One Night for Love (18 page)

He was going to watch me leave? Make sure I was gone? I didn’t like being ordered around, and I definitely didn’t like being supervised as though I was a child.

“I can handle it,” I called and shoved the stick into reverse, grinding the gears.

“Sounds like you can handle it,” he said and smirked.

“I can,” I yelled. My heart hammered in my chest and a tiny bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck. I looked out the windows. A small crowd had gathered on the edges of the road. All of them watched me. They stood there and laughed at the hick in L.A.

I pressed the accelerator, and my Jeep jumped forward and died. The crowd around me laughed.

“Are you kidding me?” the guy yelled from where he stood. He held up his hands and smiled, looking at his audience. “No surprise she almost hit me, this chick can’t even drive.”

My face flushed red and my breathing shortened. Humiliation carved a giant hole in my chest.

“I can so drive,” I yelled. “I just finished driving two thousand miles.”

“Oooo,” he said and raised both of his eyebrows and that smirk, that god-awful smirk, crawled across his face. He took four steps forward and bent in front of my Jeep.

“No wonder!” he yelled to the crowd as if he’d just found the answer to life’s biggest question. “She’s from
Kansas
!” He nearly bent double with laughter. Laughter directed at me, my driving, and where I was from burst through the crowd.

“Yo, Dorothy, you a little lost?” he called, amping up the crowd.

I slammed my foot onto the clutch, then turned the ignition on my Jeep and fired up the engine. I wouldn’t give any of them an opportunity to laugh again.

“My name’s not Dorothy.” I stared into his eyes. I would never forget that face. I would never let anyone like him ever make me feel this humiliated again. “It’s Lane,” I yelled. I slammed the accelerator and my tires squealed as I laid rubber to pavement. I flipped him the bird and hoped I would never, ever, meet that jerk again.

Dillon

“Can you believe she flipped me the bird?” I called out to Ryan, my costar on the film. He walked beside me toward my trailer.

“Bitch nearly runs your ass down, and then you’re the one that gets flipped off?” Ryan looked at me over his sunglasses. “Nice tits, though,” he added. Ryan was always willing to notice a good rack.

“Yeah, nice tits,” I called. “Later.” I laughed off the whole thing and bounded up the steps to my trailer. I was a damn good actor. I slammed shut the trailer door.

What the hell!

My heart exploded in my chest and I scrubbed my hand over my forehead and through my hair. I’d seriously almost bitten it because of some chick from Kansas.
Kansas!
That wasn’t how I was supposed to go out. Not the legacy I wanted to leave. I could see the headline in
Variety
now: Dillon MacAvoy Tornadoed by Kansas Driver. I paced up and down the length of my trailer. I’d definitely never thought I’d die because of some tourist who didn’t know how to drive.

But those eyes. I was pissed, but I wouldn’t forget those eyes. Fire and ice—her look burned. The color was ocean blue with flecks of green and brown that glimmered in the setting sun. Good thing I’d never have to see that face again. Wow. And that tight little body under a tank top. She definitely didn’t look like she was from Kansas.

“Dillon? Baby?”

I spun around. Denise climbed the steps of my trailer. She was pulling the halter string over her shoulder. Her tits were huge, but they were seriously fake.

“You want me to make you feel better?” A coy smile wrapped around her lips as she played with the snap button on her short shorts. Denise was easy. A little too easy.

I didn’t feel it. I didn’t really want it. I’d already tapped it a few too many times. She was getting the wrong idea. The idea that we were regular, that we were a thing. We weren’t regular and we didn’t have a thing—I didn’t want either.

I turned away from her. “Thanks, babe. Not now.” I headed toward the back of my trailer. She’d get the hint and return to her double-banger on the other side of set, or better yet, she’d head home. She’d gotten a little too clingy in the last week. Monogamy, relationships—not my scene.

The trailer door slammed shut and Denise was gone. Good. It was time to start hitting something new, something different. I didn’t want Denise to get the idea that I would ever settle down. I didn’t have the time or the inclination. I was too busy taking care of my little brother and my career. Plus, settling down with one woman didn’t go with my image, and my “team” had spent a lot of time cultivating my image. An image that was supposed to make me the next big box-office sensation. An image that wasn’t too far from the truth. An image that was easy for me to maintain as long as I continued with the never-ending string of fabulous-looking women who wanted to hang on to my arm.

