His Every Defense (9 page)

“You don’t have to,” she squeaked.

“No, I’m going to do it. I promise you.” He put a warm, strong hand on her leg.

“I love you, Kallie.”

She felt worse and worse, the more he spoke. Why did he have to say all the right things now, when it was too late? She’d already set everything in motion, and he was going to be angry when she told him the truth. “I love you too, but I don’t expect any special treatment. You said romantic comedies were a bad fit for you.”

“They are. But who knows? Maybe you found the next Wedding Crashers or Bridesmaids. Who am I to say?”

“Maybe I should just try and sort it out myself,” she told him.

He grew puzzled. “How would you do that?”

“I don’t know.” She fell silent.

“Listen, just be patient. I’m going to get to it. I really am.” He stood up. “Now, let’s get to that grilled cheese,” he said.

Hunter went back to the kitchen and made them both a couple of sandwiches, and they ate together on the terrace. He was in a good mood suddenly. He talked about the movie business at great length. How difficult it was, how challenging and dirty, but also how it could be the most rewarding experience when something finally paid off.

“You could help me, Kallie,” he said, watching her as he bit into his grilled cheese sandwich and chewed.

“I’m a nanny,” she laughed. Inside, her stomach was churning with anxiety.

Tell him, she thought. Get it over with.

But no. She needed to have this phone call first, and then tell Hunter what had happened. If she told him too soon, he would pull the plug on the whole thing. She just knew it.

“You’re a nanny,” Hunter allowed, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “But you could learn this business. I could teach you. Now, will this script get made? The one you found last night? Almost certainly not. But someday, something you work on could get produced. And the hard work will make it so much sweeter.”

“That sounds like a plan,” she said, and then went back to eating and tried to end the meal as soon as possible.

Hunter went back to work and Kallie tried to keep herself busy until it was time to put in the call to Max Weisman.

She went into the TV room and closed the door behind her, sitting down on the couch with the script and her notes clutched in her hands. “Please, please, please,” she prayed, eyes closed. “Don’t let me make a fool of myself.”

And then she held her brand new iPhone and went to the only contact in it. Deep breaths, she told herself. Deep breaths.

She felt like she might faint. She could barely take in a gasp of air.

Hitting the call button on the touch screen, she put the phone to her ear and waited for the inevitable ringtone. It was as if she was having an out-of-body experience. She was floating out of herself, and her hands and feet tingled.

“Max Weisman’s office,” a bright young man answered.

“Hi,” she said, her voice sounding surprisingly normal to her own ears. “My name is Kallie Young, and Mister Weisman is expecting my call.”

Swallow.

“Yes, Miss Young. Please hold for Mister Weisman,” he said.

There was a click, some silence, and then a loud, gravelly voice barked into her ear. “Kallie Young? Hello?”

“Yes, sir. Yes. This is Kallie.”

“Cool. Cool. Red Jameson spoke very highly of you.”

“Oh, well, that was nice of him.” She swallowed again. Her mouth was parched.

Again.

“Yeah, Red’s a great guy. Anyway, let’s dispense with the chitchat. Supposedly, you’ve got When Harry Met Sally meets The Hangover in your hip pocket. I’m excited.”

“Is that what Red told you?”

“No, that’s what I gleaned from what he told me, which was next to nothing. But I love When Harry Met Sally. Meg Ryan was delightful, cute, and charming. Billy Crystal was quick-witted and cheerfully sarcastic. Nora Ephron’s best work, in my opinion. I’d love to see that kind of charm combined with the edgy modern spin of The Hangover. Winning combination, don’t you think Kallie?”

“I do. Yes. But---“

“So maybe that’s the kind of script you’ve got. Tell me about it.”

That wasn’t the kind of script she had, unfortunately. She looked down at the pitch she’d scrawled on the blank page. It looked horribly amateurish to her now. Just hearing the effortless way that Max Weisman talked about movies had totally made her realize how out of her depth she really was.

“Miss Young?” Max asked. “Hello? Did I lose you?”

“No, no. I’m here. Sorry, I’m a little nervous.”

