Feast of Saints (32 page)

Releasing her, Jake turned to Wil. “Make sure she gets home safely.” With a curt bow to her, he turned and walked away, disappearing into a back room of the club.

Lilly watched him walk away, astounded. Jennis’ home was not far past the Athenee. It made no sense, unless he’d just had enough of her for one night.

Wil cleared his throat. Numbly, she slid her arms into the coat and followed Wil to the car.

Chapter 23

Stepping out of the cab at the Fairmont Kea Lani in Maui, Lilly looked around with her mouth open. She’d never been anywhere so colorful and manicured to such perfection.

Heading into the hotel’s open air lobby to check in, she thought mournfully that it was too bad she couldn’t take a minute to enjoy the scenery. With the new locale and climate change, she was going to have to get right to work if she didn’t want a repeat of the Wyoming fiasco. She left her suitcase in her room without unpacking and headed to the trailers down by the beach in search of the Hawaii version of her Lab.

By six, she realized she was right to be concerned. The appliances weren’t drying properly in the high humidity. Lilly was just throwing her second batch of glycerin gelatin appliances in the trash when Clara walked into the trailer.

“Hey, I’ve been trying to call you,” she said. “When did you get in?” She and Clara usually flew together, but Lilly had opted for an earlier flight due to her worries about being ready for the next day.

“Hey, yourself. I got here a few hours ago. I must have left my phone in the room. Look at this.” Lilly held up the defective brow appliance. She tugged on either side of it and it tore right down the middle, something that should not happen. Usually the gelatin appliances had a much higher tear threshold. It was one of the things that made gelatin an excellent medium, along with its flesh-like consistency and ability to capture fine detail when properly molded.

“Did you try not adding so much water?” Clara asked, trying to be helpful. Lilly smothered a laugh. For all of her talent with makeup and computer graphics, Clara really wasn’t an effects specialist.

“I don’t think it’s the water in the formula that’s the problem. It’s the water in the air. The compound I’m using is highly hygroscopic.” At Clara’s blank expression, she explained, “It’s a compound that easily absorbs moisture from the atmosphere.

“Clara, would you mind if I took your place this week with Jake? I’m worried this might be a constant challenge.” Frances hadn’t defined Lilly’s role for this last week of filming. Instead, she told Lilly to supervise and handle any problems that might arise. The whole trip was a bit of a boondoggle. If it weren’t for the problem with the effects, she would have been hanging out by the pool by now. Their Maui schedule was the lightest they’d had during the entire film.

“Not at all,” Clara said. “That’ll leave me free to work with Nat’s group. I think the sunshine and bright foliage is going to create some CG challenges.

“I was looking for you to see if you’d like to grab some dinner. A bunch of us are meeting at the outdoor café.”

“I’ll grab a bite later. I’ve got to get this figured out,” she said regretfully.

“Can I help?”

“No, I don’t think so, but thanks. Go on, enjoy yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay. Don’t stay up all night,” said Clara kindly.

Knowing that she’d be seeing him, touching him, in just a few hours, Lilly’s thoughts as she worked were full of Jake. In truth, they had been every moment since Thursday in New York. The adage about men who dance well had tormented her with swirling visions of what sex with Jake would be like. Every time she shut her eyes, she felt Jake’s body pulled tight against her, pulsing with the rhythm as they danced.

On the trip over, she realized that she no longer had any reason to be fearful that she would be professionally compromised if she gave in to her desire for Jake, even if things ended badly. She was not nearly as vulnerable as she’d been when they started this film. She had firmly cemented her position with the production team and, indeed, was considered a production leader, although she was younger and greener than most. And
Feast
was nearly finished anyway. Plus, now that her misunderstanding about
Jonathan Strange
had been cleared up, she recognized that he had done nothing but help her career, repeatedly.

Nearly all of her objections to Jake had melted away. She was left with just one. Sierra. She’d thought long and hard about that on the flight to Hawaii. Eventually, she settled on the notion that Jake wouldn’t have pursued her if their relationship was serious. She’d misjudged him so often, she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. And she just wanted him, preferably all to herself. But if she couldn’t have him all to herself? Well, she’d deal with that later.

