Rising Star Read online

  He hit Sabrina’s speed dial number—she was number one, at the very top of his contacts—on the walk back to his trailer. “You beckoned,” he said when she answered.

  “How’s my favorite client doing today?”

  “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Chris Pine yourself.” Griffin flashed a smile as he passed one of the wardrobe assistants.

  “So funny,” Sabrina replied with her trademark British dryness. “Love that sense of humor. How’s Dean’s directorial debut on Las Vegas General going?”

  “Horrendous.”

  “Shocking. Who could have predicted?”

  “You did.”

  Sabrina had been Dean’s agent several years ago, until they’d mutually agreed to part ways—which Griffin assumed meant she’d fired him for being an uncooperative asshole.

  “Well, I’ve got good news to brighten your day. You’re on the short list for the Buckaroo Banzai remake.”

  Griffin felt a flicker of unease. “You told me that yesterday.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. You’re using your good news/bad news voice.” Sabrina never gave him bad news without first giving him some good news to soften the blow—even if the good news happened to be a rerun. “Just get to the bad part,” he said, feeling his stomach clench in anticipation.

  “It’s just a little thing. I don’t want you getting stressed.”

  “I don’t get stressed,” Griffin insisted as his stomach acids churned like a jacuzzi tub. “You know me, I’m easygoing.”

  “I know I told you I’d set you up with my dog sitter while you’re in Atlanta, but it’s a no-go. Turns out she’s moving back to Michigan.”

  Griffin came to a stop. “Oh.”

  As soon as LV Gen wrapped, he was flying to Atlanta to shoot Prepare for War. He’d been planning to leave his dog here, in the care of Sabrina’s dog sitter, so he wouldn’t have any distractions on set.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Sabrina told him.

  One of the studio bicycles whipped around him, and the writers’ assistant called out a greeting as she passed.

  Griffin waved back, forcing a smile. “Don’t worry about it,” he said into the phone.

  “I’ve already got my assistant asking around the office. Someone’s bound to have a good dog sitter they can recommend.”

  Griffin started walking toward his trailer again. “Someone who’s available on a few weeks’ notice?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Because dog sitters were in high demand in LA. Especially the ones with excellent references who could be trusted in a celebrity’s home.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve got to find a new dog sitter too.”

  “It’s fine,” Griffin said, grinding his molars together. “I’ll find someone else.” He preferred to handle it himself; it was one thing to take Sabrina’s personal recommendation, but he wasn’t so keen to hire someone based on a secondhand reference. Not when he was going to be away for three whole months.

  He couldn’t leave his dog with just anyone. Taco was his best friend, and the little guy depended on Griffin to take care of him. It had to be someone Griffin knew well enough to entrust him to. Someone who would care for him the way he deserved to be cared for.

  Sabrina offered an apology which Griffin assured her wasn’t necessary, and he bid her goodbye as he reached his trailer. At the sound of Griffin’s voice, Taco yipped a greeting through the door, his nails tapping an ecstatic rhythm on the linoleum inside.

  Griffin had rescued him five years ago, after seeing someone toss a puppy out of their car and drive off. Seriously, what kind of monster threw a puppy out of a moving car? Griffin had taken the scared little mutt to the vet and then brought him home to the big empty house he’d just bought himself two months before. He hoped the asshole who’d mistreated Taco was rotting in hell, but Griffin felt like fate had delivered a blessing to him in a scruffy, flea-bitten package.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, leaning down to keep the dog from escaping as he opened his trailer door. Taco spun in excited circles, wagging his whole body along with his tail, and Griffin scooped him up as he pulled the door shut behind him. “You miss me?”

  In reply, the little terrier mix licked Griffin’s face with enthusiasm.

  “Gross, man. No Frenching.” He set Taco on the couch and dropped down beside him, ruffling the dog’s ears. “What am I gonna do with you this summer, huh?”

  He was already feeling guilty about leaving him behind while he was in Atlanta. Maybe he should just take him with him. But that would create a whole new set of problems. For one thing, Griffin hadn’t told the production manager he’d be bringing a dog, and the housing they’d arranged for him might not allow pets. For another, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to bring a dog with him onto a Jerry Duncan set every day.

  This was Griffin’s first time at the top of the call sheet on a major studio production, and he was already feeling the pressure. Jerry Duncan was one of the most successful directors in the business—but also one of the most feared. He was notoriously demanding and bad-tempered, bringing his huge productions in on schedule and under budget by ruthlessly pushing his actors and crew almost to the breaking point. Griffin fully expected it to be three months of hell, but if this movie was as successful as Duncan’s other pictures, it would make his career.

  He didn’t need the added stress of taking care of a dog in a strange city on top of the grueling work schedule. As much as he was going to miss his little buddy, he preferred to leave him here, in a familiar place, with someone he trusted.

  But who? How the hell was he going to find someone on such short notice?

