He sat down across from her before he started to talk calmly.
“I just want to be clear. What exactly do you plan to tell the press?”
“That he asked me to blow him.”
“Did you feel threatened?”
“No. It was just creepy for an old guy to hit on me,” Kristen said.
“Had you ever met him before?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter. If I make the allegation, they’ll believe me. I bet he’s done it before, and others will come out in support of me.”
David considered what to say next, but he rejected the first three ideas that jumped into his mind. When he was in high school, his best friend, Tami Glade, had told him that his first thought was ALWAYS wrong. She said he had to stop and think it through before opening his big mouth. Luckily, David had taken that advice to heart.
“You would destroy a man to get a role in a movie?” he asked.
“What does it matter? He should just retire. This won’t hurt him in the least.”
David had heard enough.
“Remember when you had to sign that confidentiality agreement before you could become my PA?”
“Yeah, so what? This has nothing to do with you,” Kristen bristled.
‘Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that you want to hijack the launch of a very major and expensive movie. And that you’re doing it solely for your own personal gain,’ he thought but did not say. Instead …
“There was another piece of paper you had to sign. The one that allowed you to be videoed while you were with me.”
David watched as the penny dropped. He was fascinated by the range of emotions that crossed her face. For his craft, he would have to remember and practice those faces. Finally, she smiled.
“Maybe I should just blow you.”
‘Eff to the Hell, NO!’ he thought.
He managed to bark out a fake laugh as he went to the door to get Frank.
“Go confirm that everything’s ready for tonight,” David told her as if nothing had happened.
His plan was to get her as far away from him as he could. Hence, the busywork.
“Sure thing,” she said as she left the suite.
“Is she going to hijack one of your press events?” Frank asked.
“No, but you need to reach out to Grant’s people. They have to get him in hand. Kristen had a point. If she came forward, others would surely follow.”
“What really happened?”
“What she said. Grant asked her for some oral. While I personally don’t think he harassed her, it was an unwelcome advance. In this day and age, he would be raked over the coals and never work again,” David shared.
“Maybe we should help her do it right,” Frank suggested.
“I would agree if she hadn’t made her little extortion offer. She said that if Chubby Feldman were to give her a role in his next feature, she would make it all go away.”
On reflection, David had another worry tickle the back of his brain.
“That also assumes I believe she would back off permanently instead of keeping the whole incident in reserve. She could just pull it out again the next time she wanted something from Chubby, me, or you.
“This also means she needs to be distanced from us and then reassigned as soon as possible,” David concluded.
“You should fire her,” Frank said with some heat.
“On what grounds? That I’m helping cover-up for a fellow actor?”
Frank was the professional who usually kept David out of trouble. Now, he chuckled when he saw his client was a step ahead of him. If she was willing to trash Grant, what mechanism was in place to prevent her from doing the same to David?
Before the day was out, David would have a word with Kent. He was tolerant of most of his staff’s antics and quirks. But having his PA crash and burn the release of a movie as big as Devil May Care was in the ‘fire them all’ category, Kent included.
This was the part of being in the public eye that drove David crazy. Because of his celebrity, he had to watch everything he said and pretty much everything he did. That was why Frank had insisted that he handle all of David’s social media. It only took one misstep for half the country to hate you.
If doing this media tour wasn’t part of his commitment to the movie, David would gladly have passed. He was currently enrolled at USC and was on both the football and baseball teams. Thankfully, his college life was somewhat insulated from all this.
David would do what was asked of him, but this was just the beginning of his events for this coming summer. After the Bond film, his rom-com Love Letters would hit theaters; its release had been delayed a year to take advantage of the PR around David’s roles in the James Bond and Star Academy movies. Then, over the Fourth of July weekend, the second Star Academy film would be released.
He predicted that his life was about to get crazy.
◊◊◊
Chapter 1
David
They pulled up to the BBC One studios for the James Bond special. Frank got out first and hurried inside ahead of David. The PR guy wanted to talk to the producers to get a rundown on the questions they planned to ask.
David took a moment to gather himself because he’d been a college student just a few days ago. It had been over five months since he’d been on a movie set, and he hadn’t really thought about this life since he walked onto campus.
“Nervous?” Kristen asked.
David glanced over and was surprised to see genuine concern.
“Not really. I’m one of those rare people who isn’t bothered by something like this.”
“I would be terrified. I mean, you are doing this live, and it will be rebroadcast worldwide. How do you do it?”
He thought about it for a moment.
“I think I misspoke. I am nervous, and I probably have all the fears of what might go wrong that you could guess. And it doesn’t help that this will be live because that means only one take. But I’ve learned that you can’t let self-doubt stop you from doing your best,” David explained.
“But how do you get past the self-doubt?” Kristen asked.
He gave her one of those smiles that earned him so much money.
“It’s not easy at first. Like anything, you have to work at it, or at least I did. My mind still goes in circles when I have to make a decision, and I can be a terrible procrastinator when I know that I don’t really have to decide yet. But when I do decide, I commit to it,” he said and thought of another way to put it.
“My uncle taught me a valuable lesson: how to be a man of my word. Doing that can seem like a double-edged sword. If something better comes along after you’ve given your word, it can suck. But you do what was asked because you said you would.”
“But …”
David held up his hand to slow Kristen down.
“The other side, besides the benefit of people knowing they can rely on you, is that it takes the pressure off. When I signed to do this movie, I was also obligated to do the press junket to help promote it. So, there’s no getting out of it.”
“You said you still get nervous.”
He nodded his agreement.
“I do. A good example is that I usually throw up before football games because of my nerves, but I simply move past it when I set foot on the field. I step into the role and play it. I refuse to let my doubts stop me. If I did, I would never have accomplished everything that I have,” he said.
“But I’m constantly scared of stuff,” she admitted.
David really looked at her and could see that she was serious.
“Admitting it to yourself is the first step in getting past your fear.”
He barked out a laugh when she rolled her eyes at him.
“Sorry. My uncle’s a farmer by day and a psychologist at heart. I must have been channeling him,” David admitted, which caused Kristen to give him a slight smile. “It takes a conscious effort to push past things that make us uncomfortable. To learn to do that, you have to recognize when it’s happening. When it does, stop and ask yourself: Will I let this stop me … or not?”