Hot as Heller by Lucy Lennox

2

Finn

“This fucking cabin is like being on set at a remake of Little House on the Fucking Prairie,” Kix said, flicking the corner of a patchwork quilt that lay over the back of the small love seat.

He was right. The “chalet” they’d put me up in was pretty rustic, but I could tell it had been recently renovated. Most of the fittings were brand-new and fairly high-end, but the decor was homey and welcoming. Not exactly what Kix was used to back in his luxury apartment on Sunset Boulevard, but I kind of liked it. It wasn’t the cold, ultra-modern style so many people had back home with hard angles, steel and concrete surfaces, and neutral grays.

The bedroom was my favorite, with its colorful rug that my bare feet had sunk into late last night when I’d been practically sleepwalking after a long day of driving. The crisp, cool sheets had been heavenly, and the fresh, mountain air flowing in gently from an open window had put me right to sleep. I’d come to this project after months… years… of churning, working as much as I could, as hard as I could to change my image from Chip Clover, the sitcom boy next door, to a dynamic adult actor who could take on nuanced, dramatic roles. But no matter how many degrees I’d earned, people wanted to keep me in a Chip-shaped pigeonhole.

I was so damned tired.

“I like it here,” I said, kicking off my shoes and stretching out my legs on the small ottoman in front of my chair. The nearby stone fireplace made me almost wish it were wintertime. A night dozing in front of the fire in a cozy mountain chalet sounded just about right for my current mood.

“You would,” he muttered under his breath.

I tried not to take his comment personally. First of all, he was right. I would and I did. Secondly, I knew how boring I was. It had been a problem for me my entire life so far. My mother had worked her ass off to make me more fun and engaging, and she’d be annoyed to see me chilling in front of a fire when I should be out socializing with the other cast and crew. “Finn, you have to take advantage of every moment you have while on location. There’s no better place to deepen those bonds than on the road.”

I glanced over at Kix. “Crys was pretty cool on set today, didn’t you think?”

He rolled his eyes. “If by cool, you mean an ice queen, then yeah. Cool.”

“Did you see her helping Yuki with the scene where her mother dies?”

Kix flipped the corner of the quilt again and bounced his leg in a way I recognized as pure, restless boredom. He wasn’t going to stick around here shooting the shit for very long, which was fine by me. He was welcome to go back to his room in the lodge at any time. I was ready for the day to be over.

“Yuki is a suck-up. How hard is it to act bereft when your mother dies painfully from radiation exposure?”

I opened my mouth to argue. Yuki Makino was young and eager to please. She was terrified of letting down a big star like Crystobell Edmund. But Kix was jaded, and rightfully so. He’d worked his ass off for years in this business, just to get cast in supporting roles over and over again. I had my own opinions about why that was, but I wasn’t about to say them out loud anymore, especially to Kix himself. Last time I’d tried, I’d gotten a snarky “Gee, thanks, Chip!” for my trouble. So I closed my mouth instead.

Kix resented Yuki for getting such a strong part in the film after only one decent credit to her name. As a result, he immediately put her in the “enemy” basket and treated her like dog shit.

It made me feel very uncomfortable.

“It’s so fucking boring here, I can’t imagine how we’re going to survive four more weeks of this crap.”

I shrugged and reached over to crank the nearest window open. The distant sound of an owl hooting made its way through the screen. “I think it’s relaxing. A nice break from the city. Things are nuts in town this time of year, and, honestly, I don’t love the heat.”

He barked out a laugh. “How can you live in Los Angeles and not like the heat?”

That was easy. The answer was two words. Lola Heller.

“It’s either LA or New York,” I said instead. “At least LA has good climbing nearby.”

“You and your climbing,” he said. “If you lived in New York, you could still climb, you know. I’m sure there are a ton of climbing gyms there.”

“Not the same as Point Dume and Echo Cliffs,” I countered. “And while I don’t love the heat in the summer, I do love being able to climb outside year-round.”

Kix closed his eyes and groaned. “God, even this conversation is boring. Let’s do something.”

“Like what?”

“Anything, Jesus. I’m aging as we sit here.” He lifted his fingers to his eyes and pulled at the edges to smooth out the nonexistent wrinkles. “Let’s find some dick.”

I thought of the sleepy mountain town we were in for the filming. “In this place? Pfft. I opened Grindr last night, and it literally showed me a photo of a cricket.” It wasn’t true. I’d actually opened my Discord Shakespeare chat group, but I was never going to tell him that.

