Page 4 of Cast to be Mine

I couldn’t stop looking at all the eyeballs in the room, not after what Loretta had said. Did they have the right eyes? Did I?

“Grace Stone?”

My head snapped up. A woman with a clipboard stood in the doorway, scanning the room.

Wait. Already? I glanced at my phone. I’d only been sitting here for five minutes.

“That’s me,” I said, standing up too quickly. I teetered on the five-inch heels. I’d been born in heels according to my mother. I never teetered.

Today, I did.

Great.

So much for looking confident and professional.

“They’re ready for you,” she said, opening a door.

I took a deep breath, channeled every ounce of CEO energy I had, and stepped inside.

2

MICAH

The woman on camera—Cami something, I’d already forgotten her last name—delivered her lines with technical precision. Every word was clear, every gesture calculated, every expression exactly what you’d expect from someone who’d studied the craft.

A true professional.

And an absolute snooze fest.

I nudged Doris’s knee under the table. It was the signal to put all of us out of our misery.

“That was great,” Doris said. “We’ll be in touch.”

The actress beamed at me. She thought she’d nailed it. Maybe by most standards, she had. But I needed more than fine. I needed magic. And I knew the industry and refused to feel guilty that she wasn’t going to get the part.

The door closed behind her and I immediately turned to Doris, my casting director. “Hard no.”

“You didn’t even want to see her do it again?” Doris raised an eyebrow, her pen hovering over her notepad. “She’s hot right now. Dubbed one of the rising stars. You can get her cheap. When she lands on the A-list, people are going to look for her old work. You’ll get another bump. Streaming numbers get high and it promotes everything you do after.”

I understood the logic. Obviously. My father pretty much laid the foundation. He launched hundreds of careers in his lifetime. He had an eye for talent. He didn’t have to ask an A-lister to be in one of his movies—they begged him for the chance.

“She’s not the one,” I said.

Toby looked up from his phone, his young face bright with the kind of energy that made me feel ancient at twenty-seven. “Want me to make notes on why? For the callback list?”

I’d poached Toby from my brother, Hollis. Toby’s skills were not being maximized doing thirty-second Instagram reels for Hollis’s B Well business.

Toby wanted to be in movies. Well, not in movies, but directing them. We were both aspiring directors. I had a bit more experience and decided to take the kid under my wing. Breathless would be our first big project. Everything had to be perfect, including the actress we put in the role.

Jack Montana would bring in the viewers, but we needed an actress to really sell it.

And that chick wasn’t it.

I stood, needing to move, needing to do something with the restless anxiety crawling under my skin. “She’s technically good, but there’s no spark. She’s playing the role instead of being the role.”

Doris made a notation. She’d worked with me long enough not to argue when I had a strong instinct about someone. “We have a room full of hopefuls, but I’ve seen their resumes and I’m just not sure they’re going to be what you want. If you could give me a better idea, I could find it.”

I groaned. “I don’t know specifics. I just know that what we’ve seen isn’t it.”