Just Not Mine (25 page)

She woke to the sound of the alarm, struggled out of sleep and rolled to switch off the annoying buzz, not feeling one bit ready to wake up.

And then
she remembered why. She sat up, pulled her tangled mass of hair from around her face, and listened for him, but of course he was gone, had left sometime in the minutes or hours after she’d fallen asleep with her head pillowed on his chest, his hand stroking her hair. He’d gone back home, leaving not so much as an indentation in the pillow. Nothing but the faint ache between her thighs, the hum in her body to show where he had been.

“Somebody got a shag at last.”

Clive
was scrutinizing her from the chair in which he was sprawled with his script. She had arrived in the makeup room not first, or even second this morning, because Val were already there too.

“And that somebody
isn’t me,” Clive continued. “Sadly, the only love affair Steph’s got going right now is the one with the toilet bowl.”

“Still sick?” Josie asked, taking
her own seat in the next chair along.

“Yeh. Never fall pregnant, that’s my advice,”
he said, and she kept the smile on her face. “But you’re trying to change the subject. Hard Man Hugh living up to his name, eh.”

“
Good one, Clive,” Valerie said without turning her head as Gregor continued his ministrations, added another coat of mascara to her big blue eyes before stroking blusher onto the apples of her porcelain cheeks.

“
Absolutely none of your business,” Josie said. “And how would you know anyway? Not like I’ve got an ‘Engaged’ sign lighting up in the pertinent area. You’re not nearly such a Clever Clogs as you’d like to believe. He’s my neighbor. I told you.”

“
Oh, yeh, I’d say you’ve got the sign,” Clive said, unperturbed. “Wouldn’t you, Gregor?”

“Well
…” The makeup artist paused in the act of blending Val’s blusher and cast a speculative eye over Josie. “Let’s say you’ve given me more work to do than usual. The beard burn, darling,” he said at her look of outrage. “That’s put us all on notice. Not to mention the wee baggies under your gorgeous eyes. Get on with it and get your sleep, please, sweetheart. For my sake.”

“Didn’t even notice the beard burn,” Clive said. “You’re good, Gregor.”

“Just doing my job,” he said modestly. “Honestly, Josie, tell him to go easier on you next time. You’re going to look well and truly preserved by the time I cover all that up.”

“Will you
stop?”
she protested, though she couldn’t help laughing. “Leave a girl a bit of dignity.”

“Nah, got to let us live vicariously,” Val said. “If you’r
e going to have that much fun. Because he did look like a bloody good time to me. All that smoldery burn when he looked at you? Mmm. And I take it the undies didn’t lie, either? That wasn’t a sock stuffed in there?”

“Glad one thing went right last night, anyway,” Clive said more seriously
when Josie didn’t dignify Val’s question with a response. “Since the meeting didn’t, I guess.”

“No,” Josie said
, and she’d gone from being a bit embarrassed to being a bit gloomy now. “Haven’t heard for sure, but I’m thinking, not a chance. And Dr. Eva’s character’s looking thinner and thinner, isn’t she? You can see right through her by now, she’s so shallow. Only so long you can milk a story line, and I think we’re about there. That’s what worries me.”

“Good thing you’ve got the adverts, then,” Val said bracingly. “Keep th
at wolf from the door. Wish I had that many offers, but all I ever get is washing powder. Or, for a real treat, running through a scratchy field full of tall grass with some bloke tenderly holding my innocent hand. Not paying the mortgage with that.”

“Sex sells,” Clive said. “And our
Josie’s sex on wheels, or sex in heels, more like. You can write your own ticket, can’t you.”

“Long
as I want to focus on the sex,” Josie said.

“Trust me,” Val said. “Do it. Or you’ll find yourself smiling with
loving Mummy patience at some spoilt brat of a two-year-old who’s just undone the entire roll of loo paper and tied the dog up in it, with some fella doing a voiceover. ‘So strong, and still so soft. Because little bums can use a little help.’”

Josie laughed. “That’s how much fun you had last week, eh.”

“Yeh,” Val sighed. “Just that exciting. The kid was a bloody nightmare, too, and his mum was worse. I wanted to tie both of them in the loo paper by the time we’d done, and leave them there. The dog was the best actor of the lot.”

Gregor pulle
d the smock off from around Val’s neck, and she got up and collected her script from the table. “So if anybody rings, asks me to lie in all my glory on top of a horse and look shaggable for a few hundred thousand dollars?” she asked. “Tell them I’ll be in my dressing room, running through my virtuous lines, preparing to keep the hospital pure for another day. And that I’m very good with animals.”

