Heartthrob (15 page)

God, she was ten times more tense than she’d ever been in her life, and he was sitting there, lolling back on the padded bench seat of the booth, completely relaxed as if he didn’t give a damn about any of this.

Everything about him—right down to the arm he had up along the back of the seat—oozed nonchalant charm. The painfully honest man who’d walked into her office and admitted that he was dreadfully embarrassed was nowhere in sight. Nor was the man who was so angry that his hands shook. And the man with the empty eyes who could have beaten the crap out of enormous Bob Hollander was gone as well.

But that wasn’t surprising. Jericho Beaumont was an actor. And right now, he had slipped into his laid-back, easygoing, Hollywood movie star persona. She’d seen it before, on her TV, when he’d appeared on Jay Leno and David Letterman—and when he’d walked into her office that very first time they’d met.

“So, in other words,” she said, “you’re admitting that
you say all those rude things because you enjoy offending me.”

Jericho ate some more of his salad thoughtfully. “Yeah, I guess I am admitting that.”

What would it take to make him drop character? She’d done it before, she realized. She’d taken him by surprise, and the easygoing movie star had morphed into someone else. Someone with a hot temper, a sharp tongue, and a truckload of anger buried deep down inside. Someone who was not at all easygoing and relaxed. Someone with the rather frightening ability to shut himself down and feel nothing at all.

Someone she suspected was quite possibly the real Jericho Beaumont.

If there
was
such a thing as real when it came to Jericho.

Kate wanted to see if she could make that person appear.

“Let’s make a deal,” she said sweetly. “Right here—right now. You stop pushing my buttons with your sleazy innuendos, and I won’t kill you. And, as a bonus, I won’t rub your nose in the fact that you’re arrogant, ignorant, and rude when I prove you wrong—which I’m sure will happen repeatedly as we spend time together.”

She watched for his facade to dissolve, wanting to see it when it happened.

Jericho laughed, but there was an edge of disbelief to it. “Well,
that
wasn’t at all hostile, was it?” he said. “Shit—aren’t you supposed to get some kind of tiara after you’re crowned the Queen of the Bitches?”

Jackpot.

There he was, the real man, gritting his teeth and holding onto his salad fork so tightly it seemed all too likely he was going to bend it in half.

“Okay,” Kate said. “Now that we’re both here, let’s cut the crap, shall we?”

He was silent for several long moments, but then he
blinked and laughed. He put down his fork and leaned back, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied her. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s.”

She studied him just as carefully, wishing she could get inside his head. She would give nearly anything to know, just once, what he was really thinking. Because it was entirely possible that this, too, was nothing more than an act.

“I’ve come up empty-handed in my search for a replacement for Hollander,” she told him. “So far the only candidate’s not available for another three weeks. And even if I find someone tomorrow, I’ll have to run reference checks. And he’ll be required to submit to drug and alcohol testing as well, and it’ll take several days to get
those
results back from the lab, so.…”

“So in other words, you’re going to be bringing more than just an overnight bag to my trailer.”

Kate nodded.

“You know, it occurs to me this is going to be your big opportunity,” Jericho said quietly. “I know you don’t like me and you don’t trust me—you haven’t exactly tried to hide that. If you really want me off the set so badly, what’s to stop you from saying you caught me with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s? Where that bottle came from would be my word against yours.”

“I’d
never
do that. That would be lying.” Kate was shocked.

“My God,” Jericho said slowly. “The blushing-good-girl thing isn’t an act, is it?

Kate raised her chin. “Look. If you slip up, then you’re gone,” she said heatedly. “It’s that simple. I’m not actively seeking ways to get rid of you. If I were, I would’ve had Bob Hollander tie you up, toss you into his trunk, and take you with him when he left.”

Jericho lifted his hands in mock surrender. “All right. I just wanted to point out if you were thinking of doing something like that, you should remember I’m carrying a
trump card.” He rested his arms on the table. His wrists were still red and sore, as if he’d rubbed them raw trying to get free last night. He shifted, turning his arms over to examine them ruefully. “Now the makeup head thinks I’m into B&D. You should’ve seen what she had to do to cover this up.”