The other line went quiet. “Listen, I need to get this show on the road, Kallie.

And please—don’t ever apologize for your own insecurity. It’s not a very attractive trait in a movie producer.”

She’d been slapped. Her whole body tingled with the anxiety she was feeling now. But then she thought about what Red had told her. She believed in Bryson’s script, and that was what she needed to focus on.

Not her fear.

With that in mind, Kallie finally began to speak. Her voice was confident and her words came fluidly. She pitched her first movie to a big-time producer, and she had absolutely no idea if she was doing it right. She’d never heard a real pitch before, she’d never tried to explain a movie like this, and she was simply winging it.

At the end of her summation, there was a long silence.

Max Weisman muttered something unintelligible.

“Excuse me?” she said. “I didn’t hear that last part.”

“I said, hold for my assistant,” Max replied brusquely.

“Oh, okay—“ she began, but the line had already clicked again, and she could tell Max Weisman was no longer on the line with her.

She waited, feeling the pit in her stomach that told her the pitch had been an unmitigated disaster.

She bit her lower lip and waited, despairingly.

“Hello, Miss Young?” the assistant said.

“Yes. I’m here.”

“Do you have a pen ready?”

“Sure.”

He told her his email address. “Email your script to that address, and someone will call you if there’s any interest in the screenplay.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks for your help.”

There was no reply. He’d already hung up.

***

Kallie used her new phone to email Bryson and ask for an electronic copy of the script. She didn’t specifically say why.

He responded just minutes later.

Wow, you really ARE real. Either that, or Charlie’s going through way too much
trouble to prank me. The script is attached.

Best,

Bryson Taylor.

Kallie smiled at his reply. He seemed like a really cool, friendly and confident guy. Her smile faded as she thought back on the phone call with Max Weisman, which felt as though it had gone about as horribly as it could.

Sure, his assistant was going to look at the screenplay—but if she’d really done her job, Max would have expressed some interest and enthusiasm on the phone. He’d basically hung up on her, and probably was only having his assistant look at the script so that Red wouldn’t feel slighted.

This was a waste of time. She didn’t understand the business, which Hunter had tried to explain to her last night.

Of course, Kallie thought, I didn’t listen to him because I got my feelings hurt.

As she sent the screenplay off to Max’s assistant, Kallie tried not to think negative thoughts, but it was difficult. Where else could she go now?

Once she told Hunter the truth about what she’d done, he’d probably throw the screenplay in the trash and lock the door to his script closet for good.

The next few hours passed in a kind of gloomy haze. Kallie played with her phone, went on some gossip websites online, checked her email obsessively.

Eventually, she thought about Nicole’s insistence that she check in with her family. Kallie had been avoiding that, but she supposed it was time.

It was easiest to just call her mother and father first, and let them spread the news to the rest of the family. She grimaced at the thought of telling her mother that she’d been hurt and had waited so long to tell anyone. But there was nothing to do now, accept just get through it as fast as possible.

After two rings, her mother answered. “Kallie! I was wondering when we’d hear from you again.”

“Hey, Mom. Sorry it’s been so long.”

“We didn’t want to bother you. I just assumed you were busy in your new life, and with Hunter and…well…I figured you would call me when you felt like it.”

Kallie bit her lip. She felt guilty as sin. “Mom, I need to tell you something.

Everything’s fine now, just so you know, but—I got hurt about a week ago.”

“Hurt? What do you mean?”

“I was mugged. I was mugged outside a local movie theater.”

Her mother let out a strangled, shocked cry. “You were mugged? You were hurt?”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” she said, stretching the truth. “I got a bump on the head.”

Now she was definitely lying, and not the little white kind of lie either.

“I don’t understand,” her mother replied, her voice suspicious. “Tell me everything.”

Kallie told her a very abridged version of the story, leaving out anything to do with Terrence or Levi. The way she told it, she’d gone to the movies to meet a friend, and then someone had pushed her or hit her, she didn’t know which—and she’d fallen down. They’d taken her purse and left her, upon which she’d been taken to the hospital and discharged with minimal injuries.

