Hollywood Hit (13 page)

“We’re going to see him tomorrow,” Cici said. “In Malibu.”

“We?” Nikki’s heart thumped faster in her chest.

“You and me,” Cici said. “He already knows Lydia and likes her. Bikram he can barely stand, but he’ll tolerate him—he’s tolerated him before. But you…” Cici nodded her head toward Nikki. “You’re an unknown entity. And Jackson doesn’t like dealing with the unknown. He doesn’t have to work anymore—no need. He only works when he wants to and when he can work with people he likes.”

“Jackson Nichols loves your aunt,” Lydia added. “And by love, I mean he might have forsaken his gigolo ways for her if she’d have him.”

A coy smile decorated Cici’s lips. “He’s too much work for me. I’m done with lotharios and open relationships. Besides, I adore Ted—he gives me exactly what I need.”

“I’m meeting Jackson Nichols tomorrow?” Nikki asked.

Her breath felt labored.  Her aunt’s celebrity didn’t get to her anymore, but the people her aunt knew and worked with still made Nikki’s palms sweat and her heart palpitate. These were people she had watched in film and on TV her entire life. Nikki attempted to cover her openmouthed, gaping fan-girlness with practiced Hollywood nonchalance, but there were still some actors and writers and directors that she had to work hard not to bounce up and down and spurt positive adjectives about them and their work. Jackson Nichols, the Icon, would be one such actor.

Nikki’s head spun. This was real. They were making her movie. She was making her movie with them. She clasped her hands tight. Her stomach bounced and jittery excitement pulsed through her body. Oh my goodness.
Boundless Bound
was about to get made.

“But first," Lydia said, "later today, you have to meet Bikram Shasta.” Her lip curled up at the edge and her eyebrow drooped while disgust laced her voice.

“Leave it to Fuckface to get in bed with scum,” Cici said.

Nikki tapped her aunt on the shoulder, a gentle reprimand. Cici turned her blue-eyed gaze toward her niece.

“I am sorry, darling, but when you meet Bikram you will understand completely. The man is swine.”

“Jeb needed the money,” Jessica said. “At least that’s what I’m hearing from the attorney handling the estate. He had three mortgages on his house. The wife must be thrilled that at least he had a multimillion-dollar life-insurance policy. I think it was the only asset he had left.”

Nikki didn’t want to discuss Jeb or speak ill of the dead. 

“He’d sold his car to a collector in Tarzana," Jessica said. "There was absolutely nothing left. This script was his last chance.”

The room fell silent. Everyone in the room knew what 'last chance' meant. No one survived Hollywood without a moment of darkness creeping into their life. At one time in their careers every professional in the Industry faced the abyss of obscurity, poverty, and unreturned calls at least once and perhaps multiple times. The town, the Industry, was a bitch. A bitch that could chomp and claw and rip and tear, and then with the flip or the finding of one script caress and languish and love. A bitch that could plunge you to the lowest of lows or hold you up to the highest of highs.

“Been there.” Lydia finally broke the silence.

Jessica looked from Mike to Lydia. “Yeah, we all have.”

*

Nikki had escaped Aunt Cici and Jessica and Lydia. She now wandered along a sidewalk on the back lot. She crossed the New York cityscape where a scene from
NY: Crimeland
, the TV series, was being shot. The façades seemed so real until you turned the corner and realized the four-story walk-up was only three feet deep. She wanted some space, some privacy, before she had to go across LA with Lydia to meet Bikram Shasta. Aunt Cici had asked her to go by editing and pick up a DVD of her latest film,
Concession to Her Delight,
which would premiere next week.

“We keep bumping into each other.”

Heat crept up Nikki’s chest and neck. She couldn’t stem the tide of the blush that bloomed on her cheeks. Rush Nelson was gorgeous. And charismatic, and he made Nikki’s heart hammer hard in her chest. “Hi,” Nikki mumbled. She stood on the edge of the New York City set and stared dumbly at him. Her sunglasses were on top of her head and she wished she’d remembered to put them over her eyes.

“Wandering around the lot?” Rush asked. His smile dazzled her.

“Uh, no,” Nikki said. “I had to pick up something for my aunt.”

She didn’t want to tell Rush who her aunt was or why she was on the lot or about her film. Each time a new person in her LA life discovered Nikki’s familial ties, their behavior changed. Their words became more guarded or they pulled Nikki in too close. She didn’t want those extra complications with Rush, because being with him was already complicated.