My phone beeped and I slid it from my back pocket. Webber’s name flashed across the screen.

“Hey, man,” I said. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” Webber’s tone sounded more serious than usual. “What’s up, is I need an answer on those four offers you have for those films. If you don’t read the scripts and tell me which film you want to do within the next seventy-two hours, the studios are going to pull all the offers.”

I sat on the edge of the couch. There was a two-million-dollar offer attached to each of those scripts. I ran my hand through my hair. That money could take care of me and my brother for a long while. I couldn’t let this kind of opportunity slip away.

“Shit, I don’t know,” I said. The muscle under my right eye twitched.

“Have you read them?”

I bit my bottom lip and cocked my eyebrow upward. I hated reading scripts. “No, I haven’t.”

“Has your reader read them?”

Webber didn’t know? My gaze bounced around my trailer. My eyes landed on the stack of thirty scripts next to the couch. I had the same thirty scripts at home.

“No.” I sighed. “The reader is gone.”

“Again? The reader is gone again?” I heard Webber cover the phone. “Get me Human Resources next,” he yelled. “Dude, you have to stop sleeping with your readers. You bang them and then they quit. If you won’t read the scripts, then someone has to read them.”

“They get all gooey and clingy, and man, I can’t be around that shit. Find me a guy.”

“Working on it, but until I do, you have
got
to read the scripts. These are major action films with some serious money offers. The Steve Legend script is at the top of the pile. You do realize what starring in a Steve Legend film would do for your career?”

I leaned back on my couch, covered my forehead with my hand, and closed my eyes. A Steve Legend film would
make
my career. He was box-office gold in action films.

“Legend is looking for the next big action star. That’s who he wants as his costar for this film. Every actor in town between the age of eighteen and twenty-four is begging for this role, and you have the offer. You! Legend came to you.” Webber’s tone was hard-edged but had a tremor of panic. “Am I making myself clear on this?”

"Yeah, I got it,” I mumbled.

“You’ve worked too hard to let an opportunity like this slip through your fingers—read the script.”

“That’s what I pay you ten percent for, isn’t it?” I said. Why the hell did I have to read scripts? I wanted someone else to tell me if the script was good or not.

“I do read the scripts that come with offers. Every one of them. But, man, I can’t accept an offer if
you
don’t read the script and want to do it. I read the Legend script it’s good, but you have to meet with Legend and you can’t do that until you read the script.”

Webber was right. I settled back onto the couch and slung my feet up onto the coffee table and crossed them.

“What about your brother?” Webber asked.

“Too busy,” I said, “working
your
agency.”

“Right.” Webber’s voice trailed off. “Okay, I’m sending you coverage from our intern on the Steve Legend film. Read the coverage. This is a big movie, man.”

“Yeah, okay.” I wanted to work. I needed to work. I just didn’t want to have to read five scripts a night to be able to work.

“Also we need to schedule a call with Boom Boom. I want to go over publicity for the premiere of
Mission Ranger
. It’s your first film, man, we got to get as many eyeballs on you as we can. Get those teen queens salivating. They buy tickets, baby! Those girls see a movie two or three times. That is your audience. If they love you? You are golden. You only get your first time one time, right, my man?” Webber laughed. “And you never forget it."

“Damn.” I shook my head. “That seems like forever ago.”
Mission Ranger
had been my first role in a film. The shoot had wrapped in February and the film would finally premiere in July.

"So first read the Legend script, then we’ll schedule the meeting with Legend, and we’ll also schedule a call with Boom Boom for this week. Got it?” Webber asked.

I nodded. I had my orders from my agent, and before the end of the week I would get more orders from my publicist, Boom Boom. I sighed. These were good problems to have. I was a working actor. A working actor making money who could take care of his kid brother.

“Get me a reader,” I said. “One that will stick. Someone ugly or with a penis.”

“Dillon, you’re running thin over here. You’ve fired four in three months.”

“Just find me one,” I hammered into the phone. “Preferably one I don’t want to have sex with.”

ONE NIGHT FOR LOVE

Maggie Marr

Copyright © 2014

All Rights Reserved.

978-1-62051-121-3

AGENCY INFORMATION

NLA Digital LLC

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Please respect writers and their work by buying their books from legitimate sources. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.