“Brigs.” That smile again.
“Brigs,” I say, nodding. “Oh, and let me preface our conversation by letting you know I am an intern, and I’ve only been here three weeks and I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“An intern?” he asks, rubbing his hand along his jaw. “Not from my program.”
“I go to school in London.”
“Kings College?”
“No, I wish. I couldn’t afford it.”
“Ah, international student fees. Are you Canadian? American?”
“You mean I don’t sound British?” I joke. “I’m American. And yeah, the fees were too much, even though I have a French passport from my father’s side, though that only went through this year. Anyway, I’m rambling. Sorry. I go to Met for film. It was slightly cheaper.”
He nods. “Fine school.”
“That’s a very diplomatic teacher answer.”
“And I’m a diplomatic teacher.”
God, to have a student-teacher affair with him. But I’m twenty-five and he looks like he’s in his early to mid-thirties, so it wouldn’t be all that scandalous and…
My thoughts trail off when I catch sight of his wedding ring for the first time.
Oh.
Well, that figures.
Still, I can stare at him, married or not.
“So, what brings you here?” I manage to say.
“Well, it’s funny,” he says, running his hand through his mahogany hair. “I came here for one reason, and now I have two.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Okay.”
“One reason is that our program at school has trouble competing with the bigwigs down in London, so we decided that perhaps sponsorship of the film festival would give us the right exposure at the right place. In the end, there can only be so many winners, and when the festival is over and the failed filmmakers want to quit, that’s when we want to steal them, take advantage of their low self-esteem, and bring them into our program.”
I purse my lips. “That’s a very pessimistic way of looking at things.”
“I’m a realist,” he says brightly.
“An opportunist.”
“Same thing.”
Well, we could actually use some more sponsors. “All right, well I’ll have to run this past Margaret and Ted, but I think this is something we’d like to work with you on. What’s the other thing?”
“You come work for me.”
“Excuse me?”
He looks around the closet office, squinting his eyes at a wet spot on the ceiling where it leaks when it rains (and it rains all the time. I actually have a bucket just for that). “You seem like a bright girl. I’m starting to write my book and I need a research assistant.”
“You’re an author?”
“No, not yet,” he says, looking away briefly. “But that’s what professors do in their spare time, you know. Academic papers, journals. Always writing. Honestly, I’m feeling the pressure, but I can’t do it on my own. I’m such a slow writer to begin with, and anything extra bogs me down.”
“What’s your book about?”
“Tragic clowns. Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin. Their performances in early cinema.”
Could this man be any more perfect? I’m freaking obsessed with Keaton, Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, all of them, ever since my father got me watching them when I was little. Shit, it’s tempting. Really tempting. But Professor Blue Eyes is barking up the wrong tree.
“I’m flattered, I think,” I tell him, “but there’s no way I could handle two jobs. I literally work here all day long. The intern life. No breaks, no fun.”
“You’ll only have to work a few hours a day, and if you want more work, that’s fine too. I’ll pay you forty pounds an hour.”
Forty pounds an hour? To do research on Buster Keaton?
It’s like a real dream job landed in my lap. And a job at that, not a payless internship.
But I can’t exactly leave the film fest high and dry either.
“Can I talk it over with the people here?” I ask him. “Maybe we can work something out.”
“Of course,” he says, giving me a sly smile, like he already knows I’ll be working for him. He stands up and puts his business card on the pile of scripts. “When you have an answer about both questions, give me a call.” He peers down at me with a tilt of his head. “It was nice meeting you, Natasha.”
Then he’s ducking out the door, and he’s gone.
CHAPTER THREE
Natasha
London, England
Present Day
I wake up with that uneasy feeling. You know, the one that tells you your alarm didn’t go off like it should have this morning and you’re totally fucked.