Freefall (48 page)

“When?”

“Thursday?”

“Any love scenes?”

“No. But … everything’s got energy now, all the scenes we shoot together.” Her cinematic synergy with Alec would hopefully translate to the screen, but asking Kai to come watch was risky. If their relationship was going to progress, he’d have to deal with that element of her craft, but she was acutely aware that, after Myra’s infidelity, he might not want to.

“I could cause interference.”

She smiled. “You could.” She wasn’t at all sure she could relate to Alec with Cameron there. Maybe she needed to see that as well.

“What time?”

She gave him the details and promised him a pass at the gate if she wasn’t able to meet him there.

“Can I take you out after?”

“How do you look in a bag?”

“My best.”

She laughed. “We’ll see.”

“How’s Rob?”

“He sounded good last time we talked.” Her heart warmed. “He told me about your visit.”

“I was up that way for business. Stopped in on the way home.”

“He said he hasn’t enjoyed a conversation so much in a long time.”

“It was illuminating.”

She heard the smile in his voice. “Oh?”

“Let’s see, there was the blue-hair phase—”

“That was an accident.”

“The tomboy years, the girlie years …”

“Tell me you did not spend the whole time talking about me.”

“We covered the Giants, the 49ers, and his book. I agreed to be a resource for the technical aspects of investigation, but I have to say his character’s intriguing.”

“He let you see it?” Her uncle’s gimpy detective story might never see the light of day, but then you never knew; she was starring with Alec Warner. “How did he look? It’s killing me that I can’t get up there.”

“The graft seems to have taken. Pretty remarkable, their reconnecting the blood supply from one part to the other.”

She loved that he wasn’t squeamish about the injury—that he and Rob could talk, that he would care to. “So, Thursday?”

“Yeah. All right. I’ll be there.”

And that he never acted starstruck. She especially loved that.

Curt stalked down the sidewalk, the San Francisco night life enticing but not drawing him in. Too irascible to be charming, he’d left Nicki and her nubile friends at the last club. He hadn’t anticipated this long a recuperation, or Rob requiring a second surgery because the stump hadn’t healed properly, leaving bones and blood vessels exposed.

He shriveled inside to think of them hacking out a flap of muscle from the guy’s chest cavity and attaching it to the stump, but Nicki gave him enough details to gag a horse. She assumed he wanted to know—poor grieving son. After what they’d done to Robert Fox, he’d be putting him out of his misery.

He had tried to call Allegra so many times, reached her once, but she’d said she couldn’t talk. She hadn’t asked about the hundred grand. He hadn’t asked about Rob, but according to Nicki, Allegra hadn’t been to see him. That was good.

In case the little blond nurses’ aide could do math, he’d lied about his age, told her he was twenty-nine, not thirty-nine. He’d forbidden her to tell Rob or anyone at the center anything about him. “It’d only torque him off.”

But she’d told him plenty. How brave and kind his poor
dad
had seemed, always praying and reading religious stuff.
“And he won’t even speak to his son? What a hypocrite.”
But he was sick of spending time with her, and time in any sense was becoming his enemy.

Even with Allegra’s donation, the noose had tightened on his throat. Assuming he’d have her and the money long before this, he’d taken risks. If the wrong people found out, he was dead meat. But he wouldn’t let that happen. No way. His heart beat faster. He was stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

Shooting the scene with Cameron on the set was going to be as big a challenge as she’d expected. It scared her how much it mattered what he thought, how much she cared what he felt. She had introduced him to most of the cast and crew involved in the day’s shoot and to Helen, who didn’t have call sheets for any scenes, but who’d come anyway—as she did every day—to support her friend. Gentry suspected she was also still trying to see what it was that made Gentry Fox.

She wished she could transfer the magic, blow it over her friend like fairy dust so Helen could fly too. But Helen had to find her own happy thought to make her character come alive. Not that she wasn’t trying; she tried too hard, and the scenes between them had been disjointed at best. By the third or fourth cut, she usually settled in, but by then everyone was edgy. She wished they could find the easy rapport they’d had doing improv with the troupe. She would talk to her tonight. No, not tonight with Cameron there. Her heart fluttered.

Lord, help me focus
. She wanted to do her best, not just for his sake but for everyone’s. What had she been thinking? She closed her eyes and cleared her mind.

“It’s a drag, isn’t it?” Alec whispered. “Having him here.”

She answered without opening her eyes. “I asked him here.”

“You’re as crazy as Eva.”

“Eva’s not crazy. She’s right. And you’re about to find that out.” She opened her eyes as Eva Thorne.

“First team,” the assistant director called as their stand-ins exited the set, lights and camera having been positioned.

They took their places—Alec inside the tent; she, poised to stalk

in.

“Three bells!” Quiet on the set.

“Background.” The extras started milling around behind and

passed by the tent.

“Picture’s up.” Then came the call: “Roll sound. Roll camera. Mark it. And … action.”

She tossed open the flap. The whole side of the tent was open, but no one would know because that was the camera’s position.

Matt Cargill looked up from the crate that held maps and compass. “This better be good.”

“Not a word I’d apply to anything here.”

He hunkered back on his heels. “Eva—”

“Why won’t you listen? I know what’s happening.”

The camera came in tight. Her expression, then his. Their tension crackled.

