Phoenix Falling (56 page)

The cell phone played the first few notes of "Fur Elise." Wondering if a commercial had come looking for him, he answered, suppressing another yawn. "H'lo."

"Greg—is that you?"

Not his manager. The female voice was deliciously British and familiar, but surely it couldn't be... "Yep, it's me. Sorry if I'm slow, but who is this?" With his luck, she was probably a high-class aluminum siding saleswoman.

"Jenny Lyme."

"Jenny!" He came awake fast, amazed that his caller really was Jenny. As if he could have forgotten her. Trying not to sound like a slavering idiot, he said, "Nice to hear from you. Are you in Los Angeles? If you are, let me take you out to lunch."

Smart, witty, and down to earth, Jenny was the kind of actor who made up for the prima donnas. She was also drop-dead gorgeous—a brunette stunner who stood out even in a business where beautiful women were a dime a dozen.

Strange things could happen on a movie set, and Greg's brief fling with Jenny was proof. Ordinarily their relationship would never have gone beyond casual chat, but she had been weeping her heart out over an actor boyfriend who'd thrown her over in favor of a high-profile affair with a famous French actress twenty years his senior.

Greg had been there with a sympathetic shoulder and a willingness to do anything that would make her feel better. Though he hadn't been able to cure Jenny's broken heart, he'd done his best, and even coaxed a few smiles from her. In return, he had acquired some indelible memories to warm his nights.

Her rich chuckle interrupted his reverie. "Sorry, no, I'm in London."

Damn. "What can I do for you?"

"I have a... a proposition for you."

He blinked, then ordered his libido to quit looking for double meanings. "Are you turning director and looking for a cinematographer?"

"Not exactly. But something like that."

"Yes?"

She drew a breath that could be heard a third of the way round the globe. "This is a charity project. I grew up in a village in the Cotswolds—that's west of London and very pretty—and I still have a home there. The parish tithe barn was turned into a community center just after the war, and it's a wonderful place for plays and music practice and yoga classes and pottery and all manner of amusements. It's the heart of Upper Bassett.

"Upper Bassett?" Hound visions came to mind.

'To distinguish it from Lower Bassett and Bassett on the Wold," she explained with a twinkle in her voice. 'To make a long story as short as possible, the village owns only the lease on the barn. The actual owner is a big soulless corporation that wants to sell the property in six months when the lease expires. Property in Gloucestershire is staggeringly expensive, and the price they're asking is far beyond our means. If the village wants to keep it, we have to raise a lot of money fast."

He received more than his share of requests for his hard-earned money, but he was willing to oblige Jenny. "Where should I send the check?"

"That's awfully generous of you, Greg, but I'm not calling to ask for money." For an actress who made her living playing the sexy, good-hearted girl next door, Jenny sounded shy. "I'm on the community center board, so I decided to stage a Christmas mummers' play to raise money. I've persuaded some of my friends to lend a hand, and I think we'll draw a good audience for the performances."

"But not good enough?"

"I'm afraid not. We'll never make enough if we rely on ticket sales, so in six months Upper Bassett will have no community center. This may not sound very important, but community is what makes life worth living, and it can be very fragile. I don't want to see the fabric of my native village come unraveled."

He backtracked. "What's a mummers' play?"

"Oh, sorry. It's one of those British things. Medieval plays, usually a combination of religious themes grafted onto ancient fertility rites. Groups of mummers used to go around giving short performances for begging money. That's largely died out, but the plays are still performed on occasion. It's quite a jolly tradition."

A light dawned. "I saw a show like that in Boston once. Lots of singing and dancing and melodrama. It was a great evening."

"Ours will be, too. A couple of days ago, it occurred to me that the best way to make more money from our Revels is to film the show so we can sell videos and if we're lucky, license it to the telly."

"I think I see where you're going with this, but there are plenty of great cameramen in England. Can't you draft one of them?"

"Probably, but you're my first choice. You're known for being able to do marvelous work quickly, and your name will add value to the project." Her voice turned portentous. "The Upper Bassett Holiday Revels, filmed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Gregory Marino."

"That's shameless flattery." He grinned. "Keep it up."

She had the sexiest chuckle in the Northern Hemisphere. "Very well. This production will be a bit of a hodgepodge, so we'll need your talent as well as your reputation. It won't be easy to make my Morris dancers and children's choir look dramatic instead of like amateur night. That's why I thought of you."

He toyed with the handle of his mug, thinking that it sounded like a hoot—the kind of wildly improvised project that he'd loved doing in his student days. But he hadn't been a student in almost two decades, and he was tired to the bone. "You're talking this Christmas, aren't you? Like, in the next week or so? I just got back from Australia yesterday and I'm in no mood to climb on another airplane and spend the holidays with strangers."

"You only just got home? Sorry—I thought you'd had more time to recover from the last job." She hesitated. "I know this is a lot to ask, but if you're willing, you could be the making of this project. What would it take to persuade you to come over?"

"Your fair white body," he muttered under his breath as he sipped some coffee.

"That's negotiable," she said without missing a beat.

A Holiday Fling

The Starting Over Series

A Novella

(with story extras)

by

Mary Jo Putney

~

To purchase

A Holiday Fling

from your favorite eBook Retailer,

visit Mary Jo Putney's eBook Discovery Author Page

www.ebookdiscovery.com/MaryJoPutney

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Mary Jo Putney is a graduate of Syracuse University with degrees in eighteenth-century literature and industrial design. A
New York Times
,
Wall Street Journal
, and
USA Today
bestselling author, she has won numerous awards, including two RITA's from the Romance Writers of America and the Career Achievement Award for Historical Romance from
Romantic Times
. Though most of her books have been historical, she has also published three contemporary romances. Her growing list of Young Adult novels are published under M J Putney. Ms Putney resides in Maryland with her nearest and dearest, both two- and four-footed.

Visit her website at
www.maryjoputney.com