  3

  Today was turning out to be a real steaming shit pile of a day.

  As Alice stared at the new email in her inbox, she felt the rumble of a stress headache coming on.

  From: Dr. Regina Frazier

  Subject: Just checking in (again)!

  The cheerful exclamation point her dissertation committee chair had tacked on didn’t quite manage to counteract the passive-aggressiveness of the parenthetical.

  Alice didn’t need to read the body of the email to know what it said. Undoubtedly something similar to the last two emails Dr. Frazier had sent. With a quick finger-swipe across her phone’s screen, she archived the message unread. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Too bad the real world didn’t work like a smartphone. If only you could make problems disappear as easily as swiping away an annoying alert on your phone screen. Poof! Gone! Never to trouble you again.

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t a problem that would go away so easily.

  The reason Alice was ignoring her dissertation advisor’s emails was that she’d been ignoring her dissertation. For months. Like, the last nine months.

  It had been easy to stay off the professor’s radar at first. Dr. Frazier had been on sabbatical last summer and fall, and only checked in a few times. Since Alice was in the fifth year of her PhD program and had been a great student and self-starter up until then, Dr. Frazier had no reason to suspect she wouldn’t be just fine on her own for a few months. Especially since Alice had responded to all her early emails with assurances that everything was proceeding apace.

  But now it was the spring semester. Dr. Frazier was back from sabbatical, and a few weeks after the start of classes, she’d sent an email asking for an update on Alice’s progress. Which Alice had ignored. A few weeks later she’d sent another email, which Alice had also ignored. And now this one. Alice knew she couldn’t put her off forever. By now, Dr. Frazier had almost certainly asked around the sociology department and discovered Alice hadn’t been seen on campus in months—not since the previous June, to be exact.

  Sooner rather than later, Alice was going to have to face the music and explain herself.

  There was a good reason she hadn’t set foot on campus in two semesters, and that reason was named Dr. Gilchrist. He was a member of Alice’s dissertation committe
e specializing in criminal recidivism, and the department expert in network analysis. One of the key components of the dissertation prospectus her committee had approved was a chapter applying network analysis to her data. Alice didn’t know how to do network analysis, so her adviser had recruited Dr. Gilchrist to walk her through it.

  At first, Alice had liked Dr. Gilchrist—or Neil, as he’d cheerfully insisted upon being called. She’d enjoyed the interactions she’d had with him in the past, and had been excited when he’d agreed to be on her committee and work with her on the network analysis. He was personable, generous with his time, and had a lot of knowledge he seemed eager to share.

  Or so she’d thought.

  Their first meeting had gone well enough, but he started to make her uncomfortable the second time she’d come to his office. For one thing, he’d closed the door, which he hadn’t done before. Once they were alone, his friendliness became more pronounced, to a degree that set her on edge. More than once, she caught him staring at her breasts.

  But he hadn’t done anything overtly wrong—nothing she could describe to someone else in a way that would be incontrovertible—so she convinced herself she’d let her imagination get the better of her.

  She continued meeting with him, even as his so-called friendliness moved farther over the line. He started touching her casually on the shoulder or the knee. Making offhand comments on the appearance of other female students in the department. Once, as he was showing Alice something on his computer, he tabbed past a porn website. He started introducing sexual subjects into the conversation, asking Alice about her sexual history and preferences, and sharing inappropriate information about his own.

  She spent a lot of time shifting out of his reach and pretending to laugh off his comments. The shame shouldn't have belonged to her, but she was the one left feeling guilty and unclean.

  It occurred to her that he was intentionally dragging his feet and withholding the knowledge she needed in order to keep her coming back, but what could she do? She needed him, and Dr. Frazier was away, unable to help—even assuming she’d believe Alice, which was by no means a given. She was, after all, the one who’d sent Alice to Dr. Gilchrist in the first place.

  And he hadn’t done anything that far over the line. Professors were friendly and informal with graduate students all the time. Nothing had actually happened, right? Alice was just constantly uncomfortable, feeling like she needed to play defense around him.

  Her anxiety increased as Dr. Gilchrist’s “flirting” became more aggressive. He regularly complimented her body and reminded her how much influence he could have over her future in academia—though not in the same sentence, of course. The two statements were linked only by inference, but infer from them she did. He invited her out for drinks repeatedly, which she was forced to decline repeatedly. Once, he attempted to give her a shoulder rub.

  It wasn’t any one thing that finally crossed the line into too much. It was more like a steady, progressive increase in her baseline level of dread, until it reached a point that became paralyzing. Alice left Gilchrist’s office one day, her skin crawling from the feel of his eyes on her, and simply never went back. She begged off their next scheduled meeting and stopped answering his emails altogether.

  That was nine months ago, and she hadn’t set foot on campus since. She hadn’t touched her dissertation either. Even thinking about it made her feel queasy.

