Phantom Series Boxed Set (46 page)

Before he could respond, Helen moved past the man and headed straight to the workout room and banged on the door.

“Lauren! Open up this instant. Lauren!”

Without a full crew in the soundstage, Helen’s voice echoed and amplified up into the rafters. The sounds of hammers and table saws stopped dead. She winced. This was all she needed—more personal crap from the cast causing a disruption to the production.

If Lauren was in trouble, Helen was bound and determined not only to fix the problem, but to do so with the minimum of intrusion from the press. She should have become a publicist, but thanks to her dubious first career as a “teen” star, she hated publicists.

She turned to the crew. “Sorry, guys. Just yelling because all that hard work of yours is noisy. Nothing to gape at. Proceed.”

After a moment of hesitation and muttering, someone in charge started barking orders and the noise returned. Helen, determined to gain entrance to the locked room, knocked louder. When she pressed her ear to the door, she heard what she thought was an annoyed, “Hold your horses.”

Suddenly the door swung open. Lauren stood just inside the threshold, looking like she hadn’t brushed her hair in days, her expression clearly aggravated.

“What? Oh,” Lauren said, glancing behind her quickly, then opening the door wider. “It’s you.”

Helen slipped inside and immediately shut the door before someone on the crew snapped a picture with a cell phone camera of Lauren Cole looking like hell and sold it to the tabloids for a small fortune.

“Yeah, it’s me. Question is, who are you, and what have you done with the drop-dead-gorgeous star of this film?”

Lauren locked the door, schlepped over to a pile of workout mats in a corner and threw her obviously exhausted body on top.

“She doesn’t report to the set until day after tomorrow,” Lauren muttered.

“You didn’t get the call, then?”

Lauren removed the arm she’d slung across her eyes. “What call?”

“The one that informed you we needed you on the set today to read lines with the prospective actors vying for the role of your booty boy?”

“Booty boy? Where’s Joey?”

Ah, Joey Villarosa. What a major-league hottie. Helen allowed herself a few wistful memories of the hunk’s first “audition” with her. And the second. And, ooh, the third. Yeah, the third one had been the charm. He hadn’t even wanted a part in the movie. He’d been brought in as a potential consultant and trainer for the action sequences.

Well, he’d done a damned fine job consulting her on the sexual advantages of a good workout. Maybe he could do the same for Lauren. And fast.

“Helen?”

“Hmm?”

“Where’s Joey?” Lauren repeated.

Lauren spoke slowly, with exaggerated enunciation and suspicious eyes, as if Helen had been sampling her signature pomegranate martinis again with breakfast. She was about to shoot off a sassy comeback when she remembered that Lauren hadn’t heard.

“Sweetheart, I’d tell you to sit down, but if you were reclining any further, I’d be picking out your casket.”

“Rough night,” Lauren said. “Don’t tell me Joey got pummeled in another Ultimate Fighting competition. I keep telling him, he’s too pretty to slap down with those punks.”

“He’s in the hospital.”

“What?”

Lauren shot up, then caught herself on an unsteady hand.

“Must have been some workout,” Helen quipped, before picking her way gingerly across the leather mats, crinkling her nose at the smell of stale sweat. But suddenly, as if on an unseen breeze, another scent teased her nostrils. Sweaty, but sweet. Warm. Raw.

Like sex.

“What exactly did you do here all night?” she asked, suspicious. “I don’t see tequila bottles or lime rinds, so clearly the party started somewhere else.”

“I wasn’t drinking,” Lauren said, giving herself a shake. Leaning on her elbows, she skewered Helen with a look that stopped her cold. “What happened to Joey? And why didn’t anyone call me?”

“I did call you,” Helen snapped. “Funny little thing about cell phones. You have to turn them on before you can hear the ring.”

“Is he all right?”

Helen frowned. “He’ll live, and the scars will give him character, I’m sure.”

“Scars?” Lauren swung off the pile of mats. “Helen, tell me what happened right now or those mats you’re trying to balance your Prada shoes on aren’t going to be enough cushion when I knock you on your bony ass.”

Helen inhaled, delight overriding her adverse reaction to Lauren’s colorful but completely bogus attempt at intimidation. She swung around halfway, her hands framing her Pilates-shaped backside. “Do you really think my ass is bony? God, I love you.”

