by Lucy Score
Her mother hadn’t been impressed with Gannon during the phone call Paige had been both horrified—and maybe a little gleeful—to hear about. Paige had gotten an earful of her mother’s criticism for her “friend’s attitude,” though that did come after Leslie had made sure her daughter was physically okay.
Her mother viewed Paige’s entire adult life as a rebellion of sorts. She was convinced Paige would eventually give all of this up and go to grad school for a respectable career. It wasn’t that her mother looked down on her, Paige thought. It was more that the St. James women had responsibilities to be respectable, contributing women in the world. A psychologist and a neurosurgeon, yes, were perfectly respectable. A field producer of a reality show just a handful of steps up from the all-out brawls of the housewife spinoffs? Not so much.
In fact, Paige was fairly certain her mother wouldn’t be any more thrilled with her documentary dreams than she was with the stint in reality TV. Unfortunately for Dr. Leslie St. James, she’d raised two independent, headstrong daughters, and Paige was going to shape her own life in the way she saw fit.
Gannon’s alarm sounded, and he stirred next to her. And for just a moment, Paige let herself pretend that it was a lazy Sunday morning in the offseason, and she’d have the luxury of rolling over and waking Gannon up in her own way.
He slapped at his phone on the nightstand and then flopped back down on the pillow, his arm anchoring her against him again.
“Uh-uh,” Paige yawned. “You’ve gotta get out of here before someone busts in here and jumps to the wrong conclusions.”
He yawned mightily, stretching his body until she could feel his tensile strength against her. “It’d be a lot more fun if they were the right conclusions, but someone had to go and get the shit beat out of her.”
“Har. Har. Now get out of here.”
To antagonize her, he dropped a peck on her shoulder. “See you on set, princess.”
––—
Day five of shooting dawned bright and warm enough that Paige went with shorts instead of the jeans she’d been wearing to cover the bruises and cuts on her legs. It was going to be too hot to be vain, and she’d be able to stay on set longer if she were comfortable.
The house was transforming quickly. Slate blue siding had replaced the dingy white and a crew of masons worked to finish the brick on the expanded front porch. New dormers broke up the expanse of new roof that had been re-shingled.
The yard, on the other hand, had been destroyed by production tents and an army of people tromping over grass and plants and bore none of the signs of early summer that the neighboring lots did.
Paige called up the contractor’s schedule on her iPad and checked the landscaping timeline. They were definitely going to need an extra day for construction and filming, and she was glad she’d squeezed two in. Everyone had been staying on set much later than usual, busting their asses to help Brunelli’s crew and lending hands wherever they were needed.
There was usually a family or two that the crew really connected with, and for this season, that family was the Dufours. The handful of hours they’d all spent with Carina and Malia had cemented everyone’s resolve to do the best job possible.
Satisfied that the schedule was intact, Paige opened Facebook to check the show’s page. Cat’s blog posts were shared there as well as behind-the-scenes footage and pictures of jobs in progress.
Meeghan Traxx’s name jumped off the screen at her. She didn’t want to tap on the link, Paige told herself, but that damn index finger betrayed her and opened the article.
The article led with a splashy picture of the busty blonde in a skin-tight red dress wearing safety glasses and wielding a sledgehammer. Her bloody-murder red lipstick matched her glossy, talon-like fingernails.
Meeghan Traxx doesn’t let rumors about her boyfriend bother her. “Things with Gannon and I?” she laughs. “What’s better than perfect? He’s the kind of guy who holds my purse while I try clothes on because he doesn’t want to be too far away from me.”
Paige felt twin urges to vomit and smash the iPad over Gannon’s head. But since he would be wearing a damn hardhat to help with drywall, it wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying. Compelled by righteous anger and a sick sense of masochism, she couldn’t stop herself from reading on.
Recently Traxx’s relationship with rising star Gannon King hit a public rough patch when rumors linked him to his show’s production assistant Paige St. James.
