She looked down before he could catch her staring. As his gaze returned to his script, she saw his shoulders draw in slightly. Guilt for her humor sent a small twinge through her—but surely Christian was a big boy.
Viv didn’t give away that she knew she had him; she was too good a thespian. Instead, she let herself disappear into her performance. Grace knew she was watching a tour de force, and hoped Viv could re-create this when cameras rolled. The girl was never overdone or self-conscious. She spoke as if the words came from inside her and not the page.
Grace had no problem admitting they sounded better than she’d written them.
To her delight, the other actors began to come up to Viv’s level. Good to start with, inspired by her example, they hit their lines more gently, the rhythm of their exchanges unfolding like real people talking. Their awareness of what was happening hummed palpably through them. They felt the promise of what this film could become.
Only Christian grew tenser as pages turned.
Despite her wariness of his pull on her, Grace was tempted to pat his white-knuckled hand, which he’d clenched on the table close to his chest. Christian wasn’t as bad as he thought—certainly no worse than most of the actors who’d auditioned to play Joe. For a beginner, he was darn good. Nothing in his performance jumped out as awful. He sounded smart and articulate. Grace hadn’t had to scribble one note to simplify his lines. As for his inexperience, he had his face to make up for that—that beautiful, coolly brooding visage that looked like something interesting was going on behind it even when it was still. With a face like his, brilliant acting was optional.
Grace looked down the table toward Miss Wei, searching for a cue as to whether she ought to intervene.
Her boss looked back, smiling gently and giving a tiny shake of her head. Miss Wei’s expressions could be subtle, but Grace thought she was pleased by Christian’s dilemma. Maybe she figured Viv putting him on notice would benefit them in the long run.
They’d arrived at the first big confrontation between Joe Pryor and his father. The gang members—with Growler still standing in for George Pryor—did a good job of conveying the frenetic energy of the fight in Reed’s drugstore. It was here that the split between the boys who liked George’s violent leadership and those who preferred Joe’s compassion became irreversible.
They were breathing harder as they finished, caught up in their playacting. Grace tried to ignore the fact that Christian-as-Joe was not. She had her usual role of reading stage directions where no dialogue occurred. Now Joe and Mary were escaping into the woods following the fight.
Mary stumbles,
she read,
not for the first time, to judge by the bloody scratches all over her. Joe picks her up and carries her in his arms. His fangs are down, his face tormented. Joe knows his father attacked hers as a means of punishing him for his defiance. Joe’s rage over that, and his own culpability, hasn’t calmed. Worse, Mary’s blood is arousing him. It seems wrong that he wants to feed on this injured girl who’s become so dear to him.
Grace recited these bits with half her attention, the rest of her focus on Christian’s state. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Charlie glancing around Viv at him. By this time, Christian was completely hunched over his script, one hand hiding the right side of his face. Charlie looked sympathetic, but also a bit concerned. Charlie was among the sharpest of
Teen-Age Vampire
’s young actors. Grace suspected he’d been hoping for better from their male lead.
Her own palms dampened for Christian’s sake. The scene that came next was one of the script’s most emotional. Joe and Mary were taking shelter in an abandoned boxcar, sharing their hopes and fears regarding each other for the first time. Christian’s inexperience was bound to show here as nowhere else. If he didn’t pull himself together, Viv was going to total him.
“You’re a vampire,” Viv accused in Mary’s tremulous tones.
“I am,” Christian acknowledged, utterly wooden. “But I’m trying to be a good man.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Bonehead burst out from the other end of the table. “My dog acts better than that!”
“Hush,” Miss Wei scolded. “Give Christian a chance to find his sea legs.”
“But he’s terrible,” Bonehead protested. He lowered his voice in an attempt to sound more reasonable. “You can’t do this to the rest of us. We’ve
worked
to get where we are.”
Grace’s boss turned her coolest look on him. “Rex,” she said, which was Bonehead’s real name. “If you were half as handsome as Christian, you could get away with being terrible, too.”
Bonehead’s face paled with hurt and anger. He drew a sharp, loud breath—about to say something unforgivable, Grace feared.
“Stop,” she said, jumping up from her chair. Though confrontation wasn’t an approach she enjoyed, this argument was undermining more than one actor’s confidence. “You can yell at me if you want, but neither of you are helping. Rex, it’s true Christian doesn’t have your experience, but both Miss Wei and I know he has promise. Sometimes being a good actor means being a team player.”
“Well said,” Mr. Reed put in pompously.
Viv let out the first note of a derisive laugh.
“Not a word,” Grace instructed, jabbing her finger at the young actress.
Viv innocently batted her eyelashes. “As you wish, headmistress. May we continue now?”
Grace sat down with her knees trembling. Wade patted her arm in support. From the DP’s other side, Christian looked at her, his expression unreadable. His putting up such strong shields didn’t strike Grace as a good sign. Maybe he didn’t appreciate her sticking her nose in on his behalf. She wiped palms that had gone slippery along her thighs. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved that Miss Wei didn’t seem unhappy.
If her boss was playing one of her chess games, Grace was going to be angry.
C
hristian wished the queen had fired him. Then he wouldn’t have had to go on. He knew he sounded like a robot as he explained the film’s somewhat specious facts of vampire life to Mary, telling her he was a “born” vampire and thus could walk in the sun. “Made” vampires like the rest of the gang could not, which meant Joe and his father were princes among their kind. They didn’t have to kill when they fed. His father simply enjoyed it.
“He likes to catch one victim for the whole gang. Then the human’s blood can be drained. There was a girl at the house tonight . . . ”
Grace’s pencil scratched something on her copy of the script, distracting him from Mary’s response. No doubt Grace was making note of the fact that he was a moron. He couldn’t believe she’d felt compelled to leap up and defend him.
