Mogul (Manhattan #2)(47)

“Are you forgetting who did all the work?”

“It’s hard work trying not to come too quickly when you’re going down on me.” I flush, and he stares darkly at me. Hungry.

I purse my lips and try to shake off the tugs in my stomach.

“Here, yummy motherfucker.” I pull him across the car to kiss him and thank him for bringing me. “Have fun filming garbage.”

“I will. I get off on it.”

I cackle and step out of the car, walking away, swishing my hips because I want to give him a little wood to remember me by.

A woman who was entering the building pauses and looks directly at me before shifting her gaze to the car, where Ian sits staring back at us.

“Do you know Ian?”

I hear her voice but I’m distracted. It’s a part I’m excited about, a story of a girl finding herself. And there are three leads, which means better odds of landing a part. “Yes,” I say, pulling myself from my thoughts and focusing on the woman in front of me.

“Interesting.”

“How do you know him?” I ask her.

“We’ve crossed paths. What is he to you?”

I feel possessive. I bristle. “My boyfriend.” I walk past her and open the door, thinking I’ve had the last word when I hear, “Really?”

“He seems to think so.” I turn back, give her a smile, and walk forward to get ready.

“Cordelia,” someone calls her. “A call for you. It’s your husband.”

“Oh really. He doesn’t have time to answer my calls? Well, now I don’t have time to answer his.”



*



The thing about auditions is you’re just not competing with others. You’re competing with yourself. It doesn’t matter what you have for breakfast and if it bloated you, or that you may be catching a bug. You need to be the best version of yourself because these people don’t want to settle, and they see a lot. They know when you’re settling and giving them a half-assed performance. I don’t want to be half-assed or perform scared as if I’m going to break my ankle again. I plan to do it all the way. As if the guy watching me is my Dirty Workaholic and my life depends on him choosing me.

Hmm. Why does that thought make my stomach flip?

Anyway. Back to business. There are forty-eight of us.

And we’re all bloodthirsty for the part.

Dancers can smell fear from a mile away, and so can the directors.

“From the top,” one of the casting directors says.

I took gymnastics when I was a girl. It helped my dancing in numerous ways, but it especially gave me the strength to backflip and do acrobatics that you’d never get from a normal dance class.

It turns out to be an advantage for this casting, which requires some knowledge of gymnastics.

After the auditions, the blonde I met by the door halts me with a curt “You.” She comes over, her regard making me tip my chin up a little higher. I’ve never been stared at by someone who is so blatantly angry during a casting before. “Your name?” She raises one brow.

“Sara.”

“Sara what?” she barks.

“Sara Davies.”

She purses her lips and heads back to converse with the directors.

They seem to be discussing their decisions intensely for ten minutes.

“We’re calling out the list of our final ten,” the blonde, Cordelia, says. The guy next to her begins reading names, and my stomach sinks when we get to number ten. And there’s no Sara Davies on the list.

Crushed, I am about to force myself to move my ass and get off the stage when the guy hesitates. “Eleven,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. “Sara Davies.”

What?

My eyes widen. I made the finalists?

“From the top,” he calls with a clap.

I’m exhausted by the time I’m done; even my bones feel sore. This was an emotional challenge, but I head out and take off my dance shoes and toss them into my dance bag, feeling good about an audition for the first time since I broke my ankle.

I’m supposed to be back here tomorrow.

Please let this be it.





Ian



I’m livid with Cordelia for making this personal. Livid with life for letting Sara end up here, a lamb wandering into a lion’s den.

“You called her back to have her under your thumb. Don’t tell me you don’t know who she is,” I bark at her, knowing full well what Cordelia has planned. But Sara has no fucking clue that the show she’s got her heart set on is none other than my wife’s first full production, under the company founded with my money.

“I know exactly who she is, and I know exactly why you like her. She’s sort of sassy, Ian.”

I grit my teeth and pull my hair in frustration as I pace the living room of “our” house. “What do you want, Cordelia?”

“I’ll keep her in the show. It’s seriously all this girl wants—she’d pee in a bag if I asked her to. But I’ll only give her a part if you forget about her and come home, Ian. Clean slate.”

“I’m not in love with you anymore.”

“I know. But you have feelings for this girl—I mean come on, you drove her to the audition and kissed her like you wanted to eat her up!” She laughs, not merrily. “So if you don’t do it for me, then do it for her.” She raises her brows.