Brian
I slumped back in my chair and plugged my earbuds into my phone. Maybe Katy Perry’s newest album would keep me from dying of boredom. I hated these meetings.
Once the music filled my ears, I breathed a small sigh. Much better. Nothing calmed my soul like Katy’s sexy voice. And she was so beautiful. I let my eyes drift shut and imagined her roaring for me in my own private serenade. Maybe she’d go out with me. One of the idiots in this room had to know how to get in touch with her people. As soon as they stopped talking—if they ever stopped—I’d ask. Hopefully they could do something useful for once.
A finger tapped me on the shoulder, but I ignored it.
“Brian!”
Sighing, I yanked the headphones out of my ears. Those moments of reprieve never lasted long enough. I opened my eyes to find the majority of my management team glaring at me. My father, popular film director Max Oliver, sat directly across the large conference table from me, looking as though he wanted to strangle me. Good.
This would be the last time I ever worked with my father. If it hadn’t been The Cinder Chronicles, I would never have taken the job in the first place. Family and business should never mix—especially not when it was my screwed-up family.
My new assistant, Scott, set a paper in front of me and then reached around me to pass the stack on to my co-star, Kaylee Summers. I groaned at the list of dates printed on the paper. Crumpling the schedule into a small ball, I leaned far back in my chair, aimed, and tossed. The makeshift basketball dropped into the wastebasket across the room without touching a single side—swish. “Ha! Two points!”
Holding up a hand for a high five, I turned to Kaylee. “Did you see that? Maybe I found my calling too early in life. I think I’ll try out for the Lakers next season.”
Kaylee gave me her usual disdainful look and left me hanging. Whatever. Scott would be good for one. I turned to him next. He glanced nervously around the room, but was ultimately too chicken to ignore my request and slapped my hand.
I laughed at the guy’s nerves. “Relax, Scotty. I’m the only one in this room that can fire you, so when in doubt, indulge me, not them. They won’t blame you.”
“Are you finished wasting all of our time?” my dad snapped.
Rage swept through me, as it often did when my father was around. I swiped Scott’s copy of the schedule and waved it around. “This stupid meeting is a waste of everyone’s time.”
My entire management team took great offense to my statement, but it was my agent, Joseph, who spoke up. “That is the outline for The Druid Prince publicity tour. You need to pay attention to it.”
“Why? That’s what Scotty’s for.” I threw my arm over my assistant’s shoulder. “This guy has mad scheduling skills—that’s why I hired him. He’s probably already got eight different backups of this list printed out and stashed away for emergencies. There’s no way he’d ever let me miss a meeting. Believe me, I tried my hardest to miss this one.”
Joseph sighed. “You’re here because your assistant can’t approve the schedule for you.”
“You need my approval?” I scoffed. “As if I have some kind of say in any of this?”
“Of course you do.”
I wanted to laugh, except it really wasn’t funny. I hadn’t had a say about anything since my first teen movie hit number one in the box office. Agents, managers, publicists, lawyers, image consultants, personal trainers, a million others… They controlled my life now—what I could and couldn’t wear, what I could and couldn’t eat, what functions I could and couldn’t attend, what I could and couldn’t say. Hell, they’d scheduled this entire publicity tour without once consulting me. What they’d handed me just now was an itinerary that was already set in stone.
Scanning the list, I saw that there were weeks of interviews, photo shoots, public appearances, movie premieres, guest appearances on both radio and TV talk shows. LA, New York, Chicago…
I met Joseph’s eyes and raised a brow into a challenging arch. “I’m sure you already have the flights and hotel rooms booked, so what the hell does it matter if I approve of any of this or not? What if I don’t approve of any of it? The Kenneth Long Show? That guy’s a total douche. I definitely don’t approve of that.”
Joseph grimaced, but his face settled into a look of grim determination. “The Kenneth Long Show is primetime network television. It’s the most popular talk show in existence. He has millions of viewers. You can’t pass up an interview with him because you don’t like him.”
“Fine, but what’s this Celebrity Gossip crap? They’re a damn tabloid.”
My publicist—also a total douche—cleared his throat and jumped in to defend the schedule. “They’re the largest tabloid in the world. If they like you, they can make you the most famous person in world, and if they don’t, they can turn you into the biggest joke to ever come out of Hollywood.”
