Page 24 of The CEO I Hate (The Lockhart Brothers #1)

MIA

I was still laughing about it when we reached the restaurant—a ramen place decorated with old movie posters. It had an open kitchen where the chefs worked under a string of red lantern lights, and the smell of creamy pork broth made my stomach growl.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Liam muttered as we sat down. The hostess slid two paper menus in front of us and pointed to a QR code where we could place our orders.

“She bounced off you like a rubber ball and went flying.” The image of the poor woman, trapped in her blue cardboard box, her feet stuck up in the air, was seared into my brain.

But I’d only let myself giggle over it once I knew she wasn’t hurt.

Even the woman had had a good laugh over it when she was back on her feet.

“And then you were all chivalrous and helped her up.”

Actually, all six-foot-something of him had swooped in and picked her up like it was nothing, and I’d swooned a little.

There was a moment where I’d wished it was me Liam had swooped in to gather in his arms. But the hell of it was, I knew if I happened to trip and fall, Liam would be the first to help me up and make sure I was okay.

And then he’d immediately back off like I was radioactive, because Liam’s most consistent behavior was rushing out of rooms to ditch me when things got too real. Apparently, in Liam’s world, love was too painful to mess around with, and me and Liam…That would be the biggest mess of all.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly leave her on the ground,” Liam huffed.

“It was very gallant of you.” Scenes for the next update of Heart and Hustle were already spinning through my head. “I’m foreseeing something very similar happening to Miles. He needs a little hero moment. The fans will eat it up.”

“I’m not signing anymore things .”

“I promise to warn you about all future signings so you can steer clear.”

He snorted. “Liar.”

I stared down at the menu. “I’m feeling classic tonight. Tonkotsu, maybe?”

“I was thinking about the spicy kimchi ramen.” He opened the app on his phone. “Want to share some gyoza?”

“I can get my own,” I said immediately.

“ I invited you to dinner,” he argued, placing the orders. “So it’s my treat.”

“I don’t need to be treated.”

“I’m bribing you, remember? To let the whole café incident go. You can’t pay for your own bribe. That’s ridiculous.” He glared at me, those brown eyes flashing gold under the lights. He arched his eyebrow, daring me to argue more.

Fine . If he wanted to pay, who was I to complain? Besides, it’s not like this was a date. I had nothing to prove by paying for my half of the meal. This was just dinner between…friends? No, that didn’t work. Work colleagues? Me and the man who was the bane of my existence?

Liam’s phone dinged, and he picked it up, firing off an email, frustrated lines splitting his forehead.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Just moving some meetings around. ”

Did he mean right now? Was he missing important meetings to eat dinner with me? “If you need to go?—”

He flipped his phone face down on the table. “I don’t.”

I nodded a little uncertainly. “I guess the work never really ends, huh?”

“You don’t get to clock out at five, if that’s what you mean.”

“Does that ever…” I started. “That just seems like a lot. When do you have time to turn your brain off?”

A waitress appeared with two glasses of water and placed them in front of us.

“I’ve been doing this for so long now that it’s normal,” Liam said. “If things were too quiet, if my inbox was empty, I think I’d start to get antsy.”

I shook my head. “I honestly don’t know how you do it. I thought balancing End in Fire and Heart and Hustle was a lot.”

“I remember feeling that way when I first started building the business in college.”

I sipped my water. “Jake always told me it started out as a joke.”

He nodded. “I had this girlfriend at USC. She was in theater and always talked about the backstage drama at all the student productions. It was like living a soap opera every day. Light crews and sound crews bitching over who was more important, wardrobe malfunctions, the fact that everybody was sleeping with everybody. One day, we got the idea to film a short series.”

“Like The Real Housewives of Backstage ?” I teased.

He grinned. “Exactly. We streamed it on a website we created and charged a tiny subscription fee just to cover costs. ”

“I feel like this is more than most college students accomplish in their four years.”

He shrugged off the compliment. “My girlfriend’s roommate was a film major—I think she finagled class credit for her part in it. Same thing for my roommate, with the website; he was a computer science major.”

“And you?”

