CHAPTER 13

EMERY

Day four of filming. Today’s objective was to introduce Marty to Peter and hope for a love connection. Or something.

Love was a long shot, but maybe they’d hit it off. Marty had just arrived, and Rhonda was getting him hooked up with a mic when I heard a commotion from down the hallway.

“Damn it, Peter!” Estelle’s voice was muffled. “Put it down!”

In the short time I’d known Estelle, I’d become familiar with that warning in her tone. The one that said, ‘I’m about to lose my shit.’

I had no idea what was going on, but it didn’t sound good. I followed the ruckus to the bathroom and knocked. “Estelle? Everything okay?”

“Yes,” she replied, sounding panicked. “I’m naked. You don’t want to come in here.”

I smirked.

“If you’re naked, I’m pretty sure I do,” I said quietly into the wood. If she was trying to keep me out, that was a bad strategy.

I heard some scuffling and hushed whispers from the other side of the door. Just then, Joel came into the hallway, camera at the ready. I tried to get the shit-eating grin off my face as I knocked again.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine!” she shrieked. “Everything’s just fine.”

“Okay. The man who wants to meet Peter just got here.”

“Sounds great,” she chirped. “Be out in a minute.”

Shrugging, I started to turn away when I heard a pained, “Ow!” from inside. My protective instincts took over and I turned the knob. It wasn’t locked, so I opened the door far enough to peek my head in.

Estelle wasn’t naked, but everything definitely was not okay. On all fours, she looked up at me with wide eyes and I spotted blood running down her arm.

She held up her uninjured hand. “Don’t come any closer.”

I frowned. “You’re hurt. Let me get the medic. Can we get a medic in here?” I called over my shoulder.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Estelle huffed.

As I stepped inside the bathroom, the situation became even weirder. She’d corralled Peter into the corner under the toilet, and I craned my neck to see what kind of trouble he was causing.

“Emery, can you please shut the—”

Suddenly, Peter jumped up onto the counter and flew through the doorway with a large phallic-shaped object in his mouth. Naturally, Joel followed him, intent on getting the scoop. Estelle wasn’t far behind as she scrambled by me—still on all fours.

“Was that a…? Um, it really looked like a—”

“A huge dildo? Yep,” she replied, out of breath from the encounter as she crawled over my feet.

Out in the hallway, Peter and Estelle entered a face-off, with Joel at one end to document it and me at the other, gaping as I watched the chaos unfold.

Intent on keeping his new toy, Peter covered it with the length of his body. But his weight must have been enough to press the ‘on’ button because it began moving.

Startled, he jumped three feet in the air.

And there it was in plain sight—a pink dildo twisting and jittering around on the floor, hopping down the hall like a giant caterpillar on meth.

Crawling forward, Estelle made a swipe for it, but Peter beat her to the prize. Batting at it with his paws like it was his mortal enemy, he knocked the wiggling object against the wall a few times until it stopped moving. Then he picked it up in his mouth and took off again, zig-zagging between Joel’s legs out into the kitchen.

“I give up.” Plopping down on the floor, Estelle sagged back against the wall and covered her face with her hands. “Everyone’s already seen it anyway. Oh my God. I’m never gonna live this down.”

“Shit.” I was torn between running after them and staying with Estelle, who was now lightly banging her head on the wall. Each impact made a dull thud. I decided to stay with her. “Stop,” I said softly, cradling the back of her head. “You’re already injured. It’ll be fine.”

Picking up her hand, I inspected the scratches. They weren’t too deep and had already stopped bleeding.

“That’s easy for you to say,” she retorted. “You’re not the one who just had your sex toy recorded on national television. I don’t give a fuck about what the rest of the world thinks, but my parents—oh my God, my parents. They’re conservative people who live in a very pretentious neighborhood. When everyone sees this, they’re gonna be horrified.”

“Hey, I’ll talk to Steve about deleting the footage, okay?” I rubbed my thumb over her cheek.

Estelle’s hopeful eyes were filled with hero-worship as she stared up at me. “You’d do that?”

“Of course.”

Loud laughter rang through the apartment and Estelle cringed while turning an even deeper shade of pink.

“Take a minute if you need it,” I told her. “I can just say you’re not feeling well.”

“A minute?” she asked incredulously. “It’s going to take a lot longer than sixty seconds to recover from this. And ‘not feeling well?’ Like suddenly I’m incapacitated because everyone saw my vibrator? What would we call it, the dildo flu?”

I barked out a laugh. “It doesn’t sound so great when you say it out loud. Maybe I could do something really embarrassing to distract everyone.”

A small smile played on her lips. “Like what?”

“I could spill sweet tea on my jeans and tell everyone I peed my pants.”

Shaking her head, she sighed. “I appreciate the offer, but we don’t need to make a bad situation worse. I might go hide in my room for a few minutes. Tell Janice I’m definitely gonna need some extra time with her today.”

“Will do.” Giving her a reassuring smile, I turned away to go do some serious damage control.

The laughter I heard before continued, and I was about to tell whoever it was to fuck off. But when I turned the corner, I realized the humor had nothing to do with what had just happened.

Marty was on the couch, his big frame looking oversized in the small living room. Greg was perched on his round stomach while licking the hell out of his beard. Apparently, Marty thought it was hilarious.

