Just the Sexiest Man Alive

by Julie James

  Being the eyes, ears, and voice of most of the film industry’s top acting talent was no easy feat. Not that he had any problem representing directors or writers, but no one ever cared what they did. Ron Howard or M. Night Shyamalan could snort cocaine off the ass of the script girl in the middle of an on-set orgy, and that still would be less gossip-worthy than whether Jennifer Lopez wore her wedding band while eating lunch at the Polo Lounge.

  For a de minimis 5 percent of all gross earnings, Marty’s responsibilities could be boiled down to one pithy mantra that every associate in his firm was expected to eat, sleep, and die by: make sure your client is someone whose fuckups are newsworthy, and fuck anyone that makes up news about your client.

  It was the second half of Marty’s mantra that kept him in the office so late on this particular Friday evening. Rebecca, an associate whose only assignment was to assist Marty in the various issues that arose with one particularly challenging client, had just stopped by his office.

  “We’ve gotten calls from Us Weekly, In Touch, and Star. They want to know what Jason Andrews was doing in an office building downtown,” Rebecca reported. “They claim he was with a woman, although she apparently slipped off before anyone snapped her picture.”

  For a brief moment, Marty wondered how the woman—who he assumed was this Taylor Donovan person Jason insisted on working with—managed to get out of the building without being photographed. Not an easy feat when traveling with Jason Andrews.

  “Tell them he was getting cash from the ATM”—Marty almost laughed at the idea himself—“and that the woman was a building employee who stopped him for an autograph.” With those instructions, Rebecca nodded and left.

  And then for the next half hour, Marty sat alone in his office and contemplated just how big of a problem Taylor Donovan was going to be.

  It went without saying that Jason Andrews was his top client. In fact, Jason Andrews was the top, period. The biggest name in Hollywood—a status he had held for a long, long time.

  Which was precisely what worried Marty, who got paid to worry when no one else did.

  God knows it wasn’t easy to get to the top. But staying there was even tougher. Jason had that rare kind of star quality that came around only once a generation: women loved him, and men wanted to be him. Rolling Stone magazine had hit the proverbial nail on the head: his quick wit and easy charm did indeed call to mind Cary Grant or Clark Gable. But there was something about Jason that was just that little bit more down to earth than the icons of the classic films. Marty had never been able to figure out exactly what that “something” was, although he secretly suspected it had something to do with the fact that Jason was from Missouri.

  Unfortunately, Hollywood—like many of its inhabitants—had a wandering eye. There was nothing the town liked more than the “new face,” or discovering the next person who everyone would hail as “up-and-coming.”

  And after sixteen years in the business, being an undisclosed “thirtysomething” years old, Jason Andrews was neither of those things.

  Luckily, the end was nowhere in sight. Jason’s next movie, Inferno, would be released in just a few weeks and had been predicted to be the blockbuster of the summer. He would follow that tent-pole pic with the legal thriller he was about to begin filming for Paramount, a film for which Marty had high hopes of a third Oscar nomination.

  In Marty’s mind, therefore, the only thing Jason needed to do was to keep doing everything exactly as he had for the past sixteen years. Which—from a publicity standpoint—meant wining and dining only the most famous of actresses, supermodels, pop stars, and the occasional billionaire heiress.

  Taylor Donovan, however, was none of those things. As far as Marty was concerned, in terms of media exposure, the only thing worse than dating nobody was dating a nobody.

  With Inferno about to be released, the public was ready for another full-fledged Jason Andrews romance. And Marty Shepherd—publicist to the stars and eighth most powerful person in Hollywood (once talent and studio heads were excluded)—was determined to give them one.

  With these thoughts in mind, Marty picked up the copy of People magazine that Rebecca had handed him earlier that week. He flipped through “The Women of Jason Andrews!” article until he came to the last picture of Jason and the actress who’d been cast as the female lead in the legal thriller—Naomi Cross.

