Exposing Alix (27 page)

But things had been easier today. Something inside her had
been liberated, and she’d felt different, more comfortable in her skin. Though
a wave of pure terror still washed over her every time she thought about
getting into bed with Jake with the cameras rolling and her eyes open, she no
longer felt compelled to run away.

And she had to admit, Jake knew his way around a woman’s
body. She didn’t like to think about where he’d gained all his experience, but
in the ten years since they’d slept together, he’d become more patient, more
skilled. He’d mastered her, played her body like a delicate instrument, and
given her more pleasure than she’d thought possible.

She focused on him and gritted her teeth. Damn it, he was
still hovering over Alix like she was Jodi goddamn Foster, nodding and smiling
like a fool after everything she said.

Alix had put on a pair of enormous sunglasses, and she’d
removed her shoes and rolled up her jeans and the sleeves of her ragged T-shirt.
It was painful, really, to see how conspicuously awful she managed to make
herself look. Nothing she wore fit right, her stomach wasn’t nearly as flat as
Lena’s, and her hair—well, suffice to say that Lena doubted she even had
a comb.

Yet Jake didn’t seem to mind. He had barraged Alix with
questions during the long ride to the coast, asking about her master’s thesis,
her movies, her theories about filming sex, and then kept agreeing with
everything she said or exclaiming “Oh, of course!” as if she’d just explained
the meaning of life and it was exactly what he’d thought all along.

Ryker drove them down in a sedan he borrowed from the
studio. He’d insisted they ride together. Bonding or some such nonsense. Jake
had offered the front seat to Lena and, thinking it best that they not sit next
to each other, she’d accepted. But that had only put him in Alix’s lap.

One would think he’d at least have the decency to pretend
not to like her. At least when Lena was sitting only a few feet away.

The only enjoyable part of the entire ride was realizing
that Ryker was as irritated as she was by Jake’s fawning behavior. Every few
minutes, he would look in the rearview mirror and scowl. Once, when Jake
actually touched Alix’s shoulder, Ryker changed lanes so fast Lena thought she
might get whiplash.

Hard to believe there might be something serious
developing between Ryker and Alix, with him being one of the sexiest men on the
planet and her being somewhere close to housewife material.

“You did good work today.” Ryker’s deep voice cut into her
thoughts.

Lena deliberately turned her back to Jake and Alix. She
straightened her waistband again and took a sip of her gin and tonic. “Thanks.”
Then, because she knew she had to say it, she forced herself to go on. “And
thanks for being so…understanding. I guess I’ve been a little difficult
lately.”

He smiled, dark skin framing his snow-white teeth. Lena
wondered, for the hundredth time, why she couldn’t get interested in Ryker. He
was absurdly handsome and widely recognized to be a rising star, both as an
actor and director. Yet for all that, nothing he did made her pulse race the
way a single look from Jake could.

“Difficult?” He chuckled. “I suppose that’s one way to put
it.”

Lena returned the smile. If nothing else, it was a huge
relief to be able to talk to Ryker without feeling sick inside.

When they’d started shooting, she’d been so stunned that
she’d actually gotten the part, and so nervous that she’d screw it up, that she
could barely look him in the eye. He was a great director, and she was nothing
but a pretty face. Things had gone well at first, but he was still hopelessly
intimidating.

But then things with Jake started to disintegrate, and
Ryker had become increasingly frustrated with her. By the end, he’d descended
to yelling at her and Jake, and she’d resorted to teenage pouts and bad behavior
to hide her guilt and nerves. She knew she wasn’t performing well, but who
could expect her to? She had Ryker criticizing every move she made and Jake
breathing heavy in her ear whenever she turned around.

“I should apologize as well,” he said. “I’ve been a little
testy the past few weeks.”

“Testy?” Lena giggled. “I suppose that’s one way to put
it.” She pushed up her glasses and gazed at him, pressing her back against the
cool fiberglass decking. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Jake
watching. Deliberately, she stretched her arms over her head, arched her back,
and yawned. “What do you say we start over, Mr. Director?”

He tipped back a long-neck bottle of beer and took a long
sip. “What exactly did you have in mind, Ms. Mandaval?”

