Page 39 of Mr. Wrong (Hollywood Knights #1)

Hearing her say it, no matter how much I try to tell myself that I don’t give a shit about their projections and percents, makes me uncomfortable because what she’s essentially telling me is that the movie didn’t fall short of their expectations— I did .

I fell short.

I failed to deliver.

“So…” I give her a shrug, pretending I don’t give a damn. “you’re answer to that is to haul me into the principal’s office on a goddamned Saturday so you can rap my knuckles?”

She sighs, her mouth going flat for a moment like dealing with my spoiled, superstar bullshit is the last thing she wants to do.

“No—my answer to that was to conduct an in-depth focus group that included nearly three-thousand participants, all of them women, all of whom purchased tickets for TJ2 on its opening weekend but did not attend a similarly timed showing of TJ3, with the sole purpose of finding out why .” She sits back in her seat and calmly folds her hands in her lap.

“Would you like to know the answer, Mr. Trask?”

“You asked three thousand women why they didn’t want to pay fifteen bucks to sit through a hundred and thirty-six minutes of me falling through CGI wormholes and saying things like I just made time my bitch ?

” I laugh and shake my head. “I don’t know how much you paid to conduct your little focus group but I could’ve given you your answer for free—it’s because most women aren’t brain-dead. ”

The carefully botoxed skin around her mouth tightens for a moment before it relaxes, the twitch of it barely noticeable.

“Every celebrity has a demographic,” she tells me like I never said a word.

“A sweet spot where the majority of their fandom can be found—yours is women. Ages 15-45, spanning all racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. Simply put—women love you, Mr. Trask,” she tells me in a tone that makes it clear she isn’t one of them.

“They love looking at you. They love listening to you. More to the point—they love fantasizing about you while they look at you and listen to you. Historically speaking, if you’re in it, women will pay to see it. ”

“But not this time?”

Reaching out, she pulls the folder on the table in front of her across its surface and flips it open.

Leaning into it a bit, she starts to scan its contents.

“ Unapproachable… Inaccessible… Seems like he’s hiding something .

” She sighs again and looks up at me. “ Kind of an asshole .” Flipping the folder closed again, she leans back in her chair.

“Five years ago, you were a twenty-five-year-old prince charming, married to a beautiful princess—seemingly plucked from obscurity—living a fairytale existence. Your demographic clung to the idea that it could’ve been any one of them.

That they could’ve been your princess, if only…

” She flips her hand at the folder she just shut.

“They no longer feel that way and that’s a problem for all of us. ”

“So your solution is to ask me to fake a public relationship with some woman I barely know to appease the masses?” I feel my chest constrict.

“My wife— the mother of my child —is dead.” Saying it out loud hurts.

Makes it hard to breathe. “They fucking killed her and you want me to play pretend for them, just to—”

“ Playing pretend is what we pay you to do, Mr. Trask.” Another reminder, delivered on a cool, rational tone.

“And they didn’t kill your wife—it was an accident.

A very tragic accident.” Her mouth softens for a moment, letting me know that despite the demands she’s putting on me now, she’s sorry for what happened to Rachel and whether she admits it or not, she acknowledges that while yes, what happened to Rachel was an accident, it happened because of who I am.

What I do for a living. Regardless, she has no qualms about what she’s asking me to do now.

“We’ve given you ample time to play the grieving widower but it’s time to go to work now, Mr. Trask. ”

Time to go to work.

It almost makes me laugh.

I’ve been filming back-to-back projects since I put Rachel in the ground. Work is all I do. It’s my entire life. I’ve ignored everything else for the sake of it.

Including my own daughter.

Don’t blame the Hollywood machine for that one. You don’t ignore Cassie because of the work. You ignore her because—

“Landon, we know you… see women,” Bob says, trying to make this as painless as possible. “Maybe you can just take one of them to dinner a few times. Take her to a premier or—”

“No.” It comes out flat and hard. “I’m not going to take one of the women I fuck to Spago or parade her down a red carpet and pose for the cameras for you or anyone else,” I say, barely managing to push the words past the clench of my teeth.

“I have a—” Wife . I almost say it out loud.

Instead I swallow the word, forcing it down the dry, cracked line of my throat. “A daughter to think about.”

“Then choose a woman you don’t fuck,” the woman exec instructs me plainly. “To be honest, I don’t care if she’s your nanny—”

“Can’t do that,” I break in with a smirk.

“My nanny is my little brother—not sure that’s the kind of headline you’re looking for.

Besides—he’s currently fucking my daughter’s teacher, so…

” I’m being crude on purpose—Ellenore and Lex aren’t just fucking.

Maybe it started out that way but not anymore.

He loves her. I can tell, just by looking at him. He’s completely gone for her.

I can’t even be in the same room with them for more than five minutes before I want to gouge out my own eyes.

Because you see the way she looks at him and realize it’s the same way Rachel looked at you and you have to admit to yourself that you took it for granted. Assumed she’d always be here. Never leave you.

The woman in front of me gives me another cool smile, this one caustic at its edges because I interrupted her.

“I’ll leave the who of it up to you, Mr. Trask,” she tells me as she stands while her Armani wearing lapdogs scramble on either side of her to follow suit.

“As long as she’s young, pretty and you don’t have to rent her by the hour, I don’t care where you find her—but I expect to see her on your arm and gazing at you with absolute adoration on the cover of US Weekly very, very soon. ”

“And if you don’t?” I challenge her quietly even though I already know the answer.

“We all answer to someone, Mr. Trask.” Her mouth softens again for a moment while she shakes her head.

“We all sit at someone’s feet— this is where you sit.

” She points a perfectly polished fingernail at the toes of her blood red Chanel pumps.

“You answer to me and as much as it might pain me, I promise that if you don’t start telling me things I want to hear, I’ll give your seat to someone else because there is a line of Prince Charmings right behind you, just waiting to take your place. ”