Feast of Saints (22 page)

Jake just sat, his long arms resting on the armrests; his now blood-stained hands dangling off the ends, staring at her.

Looking from his naked chest down to his blue-jeaned legs, she turned pink at her mistake. She usually had him change into his costume pants before she started. How could she have forgotten? With the grotesque nails and his hands covered with makeup and fake blood, he was not going to be able to change his own pants.

At her discomfiture, Jake smiled wickedly, echoing the expression of the Jake in her dream. Holding up his hands, he said innocently, “Now what, Pixie?”

“I could call one of the grips to help you out of your pants,” she offered hesitantly.

Jake looked down at his bulging crotch. “Well, yes, you could, but that would lead to all kinds of misunderstandings.”

The image of Jake’s hard thrusting penis in her palm in the tent Saturday night flashed before her eyes. Lilly gulped and felt her breasts get tighter. Turning away, she walked to the dressing room across the hall to grab the linen costume pants he’d be wearing during filming.

When she returned a moment later, Jake was still seated in the makeup chair. His anger seemed to have dissipated. Clearing her throat, she croaked, “Stand up, I’ll help you.”

The top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulder. She could have rested her forehead on his breastbone as she looked down at the imposing button of his jeans. She stopped with her hand on his pants.

Jake was looking over her head at their reflection in the mirror. She turned to look, too. Jake, aroused, made up to resemble her nightmares, at once thrilled and frightened her.

“Ahh, this is what you see. I can see how it could be a bit intimidating.” He smiled and, although it was made sinister by the makeup and fangs, his eyes were soft and beautiful and – concerned.

When she still didn’t move to unbutton his pants, Jake said quietly, “I don’t bite, Pixie. That is, not if you don’t want me to.”

She turned her face into his chest and popped the button on his jeans. Her knees were so wobbly that she thought she might fall. She felt Jake tip his head down and breathe in her hair. The door pounded, “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Durant!”

Lilly jumped back from Jake as if stung, then had to cover her mouth as a nervous giggle threatened. Jake’s own wide gaze crinkled into a smile.

“So you going to help me out here or what?”

“Um… well I can help you with your pants. The… other… you’re just going to have to handle on your own.” Jake looked at his long silvery nails and bloody hands.

“Now that is a buzz kill,” he said.

At the end of the day, she didn’t know what to expect. As was their routine, Mary removed Jake’s makeup while Lilly cleaned up and readied for the morrow. She thought Jake would seek her out after his shower, but he didn’t. He must have left without speaking to her. Just as well, she thought, trying not to feel disappointed. Tomorrow was another gory day, with lots of extra appliances and bloody palettes to prepare. Her new assistant would be starting, too.

As she unlocked her bike, she saw Mary standing just on the other side of the guard shack waiting for someone to pick her up.

Coasting up next to her, Lilly said, “Hey, Mary, would you like me to wait with you?”

Mary looked up, startled.

“Oh no, you don’t need to do that. You get going.” Mary then hurried off, toward a red pickup truck that had just rounded the corner a short distance away.

Lilly stood for a moment, watching her retreating back. When Mary reached the truck and scrambled in, it made a U-turn and headed back the way it had come.

Mary was an odd duck, she decided, and her smug defensiveness was a bit grating.

Lilly was standing there, knocking her bike between her knees, chewing on her cheek and thinking about Mary when Wil pulled through the gates in the Bentley. He braked next to her and rolled down his window.

“Would you like to throw your bike on the rack, Lilly? I can drop you by your house as soon as I drop off Ms. Nighly and Mr. Durant.”

Sitting in the back seat was Sierra Nighly, dressed in a midnight-blue glittery gown.

Lilly smiled at her, the brittle smile of a woman with a guilty conscience.

“No, thank you, Wil. I could use the exercise.” She hopped up on the seat of her bike and pushed away before Wil even rolled up his window.

Pedaling as fast as her injured ankle would allow, she tried to put as much distance between herself and the studio as possible before Wil reappeared. When she saw the Bentley pull out of the gates through the tiny rear view mirror on her bike, she cut swiftly down a side street.

