Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
“Seriously, Brendan,” he said. “What is that kid to you? You don’t make friends. As long as I’ve known you, you’ve pathologically avoided it.”
“I made friends with you.”
“I’m your agent, and your only friend, and that says a lot…and that’s what makes this even weirder.”
Brendan shrugged. “Maybe I’m broadening my horizons. Trying new things.”
“Hou nian ma yue,” Drake muttered.
“Still don’t know what that means.”
“Learn proper Mandarin and you’ll figure it out. You really are a disgrace sometimes.” Drake eased the car into a slot and killed the engine. “I’ve got to talk to their lawyers over some minor contract wording issues—nothing you need to worry about, I just want to remove any ambiguity regarding your cut of box office. Especially if Cillian’s planning to blow this whole thing open once the production wraps, as I don’t want legal to take punitive action for your involvement. Will you be all right in there on your own?”
Brendan stared at him. “You really do think I need a babysitter, don’t you?”
“No, but you deserved that after nearly making me shit myself.” Drake smiled sunnily and thumped his arm. “Go in there. Be the best grumpy mean Dad you know how to be.”
“I really will fire you.”
“No, you won’t. Get out of my car.”
With one last warning look Brendan let himself out of the Maserati, lifting a hand to shade his eyes from the painful shine of summer sunlight off the metallic domes of studio lots outfitted like airplane hangars. They were shooting in lot 207 today, he thought, but for a moment he hesitated in the parking area, glancing toward the long, low stretch of interconnecting hallways where the more prominent actors typically earned a dressing room more private than the little cordoned areas in the makeup section off-stage.
No. He’d see the kid when they met up on the conference room and settled in to do a dry reading of the script.
…but he should probably check and see if Cillian had even shown up.
And make sure he wasn’t hiding in his dressing room, nerving himself to even come out.
Fine. Fuck it.
Fine.
Sighing at himself, Brendan ducked through one of the side doors and into the cooler, more dimly lit halls, tapping his fingers along the walls and scanning door plaques until he hit the one with Tell’s name slotted into the plastic sheath, printed in a glitzy font. Brendan rapped his knuckles lightly on the door, leaning in to cock his ear and listen for any sounds of movement.
“Tell?” he called. “You in there? It’s Lau.”
A thudding answered, followed by the sound of panicked cursing. A spark of something fierce and hard went through Brendan, and he tested the handle.
Locked.
“Cillian?”
“Give me a second!”
More thudding, something that sounded like furniture falling over, possibly because long gangly legs tripped on it from the sound of more cursing, stumbling. Then the door unlatched and slowly swung open just a bare few inches, offering Brendan a sliver of Cillian’s face and one guilty, sheepish, creamy pale brown eye.
An eye framed by puffy, purple-swollen bruised flesh, the visible hints of that full lower lip split by a stark line of dried crimson blood, all of it plastered over with a shoddy attempt to conceal the damage with a hasty, unevenly applied layer of base that didn’t even match Cillian’s skin tone—let alone do anything but turn the bruises into a more sickly, yellowed shade of purplish red.
The anger that burst through Brendan was less a burn of heat and more a flood unleashed; a crashing torrent smashing through him with such vibrant force that his fists clenched with the urge to expel that force right into Oliver Newcomb’s face.
“Please pardon me,” he snarled through his teeth, and turned away. “I think I’m about to go commit a murder.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE IBUPROFEN WASN’T WORKING FAST enough.
Cillian perched at his dressing room vanity and peered at the mess of his reflection in the mirror, and wondered if he could risk another four Ibuprofen—or if he should even bother. It hadn’t done shite for the pounding in Cillian’s head. And although it was supposed to be anti-inflammatory, it sure as hell hadn’t reduced the inflammation turning his face into a half-crushed tomato.
Mother fuck.
He’d barely avoided Maxwell catching him like this after Cillian had slunk in during the wee hours of the morning under cover of darkness—then, first thing after sunrise, escaped the little adobe cottage he rented long before his personal valet would even be awake. He’d hoped, if he shut himself in his dressing room, iced his eye, took some pills, maybe fiddled with a little makeup, he’d be able to muddle through the day without too much trouble.
Instead all he got was a headache, and a bad layer of foundation spackled onto his face until he looked like a tattered and dirty blow-up doll.