He grinned. “Not true. But most of them seemed like either jailbait or jailbait’s grandpa. No one just right. I’m like motherfucking Goldilocks up in here.”

I stretched and leaned forward. “Maybe we should get some beauty sleep. Today was a long day, and tomorrow could be the same. I don’t want to lose sleep before we’ve even gotten into primary filming.”

It wasn’t true. I wasn’t on the schedule for much tomorrow, but I also didn’t want to go skulking around a sleepy town looking for a hookup like some kind of pathetic loser. Besides, I was here to do a good job. I needed to impress the director. My mother, agent, PR manager, and I were all working hard to transition my reputation from child star to serious adult actor, and being seen in town trolling for a hookup wasn’t the way to sell Nolan Trainor on my professionalism.

“Why do you care so much?” Kix asked.

I blinked at him. “Why do I care about doing a good job on the film?”

“It’s an action movie. You look sexy and blow shit up. Hardly the stuff of legends.”

He wasn’t wrong, but the comment still grated. “I told you why this is important to me.”

He flicked a hand in the air. “Nolan promised you something douchey if you do this. Yeah, I got it.”

“Not something douchey. Lucentio in his big-budget production of Taming of the Shrew.” I waited for a reaction even though he’d already heard me talk about this before.

“Yes, yes. Shakespeare. Guaranteed box office smasher. Oh, wait.”

I sat up in the chair. “Do you have any idea what this kind of historical production could become with Nolan attached to the project?”

“What I know is that Nolan Trainor is crazy. Certifiable. Everyone says so.” Kix shrugged.

“Not everyone. If it were everyone, he wouldn’t be in charge of a big-budget project like this one,” I argued. “Besides, people have said that about lots of great directors. Stanley Kubrick, Kurosawa, Orson Welles. Being unconventional is a good thing.”

I wasn’t sure why I was defending the man so hard. I hadn’t been a fan of Nolan Trainor or his smash-’em-up blockbusters until the possibility of me playing Lucentio had been floated. But now that it had, I was looking at Gold Rats as a very long, involved audition for my bucket list role.

“I don’t even understand why he would want to go from action films to historical dramas,” Kix mused.

“It’s a comedy,” I muttered.

“Whatever. He’s never made anything like a Shakespeare film. Why not make Gold RatsTwo instead? I don’t even care how good the acting is. With Crystobell’s face on the ads and this mountain getting blown to bits, it’s going to make truckloads of money. Might as well knock out the sequel right away.”

The opportunity to act in a big-budget Shakespeare remake was a dream come true. It had been worth any amount of bullshit, including being treated like a joke by some of the cast and crew of Gold Rats. Nolan himself had pretty much admitted that he’d only cast me in Gold Rats because my rock climbing fans from years of Cast in Clover were now the target demographic for this film. I was a ticket sales draw, plain and simple.

Which was fine with me. Being an action movie star had never been my goal. But the better Gold Rats did in the box office, the more money we’d all make and the better chances the Taming of the Shrew project had of keeping its green light.

“They’d have to knock out the sequel without me if they moved it ahead of the Shakespeare project,” I said, knowing it was hardly a threat. They’d simply find someone else to play the part of Ladd Masters, small-town police officer and avid rock climber with a heart of gold. Maybe it would be Kix’s big break. But if they did… it would mean the Shakespeare project would be put on hold.

Again.

Kix groaned. “I’m tired of this whole conversation, and I don’t really care. Let’s go sign some tits.”

Now I was annoyed and restless from letting doubts about Nolan’s intentions on the project seep into my thoughts. I stood up and stretched. “You don’t even like boobs.”

“No, but I like seeing you blush when you have to touch ’em. Let’s go fuck some shit up.” He slid his feet into his shoes and pocketed his phone. “Logan tweeted they’d be at that little roadhouse place in fifteen. Let’s go have a few drinks, sign a few cocktail napkins, and blow off a little steam. Once you get back here, you can get your beloved beauty sleep, okay?”

My mom’s voice in my head had the deciding vote, as usual.

“No one ever made good connections from staying at home, Finn. The fans want to see you, and you never know who you might meet along the way.”

I blew out a breath and grabbed my wallet. I wasn’t in the mood to meet anyone tonight. Not only was I tired of the game, but I was tired full stop. But years of media training had prepared me to hide it under a million-dollar smile.

I pushed down my natural inclination to avoid the spotlight.

The way I always did.