Snorts of laughter slithered through the crowd. Not a lot, but enough to be known. Josh's whole face screwed up. He stormed away, kicking a large set piece as he left, muttering a bunch of nonsense that was riddled with ‘fuck’.
His bad.
"I'm sorry, Denver." I turned to the director and stretched out a hand. "I didn't want to cause a fuss, but I didn't want that dude to think he could dress you down, either."
Denver rested his hand on my shoulder. "I appreciate that, Jack. You're a good man. But I have had more than my fair share of egotistical actors. I don't need you to be my knight in shining armor."
"Shame, though." I winked at him. "I look good in plate mail."
"I don't even want to know." Denver rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Are you ready to go?"
"Let's do this."
We knocked out a few scenes after that, all of them without the douchebag Josh. I hoped that asshat was crying a river in his tiny little trailer. The nerve of the guy was ridiculous. I got shit because of my criminal record but I still respected a movie set. That guy... that guy was half the problem with Hollywood these days. Upstarts who thought they could do whatever they wanted because they were holding a script. He'd never be anything more than a bottom feeder.
Denver called for a break, so I went to find Alison. I needed to apologize for earlier. Especially after calling Josh out on his shit. I needed an ally somewhere and she was it. Also, I really didn't need her to tell anyone and give them more reasons to fire me. I was a fucking idiot.
"Ah, there you are." Her sweet voice was full of poison, but I didn't care. I turned to meet her, trademark smile on my face. "Your scenes were great this morning. Good job."
"Thank you. That means a lot coming from you." I leaned against the wall next to her. "Listen, I wanted to—"
"You need to be careful, though." She interrupted me. "Josh's dad is a producer on the film. Pissing him off is not the smartest course of action here."
"His dad is a producer? Well, that explains a lot."
"He is. And you need to keep your mouth shut and stop rocking the boat. If word gets around that you're verbally assaulting his son, there will be a lot of pressure to move you out of the role."
When she was frustrated, her mouth did this amazing thing where it looked naughty and sexier than ever. I couldn’t quite figure it out—maybe the way she pursed it—but it reinvigorated all the dirty thoughts I had earlier in my trailer. And at the club. And at the audition.
This girl... I needed her in my bed. Immediately.
She cleared her throat, eyebrows looking unfriendly. "Did you hear me?"
Time for the trademark smile again. "Listen, I'm not worried about it. He tried to start shit with the director and I defended our boss. It's his bad."
Alison didn't seem to like my answer very much. She rolled her eyes and walked away without a goodbye. My god, that ass.
"I'll see you later!" I called after her. She didn't wave.
That was okay. I'd get her to come around eventually. It would just take a little more work. Lucky for me, I liked a good chase…
Chapter 8
ALISON
"Have you checked out AMZ lately?" Sarah popped her head into my room. "Or Pesto Marriott?"
I craned my neck up to look at her over my book. "No...why?"
She frowned. "You should probably look."
"Goddammit," I muttered under my breath. I tried to avoid all forms of paparazzi and trash television, even if my career rested on it. So much of it was blatant lies. These jerks printed out figurative garbage that everyone ate up with rusty spoons and then dared to act surprised when someone slapped them with a libel suit. And yet, somehow, they managed to keep churning.
Sarah never told me to read them, which could only mean one thing.
I rolled over on my stomach to grab my phone and started clicking around. It took me less than two minutes to figure out what she was talking about. My charge, the obnoxious and infuriating Jack Steele, was everywhere. For some reason, everyone was talking about his stint in prison: speculation, alleged interviews with former cellmates….Christ, someone even landed an exclusive with ‘a childhood friend’.
Knowing most of these were bullshit, I bypassed all of it and kept searching. Two different OpEd pieces on StuffPo covered it, too. What the hell was going on?
As if on cue, my phone rang.
"Alison."
"Gerald." I rolled my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. A coworker once told me it was a pressure point for migraine relief. It’d never worked for me before, but a girl could hope. "How are you?"
