Cinder & Ella

Chapter 3

Brian

I slumped back in my chair and plugged my earbuds into my phone. Maybe Katy Perry's newest album would keep me from dying of boredom. I hated these meetings.

Once the music filled my ears, I breathed a small sigh. Much better. Nothing calmed my soul like Katy's sexy voice. And she was so beautiful. I let my eyes drift shut and imagined her roaring for me in my own private serenade. Maybe she'd go out with me. One of the idiots in this room had to know how to get in touch with her people. As soon as they stopped talking—if they ever stopped—I'd ask. Hopefully they could do something useful for once.

A finger tapped me on the shoulder, but I ignored it.

"Brian!"

Sighing, I yanked the headphones out of my ears. Those moments of reprieve never lasted long enough. I opened my eyes to find the majority of my management team glaring at me. My father, popular film director Max Oliver, sat directly across the large conference table from me, looking as though he wanted to strangle me. Good.

This would be the last time I ever worked with my father. If it hadn't been The Cinder Chronicles, I would never have taken the job in the first place. Family and business should never mix—especially not when it was my screwed-up family.

My new assistant, Scott, set a paper in front of me and then reached around me to pass the stack on to my co-star, Kaylee Summers. I groaned at the list of dates printed on the paper. Crumpling the schedule into a small ball, I leaned far back in my chair, aimed, and tossed. The makeshift basketball dropped into the wastebasket across the room without touching a single side—swish. "Ha! Two points!"

Holding up a hand for a high five, I turned to Kaylee. "Did you see that? Maybe I found my calling too early in life. I think I'll try out for the Lakers next season."

Kaylee gave me her usual disdainful look and left me hanging. Whatever. Scott would be good for one. I turned to him next. He glanced nervously around the room, but was ultimately too chicken to ignore my request and slapped my hand.

I laughed at the guy's nerves. "Relax, Scotty. I'm the only one in this room that can fire you, so when in doubt, indulge me, not them. They won't blame you."

"Are you finished wasting all of our time?" my dad snapped.

Rage swept through me, as it often did when my father was around. I swiped Scott's copy of the schedule and waved it around. "This stupid meeting is a waste of everyone's time."

My entire management team took great offense to my statement, but it was my agent, Joseph, who spoke up. "That is the outline for The Druid Prince publicity tour. You need to pay attention to it."

"Why? That's what Scotty's for." I threw my arm over my assistant's shoulder. "This guy has mad scheduling skills—that's why I hired him. He's probably already got eight different backups of this list printed out and stashed away for emergencies. There's no way he'd ever let me miss a meeting. Believe me, I tried my hardest to miss this one."

Joseph sighed. "You're here because your assistant can't approve the schedule for you."

"You need my approval?" I scoffed. "As if I have some kind of say in any of this?"

"Of course you do."

I wanted to laugh, except it really wasn't funny. I hadn't had a say about anything since my first teen movie hit number one in the box office. Agents, managers, publicists, lawyers, image consultants, personal trainers, a million others... They controlled my life now—what I could and couldn't wear, what I could and couldn't eat, what functions I could and couldn't attend, what I could and couldn't say. Hell, they'd scheduled this entire publicity tour without once consulting me. What they'd handed me just now was an itinerary that was already set in stone.