“David’s made it clear that he wants to focus on his family and school for now. After college, he’ll see if there’s still interest in him as an actor. Then again, he might just play football or baseball,” Lexi explained.
“You can let him know that we’ll miss him on the big screen, and he needs to hurry up and get back to acting,” Cassie said.
“I’ll tell him, but remember, you won’t be missing him for long,” Lexi assured her. “The three movies are due out this year. Starting with Devil May Care this Memorial Day, followed by the second in the Star Academy series around the fourth of July. The final film in the Star Academy trilogy will be out around Christmastime.”
“What about you? Will you still be David’s personal assistant while he’s in college?”
Lexi wondered that herself because everything had been perfect while filming. She’d made herself indispensable to him. Lexi organized and catered to his every need so he could focus on his craft. He’d said many times that she was the best PA he’d ever had.
Looking back, Lexi had to admit to herself that hooking up probably hadn’t been the best decision. Lexi had found herself in David’s bed most nights. In her fantasy world, that would have continued, but he’d made it clear from the start that it didn’t mean anything.
Lexi had made the mistake of announcing that she loved him during a particularly nice orgasm a week ago. After that, David had pulled back.
He’d claimed that she probably should head back to LA since they were wrapping up the shoot. She’d found herself on a flight home the next day.
Kent, her boss, had been happy to have her back. He wanted to dump their problem child, Gwen Larkin, back in her lap. Gwen was mentally unstable but was currently a key figure in a highly rated TV series. One of the benefits of going overseas with David was that she’d been able to fob the nutjob off onto one of her colleagues. Gwen required almost 24/7 babysitting to keep her from doing crazy stuff that would get her in the gossip rags.
So far, Lexi had fended Kent off by saying she needed a vacation.
“I’m back in LA. I’m sure I’ll still help David out as needed, but I’ll have other clients to keep me busy.”
The alternative Kent had given her was time off to go to college to get her degree. The company did more than PA work; they also helped celebrities manage all aspects of their lives. To do that effectively, she could really use a college degree.
Lexi’s long-term plan was to get into management at a studio, so she leaned towards going to school. If nothing else, it would make her parents happy.
“Thank you for stopping by today and giving us the scoop on what David A. Dawson is up to. Maybe you could talk him into visiting with us when he gets back into town,” Cassie said.
’I doubt he’ll show up,’ Lexi thought but plastered a smile on her face.
“I’ll let him know.”
Cassie seemed happy, so Lexi was able to make her escape. David was going to owe her for this one.
Chapter 1
David
Tim, Wolf, and David were sixteen hours into their seventeen-hour flight from New Zealand to Norman, Oklahoma, home to the University of Oklahoma. That was where they planned to go to school and play football.
“Could you imagine if we’d tried to do this via a commercial flight?” Tim asked.
“My luck, I would’ve had some little kid behind me, either screaming or kicking my seat the whole way,” Wolf replied.
Their original flight to New Zealand had been a nightmare. Tim and Wolf had flown out in June, nearly three months before David arrived, to help set up and start filming the last two films in the Star Academy trilogy. David had been in Europe shooting the latest James Bond offering. Without David along, they’d had to fly commercial. For the flight home, the studio had sprung for a private jet.
“I don’t think they allow rug-rats in first class,” David said with a bit of a smirk.
“Whatever,” Wolf said, not taking the bait.
David had gotten his two best friends jobs with the Star Academy production crew. The financial windfall was enough for both Tim and Wolf to decide to gray-shirt and enroll for the spring semester instead of the fall. They’d had a lot more free time than David and had been able to enjoy traveling all over Australia and New Zealand.
The copilot emerged from the cockpit.
“The tower in Norman wanted to let you know that Coach Michaels will be there to meet you. I let them know we’re still on schedule.”
“What time is it here?” Tim asked.
The copilot looked at his watch.
“It’s nineteen hours behind Auckland ... that would make it two-thirty, local time,” he said and then went back up front.
“We didn’t rate the head coach when we came for our recruiting trip. Why do you think he’s meeting us today?” Wolf asked.
David had caught that, too. One possibility was that their Heisman-winning quarterback, Hayden Walsh, had announced plans to go pro. The coach might be greeting them to jumpstart David on his quest to lead the Sooners as next year’s quarterback. David had been rated the number one recruit his senior year and had decided on Oklahoma specifically to win national championships.
But in the back of his mind, he didn’t think the head coach would be there when one of his staff could have done the job. Oh, well, he would find out soon enough.
“Before we left, I got confirmation we got a triple in Headington Hall,” Tim said.
“I got that too. Did you get yours?” Wolf asked David.
David shrugged.
“I’m not sure. Lexi handled that stuff.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but why did she go home a week early?” Tim asked.
Lexi was David’s PA and acted as his gatekeeper, sometimes to his detriment. She’d pissed off his friends more than once when she’d stopped them from ‘bothering’ him. Tim and Wolf had admitted to each other, though, that with the compressed filming schedule, David had been run ragged. He’d been lucky if he got five hours of sleep on any given evening.
It wasn’t that David was afraid to work hard. He’d put in more hours than anyone he knew of during high school to become an elite quarterback and baseball player. He was almost invariably up at the crack of dawn, hitting the pavement running when most everyone else was snug in their bed.
But the past half year had been nonstop. If Lexi hadn’t been taking care of him, David didn’t know how he would have survived. She’d made sure he was where he needed to be when he needed to be there, and she’d been tasked by David and others, including the director, with keeping all distractions away from him. That sometimes meant that his friends and family were blocked in their efforts to get ahold of him.
David grinned as he reminisced about the time when Lexi had learned that her gatekeeper duties didn’t apply to his mom. All his friends loved his mom but knew that you never crossed her. In David’s junior year, she’d actually dragged his former best friend, Alan, out of the stands by his ear when he’d defied her.
It hadn’t taken long for everyone to figure out that if they really had to talk to David, they should have his mom call. Lexi had even interrupted filming one day when she’d called. That Lexi was more afraid of David’s mom than of Chubby Feldman, the legendary action director who’d filmed the James Bond movie, said a lot about David’s mom. When Chubby had started to object, Lexi simply told him it was David’s mom. They’d been lucky Chubby found it amusing.
“We were almost done, and she’d done such a good job that I decided to reward her and let her go home early,” David explained.
Tim and Wolf looked at each other.
“I call bullshit,” Wolf said.
“He’s right. It was more than that, because you were lost without her to boss you around,” Tim agreed.