1
“NEXT TIME YOU GET IN A BAR FIGHT, DON’T BOTHER COMING back to the set, asshole,” Ron shouted. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? That kind of juvenile—”
By this point, the rant had entered—Alex craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Ron’s Rolex—its tenth minute. And counting. The amount of blustering tedium the Gods of the Gates showrunner could pack into such a short span of time was impressive, truly.
Alex would applaud if he weren’t too busy fighting both a yawn and his desire to nut-punch his boss.
Ron’s nostrils flared with each harsh exhalation, but he made an attempt to lower his voice. “You’re lucky we only assigned you a minder. Legally, given the amount of negative publicity you’ve generated with your drunken stupidity, we had several avenues of financial and professional recourse available to us, including . . .”
The showrunner was still speaking, but Alex had stopped listening. Instead, he was studying the woman sitting approximately five feet to Ron’s left.
Sharp features, including a beaky, crooked nose. Bright eyes. Very round body, with comparatively skinny limbs. Short as hell.
His new nanny looked like a bird.
A silent one, though. Not a chirp to be heard, despite the advent of dawn.
As soon as Ron got word of the events that had transpired overnight, he’d demanded a meeting first thing in the morning. Even though Alex had left the Gates set near midnight, and departed the local jail’s holding cell maybe an hour ago. He’d barely had time to take a shower and grab an apple by the hotel’s front desk before returning to work.
The three of them could have met in a private trailer, but the showrunner preferred public humiliation. So they’d gathered outdoors, near a ragged stockade, where hundreds of Alex’s coworkers could conceivably overhear his disgrace, and so could she.
This pale-cheeked stranger. Whoever she was. Whatever she was.
His eyes were bloodshot, his right eyelid swollen, his vision blurry. If he squinted in the early-morning fog, that lank, ash-brown hair ruffling around the woman’s soft jaw might as well be feathers.
Yes, definitely a bird. But what kind, what kind . . .
Maybe an albatross? It certainly worked on a metaphorical level.
No, albatrosses were too long and narrow for the likes of her.
Once Ron had begun his lecture, she’d perched on a makeshift bench several feet away from both men. Quiet and still, she sat silhouetted before the chaos of their battlefield set as it sprawled along the Spanish shore. Yet somehow, even amid the large-scale staged destruction and ceaseless bustle of extras and crew members, she stood out in sharp relief. Incongruously small in stature, if not circumference. Calm. Avian.
Ron was still railing at him—something about contractual obligations and my cousin Lauren Clegg and unacceptable conduct for an actor on my show and bond company will pull our insurance, blah blah blah—and, sure, Alex was furious at the reprimand and his allotted punishment and the way no one had asked him what actually happened in that bar, not a single soul, but—
His paid minder, evidently an unfortunate relative of Ron’s, looked like a fucking bird.
This whole discussion wasn’t merely enraging. It was—
“Ridiculous.” Alex snorted, sweeping his arm to indicate the woman on the bench. “This bird-woman barely comes up to my chest. How is she supposed to stop me from doing whatever I damn well please? Do you intend for her to cling to my ankle like an oversized bracelet?”
He considered the matter. It would make his workouts challenging, but not impossible.
Ron smirked briefly. “She may be ridiculous, but she’s in charge.” After casting a sidelong look at his cousin, he turned his attention back to Alex. “You’ll do what Lauren says until the series finale airs. Until then, she’ll accompany you wherever you—”
Wait. Alex hadn’t meant to call her ridiculous. More the idea she could effectively keep him out of trouble for months on end.
Ron was talking, talking, talking. “—any time you leave the set or your home. Is that clear?”
Well, no. In his preoccupation with . . . Lauren, was it? . . . Alex hadn’t paid much attention to Ron’s various pronouncements and edicts.
In theory, a working actor who intended to remain working should hang on his showrunner’s every word. But why change his modus operandi after over seven years of continuous, lucrative, once-happy-now-torturous employment?
