Reel (Hollywood Renaissance #1) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,20

Tilda’s arm and they stare into each other’s eyes for a long second. Tilda clears her throat and takes a ticket from her stylish purse.

* * *

TILDA

I may be a cheat, but I ain’t no whore. Tell ya what, Bama. Looks like Daddy got hemmed up with his old lady. Take the ticket and we’ll talk about the job after the play. How’s that sound?

* * *

Odessa’s eyes widen and a smile breaks out on her face. She snatches the ticket.

* * *

DESSI

Perfect!

9

Canon

God, I missed LA.

Give me seventy-five degrees and sunshine in October over cold, gray New York. And you have to walk everywhere. Or take the subway. I mean, I get the appeal, but I grew up in San Diego County, in Lemon Grove, with beaches and mountains and canyons all in easy reach. Where rain is rare. I’m a Cali boy, born and bred. I didn’t dream of going anywhere else for college. Plus attending the USC film school kept me close to Mama when she needed me most.

She would have liked Neevah.

I bat away that useless thought when I enter the office of Scripps Productions. Most people assume my company name is a play on words, me ghettofying scripts, but Scripps Pier was actually one of Mama’s favorite places to watch her sunsets.

“Boss!” Graham, our assistant, says when I walk through the door. “Welcome home. We missed you.”

“Missed you, too.” I fish a Statue of Liberty figurine from my messenger bag and place it on her desk. “I got you something for your landmark collection.”

“It’s pink!” She snatches it, eyes bright with delight over the cheesy thing.

“Yeah. I figured that was unusual so I grabbed it.”

She crosses around the desk to hug me. “I’ve never seen a pink one. Thank you!”

I squeeze her back briefly and then pull away to head toward my office.

“It’s nothing,” I call over my shoulder. “Is he in yet?”

Evan and I don’t come to the office all the time, but we agreed to meet here today. I already know he’ll try to talk me out of casting Neevah. That’s his job—to make sure my creative impulses don’t bankrupt us. But every once in a while I have to remind him it’s my creative impulses that have gotten us this far. Today is one of those times.

“Said he’s grabbing a smoothie from that place around the corner and is only a few minutes away,” Graham shouts from the reception area.

“Cool. Let me know when he’s ready.”

I close the door and sit at my desk. I haven’t been here in weeks, which is not unusual. I’ll probably be in New York a lot more once we start shooting Dessi Blue. So much of the story takes place there. I did the spec script to sell the concept and get Galaxy onboard, but Verity is already reworking it now that she’s attached. Evan will coordinate with the director of photography and the production designer to scout locations once the script is more final, but I can’t imagine we won’t be filming in New York. That would make things even easier for Neevah.

I haven’t even offered her the part, but how could she turn it down?

I pull the headshot she brought to the audition from my bag.

I quickly skirt over the fact that she’s beautiful. Who isn’t, in this business? She has that indefinable quality you can’t teach, can’t Botox or artificially enhance into existence. She was born with it and has cultivated it, and now it’s come to my attention.

And I’m going to use it.

Someone taps on my door.

“Uh-huh,” I grunt, reaching for the bottle of water Graham always stocks in my office.

“You’re back.”

If there was ever a picture of Hollywood privilege, it would be my production partner Evan. Bronze- and gold-streaked hair falling in perfect-cut waves. Year-round tan. Chiseled bone structure and tall, lean frame. Even though he has a Hollywood pedigree dating all the way back to the heyday of MGM and RKO and the studio system, he set out to make a name and fortune for himself. He probably didn’t think it would be with the kid from Lemon Grove, but you never know how life will mix it up.

“My dude,” he says, walking farther into the office and dapping me up. “Welcome home. I thought you were doing the film festival and coming right back.”

Holding his smoothie in one hand, he plucks Neevah’s headshot from my desk, raising his brows and slanting me a knowing glance, even though he doesn’t know