It was basically true, except that it wasn’t what had happened at all.

The thing was, Kallie didn’t want to frighten anyone. There was nothing that could be done now, and she didn’t want her family worrying from afar for no good reason.

Either that, or she was just too much of a coward to explain to her mother that she’d kept something so serious from her for this long.

When she was finished telling the story, her mother was silent for a long time.

“Well,” she said softly, “the important thing is you’re okay now. And you are okay, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am, Mom. I swear, I’m fit as a fiddle—and besides, they say you’re not a real East Coaster until you’ve been mugged at least once.” Her lame attempt at lightening the mood went over like a lead balloon.

“I have a terrible feeling from all of this, Kallie. I—I want you to come home.

Back to Ohio.”

“Mom, are you serious?”

“I don’t like this. I don’t want to see something happen to you. My stomach is in knots and I just know that you’re in trouble there.”

“I’m not in trouble,” she said, wondering if perhaps her mother had a point. She hadn’t even told half of the real story, yet somehow her mom knew or sensed that there was more to it. “And besides, I’m staying at Hunter’s house and he’s taking care of me.

Good care.”

“You’re staying at his
house
?”

She’d said it as if this was perhaps worse news than the mugging.

“I am. He’s very protective and he’s making sure I’m safe and taken care of in every way.” After the words left her mouth, Kallie winced. She’d somehow forgotten just how traditional her parents were.

“I don’t like what I’m hearing, Kallie. You’re just barely out of school and now all of this has happened to you. I really want you to consider coming back to Ohio.”

“I’ll think about it, Mom.”

“That isn’t the place for you, honey. I’m so worried about you.”

“I swear, I’m going to be fine. I’ll be careful, I’ll hardly even leave the house.”

“Call me tomorrow, honey. Promise me.”

“I will. I love you, Mom. Please don’t worry about me, because I’m fine.”

Her mother didn’t say she’d stop worrying. All she said was that she loved her again before hanging up.

Just seconds after Kallie hung up with her mother, Hunter came into the room with an enigmatic look on his face. “I just got a strange text message,” he told her. “It said, ‘
did you get the script okay
?’ And it was from a number I didn’t recognize. So, being a man of moderate to average intelligence, I asked the person who they were. He said his name was Bryson Taylor. Which is funny, because that’s the guy who wrote the screenplay you pitched me last night.”

Kallie’s blood went cold. “Please don’t be mad at me. I was going to tell you—“

“Tell me what?” He looked at her with a hard expression.

“I was going to tell you about what I did after you went to sleep last night.”

Hunter wiped a hand across his mouth slowly. “You obviously took my phone.

And you called another man. I’m sure the rest is going to be even better.”

Kallie took a long, shuddering breath. “When you told me you had no interest in the screenplay, I decided that I needed to at least try and get someone to take a look at it.

I felt like I owed it to the writer to do my best to make something happen.”

“You owed it to the writer?” Hunter said. His expression was incredulous.

“Kallie, that script was sent to my offices, and you read it because I let you read it. If you owe anyone anything in this scenario, it’s me that you owe. You owe me a damn explanation as to why you think you have the right to do any of this. That was my script to either option, or pass on. I said pass. That doesn’t mean that you can then pick the thing up and make it your own pet project.”

She couldn’t even meet his gaze, because his eyes were so intense, boring into her—that to look at him now would be to risk getting into something beyond what she was ready for. She wasn’t ready to go to war right now.

“I apologize. I was going to tell you as soon as—“

“As soon as what?”

And then her cell began ringing. Kallie swallowed, looked down and saw the one name she didn’t want to see right now.

Max Weisman.

Hunter saw it as well, and his eyes grew huger than ever. “Why the hell is Max Weisman calling you?”

“I need to take this, Hunter.”

“What the heck is going on around here?”

“Please, just give me one second and then I’ll explain everything.”

“You better believe you’ll explain it, Kallie.”

She held up her hand to try and quiet him, then put the phone to her ear. Her hand was shaking. “Hello?”