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  “Sure,” he said, and folded his arms across his middle.

  Mallory began to talk. She was aware of how hazel green his eyes were, how thick his hair. He was wearing a hoodie over a Tshirt and jeans, and Jordans on his feet. He had an air of casual sophistication, which, for the first time in her life, Mallory got.

  He was terribly distracting as she rattled off her qualifications for the job.

  He said nothing as she talked. He asked no questions. From time to time, his gaze strayed to her binder. When she reached the part of her talk that drew from past series such as Columbo and Cagney and Lacey, one of his dark brows arched with surprise. “You know a lot about detective dramas.”

  She knew a lot about television. “It’s a niche interest,” she said with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

  When she had finished, he sighed, as if she had worn him out. Entirely possible. Mallory had a tendency to thoroughness. Which she’d pointed out to him, along with being a self-starter, goal-oriented, and dedicated to her craft.

  “What’s in the binder?” he asked.

  “Letters of recommendation and my transcripts, and some story boards from some short films I’ve made, in case you have questions.”

  He looked at the binder. He looked out the window. He asked what she would do differently in his office, and she said she didn’t know, she’d need a few days study workflow. He smirked and said something about there being no workflow, only chaos, and then asked, “Do you have an iPhone?”

  Odd question. “Yes.”

  “Do you know how to use the Find my Phone?”

  “Ah…sure.”

  “Good. I lose my phone a lot. Do you think you could keep that stocked?” He pointed at a small fridge.

  Mallory looked long and hard at that fridge. “I, ah…”

  What was this? The job had said an assistant to the showrunner.

  “I have low blood sugar,” he said.

  “Oh. Sure, I could do that.” She could do it with her eyes closed. She had done it for her entire family since she was twelve.

  “Great.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m a little disorganized, so I need help with that.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  He pushed away from his desk, and he looked at her again, but this time, his gaze held hers a little longer than was entirely necessary, and he said, “Can you start Monday?”

  “What?”

  “I think you met Holly on her way out,” he said. “I need someone right away.”

  “Oh.” Mallory stood up and tried to keep the grin from her face. “Yes! Eight a.m.?”

  He chuckled. “Don’t go crazy. Let’s say nine.”

  She smiled. She stuck out her hand. “Thank you.”

  He took her hand and she gripped it. “Should I check in with Human Resources?”

  “Ah…you can check in Monday.”

  She let go his hand. Neither of them spoke for a moment, just looked at each other. A slow smile lit his face, and damn it if that smile didn’t meander through her like a slow moving stream. Just spreading warmth all the way down to the tips of her toes. “Monday,” he said, and pointed at her.

  “Monday,” she said, and pointed back like a dolt. She gathered her things and went out the door, her face beaming.

  She was halfway home when she remembered she hadn’t asked him how much the job paid. Oh well. Anything was better than nothing at this point.

  Inez was in the kitchen when Mallory came home, clad in a bathrobe and her head wrapped in a towel. “Hey!” Mallory said brightly.

  “That’s my dress,” Inez responded. “And my shoes!”

  “We’re going to dinner to celebrate my new job!”

  Inez eyed her curiously. “You got a job? How are we going to dinner? I thought you were broke. Also, you really don’t have to do my laundry and fold it and put it away, Mallory. And did you really organize my closet by color? Because I am pretty sure that didn’t happen by accident. But I could be wrong.”

  “I got a job! And I am so broke. But I am confident that’s about to change,” she’d said with a wink and all the optimism of a genie in a bottle. “For the record, I don’t mind doing your laundry. It’s something to do. Also, I felt like your closet was a pressing need that definitely should be addressed, so I addressed it. I can be ready in ten.”

  “What about my dress?” Inez shouted after her. Mallory laughed.

  They went to a nearby Mexican restaurant they frequented. Mallory ordered margaritas and filled Inez in on the details of her job. “It’s the executive assistant to the CEO of a production company. But he also happens to be the executive producer and the showrunner for a project that was just greenlit by Netflix. It’s perfect! It’s exactly in line with my goals. All my goals.”

  “What’s the show?” Inez asked curiously. “Film? Series? Documentary?”

  “A series. I checked it out—it’s already gotten a lot of buzz in the trades. It’s a gritty detective drama that explores the dark side of humanity,” Mallory intoned with the dramatic flare of a program announcer. “It’s called Bad Intentions.”

  That’s when fortune’s smile dimmed. Inez looked up. Her big brown eyes narrowed into near slits. “Did you just say Bad Intentions?”

  “Yep. I said those exact words. Bad Intentions.”

  Inez wrinkled her nose and stabbed some lettuce onto her fork. “Is the CEO named Jason by any chance?”

  “What? Why?”

  Inez looked at her.

  “Yes. His name is Jason with Blackthorne Entertainment. How did you know that?”

  Inez shook her head and stabbed more lettuce. “You don’t want that job, Mallory.”

  Well that wasn’t true—Mallory wanted this job like she wanted to breathe. “Yes, I do.”

  “You don’t.”

  Mallory put her fork down and sat back, staring at her friend. “I really do want this job. I want it so bad I’m about to pop.”

  “Please don’t pop in my dress.”