  Marty smiled, thinking how nice Naomi looked standing next to Jason. She was an ingénue and a media darling. Even better, she was British, which meant double the UK and European exposure.

  Yes, Marty mused to himself, Naomi Cross was just the answer he’d been looking for.

  WAY ACROSS TOWN, in a recently purchased five-bedroom home nestled in the heart of the Hollywood Hills, someone else was looking at that very same picture of Jason Andrews and Naomi Cross.

  But unlike Marty, Scott Casey was not smiling.

  In fact, he was pretty damn pissed off.

  His publicist had promised that he was going to be on the cover of that very issue of People, not Jason Andrews. Again.

  The story—or so his publicist had said—was supposed to focus on Scott’s move from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles. How he had made the decision, given his recent film success, to live full time in the States.

  Scott doubted there were few people in America who didn’t already know his story (not that he minded it being told over and over again in GQ, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Movieline). The interviews all focused on the same basic facts: he had shot to fame little more than thirteen months ago after costarring in the epic fantasy-adventure, A Viking’s Quest. Women had gone absolutely mad for the character he played in the film. In fact, during the five months the movie ran worldwide in theaters, his name was Googled more than any other search term.

  It was nothing that Scott, nor any of the people working with him during the production of A Viking’s Quest, had foreseen. In fact, Scott had had to fight just to audition for the role. His look was too “pretty boy” to play a Viking, the director had originally said. But his agent cajoled, pleaded, pulled strings, and got Scott the audition, which eventually led to a screen test. After much deliberation, the director and producers decided that Scott’s picture-perfect handsome face was an interesting contrast to the lead actor’s rugged, unkempt look. And to match his lean appearance, they gave Scott’s character a kick-ass bow and arrow to fight with instead of a clunky sword.

  It worked. Boy, did it ever work. On screen, he was fierce and feral—yet somehow graceful at the same time. And when the camera zoomed in and held longingly on his soulful hazel eyes—his blond hair ruffling in the wind—no woman in the audience could help but be breathlessly glued to every frame.

  A star was born.

  After the release of the film, Scott was immediately labeled Hollywood’s “It Guy” and offered a wealth of the best parts in town. Seizing the day, he went after a role he had dreamed of playing since his high school Contemporary Lit class: the lead in the film adaptation of the novel Outback Nights.

  Although it was one of the most sought-after parts in Hollywood, Scott believed himself to be a shoo-in. Notwithstanding the fact that he had launched onto the industry’s A-list virtually overnight, he had the added benefit of actually being Australian. So he went to lunch with the producers and even sacrificed an entire Saturday night of clubbing with his friends to have dinner with the film’s director at his ranch in Santa Barbara. Two days later, his agent called with the big news.

  They had offered him the fucking supporting role.

  The part of the sidekick, the friend who dies violently on page eighty-eight of the script, whose death spurs the protagonist—the lead actor—to face his adversaries and demons, save the town, and get the girl in the climatic third act.

  A lead role that had been offered to Jason Andrews.

  The studio had apparently gotten a copy of the script to him last minute, and Jason was interested. It was an unbelievable coup, the producers said, certain th
at Scott would understand. They simply couldn’t pass on a chance to land Jason Andrews. No one did.

  Amidst a string of Aussie-flavored profanities, Scott told his agent in no uncertain terms that he was done playing supporting parts (unless of the indie, Oscar-garnering type, of course). And he certainly was no sidekick to Jason Andrews. Then he angrily took off to Cabo San Lucas to fume in a twenty-five-hundred-dollar-a-night bungalow.

  It was on the second day of his trip, as he was halfway through his fourth Corona of the afternoon and getting a poolside blowjob from Chandra, a reality television “actress” who happened to be staying at the same resort, when his agent called again.

  The studio’s negotiations with Jason Andrews had come to a halt over a salary dispute. They wanted Scott for the lead role.

