Chapter 1: I Asked for the Best Agent
Three minutes to spare.
By Lucy Crowe’s private definition, that meant she was practically late.
The glass doors of Seraph Entertainment parted with a soft sigh of air-conditioning, and Lucy strode inside without breaking pace. Morning sunlight caught in her hair for a moment, turning the pale ends bright before the building swallowed her whole. Her heels struck marble, setting out a rhythm of their own, separate from the rest of the office noise: sharp, even, unforgiving. The graphite suit fit her exactly where it was supposed to—shoulders, waist, the clean line of the jacket hem. Nothing soft enough to read as apology.
The materials were already loaded on her tablet. Her assistant knew how Lucy worked.
Ariel Devereux.
During the Uber ride, she’d scrolled through his filmography, mentally cataloguing every magazine cover, every viral interview, every whispered rumor drifting through LA talent circles. Midnight in Manhattan had made him Hollywood’s golden boy. The Last First Date had locked in his status as the industry’s most bankable romantic lead. The man sold tickets. No point arguing with that.
Everything else?
Four agents in two years. Every split wrapped in “professional” language that barely concealed the truth: he was difficult, demanding, and according to the industry grapevine, especially unwilling to be represented by women.
Lucy felt her jaw tighten just slightly. She eased it loose before it became visible.
She’d dealt with worse.
Much worse.
The elevator opened onto the seventh floor. Seraph’s conference wing—marble streaked with fine gold veining underfoot, abstract art on the walls that whispered money instead of shouting it. Lucy moved through it without slowing down.
Ben Smith was waiting outside conference room three.
She knew that posture on sight: suit hanging a little too loose at the shoulders, his frame folded in on itself, eyes fixed on the closed door.
“Hey,” he managed when she approached.
The word landed like wet paper.
Lucy held out her hand. “Ben.”
He shook it weakly, then glanced back at the door. “Ariel may not be thrilled.”
One brow lifted. She said nothing, which was encouragement enough.
“He asked for the best agent.” Ben dragged a hand through his thinning hair. “A male one. He specified it in the contract. Twice.”
Of course he did.
Lucy could practically see Angelica Reynolds reading that line, those piercing blue eyes narrowing behind her desk as the full meaning clicked into place. Angelica didn’t tolerate sexism smuggled in under the label of “professional preference.”
Never had.
She had built Seraph from nothing in an industry that liked to chew ambitious women up and spit them out the moment they tried climbing higher.
I’ll prove you wrong—that was Angelica’s entire operating system. Someone questioned her judgment? She raised the stakes. Someone dismissed her people because of gender? She sent the best person she had.
Which, much to Ariel Devereux’s misfortune, was Lucy.
“Did he say why he specifically needed a man?” she asked, her voice as level as a polished boardroom table.
Ben shifted his weight. “Claims he works better with men. Says women in this business are too emotional, too fixated on the romantic image, and not focused enough on career strategy.” He grimaced. “His words, not mine.”
“Right. One of those.”
“Look, I’m not defending him.” Ben lowered his voice, even though the corridor was empty. “But he’s going to push back. Hard. He thinks charm can make up for basic decency. And when the charm stops working, he gets vicious.”
Her tablet buzzed in her hand. A text from Victoria, head of PR.
Ready to revive another fallen angel? This one’s got wings made of solid gold and a personality distilled from acid.
Lucy bit back a smile. Victoria always had a way with words.
“I appreciate the warning.” Her voice shifted by a fraction—that steel note wrapped in velvet she’d perfected over years of closing negotiations with studios trying to lowball her clients. “But Angelica assigned me to this contract for a reason. If Mr. Devereux has concerns about my qualifications, we can discuss them directly.”
“Your funeral.” Ben gave her a faint, exhausted smile. “Off the record, you’re probably the only person at Seraph who can handle him. If anyone can crack that armor, it’s you.”
The conference room door opened abruptly. A young assistant leaned out, tense and visibly fresh off an unpleasant encounter with whoever was waiting inside, wearing the exact expression Lucy recognized on sight: someone who had just realized what they’d signed up for.
“Ms. Crowe? Mr. Devereux is ready for you.”
Lucy adjusted her jacket and tucked her portfolio under her arm.
She’d worked with musicians who had meltdowns over the wrong brand of mineral water. Actresses who demanded veto power over every line of dialogue. One comedian who had livestreamed his own police intervention and then asked his agent if it had helped his image.
How difficult could one rom-com actor really be?
