16. Miles

16

MILES

"What do you think?" Braxton ran her fingers along the surface of the large black wooden conference table in the middle of the 1400-square-foot room. On one side, there was an entire bay of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the water. White oak wide plank flooring, several desks lining a brick wall, and two couches on the opposite side, along with exposed ventilation and pipes, gave the room a very industrial feel. "It used to be an old tire warehouse."

This was the perfect space for our temporary production offices.

Technically, since we were only going to be shooting in Firefly for two weeks, we didn't need an office here since the majority of principal photography was going to be in New Mexico. But since this was where Austin was born and raised, it felt right that this was where the home base for Fallen Hero would be.

I wanted to be close to his friends, his family, and his neighbors in his hometown. I wanted to absorb everything. The smells, the sounds, the atmosphere. Not to mention…Zoe. She'd imprinted herself onto me, and I couldn't seem to stop thinking of her. The more I tried, the worse it got.

When I was at her house working with AJ, I'd nearly kissed her when all I should have done was remove a dryer sheet from her jeans. But having her so close was a temptation I'd been nearly powerless to resist. Even now, if I closed my eyes, I could still feel her hands on my chest, still smell the fresh scent of her…

"Miles. What do you think?" Braxton repeated the question.

"It's perfect. You killed it, as always."

Braxton had been tasked with finding the space because I'd flown to Miami for the night to go to a restaurant opening for one of the investors in Ford Entertainment. I'd kept the initial buy-in small. Myself and three other shareholders were the only people with stakes in the company. I'd spoken to all three last night at the opening and let them know my plans for Braxton, which they had all approved.

"Have you seen the latest top sheet? I updated it this morning." Braxton asked as she sat and opened up her laptop.

"No."

I'd come here straight from the airport and had spent my time on the flight and the drive here going over the latest draft of the script. The second and third acts, which take place after Austin leaves for Afghanistan, were pretty much locked. We'd had enough source material to write those before I'd come to Firefly. But since arriving, I'd gotten more information, stories, and videos that Shania and Andy were including in the first act, which was the first eighteen years of Austin's life, well, starting when he was thirteen, about to be fourteen. The movie opens on the scene in the library where he sees Zoe reading to four and five-year-olds. The first act is their love story. It follows them from their first date to when she says goodbye to him for the last time at the bus station when she's holding AJ in her arms.

That was the section of the script that still needed tweaking. It had to be perfect. Zoe had agreed to give notes on it, and I had to admit, I was nervous about her reading it. It was close to being locked, and I'd sent her the current draft about fifteen minutes ago and still hadn't heard anything. When I opened my computer, I checked my messages and saw that there was nothing from her.

"Okay, so—" Braxton began.

"Before we start," I cut her off and pressed send on the email that had been sitting in my drafts since last night. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

Her brow furrowed slightly, and the edges of her eyes twitched. "Okay."

Braxton did not like surprises. She liked control. She wanted to know everything that was going on at all times. It was part of what made her indispensable as an assistant and was going to make her just as irreplaceable in her new role.

"You have been an incredible assistant to me over the past five years."

"I know," she clipped back.

Besides hating surprises, Braxton also did not appreciate compliments. They made her uncomfortable. Typically, she ignored them or deflected. In this case, she was just irritated.

"Your talents are wasted in your current role. I am offering you a position in Ford Entertainment as head of production and acquisitions. It's the job you've already been doing, minus making my travel arrangements, picking up my dry cleaning, and answering my emails. The offer is in your inbox now. You'll see that your salary has increased significantly, and you have shares in the company."

Braxton stared at me for several seconds before definitively stating, "No."

"No?" I repeated. "You haven't even looked at the offer."

"I don't need to." Her tone left no room for argument.

"Am I missing something here?"

"Who's going to handle everything for you?" she asked.

"I will."

Her expression morphed to one of amusement, indicating my response was comical. "I don't think you grasp the magnitude of… shit that I safeguard you from. People always want something from you. I'm the only thing that is stopping them from bombarding you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year."

"Braxton, I know I've leaned on you, probably too much. But that doesn't mean that I can't take care of myself. And even if I can't, that is not your problem. You can't put your life on hold to babysit me. I'm a grown man."

"I'll think about it."

"Fine," I agreed.

I knew there was no talking her into anything, even though this was a no-brainer that shouldn't even be discussed. She would make the right decision, and the right decision was taking the job. She was just loyal to a fault and would have to come to terms with stepping away from her current responsibilities even if she felt guilty about doing so.

I pulled up the top sheet, which was the overall budget for the movie. It encompassed all the costs necessary to bring a script to life on the screen. It was an itemized layout of our budget for both pre and post-production, above the line and below the line. Above the line being the director, producer, writers, development, cast, rights, etc. Below the line being the crew, music, equipment, locations, transport, construction, catering, travel, and post-production.

Braxton had a gift for pinching all the pennies in all the right places. Besides having a photographic memory, she was also a wiz with numbers.

After we went through the top sheet numbers, Braxton sent me a link and password. "Jeanne sent the tapes for young Austin and young Zoe."

Even though I wanted to hire AJ on the spot and not make him go through the auditioning process, I'd promised Zoe I would not give him special treatment. So, he'd sent in his audition to casting just like everyone else. What Zoe didn't know was if Jeanne, our casting director, didn't send AJ as one of her top picks, I was going to call and have her send in the tape because I knew he was good. I filmed it with him. I wanted to get Braxton's opinion because I knew she would be brutally honest.

"Have you looked at them?"

She nodded.

"What do you think?"

"She only sent five options for each role. It was slim pickins."

"Slim pickins?" I repeated. I'd never heard Braxton say slim pickins .

"I think this town is rubbing off on me."

I smiled.

"I watched four tapes for Zoe and was getting a little worried, but then I saw Kendall French. She's the girl; it's not even close."

"Okay, what about Austin?"

Her lips curled, and she tilted her head to the side. "You didn't tell me that you worked with AJ."

"I know. I didn't want you to be biased."

"I heard your voice. It was clearly you."

"What did you think?"

My heart was in my throat. Even though I had the final say and could cast who I wanted to, this was the real test of whether I'd be doing it just because AJ was Austin's son or because I wanted Zoe on the set, or if I was casting him in the part because he was the best person for the role.

"He's perfect." Braxton's smile widened. "Not just because it's his dad; he really had that…" she wiggled her fingers, "that intangible ‘it' quality. When he's on screen, you can't not watch him. It's the same thing you have. It has to be him."

I slid my phone across the table to her.

"What?" she said.

"You can call them and tell them."

"Me?" She put her hand to her chest. "No. I can't… No. You have to…don't you want to look at the tapes?"

"No. I trust you as the head of acquisitions and production."

Her eyes narrowed, and she took the phone. "I'll make the calls, but only because I like giving people good news, and most of the time my job is telling people things they don't want to hear. But that doesn't change anything."

"Understood."

She was going to take the job. I knew it, and she knew it. Change was hard for her. She needed to wrap her mind around being in a new position, but after she did, she was going to kill it just like AJ had in his audition.

I was glad that Kendall had gotten the part, too. He talked about her a lot, and it was very obvious that he had a crush on her. It seemed there was a lot of that going around.