Making It, #2 Read online

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  MAKING IT

  by

  Christina Ross

  After years of struggling in New York City, I’m on the verge of making it big in my career...until he enters my life, and then all bets are off.

  ‘He’ would be Hunter Steele, the ridiculously hot showrunner of a popular reality show called The Terrible Teens.

  My name is Julia Jacobs, and on the very day I’m promoted to become an assistant agent at the talent agency CAA, I sign Pepper Winters, a billionaire’s daughter with a massive social media following who wants to be on the next season of Hunter’s ultra-toxic reality show.

  No. Matter. What.

  Trouble is, the moment Pepper and I meet with Hunter to discuss bringing her on the show, I can’t keep my eyes off him. He’s tall, dark, handsome, and has something in his jeans that looks like a damned anaconda.

  In other words, he’s exactly the type of man I don’t need to be distracted by right now. After all, I have a limited amount of time to prove myself to CAA. If I do? I’ll be promoted to associate agent. And if I don’t? I’ll be out of a job altogether.

  But with Hunter coming on to me, how in the hell am I supposed to focus on my job? At first, I try my best to resist him, but after a disastrous breakup, I’ve been single for four years, and a girl has her needs. As the weeks pass and we come to know one another better, my guard starts to drop. Should I give Hunter a chance? Or should I let him go forever when I learn about his playboy past...?

  I’ve been burned once. I won’t be burned again. And as much as I want to believe in Hunter when he tells me he’s moved beyond his loose reputation of bedding too many women to count, I now have to wonder if I can trust him.

  And if I dare to do so, will he and I have a chance to make it...?

  For my friends and my family.

  And especially for my readers, who mean the world to me.

  Thank you for following the Making It series to its final chapter.

  Copyright and Legal Notice: This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights.

  Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if we use one of these terms. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

  First ebook edition © 2019.

  Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead (unless explicitly noted) is merely coincidental. Copyright © 2019 Christina Ross. All rights reserved worldwide.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Books by Christina Ross

  Social Media

  MAKING IT

  by

  Christina Ross

  CHAPTER ONE

  May

  New York City

  IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK sharp on a Monday morning when my boss, Harper Carmichael, breezed past my desk and moved toward her office without looking at me.

  “Julia, darling,” she said over her shoulder, “your life is about to change. Get each of us a cup of coffee, grab a pen and a pad of paper, and meet me in my office—stat.”

  My life is about to change? I thought as I watched her disappear behind her office door. What in the fresh hell does that mean?

  Curious to know, I joined her a moment later in her office. I was holding a cup of black coffee in each hand, a pen was clenched between my teeth, and a yellow legal pad was tucked beneath my arm. Harper was standing at one of her office’s three floor-to-ceiling windows with her back to me, her stylish, shoulder-length blonde hair curling up from her narrow shoulders. When she turned to look at me, her gaze settled upon the pen.

  “Sorry,” I mouthed around it.

  “Right,” she said. “But best to make sure that that pen always belongs to you, and never to me . . .”

  With a bemused look, she came toward me in her fitted black power suit, took one of the white mugs from me, then motioned to the chair opposite her massive glass desk.

  “Sit,” she said. “You and I need to talk business.”

  Our business was the entertainment business, and Harper Carmichael wasn’t just one of the industry’s most sought-after agents—at fifty-five,
she was an industry legend. She also was one of the stars at the all-powerful Creative Artists Agency, which is where we were now, high above the Chrysler Building on Lexington Avenue. The morning sun had yet to crest the city’s skyscrapers, leaving long shadows to stretch like gravestones into the room.

  Which kind of made me question exactly how much life was about to change . . .

  I sipped my coffee and sat down. Whenever we had one of our “business” talks, it usually was about one of her clients, a few of whom chronically found themselves in trouble. The incidents I’d seen over the years ranged from a heavy night of partying that ended with an arrest to an ugly tabloid story that was turning out to be true—and thus needed to be managed with damage control. If most of Harper’s clients weren’t on the A-list—which they were—I knew for a fact that she would have parted ways with some of them years ago.

  “Who got into trouble over the weekend?” I asked.