Even if Ron weren’t one of the most tiresome and off-putting humans in the television industry—which was saying something—Alex might still have trouble following along. His brain was a radio that either switched channels frequently or remained set on the same one for far too long, regardless of what he wanted, and the frequency it chose wasn’t always the frequency he was supposed to be tuned in to.
That said, Ron and his fellow showrunner, R.J., were tiresome pricks, which meant their spots on Alex’s dial were particularly patchy and problematic. Over the years, Alex had grown very skilled at hiding any lapses in attention as they spoke.
Today, he wasn’t bothering.
“Nope. It’s not clear at all,” Alex told Ron with a grin that stretched his face painfully. “To my absolute despair, I missed most of what you just said. My heartfelt apologies.”
As the syrupy sarcasm of Alex’s faux regret registered, Ron’s jaw worked. Lauren merely continued to watch them both, her odd, asymmetrical face expressionless.
Marcus, Alex’s best friend, would call this pushing the damn limits and tell him to bite his tongue and consider the consequences of further insubordination.
Play the film to the end, he’d urge. What happens if you don’t change the script?
They’d reached the final week of shooting for their series, which meant it was too late to fire Alex, but there could be other consequences. Fines. A smear campaign that would make future jobs hard to find. Even retaliation in the editing room, although Alex couldn’t imagine how his character’s arc could be more comprehensively ruined than it already was.
He should behave. He would.
Mostly.
“Perhaps you could sum up the situation with greater brevity?” He bent down and produced his phone from its hidden pocket in the quiver at his feet. “I’ll take notes this time.”
Ron’s face turned vaguely purplish, but that was it. The best Alex could do, given the mingled rage and despair and exhaustion incinerating his impulse control. Even Marcus’s admonitions couldn’t save him, not entirely.
Which was, again, why this whole plan—what he’d heard of it, anyway—was ridiculous. If his best friend’s urgings and his own self-interest couldn’t keep him out of trouble, how could one improbably short, round woman accomplish the task?
Besides, if they’d actually asked him what happened in that bar fight, they would know why he’d brawled and why he’d do the exact same thing under similar circumstances, consequences and minders be damned. Also why he hadn’t regretted his black eye or his torn knuckles for a single second.
Good thing his character, Cupid, was supposed to be injured during the climactic battle sequence anyway.
“Go on,” he said cheerily. “I’m listening now.”
Ron managed not to lose his shit again. Instead, a vein throbbing hard at his left temple, he took a minute to calm himself before speaking.
“From now until the show airs its final episode, Lauren will accompany you anytime you either leave the set or your home,” he finally gritted out. “If she can’t hack it, you’ll immediately receive another minder instead, so don’t bother trying to get her to quit. Lauren may be ridiculous, as you say, not to mention joyless, but you won’t like her replacement, I can guarantee that.”
Alex tilted his head.
That was intriguing. Was his Understudy Nanny particularly vicious? Or odiferous? Or maybe—
“No more bad publicity.” The showrunner’s pale eyes speared into his, commanding his attention. “Or you’ll suffer the full legal and professional consequences outlined in your contract. Do you understand now? Or shall I involve our lawyers in the explanation?”
Alex tapped out a note to himself on his phone. Choice of joyless bird-woman or smelly murderer as babysitter, now until show finishes airing. More trouble => lawyers. Ron = serial killer eyes.
“Is anyone staying in your guesthouse right now?” the showrunner asked.
Looking up, Alex found that disconcerting stare still fixed on him and answered without thinking. “No. My friend Faroukh booked a series, so he left last—”
Oh. Oh, fucking hell.
“Then Lauren will move in as soon as you two return to L.A. The show will pay you fair market value for the rental on a monthly basis.” Ron’s smile was smug. “Very convenient for everyone involved.”
Alex’s jaw hurt, and he flexed it. “And you expect this arrangement to last nine months?”
“Hard to say. But if it doesn’t, R.J. and I have already chosen our course of action.” With an impatient flap of his hand, Ron gestured for his relative to stand. “Do what my cousin tells you, or else. Lauren, go shake his hand.”