“They’re already watching you, Brian,” my manager, Gary, added, scowling at me. “It’s better to work with them and get on their good side than have them plastering stories like this all over the media every week.”
Gary threw the latest copy of Celebrity Gossip down on the table and slid it to me. I read the caption and smirked. Getting Adrianna Pascal to come home with me last weekend had been the most worthwhile thing I’d done all year.
“You made out with world-famous rock star Kyle Hamilton’s girlfriend at his own birthday party.”
Heh. We did a lot more than make out that night. I looked around the room with big, innocent eyes. “Were they still together?”
“You broke off their damn wedding.”
I shrugged. “The guy’s an egotistical prick. Besides, if she really loved him, she wouldn’t have been all over me all night.”
My father finally lost it. “This is not the kind of press you need right now!” he roared. “You think you’re the first hot shot teen star to try and run with the big boys? You’re not! Hollywood sees new assholes like you every year. If you can’t get your shit together, your next big gig is going to be some where-are-they-now reality TV show twenty years from now.”
I glared at my father with more loathing than I’d thought physically possible. My dad had never respected me, never had faith in me. He made fun of every movie I ever did. He constantly said I couldn’t handle “playing with the big boys” ever since I told him I wanted to make my own way in the movie industry rather than just let him cast me in his movies. Now he was just waiting for me to fail so that he could throw it in my face.
“I’ve had enough of this bullshit.” I pushed my chair back from the conference table, crumpling the second schedule into another ball. This time I was too angry to concentrate, and my shot missed the trash can.
Before I could storm out of the meeting, Lisa, the executive producer of the film, and the only person in the room besides Scott I could actually stand, met me at the door and blocked my way.
“Brian,” she said, taking my hand. Her smile was completely patronizing, but I still softened to it. “We know you’re frustrated. You’ve had some bad luck with the paparazzi over the last year, but this press tour is important.”
Some bad luck? Ever since I was cast to play Cinder, I’d become the paparazzi’s new golden boy for the entire female market. They’d stuck to me constantly in order to sell millions of magazines to every woman in the country between the ages of twelve and sixty. They followed me everywhere. I couldn’t wipe my ass anymore without having it plastered on every magazine cover in America. I hadn’t had a moment’s peace in over a year.
“It’s important for all of us, Brian, but especially for you,” Lisa said. “You’ve been handed a gift with this part. Cinder is the role of a lifetime and you nailed it. Everyone, critics and the average moviegoers alike, is going to fall in love with your performance. If you play your cards right, you could have a shot at an Academy Award nomination.”
That made me pause. Joseph jumped on my hesitation. “She’s right, Brian. There’s been some buzz.”
Heads bobbed in agreement all around the conference table. Everyone smiled except for Kaylee, who probably couldn’t stand that I’d completely outshone her in this movie. There was definitely no Oscar buzz around her name.
Unable to help myself, I glanced at my father. The guy was one of the biggest names in Hollywood. As much as I hated the man, I could never help trying to earn his approval.
Dad met my gaze with a serious expression. “You did really well.”
The praise shocked me so much that I returned to my seat. “Thanks.”
My dad nodded. “This movie could earn you a lot of respect around town. It could transition you out of teen idol status and make you a serious A-list player.” He picked up the magazine off the table and added, “But Hollywood’s elite don’t like to let in people who bring this kind of drama with them. It doesn’t matter how good of an actor you are—if they don’t respect you or they think you’re going to cause them trouble, they’re not going to keep working with you.”
Unfortunately, he was right. If my team was serious about the amount of buzz I was getting for this performance, then I was going to have to step up my game a little. I was going to have to find a way to make people take me seriously. That wasn’t easy to do when the world considered me nothing but a yummy piece of eye candy.
“What am I supposed to do?” The antagonism was gone from my voice, but not the bitterness. “I can’t help it if all people want to talk about when they interview me is my abs and whether or not I’d ever consider dating a fan. It’s not my fault that I’m too damn good-looking to be taken seriously.”
“What if we get him involved in a charity?” someone asked.
“Too gimmicky,” someone else responded. “It’s been done too much. People would see right through it.”
“How about enrolling him in college?” another person suggested.
Yes! I could get on board with that. I’d always wanted to go to college. I’d been homeschooled with a private tutor my whole life. The closest thing I’d ever gotten to a real school was playing a high school student in the movies.