Ben knocked twice and pushed open the heavy oak door.
The conference room opened up in front of them—floor-to-ceiling windows, the Los Angeles skyline drenched in morning light, furniture that cost more than most of the cars in the parking lot, and enough space to host a small wedding. Seraph never did anything halfway.
Ariel Devereux was sitting by the windows on a cream leather sofa.
One arm thrown loosely across the backrest, legs slightly apart, phone held at an angle Lucy recognized immediately. Scrolling. The man was scrolling on his phone during a meeting with a new agent.
He looked up.
Blue-green eyes—exactly like the pictures, except no photo had ever quite captured that particular temperature in his gaze. He slid his phone into his pocket with one lazy motion and flicked a gesture in Lucy’s direction that technically counted as pointing, though in practice it felt closer to dismissing someone already in his line of sight.
“Ben.” The accent hit first—sharp British vowels threaded through an easy, almost American cadence. He slid his phone into his pocket with one lazy motion and flicked a glance Lucy’s way. “This is Seraph’s very best, is it?”
Then he stood.
One fluid movement, and the room suddenly felt a little smaller. At least six-three, shoulders filling out a perfectly tailored navy suit as if it had been cut for the width of him before the shape of him. Dark blond hair caught the light, arranged in that carefully careless way that always gave away a stylist’s labor. Straight jaw, mouth tilted just slightly at the corners, as if everything he saw amused him a little more than he cared to admit.
He crossed the distance between them and held out a hand.
“Lucy Crowe.”
His handshake was firm and entirely formal. Not a trace of warmth. Then he let go and turned to Ben. It was barely there, that shift, but Lucy knew it instantly—that nonverbal exchange men carried out under the assumption that a woman either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t call it out.
Lucy noticed.
She always noticed.
“That’s right,” she said, calm and professional. “I’m the best agent at Seraph. The boss chose me personally.”
Something flickered at Ariel’s temple. A tiny jump of muscle, there and gone. The first crack in the polished façade.
“Yes, well.” He frowned slightly, irritation barely tucked under British politeness. “The issue is, I asked for a man.” His gaze skimmed over her again, this time with no pretense of subtlety. “And you quite clearly are not one.”
The words hung in the air.
Ben shifted uneasily by the door. Probably calculating the distance to the nearest exit.
Lucy held Ariel’s gaze. She did not blink first. She knew the type—men who confused preference with prejudice and dressed sexism up in corporate language, expecting everyone to nod along for the sake of convenience.
“My gender is irrelevant.” Each word landed separately, like a signature under a contract clause. “What matters is whether I’m good at my job.”
“We shall see.” He folded his arms, the fabric pulling across his shoulders. “I asked for the best.”
“Good agents know how to walk through fire.” She paused. “Or through someone’s ego.”
His perfect smile—the one from film posters, polished to the millimeter—appeared and didn’t reach his eyes by so much as an inch.
“All right, then. Let’s test the theory. I assume Seraph knows what it’s doing.”
Lucy swallowed the comeback sitting sharp on her tongue. This wasn’t a contest for best line delivery. It was work. A contract that would look excellent in her portfolio no matter what she thought of the man attached to it.
“Of course.” She gave a small nod.
Ariel moved toward the conference table, trailing his fingertips over the polished surface.
“Three months.” He turned so the window framed him from behind. Someone who knew his angles far too well. “If this arrangement isn’t working after three months, you’re off the account.”
He waited.
Lucy saw it in the stillness—the slight shift of one leg forward, the loose shoulders, the posture of someone expecting a reaction and already convinced he knew what it would be.
“Fine.”
One word. No decoration.
Something moved across his face—quick, instantly hidden. Maybe the corner of his mouth. Maybe the line of his jaw losing certainty for half a second.
“Good.” He tossed it off lightly. “I assume you’ve reviewed my contracts.”
“Every one.” She stepped to the table, laid down her portfolio with deliberate care, and opened it to the correct page. “Including the Montblanc deal that’s bleeding money because of catastrophic brand positioning, and the franchise option tying you to a sequel that—unless I’m reading this very wrong—you have no intention of making.”
Ariel’s eyes narrowed. “Ben mentioned that.”
“Ben mentioned it three months ago.” She slid a document toward him. “I already have a termination proposal prepared for the Montblanc contract that protects you from financial penalties, and I’ve had preliminary conversations with the studio regarding the sequel.”
“Without consulting me?” Ice moved fast into his voice.