"I am going to be kind and assume you know why I'm calling."
"Because I'm your favorite casting director of all time and you would like to—"
"Let's not play games, Alison. We have a lot of money riding on this."
My entire face scrunched up but I kept my voice steady. "I understand. But this is all old news, Gerald. This isn't a breaking report about how he killed someone or... whatever it is he did. This is someone dredging the soil."
"Exactly. Soil that is supposed to be profitable."
"I don't think that fits my analogy."
"He's your responsibility. Fix this." He hung up.
I lay there staring at the ceiling for a solid minute before I kicked my feet and screamed into a pillow. I knew it was childish, but this had become frighteningly obnoxious. This, this right here was why I worked in casting, not in production. I hired them and disappeared into the fray. Good luck, sailors, my work here is done. Except now it wasn't done and I had one asshole to blame.
Myself. Myself and that goddamned dance in that stupid club for this infuriating role for this dumb movie.
"I see you've read the news." Sarah appeared again in the doorway. "Big guys not happy?"
"They are never happy. They are miserable old dudes with too much money and not enough soul." I sat up and scrubbed my face with my hands, like I could peel away all the irritation with my nails. When it didn't, I was left even more upset. "The hell did this guy do, anyway? No one seems to have any actual dirt."
"I think he beat the crap out of a congressman's son?" Sarah licked the lid of a yogurt container thoughtfully. "I seem to remember that much when it first broke. It seemed sort of ridiculous given the crime, you know? Why was he arrested and served time in jail for just hitting someone a few times? Then again, I've never worked on a law show, so maybe that's a felony for all I know."
I frowned. "You're right. That doesn't make much sense. Are you eating my yogurt again?"
"It expires today. You're welcome for not wasting food." With that, she disappeared back into the folds of the house with my breakfast.
Okay. It was time to run damage control. First, I needed to figure out what really happened, then move on to how to spin it in a healthy direction, and finally find the asshole who decided this would be a good idea to spill to the press while he was filming the movie my entire career was currently resting on.
Because I was going to throat punch that motherfucker so, so hard.
It took some digging to get through all the garbage and trash, but I finally found some legit articles from around the time of the incident seven years ago. Turns out our attractive action hero did beat up a congressman's son. Beat him up so bad the kid was in a coma for a week. As a result, Jack got slapped with second degree attempted murder charges.
Holy. Shit.
Flashes of him getting in Josh's face filled my mind. Jack had to be a hundred times stronger now than he was seven years ago. Would he have...? I blinked the thought from my brain.
Jack was originally sentenced to six years, which surely meant the charge wasn't that serious, right? He got out on parole after five years and, at least according to the internet, hadn't had any more serious charges since. Just a few misdemeanors and an attitude that convinced the entire country he could probably kill someone if he didn't want to fuck them.
"This is...weird," I said to no
one, after finishing another article. "None of this make sense."
And it didn't. Why did he try to kill this guy? Why only six years for attempted murder? No one could find a connection between the two guys, yet Jack tried to kill him? Jack was a lot of things...but a murderer? Hot-headed, sure. This just felt too big for him.
Unfortunately, the entire case had been sealed up tight and there wasn't a single shred of anything to say why this event occurred. If he was pissed because the son looked at his girlfriend wrong or scratched his tire, that was clearly problematic.
But what if he tried to save someone or...I don't know. This just didn't feel right.
Okay. Step two: spin the press.
If there was one thing they ate up faster than anything, it was the chance for an exclusive on some dirt. If we could stop the bulldozer from piling it on, they’d have to move on to other things. But how did I do that?
"Do you know any secret scandals?" I yelled across the apartment. "Someone sleeping with a director or something?"
"Only every other C-list actress wannabe that no one cares about," Sarah yelled back. A moment later, she was back in my doorway. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to fix this." I gestured to my phone to symbolize the giant clusterfuck it was holding. "I need to spin all this shit in a positive light."