“Hey, yeah, I could do that. I could go to UCLA—go Bruins! I’d like to study English Literature.”
Joseph shook his head, sending me a sympathetic smile. “That’s a really good idea, but you wouldn’t have the time.”
“But we’ve wrapped on The Druid Prince,” I argued. “I don’t have anything going on right now. I could totally do it. I can take a couple years off and go to school. It’d keep me out of trouble.”
Everyone in the room collectively shook their heads.
“Why not?” It pissed me off that they were so quickly dismissing the idea. “What would prove that I’m responsible more than getting a college degree? I’m plenty smart enough. I’d get good grades.”
Lisa smiled, but it was full of pity. “Of course you would, but there are five books in The Cinder Chronicles series. When The Druid Prince hits theaters and breaks box-office records—which it will—the studio will green light the other four movies. They’re already working on the next script. You’ll be filming again by spring.”
My heart sank. I should have known I wouldn’t be allowed to do something as normal as go to college. I reached for my earbuds again. My opinion clearly wasn’t needed in this conversation, and whatever scheme they came up with, I was sure I’d need Katy to cheer me up.
“What if he got engaged?”
I dropped my phone before the music had a chance to play. “Excuse me?” I gaped in horror at my publicist and waited for the idea to be laughed out of the room, but no one objected. “You can’t be serious. Engaged?”
“Actually, it’s brilliant!” Joseph said. “This nation lives for a great romance. It satisfies the teeny boppers and it shows the world that Brian Oliver is growing up. That he’s ready to settle down from his bad-boy ways and start taking life seriously.”
I tried not to take offense to that. I’d always been serious about my career. I’d been working since I was a kid, and never had a chance to be a normal teenager because I’d been too busy taking life seriously.
“I’m too young.”
“It’s more romantic that way, and no one will blame you when you break it off later.”
“Who the hell do you suggest I get engaged to? Am I just supposed to go pluck some random girl off the street and give her a ring?”
“I’ll do it.”
The whole room went silent. Kaylee was texting on her phone and didn’t look up to meet anyone’s gaze, but she shrugged, knowing that she had the whole room’s attention. “This is my first movie. I could use the publicity.”
Fighting back my gag reflex, I cringed. If ever genetics had let down the human race, it was in the creation of Kaylee Summers. She was like those chocolate bunnies they sell at Easter—delicious on the outside, completely hollow on the inside, and too much of her was bound to make you sick to your stomach. It was bad enough I had to play nice with her at work. No way in hell could I keep up the pretense off set.
“I love it!” Joseph declared.
“Genius!” Gary agreed.
Even my father smiled enthusiastically and said, “It’s perfect.”
“Hell no! If I have to get engaged, it’s Katy Perry or no one.”
Kaylee looked up from her phone long enough to laugh. “You wish.”
“The only one dreaming here, babe, is you.”
Anger flashed in Kaylee’s eyes, but her smile turned predatory. “What’s the matter, baby? We hooked up once before, and I don’t remember you having any complaints then. Come on, do this with me. We could have some fun with it.”
I shuddered. “No way.”
Several people in the room sighed, and again it was left up to Lisa to coax me back into compliance. “Brian, think about it,” she urged. “A real-life romance between the two of you would generate millions in free publicity. Your fans would eat it up. It would be great for the film, and your career.”
“A real-life romance with her?” I repeated. “I think you’re overestimating my acting abilities, Lisa.”
That wiped the smug smile off Kaylee’s face. “Asshole.”
I returned the sentiment without shame. “Bitch.”
“Man up, Brian,” my dad interrupted. “This isn’t just about you. We all need this. This is my first dive into more serious films. If my lead actor could earn an Academy Award nomination, I could get any kind of job I wanted after this and not just action flicks.”
“It’s not like it has to be real,” Gary added. “And it won’t last forever. Just a couple of months being seen together in public, and then after the movie releases you guys can break it off. No harm done. You could get engaged fairly quickly and just tell people you dated in secret during the filming. Secret love affairs are exciting. The world will go crazy over it.”
Looking around the room, I felt the need to punch something. There was no way I was getting out of this meeting a single man. Kaylee smirked at the defeat in my eyes. “I’ll make us a reservation somewhere nice. Oh, and my ring better be platinum and at least three karats.”