“You know, get to know each other a little. After all
these months of shooting, we’ve never really talked.” She leaned forward
playfully and touched his shirt. “For example, who does your shopping? You’re
an awfully well-dressed bachelor.”

“I do.” He caught her hand and gave her an amused look.
“Lena, I don’t think you want to play this game. He’s not even looking
anymore.”

“What?” She darted a look at Jake, who was talking to a
white-clad crew member bearing a tray of stuffed mushrooms. Her face burning,
Lena turned back to Ryker. “I didn’t think…I mean, I wasn’t—”

“Forget it. Look, Lena, I like you, in spite of all the
crap you’ve pulled. You’re petty, insecure, and a complete pain in the ass, but
you’ve got guts and you can be a great actress. I see it inside you, and I want
to bring it out. Now I realize yelling at you might not have been the best
path, but I’m also not going to baby you.” His expression hardened. “You’re an
adult, and I expect you to start acting like one.”

“So I take it we’re back to yelling?” Lena said. She
ignored the stab of conscience at his brutal dissection of her character and
focused instead on the unexpected compliment. She knew she could be juvenile
and frustrating—she hadn’t known that Ryker thought she could be a great
actress.

“No yelling. This is just straight talk from a friend.”

“A friend?” She mulled over the word. “Really?”

“Okay, maybe straight talk from a boss,” he admitted. “I’m
not like Alix, Lena. I’m not going to try to understand what’s going on between
you and Jake. I hope we can be friends later, but right now the most important
thing to me is being your director and getting you to do the kind of work
that’s going to make us all proud.”

“I’m not sure that’s any of her business, anyway,” Lena
grumbled.

“Exactly my point. When you come to the studio, I expect
you to leave all that baggage at the door and give me one hundred and ten
percent of that potential I know you’ve got locked inside you. I don’t expect
you to play little jealousy games with me, and I don’t expect you to engage in
histrionics and walk off the set. Maybe everyone else lets you get away with
it, but I respect you too much to do that. Understand?”

She swallowed hard. It was difficult to imagine Ryker
Valentine respecting her. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she’d done anything to
deserve that respect. Unexpected tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and she
dropped her sunglasses hastily over her face.

Ryker’s tone softened. “Lena, your career is on the verge
of something spectacular, and I want to see it get there. But that won’t happen
as long as you act like you aren’t worth the film you’re printed on.”

He took hold of her shoulders. He didn’t shake, just left
his hands firmly in place. Lena couldn’t look away, his gaze so intense she
quailed inside while moisture continued to fill her eyes.

“I’d like to put this all behind us and start again, this
time without any nonsense. You’re going to start acting like a person who
believes in herself, and I’m going to stop trying to yell you into next year.”
Unexpected warmth lightened his eyes. “We’re going to make a movie that takes
everyone’s breath away. Got it?”

Lena nodded, unable to speak.

Ryker dropped his hands and patted her encouragingly on
the shoulder. “Now enjoy yourself. This is the last day off you’ll be getting
until we finish this show.”

#

“Thanks for sitting with me.” Gunther cradled a glass of
deep crimson cabernet in one hand. He sat back in the white leather captain’s
chair, his free hand resting idly on the steering wheel of the yacht.

Ryker peered out over the water from his seat beside
Gunther. From the flybridge, the water looked glassy and smooth and remarkably
distant.

“Of course. Though in the interest of full disclosure, I’m
not sure I had a choice.”

Gunther grinned. “That is very perceptive statement. I
knew I liked you, Ryker. You and I understand each other.”

“You want to hear more about how things are going with
Jake and Lena?”

Gunther shook his head. “You can handle your actors. I
knew when you cast them that you’d have your hands full, but you’re up to the
job. No, I want to hear how things are going with Alix.”

From high above the front deck, Ryker could barely make
out Alix’s and Jake’s heads. Jake appeared to be pointing something out to Alix
on the shore. Ryker imagined Lena somewhere right behind, her eyes shooting
daggers into Alix’s back.

Ryker deliberately swirled his beer in the bottle and
studied it for a moment before he answered. “What, exactly, do you mean?”

