Take Five (Part 6)

Laura waited until his door was shut, then breathed a sigh of relief. This job was way more stressful than she had expected it to be! Between Sophia's little fits and Blake's teasing, Laura was constantly on edge, waiting to see who was going to catch her by surprise next. After taking a moment to compose herself, Laura headed off in search of the director.

Ricardo was almost all the way to his car when Laura spotted him. She picked up her pace and arrived at the vehicle just as he put his hand on the handle.

"Laura!" he said, surprised. He hadn't heard her approach, although that didn't surprise him - he had been lost in though, trying to come up with some way to handle his two stars. He quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching, but it seemed that the coast was clear.

"Get in, and keep your head down," he told her, climbing into the red Jeep. Laura hurried to the other side and climbed in, pulling on a pair of sunglasses from her bag and sitting low in the seat. Ricardo fired up the engine and pulled out of the lot before he glanced over at Laura again.

"So what's up? I thought you wanted to avoid being seen together," he said.

"It's just been a bad day, Ricky, and I wanted to talk to you," Laura said with a sigh. "Between Sophia's sulking and Blake laughing at me... it's just sucked."

"I told you about Sophia before you started," Ricardo said. "I knew it would be hard to deal with - but you insisted that you could handle it."

"I didn't come here to have you say 'I told you so,'" Laura pouted. "And I can handle it. Usually. It was just today."

"You can always quit... I'm sure I could find someone else -"

"No! Ricky, please - I can do it! And if I can get through this, I can work anywhere in the business." She looked at him, her expression fierce.

Ricardo chuckled. "I know you can, kiddo. Don't worry, every day can't be this bad. Of course, it could be much better for you..."

Laura sighed as Ricardo trailed off. "I want to do this on my own, Ricky; I want to actually earn my respect, not just have people being nice to me because of you."

"I'm just saying, it's handy to know the director," he said with a shrug.

"Nepotism is not the way - I don't want to just be Ricardo's baby sister."

"So you'll just be 'that intern over there,'" he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

Laura sighed. "For now."