“Preliminary conversations,” she repeated evenly. “Nothing has been signed. But if you’d rather spend the next three months doing remedial work from scratch instead of building on a foundation that’s already there, we can do that too.”
Silence stretched between them like a rope pulled taut.
Behind her, Ben cleared his throat.
“Right. Well. I’ll leave you two to it.”
The lock clicked shut behind him.
Ariel studied her across the table, stripped now of that polished layer of practiced charm. Under it was something sharper. Something Lucy noticed and quietly filed away for later.
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m just very good at what I do.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Barely, but it did.
“Three months, Ms. Crowe.”
“Three months, Mr. Devereux.”
Her heels hit the marble in Seraph’s lobby on the way out, this time a shade too hard, the rhythm faster than when she’d walked in. The valet handed Lucy her keys with a professional smile she didn’t register.
She got into her BMW and shut the door. The leather seat met her with a chill.
She slammed the door a little harder than necessary.
“Three months, Ms. Crowe,” she muttered under her breath, mimicking his infuriatingly calm British cadence. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and she felt her knuckles harden beneath the skin. She loosened her grip. Tightened it again.
“What an ass.”
The engine purred to life. She hit the radio, and something loud, bright, and defiant flooded the car as Lucy pulled out of the lot into the noon wash of Los Angeles.
Wilshire Boulevard moved at its usual lazy crawl. Palm trees swayed in the breeze with that infuriating indifference trees seemed to possess—as if mood, ambition, and men who looked at women like rejected bids were beneath their concern.
The music thudded through the speakers, and Lucy let it.
Just wait, you British bastard.
“Lu!”
Victoria appeared before she’d even cleared the lobby, dark eyes already glittering with amusement.
“You survived!”
Lucy’s face twisted into something between a grimace and a growl as she dropped her portfolio onto the nearest desk.
“Jesus,” she said flatly. “His Royal Highness.”
Victoria broke into laughter, trying and failing to muffle it behind her hand. Her shoulders shook anyway.
“That bad?” Her brows lifted in that particular little dance Lucy knew by heart. Then Victoria’s expression shifted into shameless appreciation. “Although, to be fair, there is a lot to look at. Girl. Whew.”
Lucy gave her a look that could have melted glass.
“He may be gorgeous, but he’s still an ass.”
“Mm-hmm. Sure.” Victoria dragged the words out, dripping skepticism.
That single sound said everything. Victoria had already built the entire story in her head, probably complete with the exact beginning, middle, and end Lucy intended to deny with extreme force.
Lucy gathered up her things and headed for Angelica’s office.
Glass walls. Her boss behind the desk, bent over a tablet with that focused intensity industry people spoke about in near-mythic terms. Lucy knocked once.
Then stepped inside.
“Why did you send me in there?” The words came out unfiltered, before she could decide whether she wanted to be professional or honest. “He’s deeply unimpressed with me and we haven’t even officially started working together yet. I’ve done nothing, and he’s already planning my evacuation.”
Angelica set down the tablet and folded her arms.
“That,” she said, “is exactly why.”
Lucy blinked.
“That man needs to learn that behavior like this is unacceptable.” Angelica’s voice carried the weight of years spent taming egos that would have made Ariel look manageable by comparison. “He does not get to choose representation based on outdated prejudice. Not at Seraph.”
The pieces fell into place with painful, crystalline clarity.
“You picked me to piss him off?”
“Yes.”
Angelica smiled—a proud, unapologetic, absolutely certain smile. The kind of smile that had built a company, signed eight-figure contracts, and never once apologized for either.
Lucy felt something strange twist low in her stomach, halfway between admiration and despair.
Of course.
Not a prestige assignment. A lesson bundled with a contract.
“Prove to him that you’re better than any male agent he’s ever had.” Angelica leaned back in her chair. “Three months should be more than enough.”
Lucy let out a sigh from somewhere deeper than she’d intended.
“Great.” The sarcasm had a mature finish, like a well-aged vintage.
“Oh, off you go, chérie.” Angelica flicked her hand in dismissal—a general sending a knight to battle without the slightest doubt about the result.
Lucy took her tablet.
Lists were already beginning to form in her head—contract review, schedule restructuring, a detailed management plan for a man who had made it very clear he did not want to be managed. At least not by her.
The elevator doors slid shut, and beyond the glass stretched Los Angeles—the city of ambition, illusion, and people convinced they were irreplaceable.
Lucy pulled out her phone.
And started typing her first note.
Challenge accepted, Royal Asshole.
