Heartthrob (2 page)

Twice more each, all misses, and Jed knew he could do it. One more shot was all he needed and …

Franz’s quarter landed dead in the center of Jed’s glass with a splash. It settled there, magnified by both the glass and the liquid.

“You got one chance to tie.” Franz slid the second quarter down the bar to him.

“Jericho—”

“I can do this, Rhino.”

Rhino put his head down on the bar, his meaty arms blocking both his sight and hearing.

Jed picked up the quarter, tracing George Washington’s head with his thumb. He knew exactly where to throw it, exactly how much force to use. He
could
do this. He tossed.

The quarter bounced.

And missed.

“Yes!” Franz laughed, smacking the bar with the palm of his hand. “I win.”

The reality of what he’d just done came crashing down around Jed. The glimmer of possibility turned to ash, to soul-numbing despair.

He stared at his shot glass, at the quarter at the bottom. He didn’t have to lift it to his nose, he could smell the pungent odor from where he was. He knew how good it would taste, how easy it would go down.

And he knew if he drank it, he’d drink another. And another and probably another. Until he was loaded enough not to care. Until he was loaded enough to beat the crap out of Austin Franz.

“You don’t have to drink,” Franz said generously. “But if you don’t, you better believe you’ll never work for me, or anyone associated with me, ever again.”

Jed lifted the glass.

Kate gazed at the man sitting across from her, nearly giddy with fatigue. “You think I should marry
you
…?”

He was handsome in a bland, spongy, Wonder bread kind of way, with wavy blond hair and very pretty blue eyes. “No, it’s not …” He closed those eyes and shook his head. “It’s not what you think,” he said in a soft southern drawl. “I’m not doing this for me.” He opened his eyes and gazed at her intently. “I’m doing this for you.”

“I don’t understand.” After five hours, she couldn’t put much emotion into it anymore.

He closed his eyes again. “I made a promise to Sarah …” The eyes opened again. Another piercing look. Kate clenched her teeth so that she wouldn’t laugh out loud and hurt the poor guy’s feelings. “… that I’d look out for you. If you’re married to me, then you won’t have to—”

“Thank you,” Victor interrupted. “Mister …” He searched his clipboard for a name. “Franklin.”

“John Franklin,” Blue-eyes supplied helpfully. Hopefully. Just like that, the slightly overdone southern accent was replaced by nasal Long Island. “Was that what you wanted? Because I could do it again. Is Laramie supposed to be drunk in this scene, because I can do it more drunk if you want. Or
less
drunk or—”

“Thank you,” Victor said again.

“We’ve got your head shot and résumé, John,” Kate told the actor gently as she stood up and escorted him to the door. “Thank you so much for coming.” She poked her
head out into the crowded waiting room. “Give us five minutes, Annie.”

As the door closed behind the man, Kate leaned against it.

“What the hell was he doing with his eyes?” Victor asked. “Where did that guy learn to act?”

“He wasn’t
that
bad.”

“I wouldn’t cast him in a dog food commercial.” Victor turned to the casting agent who was manning the video camera. “Erase that,” he ordered.

Kate pushed herself up and off the door, resisting the urge to throw herself down on the floor to scream and kick her feet. It wasn’t her job to have a hissy fit. It wasn’t her job to go insane—at least not visibly so. She was the producer of this movie. She had to be the voice of reason and the oracle of calm even when her blood pressure was 800 over 400, the way it was right now.

She could hear a dull roar in her ears as her blood raced through her veins. Looking on the bright side, if her head actually
did
explode, it was likely that Victor would begin to take what she had to say much more seriously.

Over the past few years—over half a decade now—she’d been the president and CEO of the Supply Closet, an office supply store that she’d built into a multimillion-dollar regional chain. She’d found, in those years, that her normal, soft-spoken delivery didn’t always get her the results she wanted, so she’d learned to square her shoulders, raise her voice, and get very, very tough. Most men thought they could steamroll over Kate O’Laughlin, and they probably could. But when she mentally slipped on her Valkyrie maiden breastplate, adjusted the twin horns on her helmet, and let Frau Steinbreaker loose, she could not only make a dent in the roller, but also stop the machine cold.

