Page 5 of Slow Burn Summer

“Is the woman an actor or not?” Fiona threw her hands up in the air. “Don’t be gauche, Charlie, it’s dull. Writers use pseudonyms all the time, you’ve been around this business long enough to understand it’s just semantics.”

“Not usually like this, though,” he pressed. “If it ever came out, it could be a PR train wreck.” He was trying to find an angle Fi would care about, because she definitely didn’t give a hoot about Kate Elliott.

“Then make damn sure it never comes out,” Fi said, steeleyed. “It comes down to putting the right person on this job in the first place, Charlie, a safe pair of hands, because there’s no room for second chances. Does she have the balls or not?”

He’d only met Kate Elliott once, but he found himself very much hoping that she did. She’d breezed through the office this morning like fresh mountain air, no side order of sarcasm or sense of game playing.

“Let’s wait and see how she reacts to the manuscript first, one step at a time.”

Fi shook her head. “Get her on the phone. We don’t have time to work to her schedule, she works to ours.”

“Fi, she only left the office ten minutes ago. She hasn’t even had time to get to the train station, let alone read the manuscript.”

“She doesn’t need to read it. We need someone who thinks on their feet and makes decisions based on gut instinct. Is she going to be a rabbit in the headlights when she’s put on the spot? Because she will be. She won’t have a week to make her mind up what to do or say then, will she?” Fiona sat down opposite him. “Call her, Charlie. Let’s see what she’s made of.”

Charlie found himself conflicted. Fiona had been in the backdrop of his life for as long as he could remember, his father’s oldest friend and business partner. She was about as bendable as an iron rod and as warm as freshly churned gelato, but he happened to know she kept a dog-eared copy ofChicken Soup for the Soulin her desk drawer and gave monthly to a local cat sanctuary, both facts she’d deny. Fiona Fox was a stalwart in the publishing world, and in Charlie’s world too, and right now she was using their complicated relationship to her advantage, as usual.

“Fine,” he said, reaching for his mobile with a sigh. “But for the record, I think we risk losing her by pushing too hard.”

“If she’s going to jump, better now than when her name’s on the front of that book.”

Fiona took the seat opposite and watched him place the call, speakerphone on. He privately thought it would be better for all concerned if it went to voicemail. He imagined Kate standing on the train platform searching for her mobile in her oversized bag, bangles jangling against the plain white cover of the book.

“Charlie, so soon,” she answered after a handful of rings, sounding bemused.

Fiona’s eyebrows shot up, as if Kate should be more respectful.

“Thanks for coming in today, Kate, it was good to meet you.”

She sighed. “Are you calling to say you’ve changed your mind because I arrived late, even though I explained why?”

“Well, that wasn’t—”

“Or has Fiona Fox vetoed me because—”

Charlie closed his eyes, unwilling to look across the desk. “Fiona and I are here together just now, Kate,” he cut across her so she wouldn’t lose herself the job before she’d even accepted it. “We both think you’re a great fit for the role, so shall we fix up a time for you to come back in and dot the i’s and cross the t’s?”

She fell silent for a few beats, the bustle of the train station evident through the phone speaker.

“I’d prefer to take some time to read the book first, as we agreed?”

Fiona rolled her eyes and tapped her blood-red nail against the face of her slim gold watch. “Give her twenty-four hours,” she stage-whispered.

He shook his head. “What, to live?” he shot back, hopefully quiet enough for Kate not to hear.

“I’ll call as soon as I’ve read it,” she said, cool. “Monday, maybe?”

Fiona threw her hands in the air, even though it was already Friday.

“Monday it is,” he said, wishing he’d refused to call her at all, because he’d ended up unnecessarily compromised in both women’s eyes. He placed his mobile down and looked at Fiona. “There. We’ll know she’s the right person by Monday.”

Fiona got to her feet. “Your father would have known she was the right person within thirty seconds of meeting her,” she said, turning on her heel.

Fiona drew unfavorable comparisons between Charlie andhis father all the time; he was really hoping it’d ease off as she recovered from Jojo’s loss and adjusted to Charlie’s less shoot-from-the-hip agenting style. In truth, Charlie was still working out what his own agenting style was going to look like. Being his father’s understudy had never been part of his life plan; if it hadn’t been for his all-too-messy divorce, he’d still be in L.A. now, knee-deep in scripts and studio meetings. Being married to the daughter of one of Hollywood’s sharpest agents had been great until it wasn’t—L.A. was a big place, yet it turned out there wasn’t room enough for the both of them. His father had been cock-a-hoop when he’d proposed to Tara, the only child of one of his oldest professional friends. The coming together of two legendary agenting dynasties, her father had said in his wedding speech, misty-eyed and champagne happy. And it’d felt that way to Charlie too, as if he’d found his place and his people and his purpose. Neither he nor Tara were interested in agenting, but they’d grown up around the acting industry, and they turned their own love story into a lucrative writing duo telling other people’s love stories.

He’d hit the wall hard in the aftermath of their breakup, so much so that his father had finally pitched up on his L.A. doorstep and not left until he agreed to come home to London with him.Home.Therein lay the rub, really. Nowhere felt like home. Not his soulless L.A. beach house, too showy and void-like without Tara. And not his father’s stuck-in-a-time-warp London townhouse either, decorated over thirty years ago by Charlie’s late mother and untouched since. To give Jojo his dues, he’d done his best to take care of his son at a point when he really needed taking care of, even if Charlie didn’t accept the help as graciously as he might have at the time. Talent agenting was never on his radar as a career option; he’d agreed to work alongside his father as a stop gap, going in to work at Francisco & Fox to avoid his father hiring ahousekeeper to make sure he didn’t have whiskey for breakfast. And then Jojo had gone and bloody died, keeled over in his beloved shepherd’s pie at the Ivy, leaving Charlie alone in the captain’s chair, whether he liked it or not. And whether Fiona liked it or not too, which on most days, she didn’t.

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