“I
am
sorry.”

“But not sorry enough.”

Kate was silent.

He glanced down at his wrists again. “You know, my old man had this ugly yellow dog—some kind of big, mean mixed-breed, chained up in the corner of our yard. He had a doghouse, but he only used it in the winter. The rest of the time he just lay down and slept in the dust. But during the day, when he wasn’t sleeping, he was tugging on the end of that chain. He’d worn the grass away in a big, dry circle around the tree he was chained to.”

Jericho paused. “I remember—I must’ve been around nine years old—my brother Leroy threw a book report I’d written for school into the back of that doghouse, and I knew, I just
knew
I was screwed. That dog was nearly as mean as my daddy. He snarled at me every time I tried to get close.

“I didn’t have time to do the assignment over. It was only about twenty minutes before school started, and I just stood there staring into that dog’s eyes, knowing he was going to enjoy biting me if I got close enough, and wondering what the hell it was made a dog—or man—turn pure mean like that.”

Jericho looked down at his wrists again, smiling tightly. “Last night I found out.” He looked away. “You must be hungry. You haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”

Kate glanced at her watch, wishing it weren’t so late, wishing he had told her the end of his story. Had he gotten into trouble for the missed assignment? Had he gotten a failing grade? If his father was as mean as that dog had
been, how had he dealt with that bad grade? Had he hit Jericho? Or worse …?

But the dailies were going to start in ten minutes. There was no time to sit and talk. Or eat. “I’m going to have to grab something later,” she told him, sliding out of the booth. “We need to go.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Jericho said, purposely not moving, “but someone voided your dire threat by putting the door on my bathroom before I even left for dinner.”

“Actually,” Kate informed him, “I told the crew to go ahead and do the work so they could be done for the night. It didn’t seem fair they should just stand around on hold until seven-thirty. And I figured the doors could just as easily come off again tomorrow. So I’m sorry, but my threat stands.”

Jericho still didn’t budge. He just sat there, gazing up at her, and Kate felt uncertainty slither through her. If he were smart—and she knew he was very smart—it wouldn’t take much for him to realize that since she was going to be sharing his trailer at night,
she
would probably appreciate the privacy provided by having a door on the bathroom even more than he would. In fact, she would find sharing a trailer damn near impossible without a bathroom door. Jericho could make things extremely difficult by refusing to watch the dailies and forcing her to carry through with her threat.

And she’d have to carry through. She would lose what little authority she had if she didn’t.

“Let’s go,” she said, adding quietly, “please.”

Finally,
finally
he put down his napkin and stood up. He headed for the door, and Kate tried not to collapse from relief. Dear God, this had been one hell of a trying day.

Jericho actually held the door for her as they left the Grill.

They walked in silence for a few moments, heading
down Main Street toward the VFW Hall that was serving as a screening room.

Kate couldn’t hold her question in any longer. “So did you get in trouble for not handing in that book report?”

He glanced at her, as if surprised she was still thinking about that. “Actually, I handed it in,” he told her. “It was wrinkled and smelled bad, and the teacher made me copy it over during recess, but I got the assignment in on time.”

Kate studied his face in the lingering twilight. “How on earth did you get it out of the doghouse?”

He gazed back at her for several long moments before answering. “I made the dog chase me around and around the tree until he’d wound his chain so tight, he couldn’t move. He wasn’t the smartest animal on the planet. And then while he was straining against about four inches of chain, I went into the doghouse, grabbed my report, and ran like hell.”

“Pretty resourceful thinking—especially for a nine-year-old.”

Jericho’s smile was crooked—a far cry from the toothy movie star grins he’d been flashing her in the Grill. “You had to keep on your toes, living in my house. I learned to be pretty resourceful—if you can call it that—early on.”

“Did you have just that one brother—Leroy?” Kate asked.

“Two brothers and a sister—Tom, Leroy, and Louise. All older by at least five years. We were a textbook example of a dysfunctional family—Tom was the golden boy, straight A’s, sports hero; Leroy was the scapegoat; Louise the clown. And me, I just learned to disappear.”

