, crumpled-looking businessmen are snoring loudly or glued to some steamy sex scene unfolding on their in-flight entertainment screens.
I glance across the aisle at Jake. He’s doing neither. He’s gazing into space with such a bleak expression on his face that it makes my heart ache. He looks stripped. Raw. A mere shadow of the macho, controlling bastard that I butt heads with on a daily basis. That I look forward to butting heads with on a daily basis. This man isn’t just about the headlines. There’s a story there, and all of a sudden I need to know more.
Instinctively I unclip my seat belt to go to him but the sound makes him glance up. Something electric passes between us before he’s shaking his head and mouthing that word at me again.
“Don’t.”
Chapter Ten
The L.A. freeway is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s a chaotic sea of dusty concrete, peppered with potholes and skid marks. Tatty green signs for Hollywood and Santa Monica hang limply by the side of the road, and the occasional palm tree is surprisingly sparse and grubby looking.
Now this is more like it, I muse to myself as Jake’s Escalade turns off onto Highland Avenue and drops down into West Hollywood. Those nine forty-five-foot-high white letters, the Mecca of any wannabe filmmaker, are looming over us like the promise of a lie. There’s a strange ebb and flow of disquiet about the place that I wasn’t expecting. It’s little wonder Jake owns the rights to this town. It suits his personality down to the ground.
He’s texting away next to me, completely oblivious. Since landing an hour ago he’s been a ball of tension, snapping fierce directives at me every few minutes. He’s changed into a black three-piece Tom Ford suit, and with his hair slicked back and his Ray Bans on he looks more like a crime boss than
a studio president. Perhaps that’s the kind of BS image you need to project to get stuff done around here?
“Enjoying the view?” he murmurs, barely lifting his eyes from his cell phone. It takes me a second to realize that he’s referring to the scenery outside.
“It’s okay,” I say, swallowing quickly. “I’ve always wanted to visit L.A.”
“How ironic. I’ve spent my whole life trying to escape it… Especially the goddamn traffic,” he adds with a snarl.
Our car grinds to a halt outside the Hollywood Bowl, and just like that, there are lanes and lanes of tightly packed, steaming-hot vehicles stretching out as far as the eye can see.
This is the first personal insight he’s ever given me. Jake’s thoughts are as neatly packed away as his Louis Vuitton luggage. The man has no emotional outlet apart from yelling at people—mostly me. Then I remember the expression on his face last night and, for once, I keep my mouth shut.
“Phone the studio,” he orders, checking his Patek Philippe watch again. “We’re running a half hour late.”
He won’t divulge what this mysterious meeting is all about, but I make the call regardless.
We’re heading north and following signs for Global Studios. The foliage bordering the sidewalks is more lush suddenly, as if a team of standby art directors has gone around injecting green dye into everything. Even the palm trees look more like the postcard variety compared to their shabby brown counterparts down the road.
Cruising up to the studio’s security station, Jake’s chauffeur lowers the window, addresses the guards, and we’re waved straight through. We pull up to a huge glass-fronted building and Jake is out of the car before it brakes.
He turns to face me as I’m scooting across the backseat to join him. “Wait here.”
“But—”
He removes his Ray Bans and glares me into submission. “Do as you’re told for once, Books. I don’t need any of your attitude today.”
Biting my tongue, I watch him enter the building alone. Stiff shoulders. Head held high. He doesn’t look like a man who’s just inherited the biggest film studio in the world. He looks like a man readying himself for war.
I have no idea how long he’ll be, so I lounge against the hood of his car for ages, soaking up the sunshine and multiplying my freckles.
All of a sudden I hear my name being called. “Charlie! Hey, Charlie Winters, wait up!”
A white golf cart with a blue-and-white-striped awning—the snazzy brand colors of Global Studios—zips alongside Jake’s car and swerves to a stop. I watch, transfixed, as a smoking-hot stranger unfurls himself from the driver’s seat. He clocks my face and grins. “What’s with the blank expression, honey? Don’t you know who I am?”
“Should I?” I say, sounding flustered. Mere mortals aren’t supposed to be on a first name basis with divinity.
I try not to wince as he grasps my outstretched hand. “Cute accent.”
Cute man. I can feel myself melting, and it has nothing to do with the heat. He’s the same age as I am, but in a whole different stratosphere for everything else. His tan is faultless, his long, blond surfer-boy hair has just the right amount of careless tousle peeking out from underneath his red baseball cap, and his black wraparound shades hug his cheekbones to perfection.
“I’m Brad. Brad Wilson. My father’s Walt Wilson, the VP here at Global.”
“Ah.” I frown as a memory starts jostling for position somewhere in my brain. “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Wilson.”
Could this be the man that Cassie and Jake were shouting about in his office that day? My mind drifts as I try to recall what was said… And then I’m back. Basking in the glow of his attention and wondering how he knows my name.
“I saw you arrive with Jake. I know most of the crew, so I figured you must be Max’s new assistant,” says Brad, reading my mind. “The sexier the better, right? Can’t fault his taste.”
Somehow this doesn’t sound creepy coming from him. I smile at him shyly. Me…shy? It’s a shining testament to this man’s charisma. “Actually, it was his HR team that hired me.”
