She folded her hands on the table, the wooden surface holding up against the burden of her strained smile. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?”
“This is Tyler Tapia,” Lyle introduced with a wide swipe of his arm. “Our resident prodigy.”
“Yep,” Tyler acknowledged. “That’s me.”
Gwen, looking like she had swallowed her tongue, volleyed her attention between the director and Tyler’s bored face. “Didn’t you win an Academy Award when you were twelve?”
“Yep.” Tyler still sat there, not looking up from his phone.
“Wait,” Gwen said, picking up a pencil and tapping it on the table. “If Tyler has an award under his belt, why does Garrick get top billing?”
I straightened in my chair. Her question indicated that despite trying so hard to ignore me, she was still thinking about me. Maybe she’d never stopped. Sure, it could just be annoyance that I caught her talking shit about me, but I was hoping it was more than that.
I immediately frowned at my thoughts.
I’d known Gwen for less than an hour. She was my co-star. Yes, I screwed around a lot, but I never screwed around with someone I was filming with, ever. There were too many hot, willing girls to shit where I worked. So why the hell should it matter whether Gwen was attracted to me or hated my damn guts?
“I do mostly indie films,” Tyler answered in a flat-lined tone before Lyle could scrounge up an explanation. “Greater depth, deeper meaning.”
Swallowing her envy in light of his potent indifference, Gwen sighed. “Well, Tyler, care to turn your phone off and join us in some greater, deeper team bonding? Today is the first day of work.”
Five points for Gwen. As much as I liked Tyler in spite of his aloofness, the phone thing
was
getting to me. Even I made sure to turn mine to vibrate before we started.
Tyler didn’t miss a beat, the inflections in his voice and expressions almost undetectable. “The average human brain can handle only three to four tasks at once on top of maintaining all bodily functions.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Oh, boy, here we go.”
“I can easily process twice that much. So not only can I walk, talk, and chew gum, Gwendolyn, I can also write blogs, read articles, and solve three Sudoku puzzles in the time it takes you to do your makeup.”
“It only takes me fifteen minutes to do my makeup,” Gwen said.
“Well, then, I rest my case, don’t I?” Raising his eyes, he leveled Gwen with a stare that could have stopped an oncoming train. “The phone stays on.” With that, he resumed his mad thumbing across the screen.
“I don’t know about you all, but I’m impressed.” Shane glanced around, suppressing a chuckle.
I turned to Gwen, wanting to get her to relax. To stop worrying so much and just enjoy getting to know her co-stars. “Tyler gets cranky when he’s bored,” I said. “You’ll learn to love him.”
“That seems unlikely,” she said flatly, turning to Lyle to bring some sense of order to this melee. Tyler looked at me briefly and rolled his eyes. I could tell he thought Gwen was an uptight bitch. I’d tend to agree with him if it wasn’t for the way her face had paled and the near-desperate look that had come over her since the meeting had begun. In truth, she looked a little like she wanted to hurl, and she was biting her lip punishingly, the way girls sometimes did when they wanted to stop themselves from speaking…or crying.
Interesting.
Lyle offered Gwen an ignorant smile. “This is going splendid, don’t you think?”
I suppressed a smile when Gwen tapped the pencil a little harder to drive her point home, unable to help admiring her tenacity. “So we have an action hero, a know-it-all brainiac with a phone for a limb, and a third unestablished person, no offense Shane, who has absolutely no experience whatsoever…”
“No
acting
experience,” Shane cleared up for her.
“I’m sorry. No acting experience for this
acting
job.”
I threw my hands up, wanting to get the meeting moving but more than that wanting to stop Gwen from alienating Tyler
and
Shane before things even got started. “That about sums it up.” I leaned in Gwen’s direction and mock-whispered, “Wait, I’m the brainiac, right?”
Her eyeballs shot mental bullets at my forehead before turning to Lyle. “And you think this is the right formula for this TV series, Mr. Steinhoff?”
“Said our leading lady who’s never done anything but Kellogg’s commercials and one daytime soap in her life,” Tyler added. “Lucky for you—or unlucky depending on who you ask—you’re Richard Vickers’s daughter.”
Richard Vickers’s daughter? Executive producer of Fluidity Films, the production company filming
Straightlaced
? The same man with over two hundred producer and executive producer credits to his name who used to hit it out of the stratosphere every time but had suffered a major fall during the past few years thanks to number of box office flops? It had gotten to the point that being connected to a Fluidity Films project was considered somewhat of a curse. If not for Lyle’s involvement in
Straightlaced
, I wouldn’t even have considered joining the cast.
I suddenly realized why Gwen would be taking this project even more seriously than the rest of us. She was under enormous pressure, not just to advance her own career, but also to help her father and Fluidity Films save face. Even as she was doing so, she’d have to face accusations, just like the one Tyler had made, that the only reason she’d even gotten the role was because her father had influenced the final casting decisions.
My gaze shot to Gwen, and to my surprise, instead of looking uncomfortable, her eyes blazed with pride and genuine passion.
“I
am
lucky to be my father’s daughter, Tyler, and if you choose to think that means I was granted special treatment, I’m not going to waste my breath trying to change your mind. On the other hand, don’t diss soap operas. At least not the one I worked on.”
Tyler’s eyes flashed with a hint of respect just as Erica held a hand up. “I think that’s enough team bonding for today. Don’t you, Lyle?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Lyle removed his glasses and ran a wrinkled cleaning cloth over them. “Erica, why don’t you tell them a bit about the book and our vision for the series—food for thought before we break off for the day. Tomorrow, we’ll reconvene for part one of the read-through.”