Up close, Alex could estimate her height more accurately. Around five feet, give or take an inch. And at this distance, her eyes were even more arresting. A clear, soft green with the slightest hint of blue, they were her only feature an honest observer could call pretty.
Her palm was ludicrously small, her grip firm as they shook hands. If she’d taken offense at her cousin’s blunt order or his description of her as ridiculous and joyless, she didn’t show it.
Because Ron didn’t seem inclined to do the job, Alex completed the social ritual.
“Please let me introduce myself.” After he let go of her hand, he swept her a mocking bow. “Alexander Woodroe, at your service. Or, rather, at your command. For the next nine months, evidently.”
“I know who you are,” she said without a hint of a smile.
Her voice was unexpectedly low and rich, and he straightened abruptly at the sound of it.
I know who you are.
It was a simple statement.
It was also a condemnation.
No doubt Ron had told her plenty. But she didn’t know Alex. She didn’t know the first fucking thing about him, and neither did her asshole cousin. Yet there they stood, allied in their judgment of him and what he’d done.
Impotent fury crashed over him, and his self-control disappeared in the churn.
“So you do.” As he looked into those clear, calm eyes, his lip curled in disdain. “Shall I call you Mistress Lauren, do you think? Or will Nanny Clegg do?”
THAT COULD HAVE gone better, Lauren thought, keeping her arms loose by her sides, her hands unclenched, her posture open.
She’d assumed Ron would speak to his star privately first and allow the actor’s anger to dissipate before she met him, but no. Such consideration and discretion were beyond her cousin.
In retrospect, then, she should have skipped what she’d intended to be a simple acknowledgment of his fame and just claimed it was lovely to meet him. Which it wasn’t, but he was hardly the first furious person she’d ever encountered, and she usually knew how to handle this sort of situation more skillfully.
After over a decade as an emergency services clinician, she’d better know.
“Please call me Lauren.” In hopes of defusing the situation, she made certain her tone was calm and pleasant. “What would you prefer I call you? Mr. Woodroe? Alexander?”
Compared to evaluating incoming ER patients, ones who arrived amid mental health crises and often departed without necessary resources in place to help them survive, this job—this fraught moment—should be a cakewalk. It was both temporary and unlikely to result in trays flung at her head while security guards came rushing into the fray.
It was even less likely to leave her brokenhearted and dangerously close to the end of her mental and physical rope.
“Alex, I suppose.” He cast a critical eye over her. “Is this your first day on set? Because I would have remembered seeing you before.”
That was likely a veiled insult, one she didn’t need to acknowledge. “I arrived over the weekend, so this is my third day on set. We must have been in different areas of filming before now, because I don’t remember seeing you either.”
And she would have, even hazy with jet lag on her first full day in Spain.
He was memorable. In a much better way than she was.
So was the entire, enormous set. As her exhaustion had eased and she was able to grapple with her surroundings more coherently, the network’s brazen, high-stakes gamble on Ron and R.J. had left her increasingly agog. The head of an actual network had given men like themcontrol over thousands of people and millions of dollars? Really?
Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man. Whenever she heard that phrase, she always, always thought of Ron.
No wonder the show went off the rails as soon as E. Wade’s existing books had all been adapted. Once the showrunners had to forge ahead using their own ideas, everyone involved was screwed. Inevitably.
Still, the scope of the enterprise and the expertise of the actors and crew impressed the hell out of her. She wasn’t a fan of the show or her cousin, but she’d readily admit that.
Alex drummed his fingers against his tunic-covered thigh, his quiver of arrows at his feet. “So tell me, Lauren, what would you do if—”
“I have to go,” Ron interrupted. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. Lauren, you’ll stay in his trailer while he’s working, and I reserved you the room connected to his at the hotel. Anywhere else he goes, you’re with him, and you eat all meals together. Understood?”