“Then I’ll applaud them instead. Is Jake already in the meeting with my father?”
“Your father? Oh. I assume so. He doesn’t divulge such details to me.”
“Same old Jake.”
I detect a note of coolness in Brad’s voice. “Do you know what the meeting’s about?”
“Global this, Global that.” Brad waves his hand airily in the direction of the studios. “It’ll probably drag on for hours. Hey, do you feel like having a tour of the place while you wait?”
“When the alternative is a deep, meaningful convo with Mr. Talkative?” I joke, nodding at Jake’s driver who is hunched over his cell phone in the front seat. “I’d love one. Are you sure it’s not too much trouble?”
Brad’s grin widens to embrace my enthusiasm. “For you, honey? No such thing.”
It’s a tight squeeze in the golf cart. Brad’s legs are so long they look like a grasshopper’s squished in behind the wheel. Our elbows keep banging against each other.
“Are you a producer, too?” I ask him, inching sideways.
“Did the baseball cap give me away?” He shoots me a look as we speed up the driveway past the giant red X of the studio’s helipad, and approach the main complex. “I’m nothing special.” He shrugs, modest to a fault. “We’re two a dime in this town.”
I beg to differ, especially when they look like Brad Wilson. “How long have you known Jake?”
“All my life.”
“So you grew up together?” For some reason this surprises me. These two men are like the yin and yang of hotness. One is all easy-going charm while the other is wound up so tight he’s liable to snap you in half.
Brad’s grin falters for a millisecond. “You could say that.”
Not friends, then.
I’m about to ask him if Jake’s personality has always resembled a broken bottle left out on the beach, and then I remember the bright smile of the boy in the photograph.
“Coming up you’ll see the first of our sound stages,” announces Brad as we enter a different section of the studio. There’s an emphasis on the word “our” and a real intimation of pride, and I find myself wondering what Jake’s meeting is all about again. “We have thirty-five sound stages in total, ranging from twenty-eight thousand to just eight thousand square feet.”
“Wow,” I murmur, gazing up at the iron-gray, industrial-size warehouses. “How can all that Hollywood movie magic transpire from such boring-looking buildings?”
“Appearances can be real deceptive, sweetheart.”
Why do I get the feeling he’s not talking about this studio?
Rounding the next corner, he slams on the breaks to avoid a head-on collision with a large FedEx truck. “Up ahead you’ll see a number of our on-site production offices,” he says, adjusting his baseball cap. “And here’s where our short tour ends.”
Just as well, because two seconds later my cell phone starts ringing.
“Where the fuck are you?” roars Jake. “I told you to stay put.”
“I’m enjoying a tour of your studios,” I say politely, feeling Brad tense. “That was a quick meeting.”
“Too right it was. Get your ass back to the car. If you’re not here in five minutes I’m leaving without you—”
I let him rant on and on before he runs out of firepower and hangs up to reload. “I gather you got the gist of that?” I say, turning back to Brad.
He grimaces in sympathy, pulls us into a sharp U-turn, and puts his foot to the floor. “Does Jake always speak to you that way?”
“Only when he’s having a bad day…which tends to be every day.”
“You don’t need to take his shit. You should come work with me instead.”
He says it casually enough,
but it’s like a bomb just slipped into the conversation. I smile at him and say nothing. I’m not sure what the relationship is between these two men, but I have a feeling that would really piss Jake off. Besides, I’m not prepared to leave Max and Rachel in the lurch, no matter how dazzling Brad’s Hollywood smile is.
We’re nearly at the Escalade. There’s a familiar tall shadow leaning against the passenger door. He’s yelling into his cell phone, but we’re too far away to make out anything other than curse words. He’s lost his jacket. His sleeves have been rolled up, displaying inches of that hard-muscled, golden skin. His agitation is shimmering off his body like waves of heat, and he’s running his hand through his hair again. It’s a warning sign: verbal missiles incoming.
We pull up alongside him. When he sees Brad, his face loses all emotion. The next thing I know he’s hanging up his call and tugging me out of my seat by my wrist.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shriek as I lose my footing and tumble into a solid, muscular wall of disapproval.
“Get in the car, Books.”
“Take your goddamn hands off her,” yells Brad, jumping out of the buggy, my knight in five-hundred-dollar retro sneakers.
My head ping-pongs between them as I search for clues as to why everything just went all Wild West on me.
“I meant what I said, Charlie,” Brad says, addressing me but never taking his eyes off Jake for a second. “I’ll email you my cell number.”
“Don’t bother,” snaps Jake.
“This isn’t your decision to make, Dalton.”
“The fuck it isn’t. She’s my brother’s assistant, not yours. Never yours. Back off before my fist makes a meal of your jaw.”
Promised violence hangs over us like a studded veil. When the hell did I become the object of a pissing contest between these two godlike men?
Giving Jake a wide berth, Brad leans over to press his lips briefly against my temple. “Don’t get too close,” he murmurs, loud enough so only I can hear. “Jake’s too cold, too consumed by the past. You seem like a real nice girl, so trust me on this one.”
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