Step Wilde: A Stepbrother Romance (14 page)

It swirled around before finally falling through the silver grate and into the floor.

I thought about the sweetness I had tasted between her thighs, then commenced the best masturbation session I'd ever had in my entire life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WILDER

I stifled a yawn. I was sitting in the conference room of the hotel with the largest cup of coffee Harrison could find for me. The fold out couch had been a lot less comfortable than what I was normally used to.

Besides that, I had a three-in-the-morning wake up call for a workout. It was time to get back into my routine. My trainer had FaceTimed with me during the session. I couldn't do the math to figure out what time it was there, but I was mostly sure I was talking to her from the future.

This seven-in-the-morning meeting had been impromptu and called at the last minute. It was me, Fox, and his assistant director Janna. They both looked upset.

"What'd I do this time?" I asked.

Fox looked even more tired than I was. I thought I saw a hint of light disappointment cascading across his eyes.

"Nothing, Wilder," he said, getting up out of his seat slightly so he could reach the silver platter filled with pastries that sat in the middle of the table. His own assistant had likely ordered it. He took a large bite from a croissant. "Nothing intentional anyway. It's just that we reviewed the tapes from yesterday's filming. And we have a problem."

I furrowed my brow. "What's that?"

"You and Hailey. You have zero chemistry. You actually have barely concealed contempt that's coming through the lens and she is one of the most wooden actresses I've ever had the displeasure to work with in my long, long career. She's
terrible.
She can be a bad actress - we can work with that, but if there's zero chemistry, there is absolutely nothing to go off of. I need you to work with her behind the scenes."

I nearly choked on my coffee. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me right," Fox said, sighing and pushing the platter back to the middle of the shiny table. "You need to work with her. If we can get her to not
act
in front of the camera, but just be in love and interested with you and then we can capture that, we might have something. You’re a good enough actor to manufacture the chemistry and pull that out of her. Plus, you've fucked. I know that for a fact."

He leaned back.

“Come to think of it, that might be why you have no sizzle onscreen.” Fox shrugged. “The horse is out of the barn at any rate.”

I started to protest but he held up a hairy hand. "I know there’s still some passion there. Nobody writes a song like she did without passion. She was pissed at you. I need that passion again, somehow, some way." He nodded at Janna.

"I figure if we pull the cameras away from both of you and shoot from a long distance, she might be less self-conscious," Janna said in the quiet, assertive manner that she was famous for.

I laughed. "Hailey? Self-conscious? You’re fucking joking, right?"

Janna barely refrained from rolling her eyes. "You know what I mean. Less...aware. Less
acting
, more
being
."

I chortled. "You've never been around Hailey. I'm pretty sure she's acting even when it's just her and a mirror. It's like seeing a Boggart in its natural state. It just doesn't happen."

Fox looked at Janna curiously. "Harry Potter reference," she replied, waving her hand and turning her focus back to me. "We just need you to try."

I rubbed my hands over my eyes. "I don't think that will work. But I'm willing to give it a shot. What choice do we have?"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WILDER

“You’ve got to be fucking
kidding
me,” I yelled, punching my fist into the wall. “Goddammit, Hailey.”

I ripped my script in half. Hailey almost seemed amused at my frustration.

“You should calm down,” she replied airily. “I’d hate for you to be one of those men in their twenties who has a heart attack from alcoholism and stress.”

I glowered at her and walked over to the mini-bar, pouring out a glass of vodka and slamming it back. I had to be drunk to be around her. She was insufferable. I slammed the glass on the table.

“I need you to do this, for this movie. I’ve poured money and time into this.”

Hailey rolled her eyes.

“Oh, not
money!
” She gasped dramatically. “You have another hundred million where that came from, sweetheart.”

She reached over and picked up her cherry red acoustic guitar, strumming the chords absentmindedly.

That was when I realized that the guitar wasn’t the only thing in this room she was playing. I almost laughed when the full realization came down over me.