"Isn't that what the PR guy is for? Or his agent, even?"
I glowered at the phone, thinking of Gerald. "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
"Well...yeah." Sarah looked confused. Then, she snapped her fingers. "Address it head on."
"What?"
"When Molly Blueton had that sex scandal last year, she went straight to the cameras and gave her own side of the story. Told everyone off for digging in her business and provided pictures and stuff to prove her innocence."
"Oh my god, that's right. That's why Pierce Thomas couldn't get a job for like, six months."
"Exactly. She owned that shit and everyone shut up."
"This, though." I wrinkled my nose. "This isn't a sex scandal, this is a legal issue. Everything is sealed and locked. I'm not sure what he can even talk about."
"God, I need to get on Law & Order. You know so much more than me." Sarah shook her head. "Still, if you can get him talking about it from his point of view, and make it go viral, it could help things."
"Viral..." A lightbulb went off in my head. "You're a genius, you know that?"
"Tell that to my mother, please." Sarah winked. "Okay, I'm off to Bikram. Are you coming?"
I dug out my laptop and shook my head. "Can't. Work."
"Girl, they better be paying you a hell of a lot of money to do all this shit. Tell me how it goes when I get back."
I waved her off and started making phone calls, starting with Jack's agent, Bobby, and a hopeful text to Danny. He said I'd owe him for my next favor, but if I could get this to work, I'd do anything he asked. Except sleep with him, because gross. Gross forever.
Bobby was frantic on the phone. "I'm trying to spin as hard as I can, but these people are voracious. You're telling me someone isn't screwing someone else they aren't supposed to right now? How the hell has this whole damn town gone abstinent?"
"I said the same thing," I replied, then sighed. "Listen, I have an idea. I want Jack to make a video about the incident, from his side, that we can spread around."
"That's a bit complicated, Alison. This is a legal issue."
"I know, I know. If we play up how he's changed, what he learned, all that shit, I think we can spin it as a redemption story. It doesn’t look like he ever spoke publicly about it. The tiniest tidbit can make a difference, I think. Can you get him to do it?"
Bobby was quiet. "He doesn’t like to talk about it."
"Fine. I'll keep doing your job, then," I snapped and hung up on him. Before I dialed Jack's number, Danny sent me a text back. He'd help if I got his cousin a small role in the movie. Fine. I'd throw him into a crowd scene, whatever. Being on set now afforded me some space I otherwise wouldn't have. Whatever we had to do.
I let him know we could do it and dialed Jack. "You're quite the popular man, Mr. Steele."
"I like hearing you call me that."
I made a face at the phone. "You should really cut that shit out when I'm trying to save your ass."
"You're right, I'm sorry. You just sound so imposing and—"
"Shut up and listen. This is how we are going to do this. You are going to sit your ass down in front of a computer camera and you are going to tell a sob story about how you made a big mistake as a kid, but that your time in jail caused you to dwell on your life circumstances and how you need to make a positive change in yourself and the world. Then, you are going to send it to me and I'll take care of the rest."
He was quiet, just like Bobby. "I don't talk about that."
"And I don't sit around on set babysitting actors. But here we are, Jack. I want it done in twenty minutes. Listen, I don't know what happened and I'm sure it was traumatic as hell to be there, but I've got producers breathing down my neck about the bad publicity this is spinning for your movie."
More silence. I pinched my nose again and took a deep breath. Time to change tactics?
"Jack, please. I would say you could just lie, but I don't want someone to refute you. I know this is shitty, but this is someone threatening everything important to you. If we lose you in this role, the movie tanks. You become unemployable. I want to help salvage your career. I want to help jettison it. I can't do this without you. Can you do this for me?"
He sighed heavily into the phone. "Fine. Fine. You're right. I'll have it to you in twenty minutes."
"Great. You'll do great."
