One Perfect Moment Read online

  Gage was stunned. The calm and relaxed feeling he’d had only moments ago as he’d stepped off the elevator had dissipated. It was now replaced with a sick feeling that had him shaking his head.

  “Bart—” he began and then corrected himself “—the medical director hand-selected who would work with him?” he asked, and then answered his own question. “Of course he did.”

  Because that’s what men like Bart Thomas did when faced with a younger, smarter and more innovative candidate. He selected the guy he knew best, the one he could control under the guise of training, no doubt. Gage was livid.

  “I guess that makes sense,” he continued because he had no intention of showing Mortimer how truly upset he was about this development.

  Mortimer nodded and cleared his throat. “It makes perfect sense. The board agreed. The transition will begin immediately. We’ll need you to be on hand in case further press conferences or other media appearances are required.”

  “I’m not sure that will be possible, Mortimer,” he said before he could completely work through his thoughts. “These past few months have been a little hectic with my research and patient list, combined with the work on the television show. I was actually considering taking some time off.”

  Mortimer sat back in his burgundy leather chair, setting his elbows on the arms and clasping his hands. “Really?” he asked and arched a bushy gray-haired brow.

  “Yes,” Gage replied, his tone smooth and even, as if this was what he’d planned to say from the moment he walked into the office. “My brother and his wife have just welcomed twins, and I’ve been meaning to get down to Virginia to see them.”

  “Well, the arrival of babies is always a festive occasion,” Mortimer said. “Especially in our business.”

  Gage chuckled along with him. “Definitely. So I’ll be completing the proper paperwork this morning and briefing the other doctors in my department on my patient statuses.”

  “How long do you plan to be away?” Mortimer asked. “The department agreed to work around the shooting schedule for that show because it was good exposure for us to have your name and the hospital’s name running in the credits of a nationally viewed program every week. New-patient visits at the clinic have grown by thirty percent in that time.”

  Gage nodded. He didn’t need Mortimer to tell him that he’d been an asset to the medical center. He already knew that. Which was why being passed over for this promotion was a bunch of good-ole-boy crap that Gage did not appreciate.

  “I’m aware,” he replied. “Which is why I believe that a three-week vacation is not only warranted, but justified.”

  While Gage had adjusted his hours at the medical center during the shooting of Doctor’s Orders, he hadn’t missed a beat with his own patients and had even been on call most of the time while on set, rushing to the medical center to deliver three babies for other doctors who were on vacation. He would wait to see if Mortimer pressed this issue to play that card.

  Instead Mortimer nodded, his cool gaze resting on Gage. “You’re right,” he said. “I’d hoped, however, that you would be available to represent the hospital to the media.”

  “I’d rather stay out of the media, if at all possible, Mortimer. I’m sure you understand my reasons,” Gage told him.

  While he’d been more than excited to have his research paper published and enjoyed the accolades that came his way in the medical industry, Gage did not do media. He never granted interviews and did not appear for photo opportunities or press conferences. Up until this point, Mortimer had been happy to stand with his chest poked out, speaking on behalf of their department.

  This was why Gage had been more than surprised when a production assistant from the television network had contacted him with regard to working on a show they were developing. He’d immediately turned them down, thinking they were asking him to star in the show. Gage never wanted to be in front of a camera again. But when he found out the position was simply as a consultant where he could lend his expertise and still stay in the background, he’d agreed.

  “Yes,” Mortimer replied. “I do understand.”

  “Well, then,” Gage said as he stood. “I’ll head down to congratulate Ed and then take care of the arrangements for my vacation.”

  Mortimer stood. “How are you going to adjust for three weeks without being at the hospital?” he asked. “You are your career, Gage.”

  Gage nodded because just fifteen minutes ago he’d been telling himself that, as well.

  “I’m going to be with my family, Mortimer,” was all he said before walking out of the office.

  Gage squared his shoulders and walked as proudly as if he’d just received the best news of his life, down the hall and back to the elevator. As far as his career went, he wasn’t sure what his next step was going to be, but didn’t doubt that he would figure it out. He always did. For now, Gage was going to see Gray and his new nieces and nephews. He was going back to family, the only people he could ever trust and depend on.

  Los Angeles

  Ava wanted to scream at her mother.

  It wasn’t the first time, and she was fairly certain it wouldn’t be the last. But instead of screaming, she used the fact that she was running late for a meeting to get off the phone with Eleanor Cannon. That was only a temporary reprieve, but Ava would take what she could get.

  Coffee spilled onto the marble floor as she stepped into the hallway of the Yearling Broadcast Network. Two years ago, when Ava was just twenty-five years old, she’d walked down this same hallway with her heart pounding wildly, her entire life bound in sixty-three typed pages. The TV script for Doctor’s Orders was the result of a year and a half’s work, researching and developing her idea for the new medical drama. She was young and unknown at that time, but had landed the face-to-face meeting with Carroll Fleming through the showrunner for another show where she’d worked as a staff writer. Now Carroll was her current executive at the network after helping her to develop and launch Doctor’s Orders.