As this was the fourth time she’d heard Ron’s plan, she didn’t especially need the peremptory reminder. He’d been a spoiled brat of a boy, convinced of his own genius and prone to teasing the most vulnerable children—including her—until they cried, and he evidently hadn’t changed much.
“Yes,” she said. “I understand.”
Telling her parents about Cousin Ron’s cruelty had only upset them and caused her mother to argue with Aunt Kathleen on the phone. Eventually, she’d spared everyone the distress and begun pretending she enjoyed her cousin’s company, and now she was paying the price for her dishonesty.
While you’re between jobs, you should go visit your cousin in Spain, her mother had said last month. You and Ron used to get along so well, and you haven’t seen him in years. Aunt Kathleen and I always hoped you two would be closer. She’ll be hurt if you don’t make the effort. Anyway, you could use a vacation, sweetheart.
A vast understatement. Lauren had been desperate to get her sleep schedule back in order, and even more desperate to bask in the sun and simply relax. And after endless years of overtime—the ER was perennially understaffed when it came to therapists, especially for the overnight shift—she had plenty of savings. Enough to buy her a few weeks before she had to decide where to work next.
Enough to take a vacation. A long one.
During that much-needed vacation, she’d had zero desire to see Ron. But unless she had no other choice, she didn’t disappoint her family. Or anyone, really.
So she’d driven to visit Ron the day she’d arrived in Spain, intending only a brief stop at this remote coastal town before she headed toward Barcelona. And then . . .
Then she was stuck. Because he needed help, and if she didn’t provide that help, she’d be hearing about it from her parents and Aunt Kathleen.
Besides, she had her own reasons for taking the job.
“Good.” Ron turned to Alex. “Show her where your trailer is before we start filming, and do what she says. The bad publicity ends now.”
Her cousin strode away, and a small, irrational part of her wanted to spite him. To call him back and renege on her offer and free both herself and Alex, if only temporarily.
But Ron was offering an eye-popping salary and covering all her expenses—including the rent on her duplex back in North Hollywood—for months. All so she’d watch over one man, who, recent brawl and current fury notwithstanding, had the reputation of being charming enough, if somewhat reckless and overly blunt on occasion.
A delightful asshole, his costar Carah Brown had famously called him.
With the money she’d save watching over him, Lauren could take all the time in the world before she decided whether to return to the ER or join her friend’s group practice. And what could be farther from an emergency room than the windswept coast of Spain or a television star’s Hollywood Hills guesthouse?
So, yeah, she could handle Mr. Woodroe’s anger, and she didn’t care if he considered her ridiculous and ugly or thought she had a beaky, birdlike nose. Of course he was angry after being injured, jailed, and then dressed down in front of a stranger by his condescending asshole of a boss. And of course a man that beautiful—with thick hair a rich shade of golden brown, long enough to brush his collar and fall in front of his eyes if he didn’t push it back; intense eyes the color of a rain cloud, still gorgeous despite all his bruising; handsome features accented by a neat beard; and an immaculately honed body—would disdain a woman like her.
Her nose was beaky. Also crooked from that incident her first month at the ER, when she hadn’t ducked a tray quickly enough.
She was fat and short too, and she’d been mocked by people much more vicious than him. He’d called her ridiculous, and the word was apt. She’d certainly experienced plenty of ridicule in her life. She’d grown accustomed to it.
His contempt meant nothing to her. She’d do her damn job, and she’d do it well, no matter what he said.
She swiveled to face him. “You were asking me something when Ron interrupted.”
“Um . . .” He was watching a gull pick at props left overnight on the battlefield, his brow creased in seeming concentration. “Oh, yes. Tell me, Lauren, what would you do if I wanted to go to another bar after work tonight?”
He meant to begin their work relationship with a test of her boundaries, then.
Fair enough. They might as well make those boundaries clear from the beginning. “Ron said no more bars, so I’d tell you to go to a sit-down restaurant or your hotel room instead.”
“What if I went anyway?”
“I’d call Ron,” she said without hesitation.
He barked out a laugh sharp as a scalpel. “You’d tattle on me?”
