Chapter 145: Buy
Chapter 145: Buy
“Why are you still here?” Eric turned his head and looked unexpectedly at the somewhat flustered woman leaning against the piano.
“I… I’m sorry. I’ll go out right away.” Nicole carefully put the score back in its original place and walked toward the door, but Eric called out to her.
“Nicole.”
“Mm.” The woman stopped at the doorway, one hand gripping the doorknob. She turned around, her eyes questioning him.
Eric turned around in his office chair and gestured around the study. “This place isn’t part of your cleaning area. It’s a little messy, but I’m already used to where many of the documents are placed. So, do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand. I won’t come in without your permission.” The woman nodded. Her figure still lingered at the doorway, seeming to carry a certain expectation. “Eric, is there anything else?”
Eric shook his head. “Nothing. Rest early. Good night.”
“Good night,” Nicole replied. Seeing Eric turn back around and focus on the monitor again, she walked out of the study with slight disappointment and gently closed the door.
For the next few days, the woman’s life was very peaceful.
Every morning, she woke up, made breakfast for Eric, saw him off, then spent several hours cleaning. If the clothes on her body did not constantly remind her of her identity, the woman would almost have developed the illusion that she was a housewife.
This feeling was actually not bad.
At least it was not like what she had imagined at first, where she would spend several months in Eric’s villa as a sex toy, suffering all kinds of unbearable abuse and training. Although she had already mentally prepared herself for that, none of it happened.
After Eric dressed her up into the beautiful image he imagined, he rarely paid attention to her again. For a time, this made the woman begin to doubt her own feminine charm. One day, she even secretly stuffed two layers of padding into the front of her clothes and walked back and forth in front of him. The man only smiled with interest and ignored her, leaving the woman feeling very embarrassed. After that, she no longer dared to do such things and obediently played the role of his little maid.
Aside from her own work every day, she had large amounts of free time. When bored, she read newspapers, watched television, repeatedly flipped through the script of Sleepless in Seattle, and entrusted Eric to buy her many magazines. She obediently stopped sneaking out. Since reality was far better than she had imagined, she was willing to be a docile canary.
She knew Eric had recently been busy with the post-production of a film called Running Out of Time. He was not home every day either. Sometimes he spent the night at his girlfriend’s house. That truly was a lucky girl. She had seen Aniston’s photo and envied that girl’s luck.
In late May, Eric even went to England, leaving her alone in the villa. It was said to be for a set visit, but he hurried back two days later.
At the end of May, the woman saw in the newspaper that Home Alone had officially ended its North American run after breaking three hundred million dollars at the box office. This news occupied entire newspaper pages for the following week. All kinds of reviews praised Eric to the skies, and Columbia’s stock even rose by a large margin because of it.
The woman’s focus was still on the news that Eric would soon receive as much as 120 million dollars in profit share.
To Nicole, 120 million dollars was an astronomical figure.
The reason she came to Hollywood was because of her desire for money, fame, and status. She wanted to become a top Hollywood actress like Julia Roberts. But based on the six-million-dollar salary quote Eric had mentioned for Julia Roberts, Julia would have to shoot twenty films to earn that much money. Even if a star maintained peak popularity and filmed two movies every year, it would still take ten years. What was more, everyone knew this was impossible. Most stars could only maintain their peak condition for about ten years at most, and their salaries would rise and fall depending on the performance of the films they starred in.
Thinking about this, the woman’s originally calm mind began stirring again.
If she could become the mistress of this mansion, then she would directly obtain everything she wanted.
The woman even worked out a few seduction plans she thought were feasible. Unfortunately, before these little schemes could be carried out, they died prematurely.
Because summer vacation had arrived, and the troublesome little demon had returned.
It was past four in the afternoon. The woman happened to be trimming the lawn in the yard when she heard the gate being opened. She knew Eric usually would not return at this hour, so she went forward to see what was going on and saw Drew carrying bag after bag of luggage into the yard before closing the gate.
Nicole warmly went up to greet her and wanted to help carry the luggage. Building a good relationship with Drew was a very important part of her plan.
But unexpectedly, after seeing her appearance, the girl’s eyes widened with an incredulous expression. Her gaze carried undisguised hostility. She circled Nicole several times before asking a question that made Nicole collapse inwardly.
“Did he fuck you?”
Seeing the woman freeze in place and fall into a chaotic state, Drew revealed a satisfied and somewhat relieved expression. “He didn’t, right? But that’s expected. Your chest is so small.”
As she said this, the girl suddenly reached out and grabbed Nicole’s chest, then curled her lip. “How pitiful. Not even A+.”
“You…” After Drew’s sneak attack, Nicole finally reacted. She protected her front to block the little claws Drew might stretch out again and could not help retorting, “Yours aren’t big either.”
“I’m only fourteen, you know. I still have many years to grow, ma’am. Are you thirty this year?”