“You?” Nikki said.

“Heading to the commissary to meet a friend for lunch.” Rush’s phone dinged. He looked at it and a frown creased his brow. “Friend canceled. Seems he got pulled into a production meeting.”

Nikki shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She was hungry. She didn’t have lunch plans. She didn’t have anywhere she needed to be until later today. Should she, could she—

“Hey,” Rush said. “Have you eaten? Want to grab something together?”

Nikki smiled. Problem solved.

*

Rush sipped his water and listened to Nikki describe the life she’d left behind in Tennessee. How she’d finally found her way to Los Angeles. All things he already knew. All things he’d read in the dossier compiled for him by Ted and Ted’s researchers. But Rush liked the way she told her story. Rush also liked the way she omitted certain key facts—facts that would have most likely changed most people in the Industry’s perception of Nikki Solange.

She omitted that her aunt was the biggest star in the world. She omitted that her aunt’s husband owned the very studio at which they dined. She omitted how a script she’d found in obscurity had been green-lit and featured Cici Solange as well as a two-time Academy-Award-winning director. She even omitted her mother’s death and her own arrest on assault charges.

Nikki’s eyes flashed and a smile danced across her lips as she told the story about the first time she had to run an errand for her employer in Beverly Hills. A story that included getting tossed out on her keister because no one knew who she was. Rush knew the ending from reading Nikki's file. An enraged Celeste had called the store to make certain her niece was never treated in such a poor way again.

Nikki left that part out.

She was a girl desperate to try to stand on her own—but having a tough time walking the line between independence and accepting help. He respected her desires but thought she was naïve. Whatever her problems, he enjoyed her effortless smile, her self-deprecating manner, and the way her blue eyes sparkled and danced and her ability to see and call the bullshit that was this town.

“So how did you end up in LA?” Nikki asked. She swirled her straw in her soda and her eyes held sparks of interest.

Rush leaned back into his seat. His cover story always remained the same. Solid. Traceable. Enough of a cover to woo anyone that he might need to get into business with in order to protect his client’s interests. But in this moment, looking into Nikki Solange’s bright blue eyes, he didn’t want to tell her his cover story—he didn’t want to spout the lies that tripped so effortlessly off his tongue. He wanted to tell the truth. But he couldn’t.

“I’m a bit of a black sheep,” Rush said. He rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin. “Father was an entrepreneur, mother a former schoolteacher and now society wife. They wanted me to follow in the family legacy, run the business my great-grandfather established. But, well, I chose a different path.”

“Brothers and sisters?” Nikki asked.

Rush shook his head no. Even in his real-life story he was an only child.

“Me either,” Nikki said. “I always wanted a brother or sister. Even more so, now.” Her eyes stared at the centerpiece as though she played a thought through her mind. “Did you grow up here?”

“East Coast,” Rush said. Actually his roots were lodged squarely in the center of the country, but his cover story included a private boys’ prep school, a stint at Emerson with an expulsion to add the whiff of bad boy, then the move to LA and the production of films.

“Los Angeles is so… different,” Nikki said. Her eyes darted around the commissary, packed with actors, execs, studio-office workers, directors, crew. “Where I grew up, working in the movies was a complete fantasy. Then you come to LA and everyone does something in entertainment or knows someone who does.” 

Rush too, before he found out how good he was a lying and ferreting out facts people didn’t want others to know, had felt like a traveler in a foreign land, traipsing around LA.

A smile trickled across Nikki’s face. “But I think after today, I’m starting to love Los Angeles.” Her eyes glanced up toward Rush. She bit her bottom lip and nodded. “Yeah, today has been a good day.”

“Bikram Shasta is a pig,” Lydia said.

Heat burned into Nikki’s scalp. She and Lydia clipped across black pavement to the light brown office building with black windows south of Pico that housed Bikram’s production company. For Lease signs decorated a window on each of the three floors.

“I can’t believe the fucker made us come all the way over here.” Lydia hoisted her Birkin bag higher on her shoulder. Her long strides ate up the pavement and Nikki double-stepped to stay beside her.

“Wants to prove a point,” Lydia said and yanked the building’s cracked-glass front door.

Nikki trailed Lydia across the open-air lobby with chipped terra-cotta tile that was long overdue to be replaced. The elevator was a rattletrap that claimed to have been inspected earlier in the year.