With the unexpected detour, and slowed by her injured ankle, she didn’t make it home until after ten. She was an emotional wreck. It had been a terrible mistake to let down her guard with Jake this morning. She’d violated every one of her rules of self-preservation, and for what? A fling with a famous playboy who already had a steady girlfriend?

Sitting at her kitchen counter eating an apple with peanut butter, she heard the buzz of a text on her phone. Pulling it out of her bag, she saw it was from Jake.

“What r u doing?” he texted.

The gall, she thought. He had to still be out with Sierra. And she was pretty sure one answer – the wrong one – would land her in his bed tonight. The thought that he’d be out with his steady partner, yet still be texting her, just reinforced what she’d thought all along. She was a novelty. A diversion. Fun to try on for a night or two. Biting back a variety of acerbic responses, she settled on a professional rebuff, and responded, “Trying to sleep. New assistant tomorrow. We’ll see you at 4:30.”

“That could be embarrassing,” he responded.
Was he flirting with her?

While she thought about how to respond, another text followed. “See u in ur dreams.”

Oh, how arrogant!
“Nightmares u mean!” she couldn’t help but text back.

Five minutes passed with no further texts, so she plugged in the phone to charge and washed her face. After carefully, and uncharacteristically, picking out plain professional looking slacks and a Ralph Lauren collared knit shirt, as much to impress her new assistant as to act as a barrier to Jake’s charms, she checked her phone one more time. Ten minutes earlier, she guessed while she was running water, he had texted in response to her nightmare comment, “Shud I come ovr?”

Oh, crap
. She hadn’t responded. That might seem like a yes, or that she was thinking about it. Lilly jumped at a soft knock on her door. No way. He lived at least fifteen minutes away, although in the crazy sports car he could make it in under ten if he hadn’t already burned through his one arrest rule.

She peeped through the spy hole. All she could see was the front of an Armani tux. She looked down at her Scooby Doo tank top and matching sleep shorts. She should just leave him out there. The knock came again, louder this time.

“Hold on!” she yelled a bit too loudly and threw on her short pink fuzzy robe before opening the door. Belatedly, she realized her hair was still held back by an old hairband from washing and moisturizing her face. Pulling it out, she said, “I didn’t expect you.”

“Are you going to let me in?”

“Actually…” she hesitated, but at his frown opened the door wider.

Jake strolled into her living room, not seeming in a hurry to open the conversation. He perused her film mementos and the montage of
Fox Hollow
that he’d seen before. Tyler was now happily in possession of the
Catillac Cats
collage.

Breaking the silence, he asked, “Are you going to do one for
Feast
?”

“Yes.”

“What will it look like?” he asked casually. He seemed so calm, but the way he paced around the room, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away, felt like he was toying with her. Nervous tension built in her, causing her to chatter.

“It’s something I don’t think about until the end of filming, to see what mementos I can take that would otherwise end up in the trash. Harold left behind the hatchet from the Wyoming shoot, so I did sort of already nab that.” Her confession could get her in a lot of trouble with the studio, but she didn’t think Jake was likely to rat her out.

“I’m worried it might be too gruesome to hang here, though. My niece Anna visits a lot, and I don’t want to scare the pants off her.” At the mention of pants, Lilly’s mind immediately flashed back to the morning, and her cheeks flamed.

Jake studied the
Fox
montage a bit longer. Turning to her, he asked, “So, who’s the new assistant?”

“Clara Gentry. Phillip has vetted her, so I hope you don’t mind if she sits in with us in the mornings. Her resume is impressive. She’s more on the visual effects and computer graphics side than makeup and applications, so I think we’ll have a lot to learn from each other.”

“No, I don’t mind,” he said. “I think that’s probably a good idea.”

Although she was the one wanting to keep him at a distance, she felt irrationally deflated, which irritated her. She wished he’d leave.

It didn’t help that Jake’s next move was to poke his head in the studio, her Jake room, and flip on the light. She had not dismantled the room since completing the design. Not only had she not taken anything down, she’d added sketches, some in full color of Jake in various imaginary incantations.