The key word there was
almost.

I stormed over to her, sitting on the ottoman. It was all I could do to not grab the guitar and smash it, then lift her off the sofa and shake her. I took a deep breath to calm myself. We were like dynamite and fire. This is why we always fell apart and crashed back together in an endless loop. I couldn’t count the number of times we’d broken up with one another.

“You little fucking-“ I took another breath.

“Say it, Wilde. You might give me the hook for my next song.” She blew me a kiss and went back to strumming the guitar.

“You can act. I know you can. In those music videos of yours. You cry and scream and rage and play coy…
you can act
. Which makes me fucking wonder: why aren’t you?”

Hailey smiled, her fingers still moving across the fretboard.

“I was wondering how long it was going to take you to figure this out. The alcohol must be pickling your brain. You used to be quicker than this.”

“What do you want, Hailey? Money?”

She laughed. “Wilde, I’m worth three times what you are.” She set the guitar down and leaned forward. Our faces were inches from one another’s. “I want
you
.”

I felt like time was stopping. My heart was racing. Then I guffawed in her face.

“Right. Okay. What do you
really
want?”

She frowned. “I told you. I want
you
.”

I stood up, shaking my head and pacing. I felt like I was going to explode out of my body if I didn’t move around. “

Bullshit. You don’t want me. You wanted my friends, the friends of my friends, the neighbors of my friends, the pizza guy…” I trailed off. “You fucked more men when we were together than you have when we’ve been apart.
Bullshit
.”

She twisted her mouth into a smile.

“I want you to propose to me. I want a ring and wedding planning. I want us together in public every night. I want photos of us all over the Internet.”

I stopped pacing. Then I laughed. “No. No way. Absolutely no way. Why would you want that?”

She leaned back and examined her perfect manicure.

“My album sales are dropping. There’s nothing that my fans like more than to have paparazzi photos that match my song lyrics. So when we call the wedding off, I’ll be able to have a breakup album. But a
better
one. There are only so many songs I can write about dating a guy and breaking up. But a broken
engagement
? Between me and the most famous man on planet Earth?” She laughed.

It was like ice cascading over my head.

“We would break the Internet, Wilde.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “You’re fucking serious right now.”

She nodded. “When have I ever
not
been serious, Wilde?”

I ran my hands through my hair and poured myself another drink. I stood there, contemplating.

“Let’s say that I say yes to this ridiculous stunt. So then what? You show up on set tomorrow and you
act
in this movie? For real. No histrionics. No wooden dialogue delivery. You’ll be the screaming, crying, perfect Hurricane Hailey when needed?”

She nodded.

“That’s the deal,” she said simply.

I paused.

“And if I say no?”

She put her hand on her chest and puffed it out, leaning into the light with wide eyes. “Oh, James! Take me away from this place!” she cooed. She sounded exactly as she had earlier on set: like complete, total, and utter shit.

I weighed my options. I didn’t have any.

“Okay. Fine,” I said. “Six months. And only in public. We’re not really in a relationship. Photos for the fucking paparazzi and that’s it. That’s all I’m doing. We go to the movie premiere together, ride the publicity train of all of that, then I dump you.”

Hailey laughed.

“Oh Wilde.
No
. I’m the one who does the leaving here. You should know that by now.”  She put her feet up on the ottoman and grabbed the guitar. “I need total commitment. I better be able to pull up TMZ and know in a
second
that you’re in love with me.”

I sighed. “Okay, Hailey. You’ve got me.”

I walked over to the door to leave the suite.

“One more thing, Wilde.” Her voice actually sounded angry for once.

I paused with my hand on the door. My heart was racing. It was never good when she waited until I was at the door to add something.

“If I get a single whiff of you even
looking
at another woman, I’m done.”
 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

OLIVIA

The sun beat down on the back of my head. I could feel the foundation beginning to melt off my face. During a break between takes, I ran over to the makeup table and took three baby wipes to take off everything except my mascara.