“Business major. I made the budget, rented the equipment, handled the subscriptions, and made sure everyone on camera signed releases—producer stuff, though I wasn’t really thinking about titles at the time.

But then the show was a hit on campus, and soon all these students were reaching out, saying they wanted to make their own shows.

Word started to spread, and soon we had subscribers from colleges all over the country. ”

“Not such a joke anymore, huh?” I said. “I still don’t get what made you jump from reality TV to End in Fire . Aren’t reality shows way cheaper to make?”

Liam nodded. “Absolutely. They can be shot faster too. And there’s never a shortage of people with ideas to pitch.

But when Lyle came to me with End in Fire three years ago, the script was so good—and, you know, with Jake, that world felt near and dear.

Something inside me just told me to go for it. ”

“Good instincts,” I said.

“Or dumb luck.”

“I think you need more than just luck to be this successful,” I pointed out.

Liam shrugged. “It hasn’t all been hits, you know. I’ve had my misses. End in Fire wasn’t the first scripted project I tried out. About ten years ago, a college buddy came to me with a pitch. ”

I frowned. “There was another scripted show on VeriTV? I don’t remember seeing anything like that.

” Even if the show hadn’t taken off like End in Fire , I couldn’t imagine him taking it off the platform altogether.

In the streaming industry, content is king.

Even bad content is better than no content.

It’s why you find so much random stuff in services’ catalogs: soap operas from Sweden, game shows from Thailand, anything and everything to give viewers something to watch.

“That’s because we weren’t able to complete a single episode.”

Oh. Ouch.

“I sank a lot of money into developing it, gave my friend fairly free rein because I trusted him,” Liam said with a hard scowl on his face, “and that ended up being a terrible idea because production was a disaster. I made sure the same thing didn’t happen with End in Fire.

I was there for at least part of the day every day they were shooting.

I kept an eye on budgets, schedules, made sure everything came together on sets, costumes, whatever they needed. I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.”

“Except the writers’ room?”

He let out a sigh. “Except the writers’ room,” he agreed. “I didn’t want to interfere on the creative side. I’d heard Lyle could get touchy about that. So I kept my distance. Should’ve known that would blow up in my face.”

“I’m sorry that happened.” This was the first time I’d glimpsed “behind the curtain” with Liam, and it put a lot of his more annoying behavior into context.

“I just want VeriTV to be successful,” he stated. “So I can keep supporting the people who depend on me. And I want our content to be fun and engaging and something people love . The fact that Lyle almost ruined that…” He shook his head, his jaw clenched .

That’s sort of how I felt about Heart and Hustle .

I wanted it to be a story people connected with and cared about.

My pulse skipped as I realized the depth of Liam’s concern for VeriTV and the people who worked for him.

My longtime crush on him had always been fairly shallow—mostly focused on the fact he was hot—but being here now, we were meeting more like equals.

And damned if that didn’t make him even hotter. I liked it way more than I should.

“Season two is going to be amazing,” I said. “Seriously. We’ve got a great team. And you saw the fan reactions today. As long as we get a sexy firefighter calendar shot, nothing can stop us.”

He smirked. “Carl thinks it’s a great charity idea.”

“Absolutely. We could put a new one out with every season of the show. They’ll make great Christmas gifts!”

Liam rolled his eyes as our food arrived. He tasted his broth before adding extra chili flakes. “You gonna gift one of those to your parents?”

“As if. They still think I’m playing pretend with this job. Probably dusting off a seat at the family firm as we speak.”

“You know,” Liam said. “If you wanted to bring them to the studio for a tour sometime?—”

I shook my head. “It wouldn’t help. They just don’t get this world. I mean, they never liked Jake’s job either, but at least they understood it. But as far as writing is concerned…They think it’s not a real job. And they’ve never believed I could be successful at it.”

“But you are successful,” he growled. “ Heart and Hustle gets more popular every day. ”

“I know. But Dad keeps pushing me to change careers, and Mom wants me to become some sort of trophy wife.”

Liam choked on his noodles. “Excuse me?” He wiped his mouth on his napkin. “I need to hear more about this trophy wife business.”

I lifted my shoulder in a shrug. “She won’t stop matchmaking.”