She hadn’t yet felt the need to assume her alter ego with Victor. But she could feel her backbone starting to stiffen—the first sign that the Frau was dying to be unleashed.

“We need to cast this part,” she said. That was a simple
enough concept, wasn’t it? So why didn’t he just do it? “We’re scheduled to start shooting this movie in less than a month and a half, and until we find our Virgil Laramie, we’re not going to get a commitment from any of the other actors. Maybe it’s time to take another look at the five hundred actors you’ve already rejected out of hand?”

Either that, or maybe it was time for her to start whacking herself on the head with a big stick.

Victor’s cell phone trilled, and with an arrogance that still drove her mad, even now, after they’d been divorced for close to seven years, he held up one hand, signaling her to wait as he took the call.

To date, Victor had rejected every hungry young actor in Hollywood for this part. Some of them were rising movie stars. Some were hot and happening TV actors. And they
all
had been willing to take a significant cut in pay—even down to union scale—to do this picture. To take on the meaty role of Virgil Laramie.

Virgil Laramie was a broken, bitter man who returned to South Carolina after a harsh journey to California took the lives of his wife and baby son. He’d returned east and was ready and willing to spend the rest of his life hiding in a bottle of whiskey—until his 14-year-old sister-in law shocked him by asking him to help smuggle a wagon load of runaway slaves out of the county. The girl, Jane, was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and her fearless passion, along with her deep loyalty and friendship for a young black man, slowly brought Laramie back to the world of the living.

The Promise
was going to be a chick flick—a love story, a relationship movie. It was also a period piece. The story took place in the South in the mid-1800s, several years before the American Civil War.

With those two serious strikes against it—the fact that nothing exploded and the characters wore old-fashioned clothing and did a lot of talking—Kate knew that chances
of the film being picked up by a major distributor would increase a significant amount if they had a name-brand actor attached to the project. Matthew McConaughey. Matt Damon. Ralph Fiennes.

Kate took a sip of her coffee and felt a jolt of caffeine race through her system, imagining the thrill she’d feel if they could somehow get Ralph Fiennes for the part of Virgil Laramie. At union scale. Yeah, right. Snowball’s chance in hell. But Ralph’s face was the one she imagined every time she thought of that broodingly dark character. And lately, she was thinking about Laramie far too often.

She’d created the character, and he’d come to life as she’d written the script. He was complex—a swirl of seemingly impenetrable darkness that becomes infused by the bright light of hope. He’d crumbled beneath all the pain that life had hit him with, but then he’d learned to stand and even walk again—carrying more than just his weight.

Kate was more than half in love with him.

As the screenwriter, it mattered that the actor chosen to play Laramie be right for the part. But her practical side knew both she and Victor most likely would have to compromise. If they wanted this movie to get made, they simply could not spend much more time on the casting process. They had their funding now, and those financial backers wouldn’t wait forever.

As the producer of this movie, she had four million other things she should be thinking about besides casting. In an effort to cut costs, she was responsible for scouting locations herself. She should be down in South Carolina right now.

Victor ended his call and turned back to her. “Sorry, babe. What were we talking about?”

Kate wanted to scream. Instead she put down her coffee mug and gathered up her briefcase and jacket. “I’ll be in South Carolina if you need me.”

“Katie—”

“Cast this part, Victor,” she told her ex-husband. And then she straightened her shoulders, assuming Frau Steinbreaker’s near-militaristic stance as she flexed her producer’s muscles. “Or I’ll find myself a director who
can.
”

She almost ruined the effect by laughing at the look of complete shock on Victor’s face as she marched out of the room. It was nearly as effective as having her head explode.

Jed pushed his way into the casting agent’s waiting room and stood in line at the desk that held the sign-in sheet.

The crowded room smelled like raw nerves—cold sweat, indigestion, and bad breath. It was silent, too, despite the fact that over thirty men sat in chairs that lined the walls. There was a low table in the center that was covered with magazines, but no one was reading. Some of the men had their eyes closed, others were busy checking out the competition, quickly looking away if anyone else looked up. Eye contact was minimal.

