Marie Ferrarella - Her Red-Carpet Romance

He continued looking at her, as if trying to discern if she was as good as the older woman had led him to believe. The silence dragged on for a good several minutes.

Yohanna had met the woman he was referring to only briefly. They had exchanged a few words and the interview had been arranged. There had been no time for Mrs. Manetti to form an opinion about her abilities one way or another.

She could feel herself fidgeting inside, and her pulse rate began to accelerate. All she could think of was that she really needed this job. She’d only been out of work for a couple of days, but the thought of prolonged inactivity had her already climbing the proverbial walls. Not to mention that she had enough money in the bank to see her through approximately one month—one and a half if she gave up eating.

As a last resort she could always move in with her mother, but as far as she was concerned, living under a freeway overpass was preferable to that. Her mother had been decent enough when Yohanna was growing up, but in the past eight years, only two topics of conversation interested her: marriage and children, neither of which was anywhere in Yohanna’s immediate future.

She was fairly confident that living with her mother even for a day would swiftly become catastrophic.

Lukkas continued doling out information. “If you became my assistant, you’d be keeping irregular hours at best. I’m talking really irregular,” he intoned, his eyes on hers. “And you’d be on call 24/7. Are you up for that?” he asked, looking at her intently.

“Absolutely,” she assured him with as much confidence as she could muster.

But Lukkas still had his doubts. “You’re not going to come to me in tears a week or two from now, saying that your husband is unhappy with the hours you’re keeping and could I give you a more normal schedule, are you?”

“I don’t have a husband, so that’s not going to happen.”

But Lukkas wasn’t satisfied yet. “A fiancé? A boyfriend?”

“No and no,” Yohanna responded, quietly shooting down each choice.

Lukkas still appeared skeptical. “Really? Not even a boyfriend?” His eyes never left hers, as if he considered himself to be an infallible human lie detector—and being as attractive as she was, the young woman couldn’t possibly be telling the truth.

“Not even a boyfriend,” she echoed, her face innocence personified.

“You’re kidding, right?” he said in disbelief. How could someone who looked like this woman not have men lining up at her door, waiting for a chance just to spend some time with her? He knew this was none of his business or even ethical for him to ask, but curiosity urged him on.

“No,” she replied. “I just never experienced that ‘walking on air’ feeling, si—Lukkas,” she quickly corrected herself.

“Walking on air,” he repeated. “Is that some sort of code?”

“More like a feeling,” she explained then added quickly, “I’ve never met a man I felt I had chemistry with. In other words, I didn’t experience any sparks flying between us. Without that, what’s the point?” she asked with a vague shrug.

“What, indeed?” he murmured, thinking back, for a second, to his own solitary life. It hadn’t always been that way.

Talking about herself always made her feel uncomfortable. Yohanna was quick to return to the salient point of all this. “The bottom line is that there isn’t anyone to complain about my hours even if they do turn out to be extensive.”

“No ‘if’ about it,” he assured her. “They will be extensive. I’m afraid that it’s the nature of the beast. I put in long hours and that means so will you.” Again he peered closely at her face, as if he could read the answer—and if she was lying, he’d catch her in that, too. “You’re all right with that?” he asked again.

“Completely.”

“You haven’t asked about a salary,” he pointed out. The fact that she hadn’t asked made him suspicious. Everyone always talked about money in his world. Why hadn’t she?

“I’m sure you’ll be fair,” Yohanna replied.

Again he studied her for a long moment. He didn’t find his answer. So he asked. “And what makes you so sure that I’ll be ‘fair’?”

“Your movies.”

Lukkas’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t make heads or tails out of her answer. “You’re going to have to explain that,” he told her.

“Every movie you ever made was labeled a ‘feel good’ movie.” As a child, the movies she found on the television set were her best friends. Both her parents led busy lives, so she would while away the hours by watching everything and anything that was playing on the TV. “If you had a dark side, or were underhanded, you couldn’t make the kinds of movies that you do,” she told him very simply.

“Maybe I just do it for the money.” He threw that out, curious to see what she would make of his answer.

Yohanna shook her head. “You might have done that once or twice, possibly even three times, but not over and over again. Your sense of integrity wouldn’t have allowed you to sell out. Especially since everyone holds you in such high regard.”

Lukkas laughed shortly. “You did your research.” He was impressed.

“It’s all part of being an organizer,” she told him. “That way, there are no surprises.”

There were layers to this woman, he thought. “Is that what you consider yourself to be? An organizer?”

“In a word, yes,” Yohanna replied.

He nodded, as if turning her answers over in his mind. “When can you start?”

There went her pulse again, Yohanna thought as it launched into double time. Was she actually getting the job?

“When would you want me to start working?” she asked, tossing the ball back into his court. It was his call to make.

He laughed shortly. “Yesterday.” That way, he wouldn’t have lost a productive day.

“That I can’t do,” she told him as calmly as if they were talking about the weather. “But I can start now if you’d like,” she offered.

Was she that desperate? he wondered. Or was there another reason for her eagerness to come to work for him? Since his meteoric rise to fame, he’d had friends disappoint him, trying to milk their relationship for perks and benefits. As for strangers, they often had their own agendas, and he had become very leery of people until they proved themselves in his estimation. That put him almost perpetually on his guard. It was a tiring situation.

“You can start tomorrow,” Lukkas told her.

She wanted to hug him, but kept herself in check. She didn’t want the man getting the wrong impression about her.

“Then, I have the job?” she asked, afraid of allowing herself to be elated yet having little choice in the matter.

“You can’t start if you don’t,” he pointed out. “I’ll take you on a three-month probationary basis,” he informed her. “Which means that I can let you go for any reason if I’m not satisfied.”

“Understood.”

He peered at her face. “Is that acceptable to you?”

“Very much so, s-si—” She was about to address him as “sir” but stopped herself, uttering, instead, a hissing sound. “Lukkas,” she injected at the last moment.

“I’m currently producing a Western. We’re going to be going on location—Arizona. Tombstone area,” he specified. “Do you have any problem with that?”

She wanted to ask him why he thought she would, but this wasn’t the time for those kinds of questions. They could wait until after she had entrenched herself into his life. The fact that she would do just that was a given as far as she was concerned now that he had hired her.

“None whatsoever,” she told him.