“I can’t be bothered with you.” Nicole also noticed Drew’s hostility, so she gave up on the idea of building a good relationship with this little girl. She returned to the lawn by herself, turned on the lawn mower, and continued trimming.
Drew had previously heard Eric say that he liked Japanese maid outfits and thought he was joking. She had never expected a tall beauty dressed in a sexy maid outfit to suddenly appear in the villa today. This made her instinctively feel rejection and hostility.
She did not want Eric to have yet another woman. That little fatty Aniston had not been squeezed out yet, and now another one had arrived. If women kept arriving one after another, how busy would she be driving them away one by one in the future?
“Hey, you. Help me carry my luggage in.” Although she had already confirmed Eric’s “ill intentions,” Drew did not think in any other direction and genuinely treated Nicole as the maid Eric had hired.
“I’m sorry, Miss Barrymore. I’m not your servant, so I have no obligation to do that.” The woman coldly continued pushing the lawn mower without even turning her head.
Drew immediately flew into a rage. “I… I’ll tell Eric to fire you today!”
Nicole had also understood that Drew regarded her as a real servant, so she casually threw out one sentence. “Suit yourself.”
Drew stomped her foot angrily and carried the pile of luggage back into the villa piece by piece. By the time several suitcases had all been moved inside, Nicole had also finished handling the lawn. She returned to the villa and began preparing dinner.
The more Drew looked at Nicole’s figure, the angrier she became. After thinking for a moment, she picked up the cordless phone and dialed Eric’s number.
It rang several times before someone answered.
The girl lay on the living room sofa, hugged a cushion, and made her voice soft and sweet. “Eric, I love you.”
Inside Fox’s studio, the main sets for Friends had already been completed. Today happened to be the shoot for several scenes that needed to be inserted into Running Out of Time. Eric took the AC mobile phone Motorola had gifted him because of the product placement and walked to a quiet corner. Hearing Drew’s words, he was somewhat baffled.
“Drew, isn’t school out today? Are you home?”
“Eric, I love you.” The girl’s soft voice came from the other end of the phone again.
“Alright, stop messing around. Say what you need to say. I’m busy. I’ll be home late.” Eric tucked the mobile phone between his neck and shoulder, raised his wrist, and checked his watch. “It’s not even five yet. I’ll probably be back around six.”
“Eric, I love you.” Her coquettish voice rang out again.
Eric fell silent for a moment before speaking. “Buy. Just say what you want!”
“Uh, Eric, you’re awful.” In the villa’s sofa, Drew flipped over and used the cushion behind her head, dissatisfied. “I said I love you so many times, and you didn’t respond once.”
“If you don’t say what’s going on, I’m hanging up,” Eric threatened.
“Fine, fine. Eric, can we fire that maid?” Drew deliberately raised her voice. In the kitchen, the woman cutting tomatoes heard this and rolled her eyes.
“You mean Nicole? I didn’t hire her. She’s just here helping out.”
“But I don’t like her.”
“Nicole’s cooking is pretty good. Try it tonight and you’ll like her. Be good. I’m hanging up.” After saying that, Eric hung up directly.
In the villa, Drew angrily waved her little hand, wanting to throw out the receiver in her hand. When she raised her head, she saw Nicole leaning smugly against the kitchen doorway, holding a glass bowl and mixing the eggs inside. A faintly triumphant smile was on her face.
“How was that, little one?”
“You’re not allowed to call me little one, you poor-breasted flat-chested woman.”
Although Nicole felt somewhat inferior inside, in the face of Drew’s provocation, she still shrugged indifferently. “Maybe someone happens to like this type.”
“He doesn’t like it,” the girl could not help retorting.
“People’s tastes change.” Nicole calmly left that sentence behind, then turned and returned to the kitchen, leaving Drew fuming.
“Hmph. I absolutely, absolutely, absolutely won’t let you get your way,” the girl vowed while waving her little fist.
On May 24, with the release of Spielberg’s blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, this year’s summer movie season officially arrived.
Although Eric had been busy with the intense post-production work for Running Out of Time, he still paid close attention to this film. During its first week, the film earned forty-six million dollars across more than 2,300 screens. In its second and third weeks, the box office drop remained between 20% and 30%. By mid-June, Indiana Jones had broken one hundred million dollars at the box office in three weeks.
The post-production work for Running Out of Time was also completed in mid-June. Although Eric was very willing to spend money in many areas, only thirty-four million dollars of the production budget was used. After all, the crew’s finance team came from Columbia, and the film itself did not have many expensive large-scale scenes, nor did it have any special effects.
But after Columbia’s higher-ups watched the finished cut of Running Out of Time, they readily agreed to invest the remaining six million dollars from the budget into the film’s publicity.
At the same time, Columbia’s first major summer tentpole, Ghostbusters II, on which they had placed high hopes, also opened explosively across 2,400 screens.