“I’m a field producer, not a production assistant,” Paige muttered to herself.
Traxx laughs off the idea that King’s eyes would wander. “Believe me. There’s nothing some star-struck coffee fetcher could do to tempt Gannon away from me. He’s incredibly loyal to me…”
Paige dumped the tablet on a work table rather than giving in to the urge to toss it over the fence into the neighbor’s koi pond. Cognizant of the microphone that suddenly seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, she kept her string of four-letter words to herself and buried herself in work.
Paige kept her head down and slogged through the morning, avoiding eye contact with Gannon and focusing on the job at hand. Drywall was a pain in the ass without filming, but throw in a camera crew, and things got even more hectic. Thankfully no viewer wanted to watch drywall be sanded so that stage of the operation usually afforded her crew a little time off.
Unfortunately, in order to get to that step, they needed to have the plumbing and electrical inspected, which is why an entire reality TV crew was waiting around with nothing to do while a middle-aged, bespectacled Tim Conway lookalike poked his way through two floors of chaos.
Paige paced through the Dufour’s now open living space and tried not to look at Gannon who was deep in discussion with Tim Conway Jr. Andy caught her eye and jerked his head toward the door. She followed him outside, and he handed her his phone. “They just sent me the teaser for this season,” he told her.
“The way you’re looking at me makes me think I’m not going to be happy,” Paige guessed.
Andy scratched behind his ear and moved the claw hammer someone had left on the railing out of her reach.
Oh boy.
She hit play and kept her face expressionless as clips rolled to the show’s theme song. There was Gannon looking sexy and broody, Cat mugging for the camera, then the action picked up with Cat throwing a volunteer’s axe through drywall and Flynn, Gannon’s foreman, chucking a toilet through a plate glass window. Both toilet and glass rained down in slow motion into a Dumpster.
The announcer’s voice, a favorite talent for the network, came on.
“You never know what disasters you’ll find in a renovation…”
Clips of termite damage and plumbing leaks escalated into a heated argument between Gannon and Paige. The next shot showed stone-faced Paige storming away from Gannon while he watched appreciatively. They wrapped with footage Rico had captured of the storm and Tony running toward the house with the little girl under his arm, the tent collapsing behind him. The shot went dark, and Gannon’s voice shouted her name.
The announcer wrapped with “Sparks are flying on Kings Construction.”
“Gimmie the hammer,” she demanded.
“Uh-uh.” Andy shook his head and pried his phone out of her hand.
She stood rooted to the spot shaking her head back and forth as if she could dislodge the visual from her mind.
She wanted to yell, to throw something, to do anything to let this buildup of anger out. She wanted to pull a Gannon and throw a hissy fit that someone else would have to clean up. They’d pasted together a relationship and deliberately waited to release it until Meeghan had made her statement, guaranteeing huge views. It was diabolical. She kicked at the freshly painted newel post, winced.
Everything she had hoped had blown over was going to roar back to life. Her name would once again be appearing at the top of internet searches relating to the show and the higher ups would eat it up like the asshole vultures they were. And no #NapsWithGann
on would deflect it this time.
“I thought you should see it now rather than…” Andy trailed off, either unsure how to finish the sentence or unsure of his personal safety in her vicinity.
Mel stuck her head out the door, “Hey Paige—”
Andy jumped in front of Mel before she could finish whatever she’d wanted or needed. “Now’s not a great time.”
Yeah, now was not a great time. Now was a clusterfuck, the fuckiest clusterfuck in the history of clusterfuckery. And her career, her reputation, were at the center.
Paige inhaled slowly and with great effort and, deciding it still wasn’t safe to talk, yanked off her mic and bodypack and stalked down the porch steps. She’d take five, try not to give herself some kind of brain aneurysm, and then get through the rest of the day. Then tonight, she’d lay on her bed alone and try to figure out a way to salvage this disaster.
She made it halfway down the block when she heard him. “Paige!”
