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She waved away my caution. “Stop, unnecessary. I’m not her type. I don’t need a lawsuit to tell me that. Not to mention, I’mengaged.” She added an aggrieved weight to her last word.
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, therewassomething 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?
* * *
Ithought 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 Ishouldstick 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.”
I was the head of the studio that had just hired her, and she was about as low on the call sheet as a person could get, but her chin lifted imperiously, like she was a queen and I was an unruly serf. “I’m more than capable of handling myself, and I don’t need anyone to make my job easier.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked away.
Brendan had heard every word. I could tell by the way he guffawed with Zion and the way Michio winced. Irritation lanced through me. Before I could think better of it, I followed her. I ate up the distance in three strides, and I could tell by the way her eyes widened that she was startled. She hadn’t expected me to follow her.
“Can I talk to you outside a moment, Ms. Laurier?” I asked pleasantly, but she couldn’t miss the note of steel that ran through my voice.
She looked toward Miller, who opened his mouth, but I cut him off before he could speak. “She’ll be right back.”
Without waiting to see if she’d follow, I headed for the back door.
7
WILLOW
Ifollowed Julian out, seething. How dare he order me to come outside with him like I was a disobedient child at a fancy restaurant? He’d hired me to hold my own with Miller, and the first thing he did was start undermining me in front of everyone on set.
The back patio space was a wide concrete pad with a few picnic tables and a large planter that hadn’t seen a live plant in years. Instead, people had been planting cigarette butts in the dry, barren soil. Julian stalked over to a picnic table, but I stayed right outside the door, my arms crossed. He looked even more irritated as he crossed back toward me.
“I don’t think this is going to work out, Ms. Laurier,” he said evenly. “As I mentioned in the interview, this position reports to me. Something you seem to have a problem with.”
I should have been afraid that he was really going to fire me, but I was too angry. He and my father might have been rivals, but they were cut from the exact same cloth. They’d come right off the same bolt labeled ‘domineering, overbearing, asshole.’