“What, she wants you to be a housewife?”

“I don’t think she even cares about that. She just wants me married to a guy with good benefits so I can be on his health insurance. And in her defense, paying for private insurance sucks ass .”

Liam frowned. “Your package with VeriTV includes health insurance.”

“Yeah, and my checking account definitely appreciates that. But VeriTV is the first employer to cover my insurance in the past three years and my mom knows it. Hence the parade of guys. I think I’ve been introduced to half the city at this point. The last guy sold toilets.”

“Toilets?” Liam threw his head back and laughed. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not!” I dug around in my purse. “I even got a coupon.”

“For what?”

“A toilet!” I found it, snapping it in his face.

Liam’s brown eyes crinkled at the corners as he snatched it from my hands. “I’m framing this.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious.”

“Great,” I muttered. “We can put it up beside your cat picture. Honestly, if we’ve reached toilets, I’m terrified of what they might drum up next.

” I tried not to feel sorry for myself. Sure, it made for a hilarious story after the fact, but walking into my parents’ place over and over only to be told I wasn’t good enough as they tried to pawn me off on the latest man of the week was humiliating and disheartening.

“Have you ever just told them to stop?” Liam asked, his tone oddly gentle.

That got a little smile out of me. “Multiple times, but my mother doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

You tell her ‘no’ and she hears ‘try harder.’” My phone buzzed and my mom’s name flashed across the screen.

I glanced up at Liam. “Here comes the universe to prove my point.” I answered, putting it on speaker.

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day!”

“Hey, Mom,” I said, biting back a sigh. “I was at that big convention for the show. Remember, I told you? I also did a signing for Heart and Hustle . It actually went really we?—”

“You’re still coming for dinner this week, right? Because I need to do the shopping tomorrow.”

More matchmaking , I mouthed to Liam, rolling my eyes and pretending like it didn’t hurt that Mom hadn’t even let me finish my sentence before totally dismissing me.

“Does Friday still work?”

I rubbed my forehead. “Yeah, Friday is fine.”

“Okay, great. See you then.”

Mom hung up before I could. I mustered my best smile for Liam. “If it’s Peter Porter and his Potties again, I’m gonna lose it.”

“I thought you were kidding,” Liam said.

“I’d never joke about toilets,” I teased, even as my shoulders slumped .

“Why don’t you bring someone to dinner with you for backup?” Liam suggested. “Then at least you wouldn’t be on your own, fending off your parents’ terrible suitors.”

“Tried that. Jake refuses to go.”

“I was talking about me,” he said.

“What?” I blinked at him in shock. “If you come with me on Friday, my parents will assume we’re dating.”

He shrugged. “Good. If they think that, then they’ll lay off you.”

He’d do that for me? I narrowed my eyes. “Again, who are you and what have you done with the real Liam?”

He slurped his noodles. “You shouldn’t have to put up with being ambushed every time you show up to dinner with your family. Besides, I need my head writer focused. Not stressed about toilet salesmen.”

I snorted. Right . The show. For a moment, I thought he might actually give a damn about me. Then again, the fact that he’d consider fake dating me to throw off my parents was in stark contrast from the man who’d uttered “never gonna happen” when I’d crawled into his lap at Sophie’s club.

Or was it? Yeah, he’d made it clear sex wasn’t going to happen. But him showing up for me in other ways…that wasn’t out of character. He’d always been the kind of guy to go above and beyond to fix things for the people in his life—look at everything he’d done for Jake since the accident.

So no big deal. I’d told him my problem, and he’d come up with a solution to fix it. That was just how Liam rolled.

“Unless you’d rather become the Potty Princess,” he said. “Would you get a plunger with your toilet throne?”

“Don’t make me throw this soft-boiled egg at you,” I threatened .

Liam huffed a laugh. “I will be demanding payment for my services, of course.”

“In what form?”

A slow, evil grin spread across his face. He pointed at my bag.

“No.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “That grumpy cat drawing? I want it.”

I grimaced. “You jerk.”

“No substitutions will be accepted.”

Asshole , I thought, unsure whether I felt more annoyed…or fond.