Nope. She wasn’t taking that bait. “I’d do my job.”
“What if I went to a club?”
“I’d go with you.”
“What if I met a woman and we”—he raised his brows suggestively—“got acquainted in a dark corner?”
“As long as you didn’t violate local indecency laws, I’d leave you alone, but keep you in sight.”
By that point, he was looking less belligerent and more entertained. “If I did violate public indecency laws, what would you do then? Tackle me around my knees and slap a chastity belt on me?”
“I’d interrupt, and if you continued regardless, I’d call Ron.”
At the mention of her cousin, Alex’s incipient smile died.
“What if I decided to get rip-roaring drunk in my hotel room?” His chin jutted in her direction, its firmness evident even through his full beard. “What then, Nanny Clegg?”
“As long as you didn’t cause a disturbance and weren’t in medical danger, it wouldn’t be my business. I’d leave you to it.”
He paused. “What if I were in medical danger? You’d call Ron?”
“First, I’d call an ambulance or drive you to the hospital myself. Then, yes, I’d call Ron, because you’d be unlikely to show up for work the next day, and word of your stay in the ER might spread in the media. I’d also contact anyone who could help you defend yourself against Ron’s subsequent retaliation.” She frowned. What type of team did stars like him have, anyway? “You have an agent and a lawyer, right? What about a publicist? Or maybe an assistant?”
The sneer had bled away, replaced by a look she couldn’t quite interpret.
“Whoever can advocate for you, you should probably give me their numbers. Just in case.” She lifted a shoulder. “Things happen, despite our best intentions.”
He moved a step closer to her, his brow furrowed.
Funny. A man who, according to Ron, had been wasted enough to get into a bar fight only a handful of hours ago should still smell like alcohol.
He didn’t. He smelled like generic hotel shampoo. And he didn’t appear hungover either. Just injured and spent.
“I’ll give you their information before we leave the set tonight.” He cocked his head and studied her. “So . . . what happens now? Are we supposed to socialize in my trailer or hotel room whenever I’m not working or sleeping?”
“From what I understand—”
“I’ll braid your hair if you’ll braid mine, Lauren.” His gray eyes were sharp on hers in the warm morning light. “We can tell ghost stories by flashlight. Maybe toast a few marshmallows over the hotel room radiators.”
He was mocking her.
She shook her head. “I have no intention of socializing with you. I’m not your entertainment.”
He swayed back a bit, and if she didn’t know better, she would have sworn that look on his face was . . . hurt?
No. That didn’t make sense.
“Ah. I see.” The cynical twist to his smile had returned. “You’ve assumed the role of sanctimonious bore instead. No doubt it’s the part you were born to play.”
That time, there was no hint of humor in the insult. It was a jab meant to wound.
No delightful. Just asshole.
She gazed into the distance for a moment, allowing the faint sting to fade before she responded.
“I apologize.” His words were unexpected and abrupt. Raw with exhaustion. When she looked back at him, he was frowning. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”
He sounded sincere. Surprisingly so.
She nodded in acceptance of his apology, and he let out a slow breath.
“I have no good excuse.” His jaw worked. “I’m just . . .”
She waited, but he didn’t continue.
Instead, he simply sighed and gestured to their left. “Why don’t I show you to my trailer?”
2
THE FIRST TIME ALEX ENCOUNTERED THE CONCEPT OF “extra,” he’d related to it immediately, on an almost visceral level. Oh, yes, that’s what I am. Much like the moment his mother had explained what his diagnosis of ADHD meant.
Not everyone appreciated his personality, but so be it. Not everyone appreciated deep-fried turkey on Thanksgiving either, and that was their loss. If he was congenitally, delightfully “extra,” however, the dour woman across the room was the opposite.
Nondescript tee. Cardigan. Dark jeans. No jewelry or makeup, and no natural color in that pallid face. Even her eyebrows were relatively pale. Her avian qualities—her sharp features, her short, round frame—were the only memorable things about her appearance, really, other than those eyes.
