My car’s GPS alerted me that I was about to arrive at my destination. A wave of disappointment ran through me as I thought about how nice it would be to keep driving and enjoy the amazing California day.
But I didn’t have time for that—there was work to be done.
I pulled in front of the twenty-story tower where Andrew worked, a valet coming out to greet me. Moments later, I was in the spacious lobby of the production company offices. Bits of TV and movie memorabilia were here and there, illuminated by the beams of sunlight that streamed into the space.
“There’s the man!”
I turned in time to see Andrew strolling toward me, dressed in a sharp, light-colored suit, a big smile plastered on his handsome face. At his side was a pretty young brunette, professionally yet fashionably dressed.
“Good to see you, buddy,” I said to Andrew, giving him a quick hug. I never could get used to the LA way of greeting people, no matter how many times I’d come here.
“J, this is my assistant, Natalie,” he said, gesturing toward the girl, who looked barely out of college.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Donovan,” she said, extending a red-nail-tipped hand toward me. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
I took her hand and shook it gently, noticing that the expression playing on her big brown eyes made it clear she was interested in more than just “meeting” me. It was a look I’d seen more than a few times before, but as pretty as Natalie was, she didn’t stir anything inside of me.
Not like Heather had.
I gave myself a quick, internal scolding for thinking of Heather again before turning my attention back to Andrew and Natalie.
“So,” said Andrew, putting one hand on my shoulder and gesturing toward the elevators with the other as we began walking. “Like I told you on the phone, I ran the idea for our little show up to the top—and they loved it. They’re beyond thrilled that I’ve managed to get someone like you on board.”
“‘A face made for TV,’” said Natalie. “At least, that’s what Mr. Cohen said.” She flashed me a smile, and I got the impression that she felt the same way.
“And that’s who we’re meeting with now?” I asked.
“Yep,” said Andrew. “Believe me, if it was just me, I’d have no problem flying back to New York. But Mr. Cohen’s very, ah, fussy about leaving the city. Doesn’t like to do it unless absolutely necessary.”
“No worries,” I said. “I’m used to dealing with fussy types.”
“I’ll bet you are,” said Andrew. “But Mr. Cohen’s ‘LA fussy.’ You’ll see what I mean.”
He gestured for me to step into the open elevator doors and the three of us entered. We rose up, up, up, all the way to the top floor of the building. The doors opened to a bustling office with expensively dressed men and women zipping purposefully here and there. It reminded me of my own offices, actually.
Andrew and Natalie blew past the reception desk and led me down a long hallway to a massive set of light brown double doors. Andrew gave a knock.
“Yeah?” came a gruff voice from inside.
“It’s Andrew, Mr. Cohen.”
“Come in!”
Andrew threw open the doors to reveal a massive, modern office. The back wall was entirely glass and looked out over Hollywood and the rest of the city beyond. The walls were decorated with awards and various photos of a heavyset man pictured with different celebrities and politicians.
And the man in the photos was the very same one behind the massive desk in the center-back of the room.
“Is that Justin-freaking-Donovan?” called the man as he rose from his seat. He was a short, heavyset guy, no older than fifty, with hawk-like brown eyes, a fleshy face, and a big “U” of a smile. His hair was a balding horseshoe of black, and I could tell that his clothes were as high-end as they came.
He hurried over to me with surprising speed for someone his size, sticking out a hand toward me. “Sam Cohen,” he said. “Pleased as hell to meet you. Come on—take a seat. Don’t be shy.”
He swept his arm toward a set of chairs and couches, and the three of us took a seat, Mr. Cohen stepping over to a large, stainless steel fridge.
“I gotta tell you, Justin—you mind if I call you Justin? When Andrew told me his ideas for the reality show I was on board right from the get-go.” He came over to us with several bottles of sparkling water in his thick-fingered hands. One-by-one he passed them out. “But I was thinking there was no way in hell we’d be able to land someone like you for a freaking reality show.”
“That’s when I told him about your unique situation,” said Andrew, taking his bottle and cracking it open.
“And I knew it was meant to be,” said Sam, plopping into a leather chair across from me and leaning forward. “That’s how the greatest collaborations happen—when two different needs intersect. Perfect—perfect!”
Natalie said nothing, instead taking notes on her tablet, occasionally glancing up to make eyes at me.
“Well,” I said. “Glad to hear it sounds like it’s going to work. If you could have a hit show, and I could get a boost to my baby line, that’d be amazing.”
Natalie piped up. “And don’t forget about the product tie-ins,” she said with a sly smile.
“That’s right!” said Sam. “Geez, don’t I just have the smartest kids working here?”
Natalie blushed, happy for the compliment from the big man.
“Product tie-ins?” I asked.
Sam shook his head. “Look at this guy,” he said. “You might be good at your game, but you’ve still got a lot to learn about entertainment.”
