“I want her,” Gretchen repeated, looking up at Teddy. “I want her in my movie. What’s her name?”
He almost said her stage name and then caught himself at the last moment. “Bee Hobbes. But you haven’t even seen her act yet,” he protested weakly.
“Do you think she has a reel up on her website?” Gretchen asked. “I’ll Google her.”
Teddy had a sudden, queasy vision of her Googling Bee Hobbes and somehow landing upon Bianca von Honey. And Uncle Ray-Ray’s.
“No need to Google,” he said quickly. “I’ve worked with her before and she’s brilliant. But maybe we should have some other backup options, in case she can’t...”
“No, it needs to be her,” Gretchen said, shaking her head, looking down at the picture again. “I want a degree of edginess; I want there to be something dangerous in the way the actors play Pearl’s script.”
Pearl Purkiss was the screenwriter forDuke the Halls—and Gretchen Young’s girlfriend—and was in Christmas Notch now, preparing for a movie that didn’t currently have a female lead. “We could find another edgy person,” Teddy attempted valiantly, “if we just take a quick look at the other folder—”
“I hope,” Gretchen said coolly, “that you’re not balking because she’s plus-size?”
“What? No!” Teddy worked with Bee all the time! She was gorgeous and filthy and great for business! But she couldn’t be in a chaste-as-hell Christmas movie. For the flippingHopeChannel. What if she was recognized? What if Teddy Ray Fletcher was revealed to be a purveyor of porn and thenpoofwent this fledgling Hopeflix partnership and his son the artist had to be a barista two years too early?
“I just think that we should maybe pick some alternates in case she’s... busy,” Teddy finally said.
“If we don’t get her, then I don’t even know,” Gretchen said, closing her eyes in a way that sent alarm bells ringing through him. Alarm bells that shrieked,Keep Gretchen happy so you can keep Hopeflix interested.“I already lost Winnie. Another disappointment so soon...”
The alarm bells got louder.
Would it really be so bad?Teddy asked himself desperately. Would it really be so dangerous to have Bee in the movie?
She’d been begging him to cast her in something ever since he dreamed up this Christmas studio scheme last year, and she would have just as much to lose if her porn career came back to haunt her. And besides, how much did Hopeflix’s audience really overlap with the feminist porn watchers? What tattooed,fair trade coffee drinkers with their body-safe silicone toys were also tuning in to sexless holiday schmaltz?
It might be okay, it really might. And if it was okay, if thisdidwork, then perhaps he’d just stumbled upon an easy solution for any future casting problems. It was already giving him ideas for how to fill the holes in his production team created by the rogue wooden tusk.
“I’ll reach out to her tonight,” Teddy promised. “Why don’t you, um, keep this folder here”—he carefully pushed the realDuke the Hallsfolder under her fingertips—“in case she can’t.”
“I hope she can,” said Gretchen. “I get a really good energy from her picture. Very open, you know?”
Teddy stopped himself from making the obviousvery openjoke, stress ate another mozzarella stick, and then gestured for the check.
Finally, out in the airport parking lot, he set his briefcase in the passenger seat of his minivan, did some mindful breathing that didn’t help, and dialed Bee as he stared at a stray cat licking its paws on top of a Tesla.
“Hello?” answered Bee.
“I hope you’re sitting down right now,” Teddy said.
I know I am, he thought grimly.
Chapter One
Bee
“I think six bottles of flavored lube might be overkill,” I told Sunny.
She nodded as she plucked two from the bundle clutched to her chest and threw them on my bed. “You’re right. Six is overkill. Four is the sweet spot. I’m cutting grape and French toast from the lineup. Honestly, what was I thinking including grape in the first place? No one chooses grape lube when there are other options. It’s the Pepsi of flavored lubes. And French toast is really more of an acquired taste.”
“S, I don’t think I’m going to need any flavored lubes at all on the set ofDuke the Halls. This is Hopeflix we’re talking about. If my grandmother’s stack of pioneer romancenovels and megachurch energy had a baby, it still wouldn’t be as squeaky clean as the Hope Channel.”
Sunny plopped down on the floor in a sea of dildos, butt plugs, silk ties, harnesses, Ben Wa balls, pocket rockets, anal beads, paddles, ball gags, and vibrating cock rings. Shortly after I found out I was being shipped off to Vermont to star in my very first nonporn film as part of Teddy’s venture into wholesome Christmas movies, I dumped out my suitcases, which just so happened to double as storage for my collection of toys, and started packing. And sure, two full suitcases of sex toys might be a bit much, but these are not only essential tools, they’re also a tax write-off in my line of work.
“Bee, what if there’s an emergency?” Sunny asked. “And you’re lubeless?”
She had a point. “One,” I said. “Sugar cookie flavored.”
