G. Younger
A Better Man Story
A Better Man - Book 2
Dedication
To XofDallas, for his unwavering support, advice, and counsel. And whose attempts to muzzle
some of my crazier ideas and keep my feet somewhat grounded in reality sometimes worked.
Our Fondest Memories
And to Precious, who put the ’tude in attitude.
Frank Sinatra can eat his heart out; he’s got nothing on Precious.
Prologue
David
David had arrived in London earlier in the day because tomorrow would be the World Premiere of his James Bond movie, Devil May Care. The event would kick off with a televised show to celebrate the twenty-fifth James Bond movie from EON films. They planned to have all the men who played James in the past in attendance, three of whom were in their nineties.
They would also have many of the cast members, including the Bond girls, on the show. David had been asked to do an interview on the BBC. They were doing a special on the franchise, and he’d been slotted into the coveted final twenty-minute segment. He had Frank Ingram with him in his hotel suite. They were supposed to be prepping for the interview. Instead, they were dealing with the fallout from their flight there.
“I want to expose him for the pig that he is! He asked me if I wanted to blow him in the lavatory, for heaven’s sake,” Kristen Todd loudly complained.
“And I said ‘No’ for you,” David retorted, peeved.
Lexi Andon, David’s usual personal assistant, or PA, had bailed on him to go work for Ben Cowley, who was filming in Paris this summer. Ben had worked with David on his three Star Academy movies and had also starred in Love Letters, a movie David both acted in and was part owner of.
So, when Lexi called and said Ben needed a PA, David gave his blessing. Besides, for all the work she’d done for him, she deserved a summer trip to Paris. Now, he was regretting that generosity.
At the moment, David also was planning the demise of Kent Crain, the man in charge of assigning PAs and personal managers in his wealth management company. Kent had a pool of people to select from that ranged from a former PA of David’s to others he considered friends. Instead, Kent sent him Kristen.
David suspected that Kent was sleeping with her because she had zero experience doing this type of work. Kristen was H O T hot, and she had previously been a wannabe actress. David had heard that Kent had met her at some bar and tried to launch her career. He called in several favors to get her auditions, but the girl was a bull in a china shop.
The trip had started off with her bitching about having to drive herself to the airport. Since she was Academy Award-winning actor David A. Dawson’s PA, she felt that she should also get a limo. Then she threw such a fit about not flying first class that David paid to make that happen; he was just lucky there was a seat available.
Before they’d even gotten off the ground, Kristen went total fangirl and started asking for autographs. The flight was full of people from the movie, so she felt she had a captive audience and planned to make the most of it.
David was seated across the aisle from Grant Quigley. He was older—probably mid-sixties—and had been in movies for the past forty years. The two of them had gotten to know each other during downtimes while filming. Grant had a wicked sense of humor that always seemed to draw a crowd.
The two men were getting settled when Kristen appeared.
“You’re Grant Quigley. You played M in the movie. Could I get your autograph?”
“Kristen, leave him alone and go sit down,” David ordered. “Once we land and have gotten settled in, I’m sure Grant will be more than happy to give you an autograph.
“That’s okay. Many of my fans want something to remember meeting me by,” Grant said to play it off.
David’s least favorite aspect of his fame was that people would just come up and impose themselves on him. If this had been a fellow flyer or a flight attendant, he would have just ignored it. But this was his PA pestering a fellow actor.
“Do you have something to write on?” Grant asked.
Kristen gave him a stupid look.
“No … I … uh,” she stammered.
“Do you have a pen?” he followed up with.
“I’ll be right back,” she said as she hurried back to her seat.
“I can tell her to forget it,” David offered.
“No, don’t. Like I said, I’m used to it.”
“I know, but she works for me,” David said to voice his inner thoughts.
“What happened to that cute one you were banging?” Grant asked.
While it hadn’t been a secret that Lexi had hooked up with David during filming, he wasn’t about to share details with this old horndog.
“Bite me. You’re on your own with Kristen,” David fired back with a grin.
David looked back to see what was taking her so long and about died when he saw his PA accosting Chubby Feldman.
“Kristen, get over here. I’ll find you a pen,” David hissed.
He stood up and opened the overhead where he’d put his carry-on. He pulled out a pen and handed it to her.
“I still don’t have anything for him to sign,” she whined.
She was on his last nerve as he rooted around until he found a notepad.
“Honey, do you want a memory that will help you remember today?” Grant asked.
Kristen nodded vigorously that she did.
“Why don’t we wait until the seatbelt sign goes off, and then we could find a quiet spot so you could blow me?”
Grant asked for oral sex like he was having a normal conversation, and his request was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Eff me, just sign the damned autograph,” David barked.
“You don’t have to get all territorial with your PAs,” the older man said as he held up his hands like he thought David would punch him.
He signed the autograph, and Kristen made a little happy bounce and then proceeded to harass everyone else.
“Dude, that was not cool,” David complained.
“Back in the day, that worked eight out of ten times,” Grant said to justify it.
“What about now?” David couldn’t resist asking.
“Two out of ten, but it’s still worth it to try,” he assured David.
Now, in the hotel room, Frank was carefully trying to talk David’s PA out of her attempt to start her own personal #MeToo moment. She quite obviously planned to use the press exposure that David and the James Bond movies were sure to generate to help her start it with a bang. Of course, the last thing that the film’s launch needed was that kind of press.
But David also wasn’t in the mood to help cover up Grant’s boorish behavior. Nor was he at all happy with Kent for foisting this particular female disaster on him in the first place. The one big difference, in this case, was that Grant had no influence over Kristen because she didn’t work for him.
David could see that his PR guy was about to burst a blood vessel, so he knew that he’d better step in before Frank said or did something that would escalate things and turn this into a mess.
“What do you hope to gain from all this?” David asked the girl.
Without even batting an eye, she said, “I want a role in Chubby Feldman’s next movie.”
David had to kick Frank out of the room before he strangled her. In David’s mind, it only took one person like Kristen to totally derail the whole #MeToo movement. Brave women, like his friend Halle James, had stepped forward and faced down a sexual predator. She’d done so knowing that it might very well get her blacklisted, and she might never work in Hollywood again.
Kristen was only doing this to further her nonexistent career.
David went and got her a bottle of water and tissues because she had started to fake-cry.