  Scott accepted, but not until after the producers, the director, his agent, and the studio had all sufficiently pacified his ego. He resented being second choice for a role that should have been his from the start. And so he resolved that he would prove something to the producers, the director, his agent, the studio, and anyone else who doubted him.

  Jason Andrews was nothing special.

  The time had come for the king’s reign to end.

  It was a vow that Scott repeated that very Friday evening, as he flipped through the pages of People magazine. He sat poolside again, but this time by his own swimming pool in the new house he had purchased with the money he had earned from A Viking’s Quest. After finishing the 500 laps his personal trainer ordered, Scott had turned to the weekly gossip magazines his assistant dropped off every Friday morning.

  Feeling a cool evening breeze cutting across the Hollywood Hills, Scott pulled on the Von Dutch T-shirt he’d left on the lounge chair. His pool overlooked an amazing view of downtown Los Angeles that should have captured his attention. But the picture of Jason Andrews sitting on the chair next to him sullied the sight on that particular evening.

  Scott ripped the picture of Jason out of the magazine and crumpled it into a ball. Then he pitched it into the garbage can sitting on the edge of the deck.

  This cover story would be the last thing he lost to Jason Andrews, Scott vowed. Next time, it would be Jason who wanted something. Something important.

  And he would be there to make sure Jason didn’t get it.

  Nine

  “HOW WILL THE alleged harassers do in court?”

  Taylor confidently met Sam’s gaze from across the gray marble conference table. They were now only two days from the start of trial, and he had called her earlier that morning wanting to meet for a last-minute “strategy talk.” This was partner-speak for making sure Taylor knew what the hell she was doing.

  “They are prepped and ready,” she replied without hesitation. “They’ll do great.”

  Derek sat to Taylor’s right, taking notes on his laptop as Sam continued his questions. He had been firing them at Taylor all morning.

  “And your cross-examination of the named plaintiffs?”

  “By the time I’m done, the jury will want to sue them for wasting their time on this ridiculous lawsuit.” Sam, Taylor, and Derek all got a good chuckle out of this. A little lawyer humor.

  Taylor subtly checked her watch and saw that it was almost noon. She hoped they were nearing the end of their meeting, since she and Derek had over twenty exhibits to compile and she still had an opening statement to write. It was time to move things along to the standard pretrial partner wrap-up: a brief lecture on the subject of managing client expectations, followed by closing remarks of the pep-talk variety.

  As if reading Taylor’s mind, Sam ceased his interrogation and eased back in his chair.

  “Well, it looks as though you and Derek have all the bases covered,” he told her. “One last thing we should briefly discuss is making sure our client fully understands the risks—”

  Just then, Sam was cut off as the door to the conference room slammed opened, rattling the walls as if a tornado had just hit the building.

  And a very angry-looking Jason Andrews stormed into the room.

  Linda followed closely on his heels, looking highly apologetic. “I’m so sorry, Taylor—I tried to stop him,” she said, out of breath.

  Wholly oblivious to (or simply uninterested in) anyone else in the room, Jason stopped before Taylor and pointed furiously at her.

  “Why haven’t you returned my calls?”

  The shock of his entrance and his demanding tone rendered her temporarily speechless.

  “I called you three times today,” Jason continued his rant. “Myself,” he added pointedly.

  Taylor quickly pulled herself together and nodded reassuringly to her secretary. “It’s okay, Linda. I can handle things from here.”

  Then she turned to face Jason.

  “Mr. Andrews . . .” she said in a coolly professional tone. “Isn’t this a pleasant surprise, you dropping in unexpectedly like this?” She glared at him frostily. How dare he interrupt her in the middle of an important business meeting with what appeared to be some sort of ridiculous celebrity tantrum. For about ten minutes when they’d been working together last Friday, she’d actually begun to believe that maybe there was some semblance of a normal guy hidden beneath the self-centered, arrogant, movie-star façade.

  Apparently, she’d been mistaken.

