Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Cillian had seen over a dozen of Lau’s films. Studied his acting technique, his diction, his unique vocal inflections, even his body language—trying to understand just what made his delivery so effortlessly natural and utterly compelling, the camera completely in love with his profile, with the swagger in his walk and the highlights in his rich, deeply golden skin. A tiny dark brown beauty mark kissed his left eye, dotted just to the outer corner, impossible not to glance first at it…then at deep-set, angled brown eyes, falling into them in an instant.
But nothing could prepare Cillian for just how intimidating Brendan Lau was in person: seeming to fill the entire room, taking up all the air until Cillian couldn’t breathe. Lau commanded the eye to the point of overshadowing the shorter, quietly neat man standing just over his shoulder, watching them all with a wary, thoughtful black gaze.
Brendan, however, only had eyes for Newcomb.
His half-lidded, cool stare gleamed with disdain. “No. My knocking hand appears to be broken,” he mocked softly, and lifted one hand, letting it dangle from his corded, thickly-veined wrist pointedly. “Completely limp. You’d know what that’s like, wouldn’t you, Newcomb?”
Newcomb’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
“A moment with Mr. Tell.” Brendan’s eyes flicked to Cillian briefly, unreadable, hard, but that instant of eye contact was like being shot in the heart, before a pinning gaze transferred back to Newcomb. “Alone.” One thick, sharply defined eyebrow rose. “You are cordially disinvited from this conversation.”
Newcomb’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a silent snarl, then glossed over into aloof disinterest. Strutting across the room, he brushed past Cillian, bumping into him just hard enough to make him reel to one side, flinching back from the loathsome, sickly crawling contact. But then Newcomb was gone, sauntering up to Lau and the rather solid wall Brendan made. The two men only looked at each other, something silent brimming between them, and the darkness of Brendan’s cold-glittering eyes seemed to say:
I see you.
And I will not forget.
Newcomb cocked his head as if in wordless acknowledgment, lilting out a soft, sardonic, “Table readings in thirty minutes. Be there.”
Brendan only held his stance for several long moments—then stepped aside, making it quite clear he was moving by his choice and his choice alone, allowing Newcomb to leave. Cillian held his breath, clamped down on his trembling, as Newcomb paraded himself out, vanishing from sight.
The moment he was gone, Cillian gave a low moan and let his legs collapse from beneath him, dropping back down onto the sofa and burying his face in his hands. “Oh…my fucking God.”
He’d just been rescued from being molested by the fucking director.
By one of the most famous fucking men in Hollywood.
And Cillian thought he might just throw up right here, right now, right at Brendan Lau’s feet and all over the man’s designer dress shoes.
The latch clicked softly. Cillian opened his eyes and lifted his head, struggling—struggling to just breathe, to suck in one gulp of air after another. Brendan leaned against the wall to one side of the door, his arms crossed against his chest, watching Cillian with that same wordless, brooding stare that gave away nothing of his thoughts. Cillian couldn’t look at him for more than a second, not when those dark eyes made him feel like Lau saw things in him that Cillian wouldn’t want anyone to see.
The other man, though, pushed the door closed with a tight, tense smile.
“We’re sorry for barging in like that,” the shorter said. “We heard through the door. And it didn’t sound like readings. Figured better safe than sorry.”
Cillian shook his head quickly. “No, I…thank you.” He hated how his voice shook, matching the shiver in his blood—as if the liquid in his body was a conduit transmitting the soft quiet waves of horror slowly catching up to him now that it was over, the reality of what had almost happened vibrating through him. “I…I wasn’t expecting him to—and I just completely froze, I—”
“Most people would.”
The shorter man stepped deeper into the room and crossed the floor to the mini-fridge in the corner. Cillian hadn’t even had a chance to look inside it himself, to explore the little thrill of having his very own dressing room for the first time, but the man pulled the fridge open on a number of bottles in different shapes and sizes. Extracting a condensation-frosted bottle of water, he drew closer and offered it to Cillian at arm’s length.
“Here. Take a drink, take a breath, count to ten.”
Nodding, swallowing, Cillian took the bottle, clasping it in both hands, the condensation running over his fingers in icy little rivers that hit him like a shock; like plunging into frigid water to awaken his senses. He shuddered as that sick slimy feeling intensified when he thought of what could have happened, what would have happened, if Brendan and the other man had been five minutes later. If Newcomb hadn’t listened to another no…