Step Wilde: A Stepbrother Romance (11 page)

"Because I thought you'd come up with a million reasons not to go. Which is ridiculous because I know you're broke as shit and also, it's
Italy, Olivia
. Italy! I didn't want to risk you turning it down. Besides, why are you worried? It's just another job, right?" She paused. I knew what was coming. "Just like the way he was 'just another fuck'?"

In the weeks after I had sex with Wilder, Lydia had needled me for endless details about that night. She had continued to mock me about it until I snapped one day and told her never to mention his name again.

I couldn't recall the exact wording of my many diatribes against Wilder, but I was certain the phrase 'just another fuck' had been used by me as a defensive mechanism after he had humiliated me at the auditions.

"Right, well." I stared down at my bare feet on the thick carpeted floor. "The production is paying my hotel tab. So I just got my hair and makeup done."

I had to hold the received away from my ear as Lydia's screams rocketed through the line and pierced my eardrums. "I KNEW IT!!! You still have feelings for him! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!" She said this last bit in a sing-song voice. I knew she was doing her obnoxiously endearing happy dance in the tiny closet space and the thought made me reluctantly happy.

"Lydia, calm down. It's not like he's going to rip my clothes off the second he sees me."

Lydia guffawed. "He isn't called Wilde for no reason, Liv," she replied. "I have a lot of friends who have worked on his sets. You really never know what he's going to do next."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WILDER

I was sitting in my canvas and wood folding chair with my name embroidered into it. I'd dreamed as a kid of having this kind of chair on set with my name on it. Truth be told, these things are uncomfortable as shit for a guy as big as I am.

They were sort of comfortable when I'd first started out, but as I'd drastically changed my body shape through weightlifting and copious amounts of calories, I resembled more of a bear than a skinny, fit guy. And these chairs always felt like they were two seconds away from snapping.

Hailey's chair was about ten feet away from mine. She was having her nails painted as she yapped incessantly into her iPhone. The main makeup artist on set, a woman I'd worked with before named Beverley, was touching up some of the makeup covering my tattoos.

My short-sleeved black-fitted shirt that I'd be wearing for this scene showed all of my arms. This meant a ton of work for Bev, but she didn't seem to mind.

"You got a new one since the last film we were on together," Bev said to me, pointing at a black four-leaf clover on my bicep. When I didn't respond, she followed my eye line over to Hailey.

She rolled her eyes. "I bet that's awkward for you, huh hot stuff?"

I just shook my head. "That was a long enough time ago that it doesn't matter."

"Really? I saw online that you all were together like last week.”

“Yeah, well she sort of just
showed up.
Apparently that’s her new thing.” I clenched a fist and tried to push out of my memory the sloppy sex that had happened with Hailey that night. I’d been drunk, and she’d been, well.
Hailey
.

Bev laughed. “My daughter still sings that
Fuck You
song she wrote about you. The radio edit, obviously," she added with a smile. "It's catchy as hell."

"Thanks," I grunted sarcastically. "I think that song is more well-known than all of my films put together."

"It smashed like a dozen Billboard and radio play records. What the hell do you expect?" Bev snapped the jar of liquid makeup shut and rubbed the tip of the brush onto a white cloth. "Get over it, big boy." She slapped me on the arm. "You know what they say in the biz: all publicity is good publicity." She walked away just as Fox showed up to call everyone onto the set.

"Let's get together, people. I want this scene to be shot from three angles which means three takes. No extra takes for sneezes or for phones ringing or for
actors
forgetting their damn lines
," he added with a meaningful look at me.

I saw that Hailey was still on her fucking phone. I felt anger boiling up inside of me and I marched over to her, grabbing it out of her skinny, pale hand and shutting it off. I slammed my hands down onto either side of her, resting my palms on the thin wooden arm rests.

"If I have to fucking work with you, you're going to make this as smooth as possible, princess," I said to her.

She looked taken aback but only for the briefest of moments.