  Writing a dissertation was supposed to be stressful, but it was the harassment that had kept her up nights, made her feel like she was getting a stomach ulcer, and brought her to tears unexpectedly. It was Gilchrist’s predatory attentions that had sent her into hiding and brought her academic aspirations to a humiliating and unplanned halt.

  She was twenty-seven and she’d been in school her whole life—she should be graduating in June and starting her job search. Instead, just when her career should have been taking off finally, it was over, and Alice had nothing to show for her years of work. No PhD, no plan, and no aspirations. Nothing but a temporary job she’d never intended to keep for so long, on a television show that had been canceled.

  Alice swiped to her phone’s browser and typed Craigslist in the search bar. She’d have to reply to Dr. Frazier soon, but not today. Her stomach already felt like a garbage disposal choking on a chicken bone, and anyway she had the more pressing problem of her impending homelessness to deal with. Her dissertation had already waited nine months; it could wait a few more weeks until her current housing crisis had resolved.

  While everyone else ate lunch in the catering tent, Alice sat alone with her burger and fries at one of the picnic tables on the other side of the soundstage and browsed the roommate-wanted listings. She’d already asked all the other extras and production assistants if they knew anyone in need of a roommate or sublet. Unfortunately, no one had, and her earlier Zillow search had turned up nothing but a dire-looking studio in Reseda she could just barely afford, with the toilet literally in the living room with no walls or doors around it.

  It left her no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of internet strangers.

  As she scanned through the classified ads, Alice grew increasingly depressed. Repulsive as the living room toilet was, most of the roommate situations seemed even worse…

  420 friendly house. Must be okay with snakes.

  Biggest of nopes on the House of Reptiles.

  Happy, healthy vegan couple looking for bi roommate to share house & fun with.

  Clearly a poly couple in search of a live-in third. She wished them luck in their endeavors, but no way.

  Looking for housemates for an intentional community centered on spiritual and prayerful living.

  Definitely a cult.

  I am 35 yo nudist professional male and prefer if you also are a nudist. Females only.

  Gross.

  For the right attractive female I have no problem taking care of your chores. ;) Let’s exchange pics and get to know each other.

  Alice groaned and folded forward, resting her forehead on the picnic table. Was everybody looking for a roommate in Los Angeles some kind of perv? She was going to end up with the living room toilet in Reseda, wasn’t she? She supposed as long as none of her guests ever needed to pee, she could learn to live with it. Or maybe she’d just never invite anyone over at all—it was hard to imagine offering someone a drink with her toilet sitting out in the open a few feet away.

  Something cold and wet nuzzled against Alice’s ankle and she startled upright. Griffin Beach’s dog Taco gazed up at her with his comical underbite and wide doggy eyes.

  Taco’s owner stood a few feet away, holding a smoothie shaker in his hand. “You okay?” he asked, tilting his head as he studied her face.

  He was still wearing his blue doctor’s scrubs, which had been custom tailored by wardrobe to look far better on him than scrubs had any right to do. Griffin had been a lot skinnier and less muscular the first few seasons of the show, but he’d bulked up so much for Troublemakers 4 that they’d had to write an explanation for his upgraded bod into his character’s storyline on Las Vegas General.

  “Yep. Fine,” Alice said quickly as she reached down to pet Taco. He wagged his tail and whined hopefully, so she gave in and lifted him onto her lap.

  Griffin shook his head, grinning as Taco licked Alice’s chin. “Found a sucker with a lap, did you, buddy?”

  Alice pushed Taco away from her face and glanced at Griffin without quite meeting his eye. “Thanks for earlier. I’m sorry you had to step in.”

  He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “De nada.”

  She’d always liked Griffin, but she was also a little wary around him, and not just because background had to tread carefully around the talent. He was nicer to the extras than some of the other actors, but he could also be kind of…flirty. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of actors could be like that, and sometimes it was just a harmless side effect of their people-pleasing personalities. The profession tended to attract cer
tain types: attention-starved middle children, class clowns who needed to be liked, and extroverts who drew energy from interacting with others. There were plenty of introvert actors too, but they seemed far less comfortable with the fame and attention that came with success.

  Guys like Griffin, on the other hand, seemed to eat all that stuff up. And while his friendliness was certainly preferable to the raging asshole prima donnas who threw a tantrum if you made eye contact with them—like Dean Harwell—Alice’s recent experiences had left her distrustful of friendly men.

  Not that she’d ever heard a bad word against Griffin, beyond his reputation as something of a manwhore. According to the set grapevine, his workplace conquests numbered in the double digits, including at least three of his costars and two members of the makeup department. If you believed the gossip sites, his romantic past was littered with an endless string of C-list actresses and models, none of whom had lasted more than a week or two. One of the less reliable sites even claimed he had a penchant for picking up starry-eyed fans in bars, which Alice wasn’t sure she believed, but wasn’t sure she disbelieved either.