Page 23 of Charming Like Us
“How hard is yours?” he wonders. “Because mine is fucking difficult every way you come at it. I can’t add something else to it. Narrow down your crew or it’s a no-go. I’ll cut the cord before Charlie even gets the contract.”
Confidence radiates from every pore, and his threat is palpable in the room. I’ve been head-to-head with enough guys on security to not cower. But something about Oscar slowly simmers my blood.
“For the pilot, I can agree to that,” I tell him. “But if it gets picked up for network, I can’t have a reduced crew.”
“I’m not budging from this.”
I shake my head. “Out of all the things to push back on…”
“You’ll understand when you start filming him,” Oscar says. “I’m not being an asshole just for shits and giggles. Just trust me on this.”
Getting a series order will happen down the line, and maybe I can renegotiate a bigger crew then. Right now, I just have to get off the block.
“I can agree to—” Static crackles, and I cut myself off, realizing the black radio pack beside the sink, earpiece cord wrapped around the small device, is turnedon.Volume is so loud that I hear security clearly.
“Farrow to Thatcher, is anyone making a pit stop at the lake house?”
Oscar’s hand jolts fast towards the radio. Seizing it. Maybe to power it off or lower the volume so I can’t hear.
I’m production.
I’m not a bodyguard.
But as our eyes meet, something stops him. He cradles the radio in his palm.
I dunk my spoon into the milk and ask lightly, “Are Farrow and Maximoff already at the family’s lake house?” I heard they were spending their honeymoon there, but I didn’t know when they were leaving.
Oscar glances at the rising sun. “Yeah, they should’ve arrived this morning.” His muscles are still flexed. Still rigidly clutching the radio.
I may have gone to an Ivy League, but it doesn’t take a genius to know whatever Oscar is thinking, it’s not good. But more than anything, I can’t get over how he’s not shutting me out of comms.
I can’t name a single bodyguard who wouldn’t pull the plug and turn the volume to negative 100 on me, onanyonein production.
6
OSCAR OLIVEIRA
What in theever-loving hell am I doing?
Turn the volume down on the damn radio, Oscar.
Put your earpiece in.
Don’t let Jack Highland listen to comms chatter.
I’ve never wavered about this. One girl I slept with was two seconds from hearing a bodyguard talk about Luna Hale. How she was close to flunking high school. I snatched the radio off my end table like it was the last Snickers on Earth, and I shut the girl out of my work.
In this jack-knifing second, my common sense is thrown in the gutter, making way for…what? Idiocy.No.No, I’m too intelligent to be that dumb.
Some part of me is instinctively saying,keep this guy in the loop.Keep him with you. Keep him close. And he might be production, but he understands sheltering secrets about the famous ones. He’s never betrayed them, and I have no reason to believe he’d betray me.
Don’t let me down, Highland.
I let him overhear comms.
Thatcher responds quickly to Farrow with a simple curt, “Negative.”
I must wear my confusion because Jack asks, “Is that a bad thing?” He swirls around his cereal but looks at me.
