I give him a little shimmy. “It’s my other gift.”

His eyes shine. “I have to be honest, Stephanie should know better. You are incredibly pretty, and obviously blessed with at least two enviable gifts, but sight unseen, nothing sounds worse than dating a fellow agent.”

God, I agree. Dating someone in my business would be a disaster: the hours are terrible, the phone calls are constant, and the blood pressure—and the sex life—suffer.

So I’m glad he’s said it, glad he’s just thrown it out there. It’s like we’re on the same team and suddenly there is zero pressure: Team They’re Cute But It Could Never Work.

“And,” he adds, “I just realized that you’re the beloved Evelyn Abbey. It’s all falling into place now.”

I’m caught off guard for a second and not sure how to react. Hollywood is an industry of almost forty thousand people, but its circles are small. If he’s heard of me—and my track record—it could be great . . . or not. I feel uneasy not knowing which.

“So you’re an agent?” I ask. “How have we never met?”

“I’m in TV-Literary.” Small circles. I relax a little. “But Michael Christopher and Steph talk about you all the time.”

“You call Mike ‘Michael Christopher’?” I ask. “That’s really cute. I’m getting Winnie the Pooh vibes.”

“We went to grade school together,” Carter explains, “and old habits die hard. He tries to pretend he’s cool being married and having a three-year-old kid who makes him wear tiaras, but deep down I know it makes him crazy that I’m still single and there are no pictures of me on Instagram wearing my kid’s sparkly lip gloss.”

I laugh. “Well, if it makes you feel better, this is going so much better than the last time Steph tried to set me up.”

Carter has the magical ability to sharply lift one eyebrow, and it makes a chemical reaction in me go off like a bomb. “She does this to you a lot?”

“Last time,” I explain, “she set me up with her chubby twenty-two-year-old cousin, Wyatt.”

“That’s thoughtful. She must really like Wyatt.”

I let this compliment slide warmly over me. “I’m thirty-three, so . . .”

Carter’s laugh is soft, but his entire face smiles when he does it. “He couldn’t handle you, I take it.”

“Newly graduated from UCLA, poor Wyatt hadn’t been out on a date in a few months.” I smile. “Or . . . ever.”

I’m unsure what to do with the straightforward honesty of his attention as he listens. I’m used to being the person who dissolves into the background, by necessity. Most of my life—most of my socializing—is centered around work. And there I make myself seen when I need to raise the red flag or go to bat for my clients, but otherwise my job is best done from backstage. It’s only when I’m here, standing with a man who is watching me like I’m the only thing in the room, that I realize how long it’s been since anyone has looked at me this way.

A thought occurs to me: although he grew up with Mike back east, if Carter’s in TV-Lit, he’s probably local. Daryl might even know him. “Where do you work?”

Carter smiles, as if he realizes that what he’s about to say is a tiny social stink bomb dropped between us. “CTM.”

CT Management is our biggest rival. Inside of me there are warring impulses: an urge to fist-pump because he’s local, offset by an instinctive spike of competitiveness.

If he notices my silence, he rolls past it. “I moved out here two years ago, and I’m saying this as someone who grew up surrounded by subways and a million other ways to get where you need to be,” he says. “But here? God. I live in Beverly Hills—never thought I’d say that—and it’s still a nightmare getting anywhere.”

“You East Coasters are so spoiled with your”—I make finger quotes—“subways and efficient taxi system.”

Carter’s laugh is a quiet, whiskery chuckle. “It’s true. I’m a Long Island boy at heart. But now, I’m going Hollywood.”

“Just make sure you don’t go full-on Hollywood.”

“I’m not even sure I know what it means to go ‘full-on Hollywood.’ Is that when you look at the five-hundred-dollar shoes at Saks and think, ‘I should probably get those’? Because we had that in Manhattan.”

“Worse,” I say. “It’s when you recognize the five-hundred-dollar shoes on someone else’s feet and know where they probably bought them. And then you judge the person wearing them a little because those loafers are no longer the town’s number one underappreciated, overpriced designer and you know they were on sale last week so they didn’t pay full price.”

“Wow. You are Eve-il.”

“Oh, that’s not me.” I hold up my hands and then point to my simple yellow flats peeking out beneath my robe. “I’ll have you know these shoes are from Old Navy, sir. Purchased on clearance. But I’ve lived here my entire life. Every day it’s a struggle to not get pulled down into the game.”

“ ‘The game’?”

“Talent agents in Hollywood?” I say. “You know it’s a game.”

“Right, right.” He nods, and I realize that with that one subtle gesture, he’s already playing. And if my instinct is right, he’s good at it, too. He’s wide open until the subject of work comes up, and then a filter slides into place.

Interesting.

I take a sip of my drink, looking out at the party around us. Together, Carter and I form this tiny island in the dining room; it’s almost as if the rest of the guests have been instructed to leave us alone.

“So you’re at P&D,” he says.

“I am.” I look at him, trying to read him like I do every new person I meet so I can figure out how to best interact, and I think: He’s unflappable. “Under Brad Kingman.”

Carter doesn’t react, and if my guess is correct, it’s because he already knew this about me.

“Is it true he’s notoriously picky about food and only eats raw, unprocessed, no sugar . . .” Carter grins as he cheekily tilts his can of Red Bull to his lips. “Obviously I am very health conscious, myself.”