Josie didn’t have much time to think about Hugh after that. Not with two hefty scenes on her plate, first pitching a fit during a surgery, and then pitching something else at Clive’s Bruce Dixon in Dr. Eva’s continuing bid to get herself out of disciplinary hot water. Which all made for a very long day of rehearsal, filming, and jollying the others along.

Not to mention a
bit more complication added as well, when she was called into the writers’ room at the end of the day to meet with Mike and the writing team, which definitely caused her heart to beat a little faster.

“We’re not going for your plan,” Victor said as soon as she sat down, and she saw the look of s
atisfaction on his bearded face at being able to say it.
You may be the star out there, but you’re not the boss of us. I call the shots here.

She didn’t allow the disappointment to show, gave a casual shrug instead. “Right, then. Thanks for letting me know.”
She began to get up, because all she wanted was to get out.

Victor held up a broad hand. “Wait. We’ve got another story idea instead, and we’re going to be using this one.”

“And as you started us on the track of it,” Rose, the other senior writer, said, “we thought it was only fair to let you know.”

Victor shot her a glare, but she ignored him, gave Josie a little smile that told Josie whose idea this
had actually been, and that Rose wasn’t quite as detached and uncaring as she’d seemed the day before.

Josie smiled back, then turned her attention to Victor again. “I’d love to hear it,” she said politely.

“Dr. Eva’s too one-dimensional,” Victor began. “We need to shake things up, have her confronting a situation she can’t control.”

Josie bit her tongue to keep from retorting that that had b
een her own suggestion, and kept the attentive expression on her face.

“Everyone would like to see her get a taste of her own medicine,” Rose put in, earning her another exasperated look from Victor. “
With people like that, that’s what you want to see most, don’t you? You want to see them pay, to get what’s coming to them. You want life to give them a swift kick in the arse.”

“You do,” Josie agreed, because she needed to say something.

“So,” Rose said, “she falls in love. Or at least,” she amended, “she gets obsessed, because even I may not be able to make Dr. Eva fall in love.”

Or even me,
Josie didn’t say. “No,” she said instead. “I don’t think she would, not really. I don’t think she’s capable of it, not real love. Not caring for somebody.”

“But she could be obsessed,” Victor said
, ignoring her. “And that’s the plan. We get a new character in, a new surgeon. Dr. Eva in reverse. He’s brilliant, has shot up fast, comes in senior to her from the start, which will get her pretty knickers in a twist. Arrogant, too, as bad as her. And, of course, tall, dark, and deadly handsome. He’s an alpha male, and as we all know, in any dog pack, the alpha female still has to answer to one dog. The top dog.”

Nice,
Josie thought. Clearly Victor’s ideal world.

“So,” Rose
took over, “Dr. Eva tries her tricks on him straight away. Once she’s had time to pack a sad at the whole idea of him, of course, make life miserable for the rest of the staff. But does he fall for her? I’m guessing you know the answer.”

“No,” Josie said. “He laughs at her.”

The other woman pointed a finger at her and grinned. “Got it in one. And she’s rocked. Thinks she just hasn’t tried hard enough, keeps having a go. And at some point, when he chooses, at a medical conference, maybe, our new Dr. Deadly takes her up on it. Not in her usual style, either. She’s not in charge this time.”

“Got to keep it seven o’clock appropriate,” Victor warned.

“Oh, I’m very good,” she assured him. “I’ll manage it.”

Or I will,
Josie thought, because she could do so much with a look, the tone of her voice.

“
So he gives her the ride of her life,” Rose said. “Leaves her wanting more.”

“And then doesn’t give it to her,” Josie said.

“That’s the idea. Laughs at her again, tells her she wasn’t that good. Not enough of a woman for him.”

Josie flinched involuntarily at the sting of it, and Rose laughed. “Yeh, that’s just how she’d feel, isn’t it? Am I good, or what?”

Josie summoned a smile. “You’re very good,” she assured the other woman, because she was.

“I know,” Rose said. “Got some more work to do on it, how it all plays out, but as a twist for next season, yeh. Bloody good. I think it’ll put the ratings through the ceiling, eh, Mike,” she asked the so-far-silent director.

“It’s good,” he agreed.

It wasn’t her preferred outcome, Josie thought as she left the r
oom. But it was good television all the same.

Finally, she was back in her dressing room, changing her clothes, changing her personality, weariness gaining a hand now, because it had been a long day. And a long night, Gregor had been right about that.

She looked again at the text she’d got from Hugh that morning.
Ring me when you get a chance.
She pressed the screen, and heard the buzz. Two rings, three, and he was picking up.

“Hi.” She heard his deep voice at the other end, and despite her fatigue
, got a thrill of remembered excitement at the sound. “Is this a beautiful woman, by any chance?”