“Uhh, Marty, meet Greg.” I did the introductions while turning in a circle, looking for a cat with a giant dildo in its mouth. Shouldn’t have been hard to spot it, but Peter and the vibrator were nowhere to be found.

Not under the coffee table, not behind the couch, not in the kitchen.

The leather-clad man was still chuckling as Greg made a tangled mess of his facial hair. “This one. This is the one, Emery.”

“Really?” My eyebrows went up. “I should warn you that he does that a lot. In a couple days, you might not have a beard anymore.”

“That’s okay,” he said, petting the cat who was grooming him. “I was thinking about shaving it off anyway. Just saves me the trouble.”

Okay, then.

Not the original plan, but it was great news.

Smiling, I glanced around the room, still searching for the orange-striped devil. “I’m really glad to hear that. I wanted you to meet Peter, but I think this is a good match.”

A psst sound came from around the corner, and I turned to find Janice beckoning me into the kitchen.

“I think I might have something you’re looking for,” she whispered.

“Did you get it from him?” I whispered back, reaching under my shirt to unplug my mic.

She nodded.

“How did you manage that?” I asked, perusing her arms for any scratch marks.

She shrugged. “Easy. He just hopped up onto the counter, dropped it, and ran away.”

Of course he did. “Where is it?”

“I wrapped it in a dish towel and threw it under the sink,” she replied, her face beet-red.

Every time Janice said ‘it’ her voice dropped and the blush deepened. Maybe Estelle wasn’t the only one traumatized by this event.

While Marty and Greg were bonding on the couch, I pulled Steve out into the hallway to ask him to delete the footage of the dildo debacle.

“Are you kidding?” He laughed. “This is reality show gold! You can’t make this stuff up.”

“You can’t show that on TV, Steve. I’m gonna need you to erase it.”

“What? No way,” he said, aghast. “We’ll probably get two full episodes out of this deal. Do you have any idea what this will do for our ratings?”

“Fuck the ratings.” Clenching my jaw, I tried to reel in the impulse to punch him in the face. “Estelle is embarrassed.”

“Well, of course she is. That’s what makes it great.”

“You can’t do that to her.”

Steve’s smile faded away, his lips pressing into a flat line. “You don’t make the rules here. I’m not going to lessen the quality of this show just because you have a soft spot for this chick. Do you want to keep your job or not?”

I jerked back like I’d been hit. “You’d fire me just because of this?”

“No. You don’t get it.” Huffing, he threw his hands in the air. “We’re in hot water with the network. They’re making demands, wanting to make changes. They want more sexual content, but less profanity. More drama, more humor, less heart-warming. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m not in the position to challenge it.”

So that was why he was being such a prick lately. Suddenly, the short temper and bad moods made sense. And he’d probably been provoking Estelle on purpose, hoping for tears or angry outbursts.

I didn’t know why the network was putting so much pressure on him, and the last thing I wanted was for the show to get canceled. Still, I wouldn’t allow him to make a fool of Estelle.

“I won’t let you do it,” I insisted, crossing my arms over my chest.

“She’s under contract, Emery. We have permission to show anything we film. You think I picked her at random? You think I chose this project because of the unique situation?” Shaking his head, he scoffed. “She’s fucking hot, that’s why. Again, think about the ratings. It’s not my responsibility to make everyone look like a saint on this show. I’m doing my job. You do yours.”

I found Estelle hiding in her bedroom, and my heart felt like it was splitting open at the sight of her curled up with her pillow. When the door clicked behind me, she sat up. Her eyes were a little red and puffy.

“The universe hates me,” she said vehemently. “Fate, destiny—whatever you want to call it—it’s a twisted bitch.”

Taking a seat next to her, I ran my thumb over the pink splotches on her cheeks. “It was just bad luck. And Peter’s kind of a dick. We know that.”

She shook her head. “Three days ago, that dildo was dead as a doornail, Emery. Dead. I couldn’t get it to work for anything. The fact that it chose that moment to have a resurrection? Un-fucking-believable.”

“I’m sorry.” I wanted to tell her it would be okay, but I didn’t want to lie. “So, the bad news is that I couldn’t get Steve to agree not to show what happened.”

“Shit.” She sniffled. “What’s the good news? Please tell me there’s good news.”

I wrapped my arms around her. “I think Greg found a home.”

A genuine smile stretched across her face. “Really? That’s great.”

“Come out and meet Marty. He was so distracted by Greg giving him a complimentary beard trim that he didn’t even notice the stuff with Peter.”

“Okay.” Drawing a deep breath, she wiped the remainder of the smudged mascara from underneath her eyes.

Standing up, I held out my hand. She linked our fingers like it was the most natural thing in the world. I kissed her knuckles before letting go.

“Do you have a copy of your contract with the show?” I asked, because no matter what Steve said, I wasn’t willing to accept defeat just yet.

She nodded. “Yeah. Why?”

“Can I have it? I’m going to have my lawyer look over it to see if we can find a loophole or something.” I smoothed my hand over her hair. “Until then, try not to worry about it.”

“It’ll be hard to think about anything else,” she said glumly.

Smirking, I touched my forehead to hers. “I bet I can help you with that.”