The lost child. The one most likely to follow in the footsteps of an alcoholic parent. Kate cleared her throat. “I read somewhere you left home when you were sixteen.”

“That’s right.” He gave her another half smile. “I’d had just about all I could take by then. Tom was living in San Francisco at the time, so I headed west and—” He stopped
himself abruptly. “Anyway, what I should have done with that dog was get a sledgehammer from the shed, break that chain, and set him free.” He gave a snort of laughter. “And then go after Leroy with the sledgehammer.”

Kate looked at him. His words were obviously meant to be a joke, but she had to wonder. She remembered the way he’d gone after Bob Hollander, remembered the flatness in his eyes.

Jericho still made himself disappear, nowadays by distancing himself from his anger and emotions. Shutting himself off like that couldn’t possibly be a good thing. What did he do with all his rage? Did he force it deep inside of him to fester and ferment? And if so, what would happen when the pressure built to the point where he couldn’t hold it in any longer?

Yes, he’d learned to be resourceful living in that house as a child. But she had to wonder just what else he might’ve learned as well.

Kate smelled like sunblock.

Jed sat down next to her in the VFW Hall as the lights went out and the dailies began.

One of the production assistants was passing out popcorn, and the scent of it combined with the slightly sweet smell of Kate’s sun lotion pulled him rather effectively back to his early days in L.A. It brought him back to a time when he was working as a waiter to pay his rent, a time when he used most of his earnings to pay for his head shots and résumés. He’d always scrounged together enough cash to get into the movies, though, and he’d also always managed to find some suntanned, sweet-smelling beach bunny willing to accompany him. However, in those days dinner and a movie meant getting a bag of popcorn at the show.

Kate passed him some of the popcorn, and he automatically put his arm around the back of her chair.

He realized what he’d done as she leaned closer to whisper, “Okay, now, watch this.”

Her attention was on the screen, thank God, and not on the fact that he’d gone into autopilot and made a move on her. But before he could pull his arm away, he, too, found himself captivated by the rough footage on the screen.

There was no music, the foley guys hadn’t yet added any sharpened sounds, and the edit of the scene was extremely rough. But the camera had focused on the face of a young girl, and for several long seconds, Jed didn’t recognize that the girl was Susie McCoy.

She seemed so completely natural, he felt almost as if he were watching
Candid Camera.

Jed turned to find Kate gazing at him instead of the screen. “But …” He shook his head. What had happened? Whatever Susie was doing when this particular scene was shot, she’d stopped doing it when he’d arrived on set.

“Just watch,” Kate whispered.

The footage continued. Contrary to what Jed had believed this afternoon, everything he saw was usable. In fact, it was going to be a challenge for Victor Strauss and his editor to decide which of Susie’s takes were the best.

And then, there he was. God, he hated seeing himself on the screen before the movie was fully put together. Jed squinted, watching himself through the haze of his eyelashes.

Kate leaned over toward him again. “Don’t watch yourself,” she told him. The words “you idiot,” weren’t said aloud, but they were certainly implied from the tone of her voice. “Watch Susie McCoy.”

He saw almost instantly why she had been so intent on him watching this footage. He’d have to be completely blind not to see that Susie was scared to death of him. From this side of the camera, it was more than obvious. She’d been intimidated by him, and that had made her choke.

On the screen, she blew a line, and he could see his own reaction. His body language made it clear he was exasperated as well as completely disgusted. He couldn’t have done more damage to the girl if he’d gone up and slapped her across the face.

He remembered the way she’d approached him several days ago and introduced herself. He’d been so into his own agenda that he hadn’t even taken the time to give her a smile.

She was a kid, and he’d been treating her like the spawn of Satan. He’d helped cause a tense situation, and the things he’d said and done this morning on set had exacerbated it a thousandfold.

He swore softly.

Susie McCoy was perfect for this part—or at least she would be if he didn’t undermine her efforts with every breath he took.

Kate was silent. She didn’t say anything at all.