  “What exactly is the problem, Inez? This is what I’ve been looking for. It’s an opportunity to learn about every aspect of making a show. I am so lucky to have stumbled into a job with a company that actually has some irons in the fire. It’s kismet. It’s like I’m in class and going to lab and learning how to do everything. So yeah, if you ask me, this job is pretty perfect.” She picked up her margarita to toast Inez’s margarita, but Inez didn’t budge, so Mallory reached across the table and clinked glasses on her own. “Come on, Nezzy! Be happy for me! I have experience. I have film credits, I have directing credits—”

  Inez pointed her fork at Mallory’s nose. “First, don’t call me Nezzy. My brothers used to call me Nezzy when they were terrorizing me. Second, you do not have directing credits. Seriously, Mallory, you can’t claim directing credits from YouTube short films that you posted to an audience of like, what, fifteen views?”

  It was more like twenty-five views, but Mallory wasn’t going to argue. It really only came down to a matter of the right marketing. “Never mind that. I am very interested in this job. I’ve been working in this industry for ten years and I’m very good at what I do.”

  One of Inez’s dark brows rose up with skepticism.

  “Okay, not the acting part,” Mallory amended with a dismissive flick of her wrist, although she still didn’t believe she was that bad. She thought back to some of her more iconic roles: Girl No. 2 on the subway. Bar customer. It was different for Inez. She had sleek black hair and soulful brown eyes and a lot of talent. One casting director had told Mallory that no one wanted actresses with short blonde hair, and to grow her hair out and lose ten. “But I am good behind the scenes,” she insisted. “And I want to direct. I am a good director. I know how to tell a story and all I need is a break. So why shouldn’t I go for it? I did some research on this show. Netflix is putting money behind it. They’re started filming the first season last month. See how perfect it is?”

  Inez put down her fork. She pushed her p
late away, folded her arms in front of her, tossed her dark hair over her shoulder in the same manner that had won her the role as the office receptionist in a major motion picture starring Ryan Reynolds and Rebel Wilson. “I’m going to explain to you why it’s not perfect, and don’t argue. The CEO of Blackthorne Entertainment is Jason Blackthorne. And he’s notorious.”

  Mallory gasped. “He’s a predator?”

  “No!” Inez scoffed. “Well, I don’t know, maybe he is. I don’t know about that. I mean he’s notorious for going through assistants like you go through chocolate.”

  Mallory was slightly offended, but honestly, she could motor through some chocolate. “That’s just Hollywood. Everyone is hard to work for,” she tried, but Inez was already shaking her head.

  “He has a bad rep, okay? He’s one of those workaholics you hear about—all day and all night and expects his assistant to do the same. He drives them into the ground and then, of course, he gets all the credit.”

  If that’s all it was, Mallory could handle it. She’d survived two “hippie parents” who were really neither hippies or parents. “Not scared,” she said pertly. “I can pour myself into a job with the best of them. What else you got?”

  “I heard this story of him sending an assistant to Canada to get a certain brand of flannel jackets for a scene. Not just any flannel would do.”

  Mallory shrugged. She understood that, actually. When one was creating art, one could not use inferior materials.

  “In the middle of winter.”

  “So sue him for the inconvenience.”

  “A snow storm blew in while the assistant was shopping for the jacket that could have been shipped, mind you, but Jason Blackthorne wanted it first thing in the morning. The assistant’s flight was grounded.”

  “Okay. Super inconvenient.”

  “It was three days before he could get back. His plants died. His dog didn’t recognize him. They’d declared him dead and rented out his apartment, and he got post-traumatic stress, and then, Jason Blackthorne fired him.”

  “Yeah, okay. I see what you’re doing.”

  “I’m just saying,” Inez said, and picked up her fork. “There’s something else, too.”

  “Let me guess—he hates babies. He kicked a cat.”

  “No. He’s super good-looking.”

  Mallory perked up. “You have no idea.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen him. And I know how you get.”

  “How I get?”

  “Yes. You turn into a spineless doormat when you’re attracted to handsome men and organize the shit out of their lives. It’s bad enough you do my laundry.”

  “That is ridiculous,” she scoffed. “And you’re mixing your metaphors.”

  “Sam Harris.” Inez punctuated that by stuffing an enormous bite into her mouth.

  “That was different. He was very good at making me believe he liked the things I did for him.”

  “Carlos.”

  “Carlos is your cousin! I didn’t do anything for him.”

  “He said you were ironing his tee-shirts.”

  Mallory sensed the theme. “I wasn’t doing it on a regular basis, I did it once. Because they were ridiculously wrinkled.” She leaned forward and said low, “He never takes his clothes out of the drier. He actually pulls clothes from the drier and wears them.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Inez said. “But you are the only one who started doing his laundry. You do everything for everyone, and then you’re, like, super helpful if they’re hot, and you end up getting used, Mallory.”

  “For the record, it is really hard to date someone in wrinkled shirts. Instant turn off. But here is the difference. I am not planning on dating Jason Blackthorne. I’m not even going to look at him. I will not be doing his laundry.”

  “Sure. I’m just saying, he’s the kind of guy to run right over a woman, and you’re the kind of woman to be run over, especially if he’s hot.”

  That might have been insulting to hear from anyone else, but Mallory could not deny there was some truth to it. She held out her hand. “If I regret even a moment of it, you have my permission to say I told you so. Pinky swear.”

  Inez wasted no time in taking advantage of that swear with her pinky.

  Mallory clasped her hands together in prayer pose and bowed her head. And then she’d speared a tomato from Inez’s plate.

  “I’ll get a jump start on this,” Inez said, picking up her fork. “I told you so.”

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  Barbara Freethy is a #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of 68 novels ranging from contemporary romance to romantic suspense and women's fiction. With over 12 million copies sold, twenty-three of Barbara’s books have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Lists, including SUMMER SECRETS which hit #1 on the New York Times!

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