Alan tapped on his phone with a stylus. “I’m sending a contract to your agent’s office. I’ll need it back in two business days or we move onto plan B.”
I didn’t ask what plan B was. It was likely just a sales tactic anyway.
Willa
It had been three weeks since Doug’s meeting with Alan, and I was feeling something I wasn’t used to. Guilt. Doug was legally bound to this thing. If he backed out now, Alan would make sure he never worked at anything again. And I still hadn’t told Doug about the extra little detail. The one about starting a relationship with me.
I could read Alan’s mind as he looked between the two of us at that lunch meeting, analyzing, imagining us as a couple. He was going to be like that the whole time, and I didn’t like it one bit. Doug would hate it.
We finished filming Strength Warrior’s tenth season today, and they threw me a going away party with cake and uncomfortable speeches I had to smile through. It was hard to know what to say at an event that was not quite retirement and not quite congrats on being let go. I was proud of my work on Strength Warriors. I wasn’t embarrassed by it, but if it were up to me, I would have liked to leave with a lot less fanfare.
Afterwards, I grabbed Doug before he ducked off into his trailer. “We need to talk. Meet me at the koi pond in a half hour.”
He shook his head. “I’m starving and I don’t want to spend another minute here. You want to go grab something to eat?”
All we’d eaten since breakfast was cake. And he was right. It was time to get out of there.
It didn’t take long for our secret collaboration to become everyone else’s business. Thane, our director, was not known for keeping his mouth shut, and he’d already spread it to the whole cast and crew. Chad sulked for days until he heard I was being written out of Strength Warriors. Then he went back to gloating. Doug and I being seen in public was no longer a problem.
“Sure. I’ll meet you at your car.”
He gave me a small salute and stepped into his trailer. I went to mine and packed up everything I had accumulated over the past few years. It was more than I expected, and I considered texting Doug to let him know I’d need a few more minutes when he knocked on my trailer door. I knew it was him. No one else knocks that politely.
I opened it and moved aside so he could come in, gesturing to the mess. “Sorry, just trying to gather everything up.”
“Don’t you have an assistant for this?”
I smacked his arm. We both knew my assistant gave up on me a long time ago. Once you tell someone you don’t need them often enough, they stop asking.
Doug relaxed in my curved orange chair. It looked intimidating until you sat in it, and then you never want to leave. It came with the trailer. Maybe I’d ask Randy if I could keep it.
I continued to search through drawers, packing up the makeup I wanted and tossing the rest in the little trash can that was quickly filling up.
“So, what’s up?” he asked.
“What?”
“You said you wanted to talk.”
I rubbed the back of my neck as I met his eyes in the mirror above my sink. The trailer was tiny, but it felt smaller with his intelligent eyes gazing into mine. Not here. I couldn’t tell him in here.
“It’s show stuff. I’ll explain while we eat. Where do you want to go?”
He shrugged. “Andy’s?”
It was a place with great food and customers who didn’t bat an eye at celebrity sightings. “Perfect.”
He helped me carry out my things, and we loaded them into the back of my SUV.
“You sad?” he asked.
I closed my trunk with a satisfying whump. “I’m not going to cry, if that’s what you’re asking.” I was sad, but not in the way he thought. I’d been chomping at the bit to do something else for a while. But that didn’t mean I liked hearing I wasn’t needed anymore. It was humiliating, in a way. Suddenly, I felt bad for my poor, ignored assistant.
Parking would be practically non-existent at Andy’s, so we left my SUV in the studio lot and walked over to Doug’s Lexus. He could drive me back to my SUV later.
I watched him carefully click in his seat belt and check all three mirrors before backing out of a mostly empty parking lot. I should have known this about him. The guy drove like an old lady.
“I’ve been thinking of getting a Jeep next when my lease is up.”
