It was just a start, fourteen-year-old Jared’s acting coach said, but “If you play your cards right, it will be a beginning of getting into the movies. You’ll have to do what you have to do, though.” Jared understood what that meant. He’d done what he had to do to get Larry DuCard as his acting coach and for DuCard to ferret out this movie opportunity for him.

The move was to be called “Reata,” which was the name of the big ranch in Texas that the main setting for a movie about the advent of the oil empires was to be. This wasn’t Texas, though. This was the first scene in the movie set in the horse country of Virginia, at a thoroughbred stable in Keswick to the east of Charlottesville. This was the scene where the young, hunky Texas rancher, Rhett Emery, was coming to buy a former champion racehorse for stud and wound up finding a southern belle to marry and take back to Texas.

The stars playing Rhett, Ron Fitzhugh, and his wife-to-be, Charlotte, Liv Turner, were top box office stars of the day. Both were beautiful people who would burn up the screen with the sizzle they would display for each other in the movie. It didn’t matter that off the screen, Ron preferred men and Liv preferred women. This was the fantasy world of Hollywood.

Jared would only be seen in this one take, which was totally separate from the bulk of the movie set that would be filmed in Texas. He had been recruited for this small, nonspeaking part because of Ron Fitzhugh’s needs and the film studios desire to keep its leading man in this film happy. The two had become acquainted and comfortable with each other before the filming of the scene, although to this point it had been suggestive talk and a bit of touching and fondling.

Jared’s appearance before the cameras was a short one. The filming had come to Virginia because the movie’s director, Carson Stephens, wanted to be as authentic as possible. The Keswick Hall stables housed the former racing champion, War Cloud, who had been put out to stud. Stephens insisted on using a real thoroughbred race horse in the film. Also, Keswick Hall had the typical antebellum southern mansion that would contrast with what Charlotte would find on the dusty Texas ranch Rhett took her to before it too was made magnificent over the years as oil made the family filthy rich.

Jared, small, trim, blond, and achingly handsome as a fourteen-year-old stable boy and jockey, led War Cloud out of the stables and into a large horse ring, set in a rolling, lush, green Virginia setting. Rhett and Charlotte stood at the pristine-white-painted fence surrounding the ring.

“Show him what he will do still,” Charlotte, a gorgeous, trim but buxom young woman with mesmerizing violet eyes, called out, and Jared mounted the horse and rode around the ring, while the cameras caught the conversation between Charlotte and Rhett that presaged that these two would be married and would be dynamite in bed and power partners through life.

When the conversation had threatened to become too steamy for a southern belle on her first meeting with the man of her dreams, Charlotte suddenly called out, “That’s enough. Bring him over here, Johnny.”

The tableau became the young jockey and horse approaching the somewhat embarrassed couple at the fence who both realized that more than the purchase of a stud horse was unfolding here. Jared became the center of attention of both man and woman to avoid eye contact between them long enough for the camera to catch what was happening here. Charlotte then fed a carrot to War Cloud and said, “Take him back to the stable now, Johnny, and brush him down good.”

That was it. That was the totality of Jared’s first movie role. His murmured “Yes ma’am,” was all he said in the movie. It was more than enough for him in starting his movie career, though. He’d been smitten with the looks both Ron and Liv had graced him with through the three takes of the scene snippet that Carson Stephens had insisted on, but he was more smitten with Ron’s eye contact. He had good reason to know that Ron was already smitten with him—and that Liv had no idea at all how and why Jared had gotten this small part in the movie—not that she cared. She had eyes more for the mannish actress cast to play Rhett’s sister back at the ranch in Texas.

Standing off behind the cameras, Caron Stephens and Ron Fitzhugh’s agent, Brad Boynton, were nodding their heads, pleased with how the scene—and Jared’s and War Cloud’s role in it—had gone. Brad Boynton looked at fourteen-year-old Jared with a speculative eye. The acting coach had been right about the boy. He was as worthy to be studded and created into a movie legend as War Cloud was in going to stud.

The young boy was showing as much star potential has Ron Fitzhugh had done with Boynton discovered and recreated him.

Jared juggled the cold six-pack of beer in one hand while perching precariously on the narrow steps up to the door of the dressing room trailer and knocking on the door with the other hand. Ron Fitzhugh, just wearing athletic shorts and sandals opened the trailer door. His face lit up into a smile.

“Mr. Boynton asked me to bring this beer to you,” Jared said.

“Ah, gift of the gods,” Fitzhugh said, with a grin. “And I’m talking about the beer too. Brad knows how to take care of his clients. It’s hot as hell in here. But don’t stand there for the world to see”—he looked in all directions to see if they were being observed—”Come on in. Come on in.” He reached out, put an arm around the boy’s shoulders, pulled him into the trailer, and, giving the area another sweep of his eyes, shut the door.

“Here, Jason—”

“I’m Jared. Do you want me to go get Jason?”

“Jared. Whatever. I have script meeting this afternoon. I can’t possibly drink all of this beer myself. Have one and take a load off on the couch over there.”

“I really can’t. I’m only fourteen.”

“But you’re such a mature fourteen. You’re old enough to mess around like we did yesterday, so you’re old enough to drink a beer. I’m king here, and the king says it’s fine.”

“Well, OK,” Jared said. He took a beer and sat down on the couch across from the door. The trailer wasn’t big, but it had everything needed in a dressing room, including a kitchenette a bathroom not much bigger than you’d find in an airplane and a small bedroom, dominated by a double bed in the back. And it, and Liv Turner’s trailer, were, of course, the nicest ones on the set. A dressing table with a mirror surrounded by light bulbs had been wedged in against the wall separating the main compartment from the bedroom. The loaded costume rack took up enough space to be in the way of movement from front to back.

Fitzhugh sat down on the couch, no wider than a love seat, beside Jared, put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and pulled him in close. He sniffed the boy’s hair. “Um, nice. Boys are so fresh.”

Impatient, Fitzhugh didn’t let the boy sip more than half a can of beer, during which he’d unbuttoned the silk jockey’s shirt Jared was still wearing from the filming and was running his hand over the boy’s chest. In short order he toke the can from Jared’s hand, reached over and put it on the table across from the kitchenette, and was pressing on the boy’s shoulders.

“I think you know what,” he murmured.

Jared took the hint, turned on the couch, went down on his knees between the man’s spread thighs, pulled the waistband of Fitzhugh’s athletic shorts to under his balls, and took the actor’s erection in his mouth.