“I’m just curious. You seemed particularly close at the
party on Friday. I meant to thank you, actually, for looking out for her.
Anthony Sloane is a prick, but he’s an important source of funding. I can’t
afford to alienate him completely, or I would have let you punch his lights
out.”

Ryker was fairly certain Gunther’s easy-going aura was
masking some deeper emotion, but a self-masochist streak forced him to prove
it. “Things are going well. But of course, you were right, she’s incredible. No
one does sex like Alix Z.”

Though he had expected to garner some reaction with his
bald statement, he was surprised by the intensity of the fire that leaped to
Gunther’s eyes. Gunther’s fingers tightened on the wheel for just a moment, and
then he relaxed and forced a short laugh.

“We made a lot of money with her movies. She gave it all
away, did you know that? Paid me back the money I loaned her to attend school
and then funded some scholarship with the rest.”

Ryker grunted. “She told me.”

Gunther turned to him, surprise widening his glacial-blue
eyes. “Really? She doesn’t normally share that sort of information.”

“I noticed,” Ryker said dryly.

“Did she also mention all the hell she went through when
she was growing up?”

“She told me she was a foster kid. Bounced around a lot.
Is that what you mean?”

“You grew up in South Central, so I think you have some
idea of what her schools and neighborhoods were like. But you had a mother,
and, unless I’ve misjudged you, you’ve got a pretty thick skin. Alix never did.
When I met her, she was like a little baby porcupine, trying desperately to grow
her quills but never having quite enough to ward off the pain they put her
through. It wasn’t just that no one cared about her. That would have been bad
enough. But they seemed determined to break her spirit—convince her that
life was hopeless, that she’d never get anywhere and she shouldn’t bother to
try. They thought she shouldn’t take art or music. They wanted her to spend the
rest of her life working at some fast-food restaurant.”

He pursed his lips in disapproval. “I put her first camera
in her hands when she was a freshman in high school, and it was like giving
food to a starving man. That camera became her lifeblood, Ryker. Through that
lens she saw all the things she had been denied all her life. Love. Hope. A
future.”

“And?” Ryker met Gunther’s stare. “Why do I get a feeling
there’s a moral to this story?”

“I’ll be honest with you. When I saw how
Salva’s
Revenge
was going, I knew you needed help. But I also knew by giving you
Alix’s address, I was feeding her to the lions. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted
Alix within a hundred yards of you, and I’m still not. You’re a damn good
director, but you’re also a tough bastard.”

“So you put the movie first.” Ryker shrugged. “I can
appreciate that.”

“No.” Gunther’s voice, curt and hard, lashed out. “I would
never sacrifice Alix because of a movie. But I thought, I
hoped
you
might be good for each other. I thought she might be able to teach you a little
bit about how to keep on caring, even when everything tells you to stop.”

Ryker stared. He’d never have thought Gunther Hartcourt,
of all people, would have fallen for all that emotional nonsense. “And from me?
What did you think she could learn from me?”

Gunther sighed. “I don’t know. She’s always been a loner.
Even in high school, she never had many friends. I suppose it comes with moving
around so much. But it isn’t healthy. She needs people, whether she admits it
or not. When she lived in LA, I forced her to go out now and again. But once
she moved to the beach, I couldn’t even do that. The fact is, Ryker, you’re a
charming son of a bitch. I thought maybe you would give her an excuse to come
out of her shell. Seems every year she’s been retreating further and further
into it, and I’m scared someday I won’t be able to bring her out at all.”

“I see.” Ryker took a long swallow of beer and stared at
the water. He heard Alix’s laughter float up from the deck below, and he
frowned. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I think I made a mistake.”

The bald admission caught Ryker unaware. He spun around to
stare at Gunther, who was looking over the ocean with a pensive expression.
“What are you talking about?”

“She’s too vulnerable. Even after the porcupine grows his
quills, his belly is tender. I see how she looks at you, and I don’t like it.
You’re going to hurt her.”

Unease settled over Ryker’s shoulders like a dark cape.
“We aren’t…I mean, we haven’t…”