It might help if she actually said something. Anything.
But she didn’t. If at all possible, she didn’t even acknowledge him.
“Hey, Lauren, pass me that medicine ball,” he called out to her. “The one to your left.”
She answered without looking up. “Nope.”
An hour ago, she’d settled herself on a weight bench in the hotel’s empty fitness room, eyes on her e-reader and not him. Even though he was both sweaty and shirtless, states which—he had been informed by trustworthy sources—showed him to best advantage and reliably drew the attention of anyone attracted to men.
Huh. Maybe—
“Hey, Lauren, are you into dudes? Like, at all?” He raised his arms over his head in a luxuriant stretch, then flexed his biceps appealingly, in hopes the incentive might induce her to raise her head.
Again, not a single glance upward. “Not your business.”
Half a dozen lunges. A handful of burpees. All his athletic prowess and his carefully honed body, displayed right there in front of her. And . . .
Nothing. Nada.
“Hey, Lauren.” This time he waited for a response, banking on her inherent politeness.
She finally raised her gaze from her e-reader, head tilted in inquiry, and he basked in the smug glow of victory.
“I once starred in a movie where my love interest was a mime, and my costar spoke more than you.” He did a few jumping jacks, as long as he had her attention. “Just FYI.”
Her voice was patently unimpressed. “Because she wasn’t really a mime. She was an actor.”
He frowned at her. “I meant she spoke more on camera.”
“Then she wasn’t a very good mime.”
She returned her attention to her book, and he huffed in displeasure. Normally, any mention of his most unmitigated disaster of a movie provoked lively discussion. But, of course, even Mimes and Moonlight couldn’t do the trick this time. Not when the woman at the other end of the conversation was a blank wall in human form.
After some over-the-counter painkillers and a good meal from craft services, he’d gotten over the worst of that morning’s rage. At least, the portion of it directed toward her. One good midday nap in his trailer later—while she sat on the too-hard couch, phone in hand, and said not a word—and he was ready to admit that her newfound, near-constant presence in his life wasn’t actually her fault. People needed jobs, and he couldn’t blame her for accepting her cousin’s offer, despite the profound dickishness of said cousin.
To put up with Ron’s obvious disdain for her, she must need the money very, very badly.
He frowned again.
“Hey, Lauren, if you ever need a loan or something, let me know,” he said as he positioned himself on the thick blue mat for push-ups.
With that, he had her attention entirely. Setting her e-reader on the floor beside her, she stared at him with her brow crinkled.
“You met me this morning.” Each word contained an entire universe of precise disapproval. Or . . . maybe not disapproval, but something close to it. Confusion? Suspicion? “This past hour is the lengthiest interaction we’ve ever had.”
He paused with his arms fully extended, bracing his weight. “And?”
“And you just offered to loan me money.” She enunciated very clearly. “You don’t know me well enough for that, Alex.”
He tried to shrug while in push-up stance, with only limited success. “I disagree.”
Her reaction that morning, when he’d asked what she would do if he were in medical danger, told him enough about her character. She didn’t want him to get into trouble. She wasn’t rooting for his failure and punishment.
None of this was personal, and she had a sense of honor.
Thus: loan. Loans, plural, as necessary.
He began to clap between each push-up, considering the matter.
It was possible such situations explained why his savings and retirement accounts weren’t quite as robust as they could have been. Or so Marcus regularly informed him. Then there was the money he sent his mom every month, and all the charities that depended on his contributions, and the friends he allowed to stay rent-free in his guesthouse when they were between jobs.
Although he was apparently renting out his guesthouse for the next nine months at fair market value, so who was the financial genius now, huh, Marcus?
When he turned his head to glance at Lauren, her mouth was slightly open, and she was gaping at him. Now she looked less avian and more piscine.
Finally, with a shake of her head, she picked up her e-reader and got back to her book.
No more clapping. Time for one-armed push-ups instead.
“Hey, Lauren,” he said. “We should go to a club together. I think your presence would be very convenient. ...
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