Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
We ate in silence for a few minutes. I wanted to get the subject of our new production assistant off my mind, but somehow, it kept circling back to her. Now that Dana mentioned it, there was something familiar about her. Something ineffable that I could almost get hold of, but not quite. It wasn’t her beauty–that was uniquely her own–but it was something about her attitude. The glint of battle in her eyes when she didn’t like something, the twist of her pretty mouth when she caught me looking at her legs. Something that told me there was a formidable opponent behind that veneer of polished professionalism.
I paused, the fork halfway between the plate and my mouth. What had made me think that? Willow was a production assistant, not an enemy gladiator in the arena. Besides, she was, what, twenty-five?
How much damage could she do?
I thought about being on set right at eight the next morning, but I decided to give Willow and Miller a few hours to settle in together first. I worked from home since it was closer to the studio where Miller was doing confession cam interviews with Michio’s parents.
I had a shit ton of work to keep me busy, but it was hard to focus. My brain kept going back to the problem of Callum O’Conner. Another damn genius that was making my life harder than it had to be. Maybe I should stick to alien Armageddon movies. I considered it for a few seconds, then shook my head–answering my own question and clearing it at the same time. No, I wasn’t giving up on this. I’d never given up on anything in my life, and I wasn’t going to start now. Not when it would hand an easy victory to Fletcher James.
Finally, at 11:30, I headed over to the studio. Michio’s parents were walking out the door as I was walking in. Unlike Michio, they recognized me. His dad smiled, but his mom only managed a tight-lipped grimace. She wasn’t my biggest fan. She had some idea that if not for my silly film, as she put it, Michio would have lost interest in skateboarding by now and be in high school where he belonged. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about him bringing home the first Olympic gold medal for skateboarding or the endorsements that were stacking up in his bank account. She just wanted her son to stop propelling himself at concrete obstacles at thirteen miles an hour with only carbon fiber and foam to protect his brain.
I didn’t entirely blame her, but what she didn’t get was that Michio would skateboard even if every camera and endorsement and dangling carrot disappeared. It was in his blood, the way movies were in Dana’s and mine. Yeah, we’d won the genetic lottery being born into the Lewis family, but we’d have clawed our way into the industry if we hadn’t.
Inside the studio, I spotted Willow immediately. She was hard to miss as one of the few women on the set. She was wearing all black again, and her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Michio’s agent, Brendan, was standing too close to her, an intense, focused look on his face as he gesticulated broadly. His hand kept bumping her arm, and then he’d purposely touch her arm in apology.
My mouth tightened. I knew Willow could handle herself, but fuck, she shouldn’t have to. I’d hired her to deal with Miller’s shit, not this asshole’s. Brendan Gibson was a former skateboarder himself who had been good but not good enough. The closest he was going to get to glory was riding Michio’s coattails, which he’d managed to turn into a career. Now, with his glory days firmly behind him, he followed around a sixteen-year-old and hit on twenty-somethings. Disgust curdled in my stomach.
“Brandon,” I said when I reached them, “you want to give our new production assistant some space?”
“It’s Brendan,” he corrected.
“Same thing. Back up.”
Brendan smiled affably, but I saw spite spark in his pupils. He didn’t like me every bit as much as I didn’t like him, but only one of us had the power to show it. He made an excuse and shifted off to where Michio and his best friend, Zion, were standing.
“That was unnecessary,” Willow said coolly, watching him go.
I took the opportunity to study her while she was looking away. If Brendan had been bothering her, she didn’t show it. She didn’t look like much rattled her though. “Maybe,” I said, “but it was fun.”
Willow’s gray-green gaze swept back to mine, her eyebrows arched high. “You’re making my job harder for fun?” she asked, every syllable frosted over, cold as the Antarctic.
“I’m making your job easier,” I corrected. “You’re going to have enough to do without fending off guys like that.”