Andrew stepped in. “Every bit of baby gear in the show, from cribs to clothes to whatever else, is going to be your stuff. So, in addition to being a great show, it’ll basically be an hour-long commercial.”
“And not just your baby stuff,” said Sam. “All your company’s clothing lines can be stuck in there somewhere. Everything anyone wears in the show can have the Donovan tag on it.”
“I’m liking this,” I said. “Liking it a lot.”
“Excellent,” said Sam. “But I had a little tweak I wanted to suggest.”
“Sure,” I said, curious.
“How would you feel about bringing a family member of yours on board?”
I tensed up. “My father’s been dead for ten years,” I said. “And that would leave my mom.”
“There!” said Sam. “Perfect! Let’s bring her on and have a little mother-in-law dynamic. Can be great for drama, really give the viewers something to talk about.”
“No.”
The word fell out of my mouth and landed like a ball of lead. Andrew, Sam, and Natalie all looked at one another, instantly aware of how serious I was.
“No?” Sam and Andrew repeated in unison.
“No,” I said. “My mother and I…aren’t on the best of terms. So, right now I’m saying no, and that’s the end of that.”
“Okay, no problem,” Sam said after a long pause. “No moms. Well, maybe the girl’s mom—we’ll see.”
“But that still leaves the issue of the baby’s mother,” said Andrew.
“Right,” said Sam. “She has to be perfect. Gorgeous, but with that neighborly quality that your average woman can relate to. No supermodels, no fake-looking ladies.”
“Natalie,” said Andrew. “Pull up the girls on the tablet and put them on the TV.”
She nodded and made a few swipes on the screen in front of her. The streamlined TV mounted on the front wall of the office came to life, filled with the headshot of an attractive blonde with sparkling blue eyes. Her face was as flawless as they came, with high cheekbones, a button nose, and full lips.
“This is Allie S—”
“No!” said Sam, shaking his head. “She’s too freaking pretty. We want the women watching to identify with her, not hate her guts.”
Andrew nudged Natalie, and she swiped her screen again. The next girl was a brunette. Pretty, but in a gi
rl-next-door kind of way.
“This is Rebecca Samuels,” said Andrew. “Twenty-two, a recent mother, and has experience acting. Did some community theater work back in Manchester.”
Sam’s forehead crinkled up. “Manchester?” he asked. “Like, in England?”
“Right,” said Natalie. “She’s British.”
“No way!” said Sam. “We want all-American. She starts talking with an accent and we’ll lose half our audience.”
A thought occurred to me. I took my phone out of my pocket and flipped through my photos, coming to a stop on one of the pictures Heather and I had taken of each other during our night out. Heather was just as gorgeous as ever, her smile beaming and her face nearly perfect.
“What about this girl?” I asked. I handed the phone to Sam, his eyes going wide as he looked it over.
“Wow!” he said. “Wow! Who is this?”
“A friend of mine,” I said. “She wouldn’t be available for the show, but she came to mind when you described what we were looking for.”
“Yes!” said Sam. “This is exactly it. I mean, maybe a little too pretty, but like a girl-next-door that you spent your youth pining over.”
He handed the phone to Andrew, who handed it to Natalie.
“Damn,” said Andrew. “You sure know how to pick ’em.”
I took my phone back and glanced at the picture one last time, a strange longing tugging at my heart before I clicked the phone off and slipped it back into my pocket.
“I don’t get it,” said Sam. “Why can’t we use that girl? She’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
“It’s…complicated,” I said. “But she’s a no-go. I only showed her to see if I was on the right track for the type we want.”
“You bet your ass that’s the right track,” said Sam. “I’d hire that girl now if she walked through the door.” He shrugged. “But if you say we can’t, then we can’t.”
“Anyway,” said Andrew. “We’re going to be handling the rest of the behind-the-scenes stuff here. You going to be in town for a few days?”
“Just tonight,” I said. “Flying back to New York in the morning. I’d love to stay, but too much to do back home.”
“Of course,” said Sam. “Just glad that you were able to see us for the day. We’ll keep you posted, especially with the casting of your co-star. Ah, co-stars.”
Sam got up, and the rest of us followed suit. A few handshakes later and I was being led out the door by Andrew and Natalie.
“Let’s do dinner tonight,” said Andrew. “There’s a killer Thai place in Echo Park—you’ll love it.”
More handshakes, another heated glance from Natalie, and I was out the door.
I started down the road, heading into the first bar that I found. I need a drink after that meeting, and soon after stepping into the place I had one in front of me. As I sipped my cocktail at the bar, I thought back to the meeting.
God, I would’ve loved to have Heather for the role. Who knows if she was actually the type to want to be a reality star, but at the very least I’d get to talk to her again. Ever since our night together, I’d been unable to get her out of my mind, but I was certain she likely wanted nothing to do with me.
And why would she? I bolted as soon as I realized that she was a mom. What woman with a child would be anything but disgusted with that kind of behavior?
