Page 30 of A Lucky Shot

Josh grabbed the uncapped pen out of Stephen’s hand before he was able to absently draw blue streaks through his beard. “Then show me what chill behaviour looks like.”

Everyone thought that film was this loosey-goosey, artistic, temperamental shitshow that ran on whims and muses. Well, it kind of ran on muses. But it also ran on the hard work of dozens—if not hundreds—of people, all pulling together in one direction. And it worked better when the pulling all happened at the same time.

People bumped into the room, trading greetings and hugs as they took their seats, and when the door opened next, a lyrical laugh from down the hall pattered over his skin like a spring rain.

The sound washed over him. He knew lots of people with lots of laughs, but something about that pure voice tugged at his memory and sent an eruption of goosebumps over his torso as he tried to place it.

Just as the door was closing, it wrenched open with a gangly, balding man standing back to let a short, curvy woman in first, with a gorgeous mess of curls and the most kissable lips he’d ever seen.

Make that the most kissable lips he’d ever kissed.

Sweet holy hell. He glanced down at the names making up his design team, and the scowl melted from his face.

Cassidy St. Claire.

Cass was his head of costume.

Of course he’d looked up everyone on IMDb, but very few of the crew had photos attached to their profiles. Melanie had overridden his longtime costume collaborator, so he’d poured over the long list of St. Claire’s work and became slightly less pissy with the quality of her resume. Hell, he’d swapped emails with her on wardrobe direction for weeks, and she hadn’t said a thing. Not like he would have connected the Cassidy St. Claire signing off on correspondence to the Cass Spectacular Tits saved in his phone.

He’d have blamed it on being busy, getting everything ready, but that was no reason not to know everything happening on set. He always knew everything on set, just not much about the women he slept with. And this woman was good luck. Not only had they had volcanic sex that night, but Melanie had asked him about his script the morning after they’d hooked up.

Definitely good luck. But terrible timing.

He’d have to listen to that laugh, smell her hair when she bent close, see those inviting curves that begged for his hands to run over them. Like she’d begged him to do that night. He rubbed a thumb over the angle of his jaw, the memory of where she’d run her tongue, and that sharp inhalation after he’d slid inside her. His dick twitched, and he shut down the train of thought.

He had one priority right now, and it wasn’t chasing after a woman.Not even this one.

He dragged his gaze up to her face. Of all the things she looked—nervous, embarrassed, hesitant—surprised wasn’t one of them as her eyes met his, then shifted, and her face lit up.

“Stephen!” Cass threw her arms around his friend, who scooped her in a bear hug that swept her feet off the ground.

The fuck? Something acidic flickered through his gut. Obviously not jealousy. He was just pissed that the meeting was delayed. That was it. They were starting in two minutes and Cass was busy squeezing the life out of his friend.

Stephen released her roughly with an oof and a broad grin. “Cassie! It’s been way too long!”

Cassie? For fuck’s sake.

“Ten years.” Cass finally stepped back, shooting a glance at Josh, and her smile morphed from open to awkward. She dipped her head in greeting as she sat on the other side of the long table, a few chairs down. Far enough that they wouldn’t be locking eyes every two seconds; close enough that it didn’t look like she was avoiding him. She tucked a rogue curl behind her ear, resuming her conversation with the gangly man she’d walked in with and a pretty woman with teal hair he vaguely recognized.

Oh, shit. That was Cass’s friend.

Small world.

Josh leaned over to Stephen and whispered behind his hand, “Our head of costume is the woman I told you about from the film fest.”

Stephen tore his eyes from the woman with the teal hair. “What?”

“Cass and I have met,” Josh said, loading the last word with as much weight as he could muster.

His friend closed his eyes. “Fucking hell, dude. Why am I not surprised?” He sighed. “Shit is about to get complicated.”

“Thank you for that astute observation.”

Josh pulled up Melanie and Brynne on the monitor, still back in Vancouver, and started the meeting. They went around the room, Josh giving the same benign nod at Cass’s intro as he did the others as they made introductions, her friend Libby looking much paler and quieter than the feisty person he had met outside the theatre.

Storyboards and design elements were presented. They talked vision, about how they were going to turn the sci-fi epic with a trilogy’s worth of pages into a single film that was Arrival-meets-Contact. With less than half the budget of either.

It was the largest budget he’d ever had, by an order of magnitude, but he still wanted fifteen million more dollars. Better yet, twenty-five million more.

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