Ace slumped into the chair next to Ridley and started muttering questions at him.
I rubbed a hand over my forehead.I turned my chair away for a moment.I faced the windows behind my desk.I wasn’t seeing the city at all.Just the inside of my own head.
Solving the mystery of who was doing this was only one thing.We also needed to handle the crisis.That was my specialty.I was going to have to come up with something.
“Keaton,” I said on impulse.“Sit over here.”
My wide-eyed secretary scrambled to his feet and moved to the chair in front of my desk.He’d brought a pen and notebook with him.I was getting to learn that he was always organized.We’d thrown him to the wolves with the coffee machine that first day.By the second morning, he had been an expert user.
“We need to get out ahead of this,” I told him.“I want to organize a press meet and greet.”
“H-how would I do that?”Keaton stammered.He was nervous.He didn’t want me to shout at him again.
I held back a groan of disgust with myself for scaring him like that in the first place.
“Call our press contacts once we’ve settled on a time and place,” I told him.“It has to be soon.And – Keaton.Where are your glasses?”
He blinked at me.“I’m not wearing them today.”
“Why?”
“I… have contacts in?”
I grunted with displeasure and focused my eyes on the table.On my own tapping fingers.
“Do you prefer it when I wear my glasses?”he asked.“… Sir?”
“Yes.”I paused a second.No explanation.Let him read into it what he would.
Probably that I was a control freak who needed everything to always remain the same.
So long as he didn’t guess that it was because he looked so cute wearing them.So cute I wanted to eat him up.
Preferably spread right there over his desk.
I cleared my throat.
“As I was saying,” I said.“We need to organize it soon.”
Keaton
I adjusted my glasses, pushing them further up my nose, and stood outside the office doors.For the first time since starting here, I felt real fear about going inside.Not just nerves – fear.
Because we’d spent the entire day yesterday trying to get ahead of and fix the PR disaster that was Ridley Angus stumbling out of a club drunk, and I’d been sweating the entire time, absolutely sure that someone was going to figure out I had been there.
Once they figured that out, they were surely going to ask why.And if anyone got any kind of sense that I had been filming Ridley, then I was not only going to be fired.I was probably going to be sued.
It didn’t matter that the footage was filmed at a slight angle to mine: anyone with half a brain cell could figure out that I could have set up another phone on a tripod or simply held it out from my body at an angle to capture two videos at once.That was how close the shots were.Whoever had filmed Ridley and then leaked it must have been stoodright next to me.Or, at least, maybe somewhere slightly behind and to my left.I hadn’t seen anyone – I’d been so focused on filming it myself.
Now I was kicking myself for not paying a lot more attention.
I swallowed and reached for the door handle, then hesitated again.I didn’t have to go in.This job was a fake, anyway.I didn’t really want to work here, not for the job itself.Being a secretary wasn’t on my list of dreams.I could just turn around and leave.Filming in secret was beginning to feel like too much of a risk, and if I wasn’t filming, I had no reason to be here.I could have been out there applying for real film jobs.
Although, it was pretty satisfying to insert things into Mr.Harvey’s calendar and make everything fit, like working on a puzzle.And it was fun organizing presentations and printouts for him so that everything was where he needed it.I didn’t even mind taking calls and emails for him.It made me feel useful.Being out of work so often as a filmmaker, that was kind of an unusual feeling.And this was a steady-paying job.
Simply being around Mr.Harvey, for all his surliness and one-syllable words, even felt like a treat.
I shook my head.The fact that my boss was hot as hell was not a good enough reason to stay working for him.But, still…