Someone coughed, and Jed heard a sound that had to be teeth grinding. The anxiety level here was off the scale.

It made him feel completely calm in comparison.

Jed filled in the next empty line on the sign-in sheet, taking his time to write his stage name in clear block letters. There was no space on the sheet for him to list his Oscar nominations.

Jed glanced at his watch as he sat down, marking the time as he once again did a quick head count. Thirty-three people. If each man took only two minutes, he was going to be sitting here for an hour. If everyone took five, he’d be here for more than twice that.

He settled back in the folding chair, fighting the annoyance that rose in him, fighting his need for a cigarette, flatly ignoring his need for a drink.

The good news was that no one had seemed to recognize him yet.

“Mister … Beaumont?” The mousy young woman who came out to check the many pages of the sign-in sheet was looking around the room.

Jed sat forward. “That’s me.”

“Did you bring a head shot?”

He stared at her. A head shot. When was the last time he’d needed a photo of himself? When was the last time he’d actually gone to this kind of audition? It had to have been at least ten years. More. “Uh,” he said. “No. I, uh, didn’t. I’m sorry, I …”

The mouse frowned slightly. “Didn’t your agent tell you that this was a serious audition? There’s a movie director in that back room and—”

Jed reached for the week-old copy of
TV Guide
that was out on the table among the other magazines. One of the networks had run
Kill Zone
last week—was it Tuesday or Wednesday? He leafed through, finding the full-page ad for the movie—a beefcake shot of him, muscles gleaming for his role as a Navy SEAL—assault weapon held loosely in his arms. He tore it out and handed it to the mouse. “Maybe that’ll do.”

He knew he was being a smart-ass, but he was tired of this. After his agent had sent him the script for
The Promise
, after Jed had read it, and loved it, and realized that Virgil Laramie was the role of a lifetime, the movie’s producer, Mary Kate O’Laughlin, had canceled their meeting.

Ron had pressed, and she’d told him flat out that she didn’t want to waste Jericho’s or her own time. In plain English, she couldn’t risk taking a chance with him. She and Vic Strauss were looking for up-and-coming talent, not someone who’d peaked over five years ago. The production was already a high financial risk—their backers might get spooked at the thought of sinking all that cash
into a project with an A-list “has been” in the lead role. Beaumont wasn’t even C-list these days. He was barely on any list at all.

It was frustrating as hell, especially since Jed knew he could play Laramie better than anyone in the world. It was as if the part had been written with him in mind. It was as if the character had been modeled on his very soul.

Ron called again and again, but O’Laughlin was adamant. She wouldn’t even give him a chance.

Over the past three months, Jed had found himself again at the absolute bottom of his personal barrel as he’d fought a bad case of the flu,
and
dealt with the fact that despite being cast in
Mean Time
, Ron’s phone wasn’t ringing off the hook. Jed had started going to parties, started schmoozing shamelessly in hopes that
some
one would take a chance and cast him in their movie.

But days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and the only call Ron received was from the producers of some bad TV sitcom. Apparently Jed didn’t even rate a guest spot on
Loveboat.

There was only one thing Jed had left to lose by coming to this audition in New York. And he wanted the role of Virgil Laramie more than he wanted to hang onto the remaining worthless shards of his pride.

The mouse’s eyes widened as she matched the name on the sign-in sheet with the picture from
TV Guide
, and she looked up at him and swallowed loudly enough for him to hear.

“Oh,” she said.

Jed gave her his best smile—the two thousand watt, five billion dollar, movie star version. “What’s your name?”

“Annie.”

“Do me a favor, Annie, and don’t tell Mary Kate and Vic that I’m out here. I want to surprise ’em.”

Annie stood staring at him, frozen in place.

“Is that okay?” he asked.

She snapped to. “Kate left about an hour ago. You’ll only be reading for Victor Strauss today.”

“Really?” Jed turned up his smile even brighter. “In that case, please feel free to let Vic know I’m here.”

Ding, dong the witch was dead—or at least safely out of the room. He actually stood a chance.