I took my phone out of my pocket and pulled open the picture that I’d shown during the meeting.
I’d made my choice, and now I had to live with the consequences.
Chapter 11
Justin
August
Andrew looked flustered as he strode into the West Village steakhouse where he and I were grabbing lunch. He plopped into the seat, his polished LA charm seeming somewhat out of sorts back on the East Coast. His sun-blond hair was straggly over his forehead, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.
“Hey, darling?” he asked, getting the attention of a nearby waitress. “One vodka-something, please. Strong, and get it to me as fast as you can.”
He slipped his sunglasses off and tucked them into his front shirt pocket, revealing tired, dull eyes.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s the story?”
“The story?” he asked. “The story is what I told you over the phone. Emma, our girl for the show, pulled out.”
That’s what he’d said, but I still had a hard time believing it. I’d met the girl they’d picked out. She was a brunette, slim and with big green eyes. Pretty, but not too pretty, like they’d wanted. She was from Missouri, if I remembered correctly. A cute, small-town girl with an adorable seven-month-old baby.
“How can she pull out like that?” I asked. “Aren’t there contracts to prevent this kind of thing from happening?”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “But there was more to the story than she let on. Turns out her baby’s daddy wasn’t some All-American guy who died overseas in combat, like she said.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That right?”
The waitress arrived with Andrew’s cocktail. He took a deep drink as soon as it was on the table.
“Yep,” he said, running his hand through his hair and slicking it back. “The dad was some rich guy’s kid. His dad paid Emma off to keep the baby a secret—figured that it wouldn’t look good for his kid to have a baby out of wedlock with a mother who wasn’t a suitable match.”
Andrew shook his head as if still in disbelief. “Naturally, when it got back to the dad’s parents that she was planning on putting this baby in the national spotlight, they weren’t too happy about it. They told Sam and me that if we didn’t cancel the contract with Emma, they’d drag us into a legal dogfight.”
“So that’s that,” I said.
“More or less,” said Andrew. “No way we’re going to the mat this close to when we’re supposed to start production. What a freaking mess.” He took another long sip of his drink.
“Does that mean the show’s off?” I asked. I hated to admit it, but part of me had been looking forward to production starting. Not only because of the great publicity, but because doing something like this was so different than anything I’d ever done before. And who knows? Maybe it’d be my foray into what would be a new media enterprise. If the show was a hit, it might be something worth looking into.
Maybe even think about starting a production company in LA, poach some talent like Andrew, have Sam’s company bought out…
“No, the show’s not off,” Andrew said, interrupting my reverie. “But this is a hell of a monkey wrench to throw into the gears at the last minute.”
“Can’t you just get one of the other girls we looked at?”
“Yeah, that’s what we’re going to have to do. But we’ll have to do another round of auditions, and that’s assuming they’re all still available for work.”
More head-shaking.
“Shoot,” I said. “I wish there was something I could do.”
“No, man,” he said. “This is all my crap to sort out. All you need to worry about is looking good for the cameras, being that loving daddy we’re hoping you’ll be. This behind-the-scenes stuff is my problem—I shouldn’t even be bothering you with the details.”
“No,” I said, taking a piece of toasted bread from the basket in front of me and ripping it in half. “I’m a CEO, remember? I like to be informed.”
Andrew smirked. “Good thing I’m working with a guy who knows how sideways things can go.”
“That, I most certainly know,” I said, popping one of the pieces of bread into my mouth.
“Well, if you really wanted to help, you’d find me a hot-but-not-too-hot girl for the show. One who’s telegenic and has a well-behaved seven-month-old kid. You got one of those lying around?”
I chuckled. But then I remembered Heather.
Right on cue, Andrew spoke up.
“What about that girl you showed us during the meeting?”
“You remember her?” I asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s not really the Hollywood type.”
“But that’s exactly what we’re looking for,” he said. “If we wanted an actress, that’s who we’d get.”
“And there’s more,” I said.
Andrew raised his eyebrows, waiting for me to go on.
“She and I didn’t really part on the best terms.”
He nodded in a knowing way. “Ah,” he said. “She was another notch on the bedpost and thought she was something more?”
I shook my head. “Not that, exactly.” I didn’t want to go into the exact reason—that she was a mom and I didn’t want to deal with it. Thankfully, Andrew raised his palms in a “sure, sure” gesture.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Don’t need to know all the messy details. The real issue is whether or not we can get her on board for this thing.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “She’d probably throw a damn drink in my face if she saw me again.”
“You say that, but let me ask you this—is this girl loaded?”
“Huh? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Because if she’s some struggling single mom living in the big city, she might be very, very intrigued by the contract we’re offering.”
“Good point,” I said. I thought back to Heather’s cramped apartment. She wasn’t living in poverty, but they were far-from-ideal circumstances.
“We’ll look for a new girl, but give it a shot,” Andrew said. “I can already feel like you and she would be a winning pair for this project.”
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