She hunched her shoulders and wished she was healed enough to run. He caught her easily, his big hand grabbing her by her good shoulder. Even through her fog of anger, she realized he did it on purpose. He’d kept track of her injuries to make sure he didn’t accidentally hurt her.
But he sure as hell had hurt her on purpose.
“What do you want, King?”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I thought you were upset, St. James. My mistake.”
She stabbed a finger at his mic. He rolled his eyes and yanked the power pack out of the back of his shorts and shut it down. “Better?”
She wanted to let it out. But if she started, she wasn’t going to stop, and it would just be an indecipherable load of verbal vomit.
“I’m fine. I just needed some air.”
“You know there’s only so much bullshit a man can take in a day, and when he works in reality TV, he reaches that level pretty quickly.” His tone was so amicable she wanted to slap him across his sexy face. “So why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell me why you’re limping down the block away from your job.”
“Why would I be upset? What could I possibly have to be upset about?” And she’d snapped. Oh well, might as well embrace it. She stepped into him and jabbed a finger into his chest. “Could it be the fact that your girlfriend just proclaimed to the world what a loyal loving boyfriend you are when you’ve spent the last three nights in my bed? Or that she calls me a production assistant? Nah. That’s just par for the course in Gannon’s world. Maybe it’s the trailer the network is wheeling out as we speak that paints a nice little love story between you and me.”
Her voice had risen so high that dogs were barking in the neighborhood.
“Whoa.” Gannon grinned. “So that’s what goes on in there.”
Paige had to restrain herself from stomping her foot. “You said you weren’t dating Meeghan.”
“Not this again.” Gannon made a fatal mistake and rolled his eyes heavenward as if asking for patience.
Paige gritted her teeth. “Look, Gannon. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I’m not interested in any kind of relationship with you beyond professional.”
“Paige, you’re back to lying again. I don’t like it.” His tone held a warning in it, one that she was happy to ignore.
“I’m not getting involved with you. You’re the ‘rising network star.’ Another network star seems to be convinced that you’re in a serious relationship with her. There’s too much attention. I don’t want to be a part of it.”
“What are you so afraid of?”
“Everything that has happened!” Her hands were fisted at her sides. “You’re like Kryptonite to my career. Besides, I don’t think your girlfriend would like it,” she retorted.
This time it was Gannon fighting for control. “She’s not my fucking girlfriend. She never has been. The network paired us up for ratings. That’s it. And I told them at the beginning of the season that I was done with that. The show can carry itself now. It doesn’t need to drum up ratings from a fake relationship.”
“I guess you haven’t seen the teaser yet then,” Paige quipped. “God, you’re ruining my career, and it’s like you don’t even care!”
“You’re so ready to roll over and play dead. Why don’t you fight for it?” Gannon snapped back.
Paige’s phone vibrated in the pocket of her shorts, and she yanked it out. Reading the text she felt her blood pressure rocket up into the danger zone. “Oh, great. Just fabulous. Eddie says the network wants you and I giving on-camera interviews together.”
“Well, that should be fun,” he drawled.
It should have been the last straw, but somehow there was no more anger left to feel. She just felt a dark numbness sweeping over her, an acceptance of defeat.
“Sleep in your own room tonight, Gannon, and leave me alone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Paige spent the next two nights tossing and turning on the lonely expanse of mattress and cursing Gannon King and his somniferous body. Her only joy came from seeing him exhausted and pissed off on set. At least she wasn’t the only one suffering.
The show’s teaser had been viewed over one million times, cementing to the network that the subplot of a rocky romance between Gannon and Paige was ratings gold.
She spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what he’d said about Meeghan. Was it true? Was there really no relationship there? Why was Meeghan so committed to pretending?
Tensions were already running high on set. It was the last day before the family came home, and there were fifty million things to do and zero time to do them. Adding Paige and Gannon’s shitty moods to the mix didn’t help. People were avoiding them both like they were stomach flu carriers.