“Helen…”

This time the threat was real.

“Some sort of accident. He’s going to be fine, but he’s off the film. His agent called me around midnight.”

Joey had trained Lauren in the first four films. Their rapport, while not inherently sexual, was undeniable. Michael, the director, had agreed to take on an inexperienced actor because it meant Lauren was happy and Helen was off his back.

Since Lauren’s breakup with Ross Marchand, she had closed herself off from men in a way that, frankly, Helen couldn’t imagine. Helen had quite a list of divorces to her name, and not one of them had stopped her from taking lovers. Of course, lovers had usually been the reason for her divorces. Either way, she couldn’t understand Lauren’s inability to put her hurt behind her and have some bedroom therapy with a costar. But no matter how many gorgeous, six-packed, hot-bodied actors Helen had brought in to read with Lauren for the part in the final Athena film, not one inspired any chemistry.

Until Joey had been recruited, the writers had actually considered making Athena a lesbian. Or at the very least, pissed off at men, which, fortunately for them, was in keeping with the myth. Unfortunately, part of the success of the series so far had been the steamy love scenes between Lauren and her costar du jour. And since this was the last film, no one wanted to mess with the formula.

So with Joey out of the boy-toy business, it was time to select another choice piece of meat for the powerful Athena to love—and, alas, lose.

Lauren, lost in thought, had wandered to where a sword lay on one of the filthy, sweaty mats. When she picked up the weapon, a strange light flickered off the blade. Helen looked around, but couldn’t see where the spot was coming from.

“What’s that light?”

Lauren had dropped to her knees and was running her fingers along the rather wicked-looking blade. Stepping closer, Helen realized the weapon didn’t look at all like a prop, and remembered her friend bemoaning the fact that her ex-husband had withheld some sword from her in the divorce settlement—a fact that hadn’t been sitting well with Lauren for quite some time.

“Lauren, is that… ?”

But Lauren didn’t respond.

“Lauren!”

Lauren’s hands jerked back from the blade. “What?”

“Is that Ross’s sword?”

“No,” Lauren snapped. “This was never Ross’s sword.”

Holy shit
. Lauren had done it now. If the lack of a costar hadn’t blown up production, the lead actress’s stealing from the producer certainly would do the trick. Helen rushed forward to remove the sword before someone saw it, but the moment her hand shot out, she was caught in a crushing grip.

“No! Don’t touch him.”

Helen jerked her hand free. “What do you mean,
him
?”

“I mean
it
. Don’t touch
it
. It’s very sharp. You could cut yourself.”

“Maybe then I’ll bleed out and won’t have to deal with the fact that my entire career is over if you don’t get that sword out of here.”

Lauren looked confused.

Helen grunted. Clearly Lauren hadn’t gotten much sleep. She was usually quicker on the uptake.

“I’ve got a movie scheduled to start filming in forty-eight hours, and the costar we had lined up for you is out of commission. Now, imagine if you, the star of the film, were thrown in jail for grand theft or whatever it’s called…”

“Ross would never have me arrested. The sword is technically mine, and he knows it. Besides, he’d lose a bundle if this film shut down.”

“Would he?” Helen asked. The rumors had been insidious this time. Not like the typical gossip-culture whisperings that surrounded each and every production in town. Ross Marchand, people claimed, had some kind of money problems. Since disparaging remarks about moneymen like Ross were floated around this town more often than balloons at a kid’s birthday party, she hadn’t paid too much attention at first. But then the innuendos and scandalous blather hadn’t died away. That usually meant truth was anchoring the rumors inside the mill.

Helen hadn’t wanted to say anything to Lauren, who’d fortunately divorced herself from the Hollywood glitterati the minute she chucked Marchand. She needed to have her head in the movie, not on worrying whether her paycheck was going to bounce—or worse, if creditors were coming after her for debts incurred before the end of the marriage.

“If the movie doesn’t get filmed, he’ll lose millions. You know that,” Lauren. insisted, turning, her mind momentarily off the sword still gleaming so oddly on the ground. “Wait a minute. What aren’t you telling me?”

