Free Starstruck by Lauren Conrad

wouldn’t, even if he was wrong. Maybe she’d be too afraid to contradict her powerful, important boss—a thought that made him smile.)
    He stood at the window and did a few knee bends as he sipped his drink. (His trainer had told him to take advantage of spare moments like this. “In every hour there are at least twelve minutes you could be working out,” she always said. “Every moment you’re not glued to your desk is a moment you could be increasing your fitness.”)
    Despite the Fame Game ’s excellent ratings, Trevor had to acknowledge that not everything was perfect. For one thing, his purported star, Madison Parker, was suddenly unavailable for filming for thirty hours each week. It seemed to him like a pretty stiff sentence for stealing some silly necklace. Shoplifting was practically an extracurricular activity for young Hollywood.
    Carmen, too, was turning out to be hard to pin down these days. He’d pushed for her to get the starring role in The End of Love , and now it was turning around to bite him in the ass. Be careful what you wish for , he thought, as he did ten reps of a deep squat.
    And speaking of things biting him in the ass, Carmen was still playing along with the Luke Kelly business. Those two had quickly become a genuine power couple. When Trevor and Veronica Bliss had released the story about Luke Kelly secretly dating a Fame Game girl, he’d had no idea it would escalate to this level. He was looking for a quick buzz before the premiere, and suddenly he’d ended up with Carmen engaging in a very public relationship with a movie star who had no intention of stepping in front of PopTV cameras. Trevor had tried his best to convince Luke’s representation that appearing on The Fame Game wouldn’t tarnish Luke’s acting career, but they weren’t buying it. He’d gotten exactly one scene out of them—a meal at Stecco that would be airing in a couple weeks. He’d cut and rearranged it enough to make it feel romantic and hopeful, and his music supervisor had found a fantastic love song for it. Trevor had even planted a shot of Kate looking forlorn.
    Trevor knew this meant he’d have to be a little creative. He already had his love triangle; he just needed to find a replacement for Luke. After all, in his show the men were interchangeable. A guy had clearly come between Kate and Carmen, and luckily for Trevor, they rarely referred to him by name.
    But a half-baked, heavily edited love triangle wasn’t going to carry the show all season; Trevor was going to have to rethink its focus somewhat. He had six strong episodes done, but now he had to figure out how the remaining six would play out.
    Gaby could never be the central character. She was sweet, but she was vacant and hard to relate to. Kate Hayes had definite potential—she had the fresh-faced innocence, the whole pretty-girl-next-door thing that had made such a star of Jane Roberts. But while Kate was definitely sympathetic, she wasn’t exactly charismatic. There was a chance she’d uncover some latent confidence, some hint of star power, in the upcoming shows he was booking for her, assuming she didn’t pass out from anxiety first. The stage fright would be a part of her arc, of course. He’d been planning to work it in ever since he’d seen her play at the premiere. But she needed to deal with it. And he wasn’t about to let her sign a label deal until she did. He’d mapped out her career trajectory and he couldn’t have her skipping steps—it would all unfold in a way that worked for the show. But still, he needed someone with magnetism. He needed someone the camera loved—and who loved the camera right back in equal measure. What he really needed was Madison Parker.
    He stopped doing squats when Michelle/Melissa slipped in with his other sugar packet. He sat down at his desk again, his pulse pleasingly elevated. Yes, he missed Madison’s shameless camera-hogging. She’d been such a reliable source of drama for two-plus