“You want to break something big. Fine. I know the hunger.”

“Hunger? I’m talking real hunger, starvation.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

She crossed her arms. “Okay.” She laid out her suspicions with the steely assurance Eva took into every battle. The fact than Matt Cargill had snubbed her at the UN banquet only helped her dig her heels in.

“Wai-wai-wait.” He spread his hands. “You’re telling me, you know this? You have proof?”

She let her steady gaze lie for her. She knew it, but without him she couldn’t get close enough to prove it. She allowed a flicker for the camera to show the audience her duplicity, another shift to show her despair over what she’d seen. They’d go with her because she cared enough to risk it all.

Would he? Could Matt Cargill get past his ego and admit he’d been wrong about her and the information that had strained their professional relationship and eroded the feelings they both worked hard to deny?

He stood slowly. “You realize where this takes us if you’re wrong.”

Her chin came up just enough to savor the victory. It wasn’t hers alone. It was every face that haunted her sleep, every child who might not see tomorrow. “I’m not wrong.”

Locked gaze, enough heat to show his decision wasn’t strictly professional, the tension of resistance and …

“Cut.” Seconds later the director called, “Print.”

Alec raised his brows with the hint of a sardonic smile. “First take.

I think you found your muse.”

Gentry shook herself. She’d forgotten Cameron was there. He belonged to Gentry’s world, or Jade’s. Eva had her own troubles. But she smiled with confidence and satisfaction. She didn’t need the director to tell her they’d nailed it. She felt it.

She and Alec were released while they set up the next scene with second team. He walked with her to where Cameron stood beside Helen, who was giving him the lowdown on cinematic lingo and protocol. Alec had been in his trailer when she’d brought Cameron onto the set, but she introduced them now.

As they shook hands and exchanged greetings, she had a sense of disassociation, of clashing with her alter ego, Eva. Helen picked up on her odd mental state and sent her a quizzical look. Then Cameron grounded her with a glance of his own, and she came fully back. “Hungry? There’s a snack cart.”

It was different seeing what Gentry did, live and in person. He tried to imagine what it would look like as a movie, but it was all in pieces; Gentry going in and out of the scene, someone taking her place while cameras and microphones were adjusted, watching her slip in and out of character.

She was harder as Eva, a little jaded, with a hint of Northeastern accent. And she was right that her scenes with Alec were energized. They’d reached the end of today’s shoot without kissing, but it wouldn’t be long. Alec Warner and Gentry Fox would pretend they were other people and kiss. With Troy she’d said,
“It only looks real.”
But she wouldn’t get away with a dip and turn this time. There’d be hands and lips and tongue …

His throat squeezed. The director outlined a few things for tomorrow while Gentry, Alec, and four others nodded. Then Alec pushed her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck. “Ciao.”

She left them and headed over, murmuring, “Sorry.”

“For …”

“That.”

“What was it?”

“A tease. He knew you were watching. It’s … He didn’t mean anything.”

But he recognized her fluster. “Does it bother you?”

“Let me grab my call sheet.” She took the pages handed her by the person distributing them, then rejoined him. “It hasn’t bothered me to this point because I haven’t had someone who … mattered. Who it might matter to.”

“To whom it might matter, if you really want to beat it to death.”

She shot him a glance. “The last person I was serious about bailed at the mention of Hollywood.” She led the way to a trailer at the edge of the set. “He’d have been horrified if I kissed Alec or anyone else.”

What was she saying? That he shouldn’t mind it?

She pulled open the door. “I need to get this makeup off.”

He hesitated, but she held the door for him to come in. She sat down at a dressing table and slathered her face and neck with cream. The energy of her day radiated from her like steam and made it hard to breathe in the cramped space.

He crossed his arms. “When you kiss him, you have to feel something, or it’s not believable.”

She pulled thick, soft tissues from a box. “Eva feels something. It’s about what she feels in that circumstance.”

He tried to get his mind around that.

She swabbed her cheeks. “I wanted you to see that it’s a job. A production. So that when the movie comes out—”

“I know what he’ll feel.”

“He’s a professional, Kai.”

“Yeah, I saw. He left his signature.”

She shook her head, but the argument was lame. He knew exactly what had gone down. The back of the neck was a lot more than a brush on the cheek.

“When do you kiss him?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I want to be there.”

“Kai …” She dropped her hands to the tabletop and looked at him in the mirror. “No.”

“I’m not allowed?”

She snatched another handful of tissues and rubbed the rest of the cream from her forehead and hairline. “I can’t do it with you there.”

“Why? If it doesn’t mean anything.”

She threw the tissues into the trash and turned. “Eva will kiss Matt.”

“Then why—” He wanted to say he could take it, that he had to, that if he didn’t ride this wave, he didn’t know if he could catch the next. But the truth was it would bury him.

She dabbed her face one last time and stood up more Jade than Gentry or Eva Thorne. She took his hands. “Do you still want to go out?”

“No.” He brought her fingers to his lips. “I want to go away.”

She closed her eyes and lowered her chin. He drew her into his arms, pressed his lips to her hair. He wanted to lift it and kiss her neck, but that spot was tainted. Would he feel that way about her mouth tomorrow?

She looked up at him. “I knew this would be hard. But we need to know. If it’s not something you can live with …”