"Nice makeup," Bev said, shaking her puffy head of curls my direction. "Did you do it?"

I shook my head. "Four Seasons spa, actually," I replied.

I'd splurged again but this time had headed downstairs early in the morning. It was ridiculous, really. I was getting tarted up to appeal to a drunk asshole who looked ready to jump me at a moment's notice.

He wasn't the Wilder that I remembered, that was for sure. Maybe he just couldn't hold his liquor anymore. Either way, he'd reminded me way too much of family members who I'd rather not be around. And yet I’d still bothered with the pretense of makeup and costume.

I was doing a terrible job at convincing myself that I didn’t
want
him to look at me the way he was looking at me.

I made my way to craft services where they were handing out herb-infused lemonade by the icy cupful. I drank from the plastic cup deeply and fully before ladling out another.

"You really should get a clean cup next time," said a masculine voice I'd recognize anywhere. Goosebumps came over my body despite my better instincts and inclinations.

I held up my glass with sarcastic surprise. "Oh, I'm sorry. I don't think you'll like this much. Nobody's spiked it."

A flash of hurt fell across Wilder's face, but he recovered quickly with a smile.

"You look great today once again, Liv," he said.

I couldn't imagine why he was using my nickname, even though every time he did I felt a frisson of pleasure. But the fact remained that we barely knew each other. It felt intimate on a level that hadn't even existed the night we'd fucked each other's brains out.

His muscular arm brushed against mine and I felt a jolt of undeniable electricity. Somewhere underneath that body paint were dark tattoos. I had a wild flash of me tracing my tongue along them.

"I don't look great, actually. I'm basically melting out in this heat." I dabbed at my forehead with a paper napkin.

Wilder leaned down and whispered into my ear. "I'm going to keep telling you that you're beautiful until one day you believe it for yourself."

I stared up into his eyes, our faces inches away from one another. I felt a wetness between my thighs and I thought seriously about pushing him onto the table, shattering the glass cooler of lemonade and fucking his brains out.

Then I heard Janna calling everyone back to order. Wilder walked away from me and back toward Hailey, who was standing underneath a black umbrella held up by a set assistant.

"Ready? Speed...marker...action!"

I stood in the shade of the craft services tent and watched from afar. It had been a weird day full of surprises even before Wilder came over to talk to me. It was like someone had sprayed Hailey with essence of Meryl Streep.

Okay, maybe not Meryl. But her acting had improved with such a swiftness that I wondered what had happened; it seemed like an overnight change after the first day on set.

They ran through five takes of the same scene. It went flawlessly each time. I sat there, thumbing my script as I watched the two of them together. They looked completely in love, and the chemistry between them was sizzling.

I felt jealousy creeping over me against my better judgment, particularly as Fox yelled “CUT! That’s all for today, folks” and Hailey wrapped her arm around Wilder’s waist.

That was odd. She hadn’t done that before.

But when the camera stopped rolling, I thought I caught a glimmer of disgust behind Wilder’s eyes. A second later I was sure I had imagined it. Wilder opened his mouth and yelled.

“Everyone, hey! Just a second. Could we all come together for a minute?”

I glanced around me quickly to see if anyone else was as confused as I was. I was greeted by the sight of Lydia’s sunglass-covered face. She was in head-to-toe black clothing as usual and directing a pair of men who were struggling with two enormous black steamer trunks. I waved at her and she waved back.

Most of the crew had moved in closer to where Wilder and Hailey were standing.

“Okay, I think this is everyone,” Wilder said.

I turned back around, even more curious now. Part of me also felt like throwing up. I wasn’t sure where that instinct was coming from, but it was there. I tried to examine Wilder’s face for a repeat glimpse of the disgust.

He cleared his throat and put his arm around Hailey. “I just wanted you all to be the first to know…we’re getting married.”