  “This isn’t going to be that kind of talk,” she said.

  “Well, what kind of talk is it going to be?” I asked.

  “You’ve been my assistant six years last month, correct?”

  I just shrugged at her.

  “You took me out for dinner on that day,” I said. “We celebrated. Remember?”

  “I don’t have dementia yet, Julia. Nor will I ever.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest—”

  “That was a joke.” She put her coffee down in front of her and folded her arms as she leaned back in her chair and studied me. “It’s time,” she said.

  “Time for what?”

  “Unfortunately, my dear, it’s time for me to let you go.”

  For a moment, I sat in shock, not sure that I’d heard her right. But when I saw the unwavering look in her eyes, I swear that her office started to spin as if I’d just been strapped into a sputtering, malfunctioning Tilt-A-Whirl. This is how my week is going to begin? Seriously? She’s firing me? Why?!

  I just stared at her.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Harper, I’ve been nothing but loyal to you. And I love working for you. I thought we were friends. Why would you let me go? Are there budget issues I don’t know about? Cutbacks? Have I done something wrong? Just tell me what it is, and I’ll fix it. Hell, please tell me I still have a job.”

  She let out a low laugh when I said that, then she simply shook her head at me.

  “Julia, what you have is a promotion.”

  “A promotion?”

  “Yes, a promotion. Look, you’ve been an amazing personal assistant—the best anyone could wish for. But you’re twenty-eight now, and it’s time for you to grow.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “That I know you aren’t going to wait forever to become the agent you’ve always wanted to become,” she said softly. “And that the last thing I want is for you to leave CAA and work somewhere I can’t help and guide you.”

  She leaned forward in her chair.

  “Over the past month, I’ve set things into motion for you. I’ve discussed your potential new position with the team, and everyone agrees that it would be foolish to lose you. So, what CAA and I are proposing is that for the next year, you will work directly under me as my assistant agent. If I could have made you a full agent straightaway, I would have—but as you know, that’s not how it works here. CAA gives all of its assistant agents one year to prove themselves to the agency, but since you’ll be working under me—and provided you don’t somehow screw this up, which I can’t imagine for the life of me—in a year’s time, you’ll become an associate agent, and you’ll have an office and clients of your own.”

  My heart started to race.

  “I’ve been promoted to assistant agent?” I asked her, unable to believe it. I’d waited so long for this day to happen, it seemed surreal that it finally was happening.

  “You have, my love. I’ll miss you as my personal assistant, but I’m beyond excited to help you become the best agent you can be. That process begins today.” She looked at her watch. “In fact, boot camp starts for you today at noon.”

  “Boot camp?” I said.

  “That’s when you and I will meet with your first potential client—Pepper Winters.”

  “Pepper Winters,” I said. “The social media superstar?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I’ve read terrible things about her,” I said. “I’ve heard that she’s a nightmare. We don’t need someone like her in our lives. Why are you considering taking her on?”

  “A few reasons. The first of which is her Russian father, the billionaire Oleg Semenov, who happens to be friends with one very important person here at CAA, otherwise known as our boss, Andrew Simms. Second, with over seventy-five million followers on Instagram alone, you’re right, Julia—that girl is indeed a social media superstar.”

  Exasperated, she leaned back in her chair.

  “Do you realize that not even one of the actors I represent comes close to enjoying her kind of following—not even Jackson Cruise, who is a few million followers shy of her numbers, and yet he’s a legitimate superstar. All Pepper Winters is known for is being a wealthy, beautiful, fourteen-year-old girl with a fabulous lifestyle—and also for her popular makeup videos on YouTube, which have racked up hundreds of millions of views over the past two years. Her adoring fans see her as a style icon.”

  “And there’s money in that,” I said.

  “Oh, there’s plenty of money to be had in Pepper Winters, Julia—so much so that Andrew took me aside after his phone call with Pepper’s father and pitched her to me. At first, I resisted, because even though I’m not her demographic, I’ve heard about that girl’s wretched reputation. But since Andrew rarely asks anything of me, I agreed to at least meet with her. Actually, I told him that you and I would meet with her, because if we do decide to sign her, she’s all yours to manage.”