Sounds from outside the rehearsal room reminded Helen that this wasn’t the time or the place to discuss Ross’s dicey financial situation. Grabbing Lauren’s wrist, she glanced at the door, making the reason for her reticence perfectly clear.

“Get rid of the sword, Lauren. Go to your trailer, clean up, and meet me back here in a half hour. I have five actors coming in to do a read-through at ten, but there’s time for us to grab a cup of coffee beforehand. Off the lot, if you know what I mean.”

Lauren’s brow furrowed. She clearly wanted to know more, but a loud bang just on the other side of the door spurred her to action. She grabbed a blanket, wrapped up the sword, gave Helen a hug and then promised to return in twenty.

Once the door was closed, the tension in Helen’s shoulders relaxed somewhat, but not enough for her to cancel the masseuse who was coming at two. She tossed the folder she’d been carrying onto a trunk, then looked around, wondering, first, what the hell her friend had been doing in the rehearsal room alone all night long, and second, how she was going to weasel a confession out of her before their lattes got cold. She and Lauren were close, but since Ross had strong-armed Lauren into making this last film, she’d been edgy and sullen. The last thing Helen wanted to do was set her off right before production started in earnest.

Turning, she caught sight of a flickering red light. A flickering red light atop a video camera aimed in her direction.
Interesting
. What could Lauren have been doing last night that she felt the need to record?

Well, only one way to find out.

Seven

Lauren shot into her trailer and collapsed against the door, the sword clutched tightly against her chest, her breathing labored. Her mind swam, and she wasn’t sure what to focus on first. Joey’s accident? Helen’s quest for her new costar? Ross and the stolen sword? The parade of as yet unnamed actors coming in to read with her? Or the insane belief that she’d just spent the night with Aiden Forsyth, a man who claimed to have been cursed by Gypsies in 1747, but who had made mad, passionate love to her all night long before disappearing with the dawn?

Lovingly, she placed the sword across the coffee table, but kept the blanket closed.

“Aiden? Are you here?” she asked the air.

She heard nothing. Felt nothing. Fear jabbed at her chest. Had it all been a dream? She’d suspected it before, but the pleasure of making love with Aiden had been too intense, too complete, to come from her subconscious, Maybe she’d lost her mind? She’d always wondered if and when her lie of a life would catch up to her and start chipping away at her sanity. Clearly the divorce had pushed her over the edge. Funny. She would have put her money on the marriage doing the trick.

“Aiden?” she asked again, desperation lilting her voice.

After another tense minute, the atmosphere shifted. Warmed. Filled. Aiden’s scent, a mixture of leather and rain, reached her nostrils and eased the rapid pounding of her heart.

She sighed. “You’re here.”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice as rich as dark chocolate.

“Where?”

“Where do you want me to be?”

She closed her eyes. His hands smoothed over her hips and around her backside, which he clutched possessively. How easy it would be to surrender and indulge again in a few hours of mindless lovemaking. And with an invisible lover? Damn, how many of her private fantasies was he going to deliver?

“Let me see you,” she requested.

“I cannot,” he replied.

“We’re in my trailer. No one will find us here.”

“I do not fear discovery, my lady. I have not the ability to make myself corporeal. I suspect the dawning of a new day has changed my circumstances.”

“Convenient,” she snapped.

After checking to make sure she’d locked the door, Lauren unwrapped the sword from the cashmere blanket. She touched the handle, then remembered that she’d experienced the sword’s magical effect fully only after her skin had made contact with the blade. How many other people had handled the sword over the years? Why had none of them freed Aiden from his prison?

Why
her
?

The question would have to wait. She sat on the couch and scooted the table closer, then stretched her hands above the polished steel. The reddish silver gleam had diminished, but the sword still sparkled with potent power, causing the hair on her arms to stand on end.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Proceed,” he replied.

She took a deep breath and placed her palms flat on the sword. She glanced around, but noticed nothing different.

“Anything?” she asked. “Aiden?”

“Nothing.”

Damn
.

“Maybe you can only come out in the dark?”

She dashed to the light switch, plunged the trailer into relative darkness and then waited for her eyes to adjust to the shadows. She caught the glimmer of the sword and groped her way back to the table.