Changing the Rules

"Hello," Gisele said, suddenly shy.

Katherine, Lisa, Grace, Kelsey, and McKenna stood inside Nolan's Beverly Hills house. The other models had gone back to their hotel after the tour, but he had brought Gisele and her twin sister Patricia home. Gisele had been eager to see the place. The reception stopped her at the door.

Three of the women were visibly pregnant. She knew Kelsey and McKenna, and knew what they were to Nolan. The others were strangers. 'Are all three babies his?'

Grace reached her first and took her hands. "You're even more beautiful in person than you are on a runway."

"And tall," Katherine said, smiling. At five feet eleven before heels, Gisele stood above most of the room. The shoes made the difference more striking, though she never seemed awkward in them.

"That black Alexander McQueen look you wore at New York Fashion Week," Lisa said. "I've asked every buyer in Los Angeles about it. Can you help me find one?"

Within minutes, the women had swept Gisele into a tour of the house. Patricia remained beside Nolan, overlooked in the rush. "She has a way of becoming the center of any room," Patricia said with a rueful smile. She was used to it.

"You could be on a runway too," Nolan said.

Patricia was Gisele's twin and could have worked as a model, but she shook her head. "Managing her schedule keeps me busy enough." She handled Gisele's appointments and dealt with Sarah Douglas on her behalf.

"Let's talk about you instead. How do you survive nights in a house this full?" Patricia's smile made the teasing clear. She imagined Nolan's evenings were more tiring than his days on the field.

"I manage," he said. "Even with Gisele here."

"Mom was upset enough when she heard Gisele stayed over with you. I'm not volunteering to make your life harder." Patricia laughed and waved the subject away.

Nolan took her outside, and they walked through the grounds. The conversation turned to Gisele's work.

"Besides the appearance you arranged, she has a meeting at Victoria's Secret headquarters in Ohio," Patricia said. A contract was on the table. Nolan knew the partnership could raise Gisele's profile and give the brand a new face.

"What about Adriana and Alessandra?"

"Sarah recommended them. The people there weren't convinced."

Patricia told him when the meeting would be. "I'll come with you," Nolan said. He had business he wanted to discuss with the company as well.

"Be careful with Sarah, by the way. She's been unusually close to the other models these past six months."

The timing matched Nolan's last meeting with Sarah. He had delayed renewing their arrangement, and she had started cultivating alternatives. Patricia had confirmed what he already suspected. He would speak to the models himself.

They walked for more than ten minutes without reaching the property's edge. "What did all this cost?" Patricia asked. His answer made her stop for a moment.

Unlike the visitors at the club, Patricia knew he was not an heir. Nolan had helped organize sporting events while still at college and now held an ownership stake in an NFL franchise.

"I got lucky," he said, though his playing career had opened most of those doors. "And a few stock investments worked out."

She asked how well. When he mentioned investments made for Hollywood stars and profits approaching a hundred million dollars over the last two years, she stared at him.

"You invested in movies too?"

"A few," he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

'A few?' Patricia could not think of another person she knew who had built meaningful careers in sport, entertainment, and investing at once.

They returned in time for dinner and met Nolan's mother. Gisele and Patricia exchanged a look across the table. They were discovering more about his household than either had expected.

Lisa brought up Happy Death Day. Two weeks into its theatrical run, it had taken in twenty-four million dollars. The first day had brought only about $750,000, but word of mouth had held. By its busiest point, 1,346 theaters were showing it.

The summer had been crowded with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, The Mummy, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Tarzan, The Blair Witch Project, Notting Hill, and the latest Austin Powers. The fall had left more room for their smaller picture.

"Fight Club is our closest competition now," Lisa said. "It opened ten days earlier and has made about twenty-four million, but it cost far more. Our entire outlay, distribution included, was about nine million." Nolan knew that Fight Club's first theatrical numbers did not tell the whole story, but they made the comparison attractive at this table.