She sighed, looking at her third reconstituted batch of gelatin, which had also failed. She needed to stop thinking about Jake and focus on the task before her.

Lilly gave up trying to reformulate the gelatin, and instead worked on perfecting a drying system, trying to come up with a contraption that would mimic the air-conditioned set in LA. One cardboard box, two rolls of aluminum foil, an incandescent bulb, the Conair hair dryer unscrewed from the bathroom wall of her hotel room and two test batches later, she had found a solution. It was four a.m., and she’d been at it for twelve hours.

Sagging with relief, she set her head down on the counter. She awoke with a start, stiff-necked, to the sound of the crew milling around outside, readying for the day’s shoot. She hurriedly packed what she needed and headed over to Jake’s makeup trailer. She was aghast when she looked in the mirror. Her crazy morning hair was sticking up all over and she was wearing the same stale clothes she’d worn on the long flight over –
was that just yesterday?
She had fifteen minutes to hop in the trailer’s small shower and scour the sleepless night away. She found a stash of disposable toothbrushes and a stack of clean scrubs worn by the makeup department under the sink. Slicking back her still wet hair, she grabbed the smallest pair of scrubs she could find, which still swallowed her, and rolled up the waistband to keep them from falling off.

She’d just gotten her carts laid out at Jake’s chair when he walked in and stopped short upon seeing her, not Clara. He gave her garb the once over, his gaze returning to hers as he slowly blinked twice.
How does he do that?
Lilly had to restrain herself from smoothing her hands over the crumpled scrubs in a useless attempt to improve her appearance.

Pushing her damp hair out of her face, she said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Please, just sit and spare me the glib comments. You try dragging volatile compounds halfway across the ocean and expect them to just magically do what you want.”

When Jake sat, she picked up the protective lotion, rubbing some between her palms to warm it before lifting his arm off of the chair’s armrest. Jake pulled away and then extended his palm, clearly expecting her to let him put the lotion on himself. Maybe this was the way he and Clara worked. Embarrassed, she handed him the tube and hid her face in the tray.

When he handed the tube back to her and would have taken the next product from her hand, she pulled it back. It wasn’t a good idea to let him do his own face. She didn’t like him doing his own hands for that matter. She’d worked all night on these appliances and she didn’t want them sliding off midmorning.

“I’ll do it,” she said, holding the gel out of his reach. Standing so as not to lean in, since he clearly was in no mood for any kind of flirtation, she ignored his outstretched hand and started smoothing the lotion over one brow, then the other. Jake put his hand down and became so still he could have been a wax figure, staring sightlessly at his own reflection.

Smoothing his cheeks and chin, she said, “I don’t want another Wyoming experience.”

Lilly felt Jake’s jaw clench under her hand. She quickly clarified, “I meant… I was here all night because these materials don’t do well with climate changes, like in Wyoming.” As she continued smoothing his face, she explained the problem she’d had getting the gelatin to cure in the humid Maui air.

Tugging his ear to get his attention, she smiled at him and said, “I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for covering for my mistake when the cold mountain air caused the appliances to fail on the Wyoming set.”

Jake’s expression softened, although he didn’t return her smile.

“Problem solved?” he finally asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” she said. She’d already finished spreading the lotion over his face, but she began again, smoothing his brow, erasing the frown.
This is a man who shouts down bears for me
, she thought. She smoothed her small hands over the sides of his face, over his cheekbones.
This is the man who would carry me for miles out of the mountains
. Looking at his mouth, touching his lips, she thought,
this man, oh, this man
, feeling the familiar whirlpool of desire.

But Jake’s expression had turned stony. She didn’t have his permission to touch him like this. She let her hands fall away and turned to pick up the labor-intensive apps.

As she worked, she felt like she was working with one of her plaster Jake statues. She told him to stand and he did. Sit, he did. Look down, look up. He could have been an automaton. She worked from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. As always, she focused on one piece at a time, getting it just perfect, knowing exactly how it would fit with the whole, and she didn’t step back to take in the whole effect until she was done.

There weren’t a lot of clothes written into the day’s script, and her work had involved covering, painting and applying CG dots to much of Jake’s bare skin. Lilly stepped back and looked. The angles on the apps were still severe, but his skin-tone was warmer to suit the human Allegrezza who appears in Sofia’s dream. The gray-blue had a soft golden undertone.

