Ethan settled into the chair beside her with the unbothered ease of a man who had never once worried about walking into a room late.
Up close, he was harder to look at than the screen had ever prepared her for, not because of any single feature, but because of how little effort he seemed to spend holding it all together. Dark eyes that tracked the room without appearing to. A small scar just above one eyebrow that no interview had ever mentioned. He pulled a script from the stack in front of him and started reading before anyone had said a word to him, as if the meeting had already been running for an hour and he was simply catching up.
Alex kept her eyes on her own copy of the script, willing her pulse to behave itself. She'd watched every film he'd ever made. She'd defended his acting choices in comment sections she'd never admit to reading. And here he was, near enough that she could hear him breathing, and she was doing everything in her power to look like a woman who met famous actors every day of the week.
It didn't help that he seemed entirely unaware of the effect he had, or worse, entirely aware of it and simply uninterested in doing anything about it. He read in silence for a full minute before glancing sideways at her, as though checking whether she'd noticed him yet. She hadn't given him the satisfaction of looking back.
"Miss Alex," Leila said, "the role is our second female lead. Alysha. A spy working undercover as a model. You'll share several scenes with Ethan here, our lead, which is why he's joining us today."
Alex and Fidelia bent over the pages together. The number of action sequences caught Fidelia's attention first — she frowned, flipping ahead. "That's a lot of fight choreography for someone who's never acted a day in her life. Are there safety measures in place? A stunt double, maybe?"
"Of course," Leila said smoothly. "Her wellbeing comes first, she's the face of this company now. But we don't typically use stand-ins unless the stunt is exceptional. These scenes are well within what Alex can handle safely, I know for a fact that Alex do all sort of training."
Alex, for her part, wasn't worried about the fight scenes. She'd trained in enough disciplines over the years that a choreographed brawl sounded almost like a relief compared to everything else in the script. She kept reading, right up until her eyes landed on two words tucked into a scene description, and her face went carefully, deliberately blank.
"There's a sex scene," she said, in the flattest voice she could manage. "I don't think this role is for me."
Every head in the room turned toward her at once.
"Why?" Ethan asked. He hadn't spoken since he'd walked in, and the single word landed with more weight for the silence that preceded it. He watched her with open curiosity, like a man encountering something he hadn't come across before and wasn't sure yet whether he liked it.
He was, by any measure, one of the most wanted men in the country. Rich, famous, and apparently unused to being turned down for anything, least of all this.
"I'm sorry. I don't think I can do that scene, Mr. Ethan" Alex said again, holding his gaze this time.
"Can we drop the formalities?" he asked, out of nowhere.
She blinked, caught off guard by the shift, then nodded — some part of her still quietly shouting Ethan is talking to me behind the careful composure she was working hard to maintain despite the situation.
"You've posed nude before, if I remember correctly," he said, tilting his head. "So I doubt people seeing part of your body is really the issue. What's actually wrong with the scene?"
She felt heat climb up her neck and refused to let it show on her face. "That's private information, Mr. Ethan."
"Interesting how it's private until it isn't." He raised an eyebrow, clearly enjoying himself now. "Are you still — you know. Never done it before?"
The room had gone very quiet, everyone watching the exchange like spectators at a match neither side seemed willing to lose.
She recovered enough to answer with a small, deliberate smile. "That's also private. And I don't expect to lose that particular distinction in front of a full film crew."
"So losing it with a stranger isn't the problem. Just the crew." He leaned back, visibly pleased with himself. "In that case, we could always shoot it with just the two of us in the room."
"I'd need to actually want to lose it first," Alex said evenly, "and that's not currently the case. Even with you."
"Interesting," Ethan said again, and turned to Leila before Alex could decide whether that had been a win or a loss. "Can we cut the scene? Miss Michell doesn't seem particularly enthusiastic about being anywhere near me."
Leila's smile didn't waver. "I'm afraid that's not possible. It's a key scene in the film. We could always bring in a body double."
Ethan's expression shifted, something colder passing behind his eyes for half a second. "A double? For a scene I'm also filming for the first time? Strange that you'd suggest one for her and not for me."
"I was joking," Leila said quickly, backpedaling with the practiced ease of someone who'd learned exactly how far she could push him. "We wouldn't bring in a double for our favorite lead. Besides, you never use one anyway."
It was true, and everyone in the industry knew it. Ethan filmed every stunt himself, every dangerous sequence, refusing the safety net most actors of his stature took for granted. It had earned him a reputation for fearlessness that the tabloids loved and directors quietly dreaded.
Fidelia chose that moment to lean forward. "Could I have a moment alone with my client?"
Leila, clearly unwilling to lose her lead actress over one scene, waved them toward the adjoining room without hesitation, and the two women excused themselves, leaving the men behind the glass.
The second room was smaller, softer somehow, though Alex barely registered the furniture.
"Baby girl," Fidelia said, the second the door clicked shut, "this is everything you've been working toward. So what's the actual problem here?"
Alex exhaled slowly. "The script fits me. I know it does. It's just this scene — I really can't."
Fidelia studied her for a moment, something calculating behind her concern. In all the years they'd worked together, Alex had never once turned down a job this bluntly, this fast. "What's really going on? You always have a hard time when male models get too close on set. You turn down every commercial that asks for anything intimate. Why?"
The question hung in the small room, and Alex felt the familiar tightness rise in her chest, the one that always showed up right before she had to decide how much of herself she was willing to hand over, even to the one person who'd earned every right to ask.
She thought about deflecting, the way she always did with a joke, a change of subject, the practiced ease of a woman who'd spent a decade making sure this particular door stayed shut. But Fidelia wasn't asking out of idle curiosity. She was asking because she'd watched Alex flinch away from a hand on her shoulder a hundred times over the years and had never once pushed for a reason, and that restraint had earned her the right to push now.
Through the glass wall behind Fidelia, Alex could just make out Ethan's silhouette, still seated at the table, saying something that made Owen laugh. He hadn't so much as glanced toward the room they'd disappeared into, and yet some part of her was aware of him anyway, the way you're aware of a window left open in another room.
"It's not something I talk about, easily" Alex said finally, quietly. "But I think I owe you that much, after everything you've done for me these past years."