  “What is she looking for?” I asked.

  “Have you heard of that awful television show, The Terrible Teens? The title of which is a crude twist on the terrible twos?”

  “Of course I have—that show is huge. As in Kardashian huge.”

  “And look at the kind of money those tramps are making,” Harper said.

  “At this point, the Kardashians are making hundreds of millions. I mean, Kylie was recently listed as a frigging billionaire in Forbes due to her cosmetic line. And yet she’s only twenty-one! How does that even happen?”

  “Exactly—and yet it does happen. So! Pepper wants to be part of The Terrible Teens, which starts shooting its second season next week here in New York. Pepper wants in. Pepper wants an audition. Pepper wants to take her career to the next level, and the way she sees it? That show is her way of conquering the world.”

  “Actually, it might be,” I said to Harper. “I mean, Pepper’s reputation precedes her like a toxic cloud of green gas. I think she could out-bitch anyone on that show—even the queen bitch, Lexi Reynolds.”

  “Lexi Reynolds?” Harper said as she looked curiously at me. “That name just rolled off your tongue as if you know it intimately, didn’t it, Julia? Tell me it’s because you’ve read about the show—and not because you’ve actually sat down and watched it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Here’s the thing about being single in the city for the past four years, Harper. It literally can reduce you to watching reality TV shows like The Terrible Teens. Or even Hoarders.”

  “You do not watch that show.”

  “I do—and a weird part of me is transfixed when they find a hoarder buried alive. It’s a sickness.”

  “Watching the show? Or being a hoarder?”

  “Probably both.”

  “And here I thought you had taste.”

  “Let’s call it what it is—a guilty pleasure. Sort of like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I can’t get enough of those Botoxed broads.”

  “That’s enough!” Harper said. “I had no idea about this haunted private life of yours. Pepper will be h
ere at noon with her mother, Savannah Winters.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?” I asked.

  “Because she’s the grown-up version of her daughter—a popular Manhattan socialite. You’ve likely read all about her in Page Six. Given the ridiculous number of parties I have to attend in this city, I actually know Savannah—and she’s nothing short of a well-heeled Park Avenue drunk. Gorgeous woman, but after her disastrous, ugly divorce from Oleg? Let’s just say that her life took a terrible turn of its own when he eighty-sixed her from his life.”

  “Did she get any money in the divorce?”

  “Oh, darling, please—Savannah walked away with a cool hundred million. And for a while, she was happy about that. But over time, I think when she realized that every potential suitor who came her way only wanted her for her money, poor Savannah turned to the bottle. Word has it that she wakes up in her own vomit on a daily basis.”

  “Well, that’s just sad,” I said.

  “Cry me a river! She’s worth a hundred million, for God’s sake.”

  “I still think it’s sad,” I said.

  “If you’re going to be on this side of the business, you seriously need to toughen up.” She stood up. “What I need you to do now is clean out your desk before Pepper and Savannah arrive.”

  “Clean it out to where?”

  She told me where, and to return to her office by noon.

  “What’s my replacement’s name?” I asked her.

  “Opal Kaiser. She’s a Harvard grad, she’s whip-smart, motivated, direct, no-nonsense, and gorgeous. You’ll meet her later. For now, give me a hug, because you really do need to clean out your desk before Opal, Pepper, and Savannah arrive.”

  I stood, walked around her desk, and hugged her.

  “Thank you, Harper,” I said in her ear. “You know I’ve always wanted this.”

  “I know you have, my darling girl. And you deserve this, Julia. But I won’t lie,” she said as she kissed me on each cheek before she reached for my hands and took a step back to look at me. “Being an agent isn’t easy—as you know after witnessing the kind of bullshit I’ve had to deal with over the years. But you’ll make it, Julia. You’ll work hard, I’ll have your back the entire way, you’ll win over the management team here at CAA by proving yourself to them, and before you know it? You’ll have an office of your own and clients to champion. And when that happens? You no longer will work under me. Instead, you and I will become true colleagues—and I, for one, can’t wait for that day.”