Some of them were inspired by her nightmares. Hidden behind the papers tacked on one wall was a full-sized, charcoal pencil drawing of Jake as the beast with black leathery wings and a vastly exaggerated angled face who ravaged her sleep. That one had been hard to draw. She’d almost immediately covered it with more fanciful paper sketches.

Jake walked in and did a full circle. Her nervousness increased as she worried he might start looking behind the tacked up drawings to what lay underneath. After two rotations, he stopped and commented, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a stalker fan, Lilly.”

“Well, you do. Know better,” she snapped, embarrassed. She had felt stalkery doing all of these. But she also knew they helped her hit her stride with the work, which was obviously good. She didn’t like Jake poking fun at them.

Jake turned to face her. Running his hand through his hair in an uncharacteristic gesture of self-consciousness, he said, “Lilly, I owe you an apology.”

Lilly, still smarting from his stalker comment, thought he was right. He did owe her an apology. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“Since I can’t seem to hide it, I’ll just tell you that I’m stuck on you.”

She raised her brows at the Mayberry word choice. “I don’t understand.”

Jake frowned at her like she was being deliberately obtuse. “When I’m with you, all I can think about is your hands on me, and getting my hands on you.”

Okay. Not so Andy Griffith
.

“Hell, even when I’m not with you that’s all I think about.” Jake started toward her but stopped as she took a step backward.

Lilly looked him over in all his finery, wondering where he’d been. Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “I’d like to hear the apology part.”

Chastened at the rejection, bland Jake made an appearance.

“Well, I’m starting to feel sorry for coming here,” he said.

She hated that sardonic tone, that expression.

She rarely saw Jake in anything that wasn’t hand-tailored, she thought, looking him up and down. Even his shoes. And then there was the famous girlfriend, the Beverly Hills mansion, the million dollar sports car and all of the other trappings of wealth and fame. With everything he could ever want at his fingertips, maybe he just wasn’t one to take no for an answer.

Her nervousness, her exhaustion, her frustration at his persistence, the appalling rudeness of dumping Sierra off somewhere then coming here, caused her to throw caution to the wind.

“Did you come here to apologize? Or did you just come here to get laid?” He shouldn’t have come at all. It wasn’t like she had invited him over. Just the opposite.

“If I’d just wanted to get laid, I could have stayed where I was,” he said coolly. “Is there something else you’d like me to apologize for?”

Her fury turned cataclysmic at his admission that he’d come from another date.

She spat out, “How about: I’m sorry for being a total bastard to you and your friends, and then expecting you to jump into bed with me when I deign to be nice to you.

“How about: I’m sorry for barging into your home, uninvited, so that I can tell you what
else
you can do for me.

“How about: I’m SORRY for making you feel like giving in to my every whim, including my sexual needs, is a part of your JOB.”

Jake stayed silent; his face as white as moonlight.

“Well, let’s hear it, then,” Her voice had gone hoarse. “I haven’t heard you apologize for anything.”

After a long pause, Jake cleared his throat and said quietly, “That about covers it.”

When she just stared at him, expecting more, he said, “If the new assistant works out, you can quit working with me, Lilly.”

She felt as if she’d been slapped. “I’m being fired now because you came here expecting something else, and I’m not putting out?”

“God no, Lilly! Jesus!” His white face flushed darkly. “I’m not talking about you leaving the set. There’s plenty more to do, and you know it. Neither Frances nor Monty would have compromised the budget to get you an assistant if they didn’t want you spreading your talent around. What kind of person do you think I am?”

Jake visibly struggled for control. Lowering his voice, he said, “I came here to be honest with you and apologize for rushing you. I DO find you attractive, obviously. I was hoping you’d acknowledge a mutual attraction. I thought… this morning and this last weekend….”

Lilly’s expression became mulish at the suggestion that she had done anything to contribute to the problem. She could have gone merrily along ignoring it if he hadn’t forced his way into her mini-vacation. If he hadn’t kissed her in the damned tent.

“Look,” Jake said with an exasperated sigh, “we’re making each other miserable. You already admit you hardly sleep. I’m just trying to come up with a solution.”