"It won't stay this quiet. Toy Story 2 and other releases are coming. Even so, this film has already beaten our expectations."

"The story did a lot of the work," Mia said. "Nolan gave us that."

"Happy Death Day was your idea?" Gisele turned to him.

Mia answered first. "That and the story behind Seven. I wrote the screenplay, but Nolan gave me the premise, the turns, and the ending. He deserves a story credit for what he brought in."

"I was there," Katherine said. "He talked through Seven over lunch at a McDonald's, and Mia started taking notes on napkins before he was finished."

Grace and the others had heard the story. For Gisele and Patricia, it was new. They had not seen Happy Death Day, but they knew Seven. Patricia had watched it repeatedly and admired its dark, deliberate mood. She had recognized Mia's writing credit without realizing it was this Mia, much less that Nolan had supplied the original story.

She looked at him across the table as if she had to take his measure all over again.

Later, Gisele lay on a bed upstairs, moving her feet against the soft carpet. "This house is enormous. I don't want to leave." Patricia sat beside her, quiet.

"What are you thinking about?" Gisele asked.

"I still can't believe Nolan came up with that film."

"Some people think differently." Gisele rolled onto her side.

"I'm going to find him. Remember what you promised."

"I won't tell Mom you stayed with him," Patricia said.

After Gisele left, Patricia lay back and closed her eyes. Images from Seven returned, except Nolan kept taking the place of its lead. She opened her eyes. "I don't think I like that movie anymore," she murmured.

At the hotel, Nolan sat across from Alessandra in her room. "How's Los Angeles treating you?"

"Well enough," she said, looking up. "The weather isn't so different from London."

"What if you left London for good and worked here?"

"Then how would I earn a living?" She shook her head at once.

He did not press the move. Instead, he recalled the day he had chosen her for the agency. "I liked your look from the start."

"Thank you, boss." She refilled his whiskey when she saw the empty glass and tried to steer the conversation toward Gisele.

He would not be diverted. "Let's talk about Sarah Douglas. Has she asked you to move to Storm?"

Alessandra's hand shook before she steadied the bottle. "She asked. I haven't agreed. You brought me out of Brazil. I know what I owe you."

"Yet you've spent a lot of time at her office. I hear you've passed along news about me."

"I swear I haven't betrayed you." She raised a hand, then lost confidence in her own answer.

She assumed Izabel had told him everything. Frightened, she apologized and explained how Sarah had approached her and Adriana. She cried as she spoke, trying to prove she was still useful to him.

"I don't doubt you can say the right things," Nolan said. "Words and tears won't settle it."

"Then what do you want from me?" She understood what she thought he was demanding and began undoing her buttons, one at a time.

"Wait." Relief flashed through her. For a moment she thought he was going to let her stop.

"Bring Adriana in. I don't have all night."

Alessandra stared at him, then went to the door. Adriana had been listening outside. "Izabel told him," Alessandra whispered. Adriana looked from her to Nolan and realized they were both in trouble.

"You can leave when your contracts end," Nolan said from the room. "I won't stop either of you. But think about what follows."

He had decided he had been too lenient with the agency. The two women exchanged a frightened look and stepped inside anyway. They were eighteen, but the choice he offered them was not free of pressure.

"Close the door." It shut behind them.

They began to undress without being asked. Neither looked willing. The encounter that followed was coercive and painful, leaving injuries neither had agreed to bear. The damage was not confined to their bodies.

When Nolan emerged from the bathroom, they had dressed in silence. Blood marked the disordered white sheet. He took it as a sign they had little sexual experience, though he had no way to know that. Alessandra was eighteen; Adriana had only recently turned eighteen. Their work and Sarah's close oversight had left little room for private lives.

He let his robe fall. They helped him dress with stiff, automatic movements.

"Rest tonight," he said at the door. "You'll have to appear in a few days."

Only after he left did they lie down, still hurting.