Lydia poked at the button marked with a three. “He probably doesn’t realize you own the script. If he did, he’d do better at kissing up to you instead of making us drive way down here for a meeting.” Lydia flipped her sunglasses to the top of her head. “How’d you get the script?”

“Bikram’s assistant, Liam,” Nikki chirped out. “But I didn’t know Bikram wanted to produce it.”

Lydia tilted her head. “That could be useful.”

They entered the suite reserved for Shasta! Productions. Tight quarters, the lobby was barely big enough for one small desk and two ragged chairs that had once upon a time been plump with lush padding but now sagged in the center. Liam manned the front desk. His hands furiously typed on a computer. He was thin with sharp, refined bone structure around his jaw and eyes. His face contained a pert mouth. Extreme focus lasered from his  gray eyes to the computer screen. He glanced up and his hands continued typing. A bright smile broke across his face.

“He’s on a conference call,” Liam said. “He’ll be finished in less than five.” He nodded toward the two broken-down, lumpy chairs. His fingers tippity-tapped a few seconds more. Then Liam stopped and stood. He was tall and lean, fair with a shock of wild, wheat-colored hair. He looked washed-out, as though any vibrancy had been sucked from him.

“Can I get you a water or some coffee?” Liam asked. He walked around his desk. He towered over both Nikki and Lydia.

“Thank you, no.” Lydia slipped her sunglasses off her head and into her bag.

Nikki shook her head but returned Liam’s smile. They’d met socially at Industry functions three or four times. They were on speaking terms, but still, she’d been surprised when he’d forwarded Jeb’s script to her with a note explaining that Jeb was looking for cast and a producer for the project. “I’ll take a water.” Nikki said.

“Be right back,” Liam said. He slipped through a door within the office suite.

Once the door closed behind Liam, Lydia turned to Nikki. “Don’t be intimidated by Bikram. He needs us more than we need him.”

Nikki’s brow furrowed, turning her face into a question mark. 

“You own the script. You are a producer on the film. It’s your aunt who wants to star in the film—”

“But—”

Lydia held up her hand. “Stop. Listen to the facts. Worldwide will make this film with or without Bikram Shasta as the producer. While he has an option on the script, he hasn’t purchased it. He can’t, because he’d have to purchase it from you. Besides, Cici won’t make the film without you and Worldwide.”

“My aunt is starring in my film,” Nikki whispered. This was a complete shift for Nikki. A shift from what she thought she wanted. Hadn't she been convinced that she'd get
Boundless
Bound
made
without
her Aunt's help?

“Bikram knows he can be kicked off the film. Which means he'll try to be an even bigger bully than he normally is.” Lydia scrolled down her phone, then glanced back at Nikki. “Don’t let him bully you. He thinks JP Anderson wants him on the film as producer, but JP doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Bikram. JP will do this film with me as a producer, or you, or any other hired gun that Worldwide wants to put on the project as long as Cici is involved. Bikram needs this film.” Lydia glanced around the paltry tiny office that was off Pico and in a medical building. “He needs this to get out of hell.”

Nikki shifted in her chair. She twisted the opal ring on her right hand. Everything had changed in her world in less than twelve hours. She had a green-lit film with a world-class star and an amazing director and distribution.

A sharp anxiousness, like a ball of pins, spun out in her chest and shortened her breath. Yes, she’d found the film and developed the screenplay, but it was Aunt Cici who gave the project lift. Nikki nibbled her bottom lip and glanced at Lydia. “I’m not sure I want to get
Boundless Bound
made this way—”

“Don’t be a fool.” Lydia cut Nikki off. Her voice was harsher and her tone not nearly as light. Her dark eyes latched onto Nikki and the sparkle cut hard; her eyes glittered as though they could cut stone. “You found something good in
Boundless Bound
and turned it into something
amazing
. Do you know how long and how hard a producer looks to find a script like this?” Lydia’s cheeks sharpened and her lips formed a tight pert pucker. She leaned toward Nikki. “Look, I get it.” Lydia lowered her voice to an intimate tone. “I was born into this business, my dad ran a studio. I didn’t want to get handed everything either—I found my first script by myself too, but
nobody
gets here alone. It isn’t cheating, it’s using your talents and your connections. I had help, everyone does. Get over it. Get
Boundless Bound
made and move on.”