Cole flopped back onto his stomach. “Get your thumbs between my scaps,” he instructed Tina. “Yeah, that’s it.” He groaned. “You’re an angel. Right there. God, I love a woman with strong hands.”
I imagined her strong hands around his neck, squeezing.
But it was his money—all of it, including the part that paid my salary.
I’d been recruited to produce The Siren mainly because Cole had gotten flack in the media for his entertainment company being a boy’s club, which it was. For my part, I’d gladly accepted Cole’s offer not only because it was generous, but because it was the sole offer I’d fielded in the half a year since I’d been unceremoniously dumped from my prior job, and I was running out of money, not to mention losing my sanity to a deadly cocktail of inertia and depression.
Power Pictures was smaller than customary for entertainment companies owned by stars of Cole’s stature and was yet to deliver anything when I came on board. He handed me The Siren—a low-budget, complicated, truly independent passion project without studio involvement or even outside money—while the rest of the team stayed in LA to develop bigger things.
Why Cole had given his son, whose life he’d never much been involved in as far as I could tell, a three-million-dollar budget to direct a movie as his film school graduation present was beyond me. He and Jackson were far from chummy, and it was certainly a lot of trouble to go to for a tax benefit. But then, God only knew how much he had in the bank after the box-office-smashing success of the Gentleman Gangster series. (The fifth installment, for which he’d been paid thirty million plus an unheard-of percentage of the back end, had opened last month to even bigger numbers than any of the previous four.) The world was head over heels for the vicious yet charming anti-hero Gentleman Gangster. In a time of ever-declining ticket sales, Cole Power was one of the few movie stars whose name still drew a crowd.
Not only was father-of-the-year Cole Power financing The Siren, but in an even curiouser move, he’d agreed to star in it. It would be the lowest-budget film he’d done since before his first turn as Hollywood’s Sexiest Man. Of course, his appearance in it all but guaranteed the film’s success, which boded well for me and everyone else working on it, so I wasn’t protesting. I was now one of the many, many people whose livelihood depended on audiences continuing to fork over their hard-earned cash to see Cole Power smolder “A gentleman never shoots a man in the back.”
Tina continued to rub Cole’s shoulders as he squinted across the water at the siren on the rock, now leaning out over the water to converse with Jackson, her breasts dangling before him like ripe grapefruits. “Who’s that?”
“Stella’s new assistant.”
“Of course.” He sniggered.
“Funny. Jackson had the same reaction.” I raised my brows.
“Did he?” Cole eyed the two of them, the corners of his mouth downturned. “What else did he say?”
“Nothing.”
I contemplated. I’d just pissed him off by reminding him the movie had a budget, and I certainly couldn’t care less about Stella’s preferences, but if a known pattern indicated there might be a problem, as producer I needed to know. I’d had a hell of a time getting Stella insured to play Cole’s wife after her checkered past, and the insurance had caveats—like her staying sober. “Is there something I should know?” I ventured.
“No.” He suddenly rose to his feet, leaving Tina kneeling in the sand with no shoulders to rub. She looked to me for direction. I knew he’d probably want her to hang around, but I saw a chance to handle my sticky business with him and decided to take it before we were interrupted again.
“Thank you.” I dismissed her with an apologetic smile, pressing a fifty into her hand. Cole had an accurate theory that people rarely had anything bad to say about stars who were generous, so he insisted everyone around him always have cash on hand to grease the wheels.
“Hey, handsome!”
“Speak of the devil,” Cole said under his breath.
Seriously? Was I ever going to get a moment alone with him?
Stella traipsed across the sand toward us, her slender frame clad in a turquoise caftan, wide-brimmed white sun hat covering her expertly highlighted honey-and-milk-chocolate waves. She was still beautiful at what she claimed was thirty-six but I knew from processing her paperwork was really forty, her heart-shaped face and delicate features offset by large, come-hither green eyes. I also knew after seeing her barefaced at the makeup test that even with the aid of fillers and Botox, the years of partying had taken a toll. She’d mastered the art of camouflaging the fine lines around her mouth and the hollows beneath her eyes with foundation and contouring, but our cinematographer would have to be incredibly careful how he lit and shot her.
Cole fired up his megawatt smile. “Stella! Gorgeous.” He slid his arm around her and gave her lingering kisses on each cheek. “Good to see you. Mmm, you look good enough to eat.”
“Oh, stop it!” Stella swatted at Cole. “You know you’re more gorgeous than I am.”
Stella and Cole had been an item way back when, and the scandal surrounding their breakup had been massive, but that was a long time ago and Cole was so insistent on hiring Stella that I’d figured they must have made peace since. Anyway, as