While he was filming, I was spinning. With Danny's help, we were able to secure space for his video on virtually every shitty platform out there and all the social media sites. When Jack sent me the video, I shot it off to Danny and Bobby and crossed my fingers.
He didn't go into too much detail, but he looked heartfelt. He said exactly what I needed him to say and vowed that he wanted to be a role model for the troubled youth out there who didn't think the world could give them a second chance. Nice touch.
Within an hour, Bobby left me a voicemail saying that his phone had been ringing off the hook for exclusives. Jack was even trending online as #SecondChanceSteele. It worked.
Holy shit. It worked!
Maybe one day, as a thanks, he could tell me what actually happened all those years ago. Until then, I’d be content to know that if I ever wanted to change careers to Public Relations, I could kick ass at it.
Right now, I felt like I could kick ass at anything.
Chapter 9
JACK
The chase was going longer than planned. Apparently, encouraging Alison to grab my throbbing member, as it were, in my trailer and then having her step up and clear my name with the press was a double-whammy of bullshit that created walls the size of Antarctica between us. Almost as frigid, too.
Thing was, I saw how she looked at me when she didn’t think I was looking. I was the king of watching people when they thought I wasn’t watching. It was way less creepy than it sounded. The lip biting, the hooded eyes, the smile she seemed to have only for me when I was on set…I saw all of it. And still, I couldn’t get any closer to her.
I’d fucked up bad. Normally, I would have put her past me and kept going for the next easy target, but she was haunting me. There was a confidence to her, a fire that burned so hot and strong I couldn’t help but be drawn to it. She made me laugh constantly and I was always trying to act cool around her. Forever on my toes. And still, walls.
But today I was going to tear that shit down. Sarah had mentioned a few weeks ago that Alison’s birthday was coming up and she was disappointed she had to be on set all day for it. That seemed to be a recurring theme: Alison wasn’t supposed to be here, she was working insane hours to balance casting for other productions and keeping an eye on me, et cetera et cetera. That probably had something t
o do with the walls. Where I was hoping it’d be a sexy gig, she found it to be more stress at work.
I knew this because Sarah and Lena told me. Lena was my ‘in’ with females in general but Sarah was my ‘in’ with Alison. They both took a vested interest in seeing us hook up and both agreed our lack of boot-knocking was firmly my fault. Oops.
It was time to crack open the old playbook and unleash something truly great for her. I had to prove I was interested, that I cared, that I was more to her than just some job that was dragging her down. Also, I had to prove I was worth fucking, apparently.
“You guys are all alike.” Lena rolled her eyes. “Everything is about sex. What about the foreplay? What about buttering us up? You can’t just shove it in there.”
“You don’t even sleep with dicks.”
“I sleep with dildos and it’s the same damn concept.” Lena was nursing a large mug of coffee while Sarah did her makeup for the day. “I know you aren’t used to people telling you ‘no’, big boy, but you gotta learn a little romance.”
“I can be romantic.”
“Bullshit.”
“What did you have in mind?” Sarah asked. I liked Sarah. She was less abrasive.
“I was thinking a surprise party for her on her birthday, after we wrap for the day. Balloons, cake, food, the whole nine yards. Maybe even a little music? I talked to Edward and he says he can set the system up to make it like a club in here: music, lights, everything. Think she’ll like it?”
Lena took a sip and shrugged. “Not bad.”
“Stay still.” Sarah tapped her on the nose with a makeup brush. “That would be really sweet, actually. It shows you care, that you went out of your way to do all this for her.”
“Would it be too much to hide in a cake, naked?”
“Yes,” they both said at once.
“You guys are no fun.” I omitted the biggest part of my plan in case I couldn’t pull it off. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice, but this required a little more finesse. And a whole fuckload of favors called in. “I’m going to ask her to dance tonight, something sweet. I’ll show her my softer side. You’ll see.”
Notorious (Hollywood Bad Boys) Page 5