  Today’s meeting was with Carroll and Jenner Reisling, a development executive at the same network. Ava was going to pitch her new series idea to them and prayed that the success of Doctor’s Orders, currently the network’s number one show on Thursday nights, would add weight to the new pilot following the lives of African American law students navigating their way through school, the professional world and, of course, love.

  She was only a few minutes late but hated that just the same. Ava prided herself on being professional at all times. She’d always had to be. As a woman in the television industry, she knew she had to be on her game, no matter what her credentials were.

  “I apologize for being late,” she said immediately upon entering the conference room. “I know your time is valuable, so I’m ready to get started.”

  Carroll, with his shiny bald head and long, bushy red beard, sat forward in the chair he’d been lounging in.

  “Don’t speak of it,” he said, pulling some papers that had been spread across the conference room table into a neat pile. “We were just talking about the ratings for the season finale of Doctor’s Orders.”

  “Phenomenal,” Jenner, a slim man with dirty-blond hair and dark brown-framed glasses, said. “As a first year procedural in a really competitive time slot, you knocked it out of the box with this one.”

  Ava beamed. That was the praise she’d wanted to hear for the last year. Actually, the last five years, since she’d decided that writing was her niche. She didn’t believe it was conceited at all to like hearing that she’d done a good—no, a great—job with her first network show. Especially after all the critical words she received from her mother in her lifetime. If she’d listened to anything Eleanor Cannon said, Ava doubted she’d be where she was today.

  “I’m elated at the show’s success,” she said and pulled three copies of her newest screenplay out of her bag.
/>   The bag was huge and just a little worn around the straps. It was her favorite because it easily accommodated all the necessities she carried with her daily. Today, in addition to the script, she’d added her handheld recorder so she would be sure not to miss anything that was said in this meeting, a second spiral notebook that would be solely dedicated to this screenplay and any additional work she needed to do on it, and her newest pair of reading glasses because she’d accidentally stepped on the old pair when they’d fallen off the desk in her apartment.

  “We are, too,” Carroll continued and folded his hands over his stack of papers.

  Jenner sat right next to him, smiling across the table at Ava.

  “Yes, that’s great,” she continued as she pushed copies of the bound pages toward each of them. When they were both looking down at the cover page, Ava took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “That brings me to this new pitch. Two young African American women spend their weekdays attending competing law schools, drinking and partying on weekends and navigating the murky waters of dating 24/7. This new, vibrant, urban take on sex and young professionals in the city will cater to the twenty-to thirtysomething crowd. A prime time slot would be Sunday evenings. This would be an hour-long show, with a huge draw to advertisers geared toward the female consumer.”

  Jenner flipped through the pages of the script and glanced down at them. Carroll did neither. Instead, Ava found him staring at her as he drummed his fingers over his stack of papers.

  “We have another idea in mind,” Carroll told her.

  Ava was about to open her mouth to speak, but she thought better of it. She always tried to evaluate her words carefully. Something else she’d learned from her mother, or rather because of her mother. Eleanor Cannon said whatever she wanted to say, whenever she wanted to say it. Even if it ended with hurt feelings or offense. Her mother believed that because she was a millionaire, she was entitled to speak her mind and never apologized for doing so. But Ava believed in giving people respect and demanded the same in return.

  “I don’t understand,” she replied finally.

  “Not that this wouldn’t be great,” Jenner began. “You’ve already proven that you have your finger on the pulse of what viewers want. And your pitch was quite intriguing. But I’m looking for something specific to boost our reality television programming.”

  “I see,” Ava said. “I don’t write reality TV shows.”

  She rarely even watched them. While they were extremely profitable and most brought in huge ratings and large sums of advertising dollars, they didn’t exhibit the creativity and originality Ava liked to pour into her shows.

  “You haven’t yet,” Carroll said, his excited smile spreading widely across his face.

  The last time Ava had seen that smile was the day he’d shown up in her trailer on the set in New York to tell her they’d been renewed for a second season. That had been just six hours before she’d returned to her trailer with another man—the man who continued to creep into her thoughts on a daily basis.

  “These are notes on the previous show of this kind,” Carroll continued. “We want you to look at these to get a feel for the subject matter.”

  “You’ll still have creative freedom to work this out in the way you see fit, but we’re really aiming for the family reunion angle. If you can have a preliminary outline of the show in three months, we’ll be ready to shoot the first pilot right after the first of the year. We already have the time slot selected. It will air at eight o’clock Thursday evening, with its debut on Thanksgiving Day. This will give us time to put a vigorous promotional plan in effect,” Jenner told her.

  Carroll was nodding now as he pushed that pile of papers across the table to her.

  “Doctor’s Orders is number one in the Thursday at eight slot,” she said slowly, not liking where she felt like this was going.