Gannon was a roiling temper tantrum waiting to happen while Paige played Ice Queen. Their first interview together for the show was so awkward and full of eye rolls that it took nearly half an hour until Andy let them go back to their separate corners. And then he called in the big guns.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” Cat approached Paige in the replacement craft services tent where Paige was debating between an apple or a pack of jellybeans for a mid-afternoon snack. “It’s important, and I don’t know who else I can talk to.”
“Of course,” Paige said, dropping the jellybeans and running through all the possibilities of things that could worry Cat. Sometimes the things that threw her were… unexpected. They ran the gamut from seeing a stray cat that she thought was too skinny to men problems.
Cat yanked open the sliding door of the production van and ushered Paige inside in front of her.
“You’re not pregnant are you?” Paige asked over her shoulder.
“Pregnant?” Gannon’s voice cracked like a whip.
“What’s he doing in here?” Paige demanded, trying to turn around but finding her exit blocked by Cat. Cat yanked the door closed behind her.
“What’s your problem with me being here? My sister asked me to be here. What are you doing here?” Gannon snapped.
Cat clapped her hands. “Enough! Guys, I’ve been elected by the entire freaking crew to sit you both down and talk to you about how your preschool behavior is affecting our team.”
Paige closed her mouth with a snap. Gannon, the picture of apathy, kicked back in the one and only chair at the crowded workstation.
“Now, I say this with love, but you two need to get your heads out of your asses,” Cat said, hands on hips. “You’re driving us all nuts during what’s already been the toughest shoot we’ve ever had. You got hurt,” she said, pointing to Paige, “in front of all of us. And there were a few seconds when we thought we might have lost you.”
“I’m sorry—” Paige began, but Cat cut her off.
“We’re working on a house for a little girl who might not be here much longer to enjoy it if her treatment doesn’t take a turn for the better. Walking on eggshells around you two idiots is hurting our abilities to do our jobs.”
Gannon star
ted to argue, but Cat pinned him down with a stare. “Uh-uh. I talk. You listen. I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but I need you to fix it. We need you both on top of your game if we’re going to deliver the house that little girl deserves. So play nicely, work it out, and get your heads out of your asses!”
“Sorry,” Paige sulked.
Looking uncomfortable, Gannon avoided eye contact with both of them.
“Now, on a personal note. I know you two have feelings for each other. Shut up,” she ordered when they both opened their mouths. “I think you’d be idiots if you let that go just to rebel against the network and the gossip sites. Figure out what you want, go after it, and forget about the rest of it. Understand?”
Paige and Gannon nodded.
“Good. Now get your asses back to work so we can finish this house.” Cat wrenched open the door and stormed outside.
––—
They managed a tremulous truce for the rest of the afternoon, and the work pressed on despite the steady rain that began to fall. Paige pushed them all to get as much footage of the finishes as possible. Gannon installed the hardware to the new kitchen cabinetry while Cat jumped in to help with the tile backsplash. They shot Flynn connecting overhead light fixtures and Brunelli’s crew attaching the custom-built bookcases to the living room wall around the TV. Everyone else was painting every vertical surface in the house.
Furniture move-in needed to be shot in daylight, not downpour, so Paige and Andy juggled the schedule, which was, at this point, broken down into hour intervals. It was the final sprint when everyone was already tired and the amount of work to be completed seemed never-ending. The pizza shop in town sent over three-dozen pies to feed their army of crew and volunteers, and the delivery girl was welcomed like a hero. Paige gritted her teeth when Gannon obliged the girl with a smiling selfie before handing her a paintbrush.
By the time there was nothing left for her crew to do, it was after midnight the morning of reveal day. Paige surveyed the nearly finished house with tired pride. They’d pulled it off again. Providing move-in went well in the morning, they’d be filming the reveal and tour by early afternoon, and Carina and Malia would spend the night in their brand-new home.