“I think that would be a great idea,” Erica said, sitting up a little straighter.
I listened while Erica laid out the book’s plot and points most critical to emphasize in the show. The gist of her explanation, like most romance novel summaries, boiled down to two people in opposite walks of life who were never supposed to fall in love, but did.
Surprise, surprise.
Such bullshit. Everyone knew love didn’t actually work that way and if they didn’t, they should. I may have experienced my fair share of heartache at a younger age, but it taught me a lot just the same.
After a while, she began repeating her same points, and Lyle did nothing to stop her, so I found myself tuning out and becoming far more interested in the super-composed way Gwen held herself. She still refused to look at me even though she had to feel my eyes locked on her.
Clearly, I had gotten under her skin.
It was only a matter of time before I got into her head too.
I couldn’t help wondering, half wistfully and half nervously, as I watched the way she rolled the tip of her pencil in her mouth: If I wanted her there, how long would it take me to get in her bed?
Gwen
“You can do this,” I assured myself for the third time, firmly rooted in the back of my father’s Lexus again on the way back to Sun Studio. After leaving yesterday, I’d practically stumbled into my house, mustering just enough energy to strip off my clothes before collapsing in bed, where I’d pulled the covers over my head and hidden until Vi had pulled me out for dinner. God, it had been a long day. And to make it worse, I’d come off as a total bitch to almost everyone, all because I feared the entire show was going to be a huge disaster and somehow, my father was going to find a way to blame me.
People had no idea what it took to keep Fluidity Films going for over thirty years. They had no idea how much my father had sacrificed, the hard work and dedication he’d put in, the stress and endless hours he’d devoted. It didn’t seem fair that after all that, the company was floundering and now the one director who could save it had carte-blanche to hire no-name actors and action heroes who had no business being in as critical a show as
Straightlaced
.
I had nothing against Shane or Tyler or Garrick as people.
Well, maybe Garrick, just a little. But that was mostly because he had a reputation as a major partier slash manwhore, and the guy seemed to get off on antagonizing me. Really, could I blame him? It wasn’t like we’d met under the best of terms. The truth was, I found him very attractive, and had only said the opposite because I’d been surprised to hear he was my leading man. I’d seen a couple of his movies and developed a little crush on him. After what had happened with Randall, I’d immediately panicked at the idea of having strong chemistry with my co-star again.
Then there was Erica Ellis, all cool and professional. The last thing I wanted was to look like an air-headed fan girl or give away how intimidating it was to be working with a bestselling author. But after the way I’d acted yesterday, Erica probably thought I was a bitch too.
Ugh,
this project was quickly devolving into a disaster.
“Miss Gwen?” In the rearview mirror, Thomas appraised me with acute concern.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said. Any confession of weakness or uncertainty would make it back to my father in record time. Donning an assertive smile, I collected my things and opened the door. “I’ll see you back here at three. Thank you.”
“Yes, miss. Have a pleasant day.”
“You too, Thomas.”
For the second time this week, I stood on the sidewalk staring at the green and white building where I grew up most of my life. If I put in enough time of my own, I might be producer here one day. But only if I kept things together. And did my part to get Fluidity Films back on the right track. Thomas drove away, and I muttered to myself once again, “You can do this.” Mustering my courage, and determination, I straightened my jacket and marched inside.
“Good morning, Miss Vickers,” Norm, the front door security guard, and Bettina, the secretary chimed in near-unison.
“Good morning,” I replied as I turned the corner at the first hallway and strolled into the meeting room.
Garrick was already there, looking completely nonchalant and ready at the same time. How did he manage to do that? I knew I looked presentable in a pretty pencil skirt and blouse with the top button artfully undone, but I still felt tense, while he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed after having lots and lots of sex.
Erica, as amazing as she was, wore what looked like a potato sack with a belt. The girl was a brilliant author, but my God, someone get this woman on
What Not To Wear
. Maybe if she didn’t completely hate me, I could give her some pointers. Maybe we could even hang out together. I was going to be in New Mexico for quite a long time without Vi as my support system. It would be nice to have a female friend while I was there.
Everyone took their seats, mine the farthest from Garrick, then Lyle began… “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today, I’d like us to do a read-through of the script. Let’s go as far as we can in four hours. Tomorrow we’ll pick up where we leave off. After that, it’s T-minus three days until we head to Albuquerque to begin filming.”
“I’m excited to be back in New Mexico,” Erica said. “I wrote the book while enrolled at UNM. It’s pretty specific as far as the setting. All real places down to the color of the street signs and the bars I mention.”
Shane opened his copy of the book, browsing through the table of contents. “Are the people real, too?”
“Some of them are based on real people, yes, but that’s how it usually is in novels.” She laughed politely. “No real names are used.”
I supposed that was half the fun of writing—getting back people who’d done you wrong by casting them in your book as jerks or conniving bitches. Maybe one day I would write a book and name my Randall character Scandall. Or Lamedall.
“So, this disclaimer on the front page,” Shane said, picking up her book and flipping to the first page, “about relations to people living or dead being completely coincidental...”
“Is bullshit.” Erica smiled then cocked her head to one side, as if asking,
Any other questions?
Tyler actually looked up from his phone for a nanosecond to crack a smile.
“Anyway…” Lyle coughed explosively and smoothed down his thin hair. “We open with a scene where Lacey is in her room, unpacking her last box after moving into her house.”
Garrick lifted his hand. “She bought a house?”
“She’s renting,” Erica clarified. “Dirt cheap to do so out there.”
“As a freshman?” Garrick asked again, narrowing his eyes.