Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
I shrugged my shoulders. “Can’t take the chance. My heart is fragile.”
“Suit yourself,” Julian muttered without an ounce of sympathy. He knew as well as the others that my heart would be just fine watching Noemi on screen, fucking David Romero or not. I loved my ex-wife, but I hadn’t been in love with her in about two decades. After this band of assholes, she was probably my closest friend.
“How is Noemi?” Con asked. “Does she want to come back to The Walker Agency?”
“She still calls it the shithole, so probably not.”
Now Con looked irritated, too. I was really knocking them out of the park today. “It’s nothing personal,” I added. “She just still hates your dad.” Con was the Walker of The Walker Agency today, but when Noemi first signed with them twenty years ago, Con’s dad had been in charge. He’d tried to pigeonhole her into films where she showed her tits in every scene and suggested she go on a diet of rice cakes because, verbatim, fat girls didn’t get far in this town.
“It’s not my dad’s agency anymore,” Con said levelly, “but I get it. How’s she doing?”
“Great, minus this shitty movie her agent convinced her to do,” I said cheerfully, switching back to annoying Julian with ease. I actually hadn’t talked to my ex in a couple of months. Life had gotten busy. She was dating and that always put the brakes on our friendship for a while. Other men generally didn’t get why the ex-husband was still hanging around.
“I heard good things about the movie, actually,” Landon said, still staring at his phone. He glanced up at us briefly. “Good advance buzz.”
“Yeah? Your secret agent sources told you that Julian has a hit on his hands?” I needled. Landon was in the security industry, and he was the kind of guy you could tell was in security. I could count on one hand how many times he’d sat with his back to the room. He wore reflective sunglasses for Christ’s sake.
Landon gave me the finger and went back to his phone. Con was on his, too, texting with his older daughter. Dominic had turned sideways in his seat to talk to one of the women behind us, and Julian still looked irritated. I had that effect on people. Unbothered, I turned to check the score of the baseball game on the television behind the bar. Seeing it, I shook my head in disgust. Sometimes it was hard to be a Kansas City Royals fan.
I started to turn back to the table, but to my surprise, I realized that TMZ was playing on the other screen. Considering this was a place frequented by some of the targets of TMZ, the bartenders generally put on sports or news. The big story today was that an A-list actor was being accused of running a sex trafficking ring.
“Hey, Con. Geoffrey Dorsch isn’t one of yours, is he?” I asked, nodding toward the screens.
Con turned his head to look, then shook his head. “No. We thought about signing him when he was shopping around a few years ago, but he seemed like an asshole.”
“You were right.” I watched the coverage, trying to figure out how I’d spin it if I were Geoff’s crisis manager. It wouldn’t be easy. He was being accused of being the middleman between young models and C-list actresses and the rich, old men who wanted to sleep with them. It happened all the time. There were probably a hundred middlemen in Hollywood, but the problem was, Geoff had sent in some underaged girls. They were trying to figure out now if he knew they were underaged.
Bad move, Geoff.
Though I’d set him on fire before I helped him, I played the game in my head, trying different spins on it. I decided that maybe I could save his career but fuck if I’d bother. Saving assholes from themselves was my job, but I didn’t help pedophiles. Because, fuck those guys.
“Why would he do it?” Julian wondered, turning to watch the coverage, too. “I paid that shithead twenty million for his last movie.”
Dominic, the money manager, muttered something about taxes taking half, agents, managers, publicists taking half of what was left. “And he’s got two ex-wives,” he said, then added as an afterthought, “Not that it justifies it.”
“Sure as fuck doesn’t,” I agreed. I wondered if Noemi had seen the coverage. She had dated Geoffrey Dorsch about ten years ago. It hadn’t lasted long. Noemi had questionable taste, but she wasn’t an idiot.
“Destiny Pollock,” Con muttered, his eyes on the screen, one hand still on Harper’s stroller. “That’s unfortunate.”
TMZ was showing pictures of a young woman with cherry red hair. I recognized her, though she didn’t look a damn thing like the cute kid she had been when she starred in a show about a girl with psychic powers. Back then her hair had been auburn and always in two long braids down her back. Now it looked like it had been dipped in Kool Aid and set on fire. She had the same peaches and cream complexion, but she’d had a smattering of freckles back then. Now they’d either faded or she’d spackled them down with a couple layers of foundation. Her hair wasn’t just a different color now, it was long and loose, hanging halfway down her back, falling over one eye like a real-life Jessica Rabbit. I had the urge to mutter sorry, kid, for thinking it was sexy. But clearly, I wasn’t the only one, because rumor had it she was one of the yacht girls that Geoffrey Dorsch had recruited.