“Did you hurt her?” Viv-as-Mary asked for the second time.
“I stood by,” Christian read numbly. “Oh, God, I stood by.”
This came out so leaden Christian’s neck grew hot. He was getting worse by the second.
“Perhaps with a
smidge
more feeling,” Nim Wei suggested from the head of the table.
Viv touched his arm. His incompetence hadn’t thrown her. She was looking up at him as if she were Mary, with her schoolgirl’s heart shining in her eyes. She wanted him to deny he was any less than she’d dreamed, wanted to throw caution to the winds and love him without reserve. For two endless seconds, Christian couldn’t see anything but her. Grace had gazed at him like that, once upon a time. He tore his eyes away and back to the page.
I need you to believe I can change,
it said beneath his character’s name.
If you have faith in me, maybe I’ll find the strength.
An uncustomary sweat prickled on his scalp, joining the heat sizzling on his skin. Wasn’t this what he’d hoped Grace would give him? The strength not to turn into a soulless killer like his father? His mouth was dry, his tongue so thick it felt like it blocked his throat. He couldn’t say the speech. He couldn’t
do
this. It was too much to ask.
He pushed too fast to his feet, causing the humans who were looking at him to blink in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the apology as hoarse as he’d feared. “I shouldn’t have taken this job.”
“Christian,” Grace said soothingly. He couldn’t look at her. He strode from the dining room with his cool face gone fiery, all his focus on not blurring out of there.
Once outside, he almost crashed into an older man who was walking up to the door.
“Watch where you’re going!” the stranger snapped.
Christian ignored him. It didn’t matter who he was. He crossed the cobbles of the courtyard with hair-ruffling haste. The breeze was cool, the night scented by the ocean and fresh-cut grass. He didn’t want to be calmed by either. He wanted to get out of there.
Or he thought he did.
His feet led him to a light in the darkness, a guest cottage at the edge of Nim Wei’s grounds.
“
Scheisse
,” he cursed to himself. He knew exactly where he had ended up.
T
he older actor who played George Pryor stormed into the dining room in full bluster. He’d done a lot of Westerns, and he was good at it.
“Who the hell was that?” he demanded. “The guy nearly ran me down.”
“That was your son,” Bonehead drawled. “Our would-be star.”
“Good riddance, if you ask me,” Viv huffed.
“Be fair,” Charlie said. “He was doing all right until you two started in on him.”
Viv tossed her head. “If he can’t take a little pressure, he shouldn’t—”
“Why did you begin without me?” George interrupted, looking around, perplexed. “You said the read-through was at nine thirty.”
Grace blew out a sound of annoyance her boss couldn’t fail to hear. She’d specifically told Grace she needn’t call George about the time. For whatever reason, Miss Wei had wanted Christian’s movie father to be tardy.
“Did I?” Miss Wei asked now. “I
am
sorry. I must have been mixed up.” She met Grace’s disbelieving stare without a shred of remorse. “Well?” Her hands made little shooing motions. “Go after Christian. We can’t have our leading man throwing in the towel.”
It took all Grace’s strength not to favor her employer with a few choice words. She would have if they hadn’t had enough drama already. Grace couldn’t help but think Miss Wei had created this situation on purpose. That, however, wasn’t their most immediate crisis.
“You’re underestimating him,” she said softly but pointedly to Viv. “Christian brought out something special in you tonight. That alone ought to earn him your patience.”
“I need an equal,” Viv protested, drawing back in hurt at the scold. “Someone I can play off of.”
“You’ll get one,” Grace promised, meaning it thoroughly. If it was the last thing she did, she’d drag Christian up to par for this movie.
F
or the last four years Grace had been living in Miss Wei’s cozy one-bedroom, ivy-draped guesthouse. Only her knowledge that the cottage wasn’t really hers kept it from feeling a hundred percent her home. It was closer to one than any place she’d inhabited, including the many houses she’d grown up in.
Having an abusive, alcoholic father, whose control wasn’t always what it should be, had meant moving around a lot.
Logic said she should check the bluff first for Christian. Most people who were upset would have stalked there to stare at the waves. Ignoring the reasonable choice, Grace turned her steps toward the cottage. The air was nippy as it blew around her. She was grateful for the Windbreaker Charlie had lent her.
What French people called a frisson ran through her when she spotted Christian on her doorstep, exactly where logic said he shouldn’t be. The harsh security light flooded down on him. His head was bent, and he appeared to be contemplating her doorknob.
If clothes were all it took to change a man, Christian was a chameleon. He looked dangerously elegant in his dark silk shirt and trousers, the outfit exaggerating both his height and leanness. Grace heaved a private sigh at how exactly he matched the type of man she preferred—muscled and spare and effortlessly graceful. His new short haircut gleamed in the light, the curve of bangs over his forehead just as tempting as promised. Grace wanted to run her fingers through those silky locks, to smooth her hands around his skull on the way to the rest of his gorgeousness. His rear was as appealing in black trousers as it had in been jeans, its taut, high curves screaming to be stroked.
Grace forced her fingers to uncurl from her palms. These weren’t appropriate thoughts right now.
“Someone smashed your glass,” Christian said a second before turning his head to her. “They locked up again when they left.”
Drawn into sharp lines by the light and shadow, Christian’s face was beautiful but weary. Grace’s chest ached with her longing to comfort him. Belatedly, his words registered.
“Someone broke in?”
Shrugging, he reached through the shattered diamond-shaped pane to open the door from inside.