  “We know! We know,” Carroll continued with glee. “That’s why this is so perfect. That’s why you are the perfect one to write this new script.”

  “I thought reality shows were supposed to be unscripted,” Ava told him. “If you already have the idea and time slot locked in, you don’t need me.”

  Besides, Marcelle, her agent, hadn’t said anything to her about the network wanting her to work on a different project. She’d spoken to her late last night, and they were both pumped about the new pilot idea. Ava wasn’t interested in a reality television show.

  “Oh, but we do need you,” Jenner said. “I believe you can bring a fresh slant to this idea and the execution of the show.”

  Carroll nodded enthusiastically. “We both believe you can do this, Ava. Especially since you already have a foot in the door with one of the stars of the show,” Carroll continued.

  “What are you talking about?” Ava asked. “This is the first I’ve heard of this show at all. How do I know who is starring in it?”

  Carroll rubbed his thick fingers together, and Ava could swear his cool gray eyes glowed with excitement.

  “His name is Gage Taylor. He just worked on Doctor’s Orders with you,” Carroll said.

  Gage Taylor, as in the gorgeous doctor whom she’d spent the last two and a half months acting as if she weren’t attracted to? The man whom she’d finally decided to have once and for all as a celebratory prize for the second season renewal? The guy whom she hadn’t seen since that night, yet had thought about at least once each day in the past two weeks?

  “He’s a doctor,” she said after taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly. “Is this show about doctors? Because I really don’t want to work in the same area. That’s why my new show idea is so different from Doctor’s Orders. One is a procedural drama, while the other will be mostly drama, with lots of sex thrown in.”

  “No,” Jenner replied. “This show is not about doctors. It has its own fantastic and totally original idea we’re trying to bring across!” Jenner told her. “It’s a reality television family coming back together thirty years after their original story aired. We’re going to call it The Taylors of Temptation: Remember the Times.”

  Ava sat back in her chair and stared at them.

  “Thirty years ago, Olivia and Theodor Taylor had the first sextuplets born in the town of Temptation, Virginia. The parents are dead now, but we want to bring the sextuplets together again, in Temptation, to see how their lives have changed,” Jenner told her. “The network is already on board with the concept and you writing it. All you have to do is grab your computer and head out to Temptation to get started.”

  She had never heard of The Taylors of Temptation. Probably because she was only twenty-seven, and this show would have originally aired before she was born. Gage Taylor had come to her via recommendation from Daniel, her production assistant, whose wife, Leslie, was one of Gage’s patients. Ava had known they’d need a consultant to make sure the story lines surrounding the doctors and the clinic where they worked was as authentic as possible. So she’d taken Daniel’s and Leslie’s word for how good Gage was and ended up enjoying working with him. A lot.

  She folded her hands in her lap and shook her head once more. “I do not write reality television,” she told them again.

  This time Carroll’s smile disappeared, and the cold edge of those gray eyes rested solely on her.

  “Then you don’t write another show for this network,” he said with finality.

  Ava couldn’t breathe. She wanted to curse or kick something...possibly Carroll. Instead she kept her lips tightly clamped.

  “Look, Ava, we like you,” Jenner began. “Doctor’s Orders is doing very well, and we’d love to continue working with you. To possibly develop other shows with you in the future. But for right now, this is the show we want. Do you understand?”

  She absolutely did. They were giving her an ultimatum. One Ava didn’t know if she could walk away from.

  Chapter 2 />
  Temptation, Virginia

  One week after the tumultuous meeting at the network, Ava drove a rented fuel-efficient car into the town of Temptation, Virginia.

  For the last thirty minutes, her speed had slowed. After passing the large heart-shaped sign with “Welcome to Temptation” written in bright turquoise letters, she’d felt a bit of calm take over. The drive from the airport took a few hours, and she’d hurried at first, driving as if she was on her way to an emergency. She wanted to get this over with.

  Except Ava knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. She hated that Jenner and Carroll had given her no choice in this matter. Or rather, she despised that their choice meant she would either have to shop her new idea to another network—and risk news traveling that she was difficult to work with—or do what she was told to do, something she’d sworn she was beyond doing.

  Ava was not difficult to work with. Not on the set of the first network series she’d written for, or as the executive producer and writer of her own show. But that didn’t mean Carroll wouldn’t put that rumor out there, just to keep her from working anywhere else in television. That’s how the industry worked. There were lots of intimidation tactics used by those in controlling positions, and Ava was glad that hers had, thankfully, only included a delayed green light of her new show idea. She knew of too many women who had suffered in other ways.

  Ava was going to write the treatment for this show. Taking the next step in her career meant that much to her. And while she was sure she could use her family’s influence to work with another network or even to produce her own movie if she wanted to, Ava chose not to do that. She wanted to do this on her own merit, and she would, even if it meant approaching a family who—she’d learned from the research she’d done in the last few days—had done all that they could to stay out of the spotlight.