Page 13 of The CEO I Hate

“Tomorrow. VeriTV Studios. Eleven o’clock,” he growled at me before darting for the door.

“Thanks for coming!” Sophie called after him. She did a dramatic spin as the door closed, flopping down on the couch next to me, swaths of tattooed skin on display. “You know, it’s a shame I can’t use the two of you as a new floor show at the club. With all that sexual tension, we’d sell the place out in no time. Standing room only.”

I barked a laugh. “Not a chance. Liam doesn’t see me as anything other than Jake’s little sister. Trust me.” Though I’d had a fairly shallow crush on him for years, entirely based on how hot he was, I knew better than to think he’d cross that line. He’d proven that two years ago. “That New Year’s rejection is firmly cemented in my mind.”

“You can’t base everything off that one experience,” Sophie said.

“What else am I supposed to base it off of? The man can hardly stand me.”

“Look,” Sophie continued. “All I’m saying is I literally had my boobs in his face—and we both know they’regreatboobs—but Liam barely glanced away from you long enough to check out the show. I knowhow to clock desire in a man, and Liam definitely feels it for you whether he’s willing to admit it or not.”

Yeah, I thought wryly. Maybe the desire to strangle me. I ignored the little flutter in my chest at the thought of him actually wanting me. Whatever this was between us, there was no chance in hell Liam would ever go for it.

5

LIAM

When Paula returned to the conference room after break, she was holding the biggest coffee I’d ever seen.

“Is that much caffeine even legal?” I asked.

“No. Maybe if I’m lucky, it’ll induce a heart attack, and I can get a forced vacation from all this bullshit.” She shoved her pearl-encrusted cat-eye glasses up her forehead to rub at the bridge of her nose.

“I just tried to pore over what was left of Lyle’s notes again. It’s like a goddamn cryptex. My brain is mush. Please tell me we’re going to talk to someone semi-competent next?”

Jerome, one of the staff writers, walked into the room, a stack of papers in his hand. “Got the new pile of résumés from the printer,” he said. He was tall, wore gold studs in both his ears, and kept a pen tucked into the pocket of his T-shirt. There were scribbled notes on the backs of both his hands that looked like tattoos.

“Anything promising?” the young woman next to me asked. She had a choppy blonde bob dyed pink at the ends. Her name was Kit or Kitty or maybe Kit-Kat…I’d lost track. They looked like babies to me, but Paula had assured me they were fully qualified—and that it was important to have our staff writers sit-in on the interviews. We needed to find someone who gelled with the rest of the team, and we needed to do that quickly.

“I just did a quick scan, and nothing popped out at me,” Jerome said. “We should probably do a deep dive though.” He passed the résumés along the table, spreading out the work.

“Ugh,” Paula complained. “Get rid of the ones that sound too eager. Anything with a cover letter that says it’s always been their dream to write for a mystery drama about firefighters.” She glanced at me. “No offense, but that’s no one’s childhood dream.”

“I learned not to be offended by you a long time ago,” I muttered, perusing a couple of the résumés. I appreciated that Paula didn’t beat around the bush or spare feelings. Hollywood was crowded with people ready to tell you whatever they thought you wanted to hear. The ones I liked were the ones who’d give it to me straight.

“This person literally wrote they have experience starting fires! How the fuck did this even get in the pile?”

I looked over at the writer at the end of the table—Tanya. She was so short I’d almost mistaken her for a child when I first walked into the conference room this morning. That was until she started swearing like a sailor. She folded the résumé into a paper plane and threw it across the room. It hit the garbage bin, bouncing off the rim and onto the floor.

“Nice!” Kit or Kitty said, giving her a high-five.

Jerome snorted. “Yeah, we should probably send that one directly to the police.”

Paula looked at me over the top of her glasses.

I let out a heavy sigh. “I’ll have Carl filter them a little better.” My personal secretary had already taken on the monumental task of weeding through the dozens of applications rolling in for the position. It was impossible for one person to catch all the unqualified candidates. “The next interview should be starting in a couple minutes.”

Right on cue, Carl knocked on the door, wordlessly announcing the candidate’s arrival. With a flick of my head, Carl let the man in, and we spent the next thirty minutes trying to get rid of him.

“My God, I thought he’d never shut up!” Jerome said once he was gone. “I was about to get up and pull the fire alarm.”

“I’m praying for the people in the next writers’ room he gets staffed in,” Tanya said.

Paula laughed humorlessly. “Oh, he’s not getting staffed anywhere. Who’s next?”

I flipped open the folder in front of me, almost afraid to look. The next candidate spoke far less, but she was also primarily a comedy writer who badly fumbled our questions about the dramatic stakes of the show, and Paula elbowed me in the side, giving a discreet head shake.

After that came a kid fresh out of film school, young and eager, with all the heart you could ever want and none of the experience. Maybe I’d be willing to take a gamble on someone this green if I had a more solidly established writers’ room, but as things stood, I just couldn’t take the risk.

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