Gads, he’s gorgeous
. Before this film, Jake was a darkly enticing Hollywood figure with a bad boy rep. His characters readily appealed to the Goth and Doc Martin crowd, but didn’t have the mass appeal of a mainstream leading man. This film was going to change that, clearly.

Searching his face, she could see that it was going to film beautifully, but something was off. Asking Jake to sit again would mess up the body paint, so she pulled up a stool and stood on it to get closer to his face.

“Look at me, please.”

Automaton Jake did as he was told. Lilly hopped down and grabbed a brush, dabbed it in the gray-gold shadow tone and stepped back up on the stool. Jake turned his gaze back to the mirror, although he was not assessing his appearance. His face was so reactionless that he didn’t seem to see anything. Carefully filling in around his eyes she stopped and looked again. Still not right.

Frowning, the source of the problem came to her. It wasn’t her work, she realized, it was the man underneath. This was supposed to be the most human the character would be in the entire film, and Jake could not look more remote. She put her hands on her hips.

“Look at me again, please.” Jake did as he was told. “You look fabulous,” she said, “but you’re going to have to take some happy pills to pull this off, big guy.”

For one moment, the shutters fell off Jake’s expression, and she felt that she’d been scorched. Without a word, Jake stepped around her and out the door.
So much for the joy of reunion
. She carefully packed her set kit and trailed behind him.

On her way to the beach set, she grabbed Bryce and, with his help, assembled a convenient station to do touch-ups as needed. It was going to get hot soon, and while they’d try to take as many breaks in the air-conditioned trailer as possible, the next ten hours were going to be a series of constant adjustments to keep the paint and effects from running and sliding off. Looking around, Lilly quickly wrote out a list of other items she wanted – something to provide shade, a fan and an ice chest stocked with water and grape G2 chief among them.

Bryce set up a ten by twelve awning and didn’t just score a fan, but some kind of portable air conditioner, running a two-sixty electrical cable to get it operating. He even sent five other grips over with potted palms from the hotel lobby for a makeshift screen around the awning to filter the worst of the rays. When he’d finished, Lilly punched him on the arm and gave him a huge smile.

“Thanks, man, you rock.”

“No,
you
rock,” he said with mock adoration, adding petulantly, “although I prefer your yellow bikini to those scrubs.”

Bryce was a huge flirt. Good thing his wife, Kaitlyn, was extremely confident. Their LA apartment was a regular weekend party stop for the crew due to their vivacious personalities and a great rooftop pool. The one time she had made it over, Bryce had been surrounded by much more scantily clad women than Lilly in her yellow bikini.

Laughing, she wagged her finger at him and turned and ran smack dab into the wall of Jake’s painted, naked chest.

“Whoa,” she said, startled, then stepping back, “Hey, check this out!”

Lilly opened her arms and spun in the oasis that was their personal air-conditioned outdoor space. “All we need are some beers and a hibachi.”

“On it!” Bryce called back over his shoulder.

She smiled up at Jake, still trying to find the Jake who’d danced nonstop with her only last week. It seemed that that Jake was not on the island.

“Where’s Clara?” he bit out.

Chastened, she said, “She’s sorting out some CG challenges due to the sunny setting. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me today.” Jake looked around as if wishing he could find someone, anyone, other than her to work with.

“Come on Jake, it can’t be that bad, right?”

Jake turned his stony gaze back to her. “Just try not to touch me.”

Ouch. “Um, that’s going to be hard in this heat,” she said, still trying to lighten his mood.

When Jake didn’t relent, staring holes into her as if he could will her to disappear, Lilly, crestfallen, said, “Okay, I’ll go see if I can find Clara,” and started out of the little oasis.

Just then Monty came up with Jessica Palmer,
Feast of Saints
’ author.

“Lilly, Jake,” Monty boomed, “Let me introduce you to Jessica. She’s decided to join us for this last week of filming.”

Stepping around Lilly, Jake turned on the charm for Jessica. He couldn’t offer his hand, which was covered in makeup and accented with tendon appliances, so he executed an elegant bow, saying, “Ms. Palmer, it’s a pleasure. I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I tell you how grateful we all are for your imagination.”