"Handsome," she whispered to me. "I'm running the show here. You can be assured that I won't take up any more of your time than is necessary." Then she pushed me off of her and walked over to the set, where wardrobe fluffed out the bottom of her skirt as she sat down at the small bistro table.

All of the extras were sitting in their 1950s garb around a makeshift coffee shop patio, a waiter with a tray standing in the doorway.

"We're all just waiting for you now, Wilde," Fox called out.

Jesus Christ.
I opened my mouth to retort that this was only because Princess Hailey needed to be put in line, but I shut it at the look on Fox's face. This was my time to not be a child anymore. I needed to remember that. I walked over to the other side of the railing that separated the seats from the street.

The crux of the scene was this: I was supposed to be strolling by when I saw the most gorgeous specimen of a woman I'd ever seen in my life. Or so said the hastily-revised script that a brand-new scriptwriter had finessed into something resembling quality; as opposed to what it was before, which was utter and complete shit.

"Okay, speed...marker..." the board clapped together.

The extras started chit-chatting and I strolled by, turning to do a double take toward Hailey. She was preening in a way that was completely overplayed. I expected nothing more or less from her than this bullshit, but I kept my face in the position of ‘Holy shit, that woman is the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen in my entire life, I want to fuck her right now.’

And that's when I looked past the camera and saw her.

My dream girl.

She was standing three feet behind Fox, holding a clipboard and a pen and staring directly at me. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail. I almost didn't recognize her with makeup on. She was fucking stunning.

Even more so than she had been years ago.

Seven years ago. I'm not going to pretend like I didn't remember the date. It was April 29th.

I had been with three dozen women before her and a hundred since. But she was always the one that I was thinking about when I fucked movie stars, supermodels, and singers.

It was always her.

I'd asked around a few years ago and heard she was working as a script supervisor. I'd always hoped to run into her at a party or on a set but it had never managed to happen. Now, there I was, standing on the streets of Milan –

"Ruining the first goddamn take again! Cut!
Cut cut cut
. Christ. Can someone check him to see if he still has a pulse? Did you just have a goddamn stroke, Wilde? What the hell has gotten into you. You look like you've seen the ghost of Christmas fucking past."

I looked around me and saw that the entire set was gaping at me, including the extras. I nervously combed back my hair.

"Sorry guys," I replied. I saw the look on Marge's face behind the camera. She clearly wasn’t pleased with the masculine catch-all term I’d just used. "Not guys. Everyone. Apologies." I glanced over at Hailey and saw that she knew what - or, rather -
who
I was looking at. Her eyes narrowed viciously.

"Can we run that again?" I asked.

Fox threw his hands onto his hips. "
Can we? Can
we? If you want to make the fucking movie, we can. Jesus Christ on a goddamned bicycle. Okay. Is everyone ready, including Mr. Daydream here?" Fox looked around the set. "Let's do this."

We managed to get the shot, though the entire time my mind was on Olivia standing twenty feet away from me. The wind shifted at one point and I swore I could smell her perfume. My dick could smell her, at any rate.

I had to shift my legs multiple times once I sat at the table with Hailey. Acting across from Hailey was like acting to a brick wall. Actually, a fucking brick wall would have been my preference.

At least then I wouldn't have to stare into her overly-eager eyes miming what should be genuine human emotion - something I didn't think she was capable of even when she wasn't trying to act.

After an hour of sitting in the increasingly hot sun, Fox called a break for lunch so we could reposition for the next scene. Movies seem like glamorous things, but only when they are finished. Most of it is sitting around and waiting.

The second Fox cleared the set, I was on my feet. Even if I had
wanted
to stay away from Olivia, I couldn't. I'd waited this long. I wasn't missing that chance. I nearly sprinted over to her. When I was finally two feet away, she was still staring at her clipboard and scribbling furiously.

I cleared my throat.

"Hang on a minute," she said to me without looking up.