  “I wasn’t aware you had called today,” she told him. “I’ve been away from my office, in this conference room all morning.”

  Jason appeared to have a retort ready on his lips, but then he paused when he heard her explanation. It apparently had not been the response he had expected.

  “Oh.”

  But his next words were far more eloquent.

  “I see.”

  Jason looked around the room, took in Sam and Derek (who sat frozen at the table, wide-eyed), then turned to Taylor with his most charming smile.

  “So how are you this morning, Ms. Donovan?”

  TWENTY MINUTES AGO, when Jason had jumped into the Aston Martin and sped down to Taylor’s office, his actions had seemed perfectly rational. There wasn’t a person in Hollywood who didn’t immediately drop everything to take his call. So when Taylor hadn’t returned the three—count them, three—messages he had left with her secretary, he had assumed she was blowing him off. And he’d been furious thinking this—especially after the progress he thought they had made last Friday.

  Unfortunately, they now appeared to have reverted back to the whole “Mr. Andrews” routine. But before Jason could say anything to clear up what obviously was just a simple miscommunication on the part of someone other than him, the gray-haired guy at the head of the conference table stood up.

  “What the hell is going on here, Taylor? You told me you and Mr. Andrews had completed your project.”

  Quick to make amends, the gray-haired guy headed over to Jason with his hand outstretched. “Mr. Andrews . . . I’m Sam Blakely, head of the litigation group here at Gray and Dallas. I’ve spoken on the phone with your manager a few times.”

  Jason shook his hand. “Of course.”

  “I was under the impression you and Ms. Donovan had finished your work together,” Sam said quickly. “I want to sincerely apologize for any problems or inconvenience she has caused you.”

  Being taller, Jason could see over Sam’s head to Taylor, and his eyes met hers at the partner’s unctuous words. If looks could kill right then, Jason had no doubt he would’ve been lying flat on the ground with an expression of wide-eyed shock on his face and a twelve-inch hatchet lodged deep in his forehead.

  Taylor came around the table to defend herself. “I’m not sure what the problem is either, Sam. It was my understanding that Mr. Andrews was very satisfied with the assistance I provided him last Friday.”

  “Clearly, that’s not the case,” Sam snapped at her. “Otherwise, why would he be here?”

  Jason saw how surprised Taylor was by the angry tone of the man who presumably was her boss.

  “I . . . I don’t know why
he’s here,” she faltered, turning to Jason in confusion. And in that brief moment, she suddenly looked utterly and completely lost.

  It got to him. When Jason saw Taylor like that, he felt something odd . . . something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time . . . an unfamiliar emotion that took him a few seconds to place.

  Guilt.

  Jason saw that he needed to remedy the situation. If for no other reason than to avoid future hatchet-in-forehead death glares from Taylor.

  So he turned to her boss. Of course he could fix this—he had won an Oscar for chrissakes.

  “I think I may have created some confusion here,” Jason said. “Taylor and I did indeed finish our work last Friday. Today, I was calling her about a separate issue—a new matter on which I hoped she could share her immeasurably learned legal expertise.”

  He winked at Taylor, proud of this last detail. Now this Sam character would think she had brought in new business for the firm.

  He was a hero.

  But the Sam character apparently wasn’t buying it.

  “A new matter on which you need the advice of a sexual harassment attorney?” he asked skeptically.

  Jason paused to think about this—damn lawyers with their pesky questions—when Taylor jumped in.

  “That’s right,” she said, picking up Jason’s lead. “Mr. Andrews mentioned this to me during our last meeting. He owns a production company, and was looking for advice on some employment issues that have recently arisen at his office.”

  Jason nodded along—hey, it worked for him. “Yes, yes, that’s right—employment issues that have arisen at my production company offices. Of course.”

  Sam eyed them both suspiciously. “What kind of issues?”

  Taylor didn’t bat an eye.

  “Well . . . it appears that Mr. Andrews has some problems determining what is and is not appropriate behavior in the workplace.”