Page 4 of The Billionaire Love Match

TWO

“Colton, what happenedto your face? We’re going live in less than ten minutes!”

His mother looked shocked, but almost immediately Colt could see the wheels turning in her head. Only his mother could find a way to spin his injuries to benefit the show. As she leaned closer, her cloying perfume in his face, he pushed her away.

“Just a mix-up,” Colt said. Of the best kind, he wanted to add. The lingering effects of the past twenty minutes clung to him. He felt the coursing of adrenaline after the punch, and something alive and electric and exhilarating from the best kiss he’d ever had. With some girl he didn’t even know. He needed to know her.

Her eyes narrowed and she picked up her cell phone. “We need ice,” she said into it. Then, facing Colt again, she said, “I think you mean a dust-up.”

“Both are pretty accurate,” he said.

A moment later his mother’s assistant Nancy popped her head in with a bag of ice and handed it to his mother. “Anything else you need, Grace?” Nancy asked.

“Tell makeup to get back in here. We’re going to need to do...something.”

Colt grabbed the bag of ice from his mother before she could try to put it against his face herself. She never had been the nurturing type and he hated when she tried to fake it. “Thanks,” he said tightly.

Colt sank into a ratty leather couch that had seen better days. He stared up at the wall beside him, which was covered with signatures from bands that had played this club. What was he doing here?

But he knew what he was doing here. He had been over it time and again in his head, trying to find a way around playing right into his mother’s hands. Grace Beacon was the most powerful movie executive in Hollywood, sitting at the helm of BeaconWood entertainment. She went back to her maiden name after the other half of the company, Colt’s father Steve Wood, died of pancreatic cancer eight years before. Colt had been only seventeen.

Within six months, his mother had pulled BeaconWood out of the financial hole it had been nosediving into while his father was alive. Within four years, her net worth was billions.

BeaconWood, known previously for family-friendly entertainment and educational films, had pivoted hard and fast into summer blockbusters and huge productions. Big sets, big stars, big profits. Then two years ago Grace set her sights on the small screen, producing four out of the top ten most-watched shows on network TV. She was in the middle of brokering a huge deal with a streaming entertainment company for a new show. Colt’s show.

“A dating show?” he’d said to his mother a few months before. “You must be out of your mind.”

“Look, sweetie,” she said, “it’s just business. We need a face for the show. Someone who will draw the ratings and solidify the success. If this streaming deal works out the way it will with you as the star, it’s the final piece I need for the BeaconWood legacy.”

Colt had rolled his eyes. He was sick of her talking about the BeaconWood legacy, which seemed to have very little to do with him and a lot more to do with multiple zeroes. “No, Mom. That’s not going to cut it this time.”

She had sighed and scrunched her face into something resembling compassion. Not for the first time he thought about how much sense it made that she moved from acting to work on the production and finance side. Her face was still beautiful, but she couldn’t act to save her life. He would have laughed. But he knew she might actually get her way with this, as she seemed to with everything else.

“I know that these shows can be...distasteful. But think of it this way—it’s just a job. One with some great perks,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Mom.”

She shook her head. “You have to be the only young man in the world who would turn down the chance to have fifteen beautiful women fawning all over him.”

“That’s not how I want to meet someone. Those shows don’t work.”

“Of course they don’t. And I wouldn’t expect you to really date someone who would try out for a reality show,” she said with disdain. “The truth is that I need this. I need you. And if you comply and fulfill your contractual obligations to the show, you’ll get what you’ve always wanted.”

This had gotten Colt’s attention. While he was often called a “Billionaire Bachelor” by the tabloids, the truth was all his money was tied up and held onto by his mother. Something he had been working slowly and steadily toward changing. But she didn’t seem to have any plans of slowing down, which kept him waiting and stuck at her mercy.

“My own studio? For the kinds of films I want to make?”

She smiled. “I don’t know why you want to make them, but yes. If that’s what you want to do with your studio, the choice is all yours.”

“I’ll need it in writing,” Colt had said, knowing his mother too well to believe that he would actually get what he wanted without a legal and binding contract. Too many times through the years he had seen her wiggle her way out of promises.

So now he was here. Waiting backstage to pick the top fifteen girls who would be competing for his heart on Billionaire Love Match. The thought of it made him want to vomit.

He hated dating and he hated cameras. He had only been on a dozen or so dates since his dad died. All of them were ruined by either the paparazzi’s flashing cameras or finding out his date just wanted his money and the fame that came with being entrenched in the Hollywood scene. His last actual girlfriend had been in high school, an embarrassing fact that only he and a few close friends knew.

Being on a dating show would put him in the center of everything he hated. But would get him what he loved most: the freedom to help make films that truly would leave a lasting legacy. Films, not just movies. The kind that won festival awards and acclaim, not box office numbers. Though if he could do both, that was the real dream.

And without his mother’s backing, it would be years before he got the chance. Though on paper he was a billionaire, everything was tied up in BeaconWood, or tied into his mother’s accounts. He knew that if he said no, not only would he not get his studio, but he would suddenly find more doors closing, more connections disappearing, and more financial backers drying up. There was a reason his mother had taken BeaconWood to a meteoric rise. His father would have hated it, but she was extremely good at what she did.

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