I was so surprised I actually took a half step backward. Nobody talked to me like that. Not anymore. I literally could not remember the last time somebody told me no. Fox had been correct about that days ago back in Los Angeles.

I felt my fist ball up, but this time it wasn't from anger. It was to keep from grabbing the back of her head and sticking my tongue into her mouth so hard that she wouldn't be able to walk away from me ever again.

Like the way she had in that auditorium that night
.

I was
the one who always did the leaving. It was true then, and it was a hundred times more true now. And here she was, once again rebuffing me. I'd never been so turned on in my life.

I stared at the way her teeth bit her bottom lip in deep concentration. I thought about being on the receiving end of that bite and a shiver went through me. She was still scribbling fiercely when a woman I didn’t recognize walked up to her.

"Oh, hey, Jennifer," Olivia said to the woman while still ignoring me. "Can we talk about this next scene? I want to make sure that the details here are consistent."

Jennifer
. That rang a bell. I was pretty sure she was the screen writer.

"Sure thing," said the woman. "You grabbing lunch at craft services or did you want to head around the corner?"

"Craft is fine, actually," Olivia said. "I’m on a budget."

And here was the next shock of the day. No one - and I mean no one - on a Hollywood film set admits they are hard up for cash.

Olivia flipped her long, blonde ponytail over her shoulder. I realized her face was glimmering slightly from a fine kiss of glitter. I fought a sudden urge to lick it off her cheek.

"You ready now?" Olivia asked Jennifer.

"Sure thing, but,” Jennifer looked up at me with an uncomfortable grimace. "I think Mr. Wilder wanted to speak with you."

Olivia flipped the pages of the script back over onto themselves and tucked a pen underneath the clip at the top of the board.

"Mr. Wilder?" she asked, her voice laced with sarcasm. Her full, gloss-covered lips were arranged in a sexy smirk.

"Uh," I said, opening and closing my mouth several times, struck speechless. I clenched my other fist, feeling like an absolute fool. Nobody made me feel like this.
Nobody
. Then a wild thought occurred to me. "I was actually hoping to talk with both of you about the script. I had a few questions."

Jennifer looked at me, surprised. "Really? You weren't that interested in L.A." she said. “I don’t remember you being at any of the meetings where I was.”

I felt like punching a wall at that response. Olivia was smirking as if this were completely expected behavior for me. As if she expected nothing more.

"Well, I was juggling a lot of things back in the States. Now that we're here, my focus is capable of being more...singular."

I said this last word while looking directly at Olivia. She didn't flinch or respond in any way. If she had been hard to reach when I'd walked into that coffee shop all those years ago, it was absolutely nothing as to how she was now. It was like there was a glass wall between us. I wanted to drive a truck through it, douse gasoline on the remains of the shards and light them on fire.

Jennifer looked between both of us, and Olivia spoke. "Let's hurry. I have a few things to do before we get back to shooting, and I'd like for lunch to not take up the majority of the next hour." And with that, she turned around, swishing her long ponytail behind her and giving me the best view of her ass I could possibly receive.

She was fucking with me. And it only made me want her more.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

OLIVIA

Wilder wouldn't stop looking at me the entire time we were sitting at the table. It was actually intensely embarrassing in so many ways. Jennifer was babbling on about something. I was having a hard time keeping my focus.

The three of us were clustered foolishly around one of the miniature bistro tables that were intended, at most, to hold two diminutive cups of espresso and maybe two small pastry plates.

We had three scripts and enormous plates piled with fresh salads and meatballs. It was all I could do to not stuff my face with the food that was currently in front of me. I was ravenous from the jet lag, and the smell of the fresh marinara made me want to eat my hand. But Wilder was six inches away from my left elbow and looking at me.

Looking at me
hard.

"So I was thinking the part where James and Margot end up running off to the countryside for their secret rendezvous - I thought that it could be interrupted by the international mob looking for James. Thoughts?" Jennifer was still talking and I'd said nothing, barely hearing what she was going on about.