Falling Star (Beautiful Chaos #2) (8 page)

M
Y PULSE SPED UP as I mentally prepared my speech, but what came out was a garbled mess. “There’s something about this girl,” I started, “that makes me . . . literally crazy. Obsessed! I can’t control myself. Which makes me feel it must be wrong, right? I mean, love is meant to be sweet and thoughtful and caring . . . but this girl, I almost want to throttle her . . . she drives me so . . . crazy! And then the drug feeling comes back. Full on. But it’s not drugs I crave, but her.” I was sweating. Had come straight here on my run and was donned in shorts and sneakers, probably stinking of B.O., but I did feel better after expending so much pent-up energy. I needed the exercise.

“It works if you work it,” someone said, and then they all chanted, “Thanks for sharing, Jason.”

I wanted to go on, but a bodybuilder in a wife-beater tank piped up: “I relapsed last night. Fucked two women in a row. One after the other. I picked the first one up at the gym, took her out and then got sidetracked by another, prettier one, I met at the bar. I feel bad, man, like a real jerk. And the sex wasn’t even that good. Worse, I didn’t use protection.”

The group nodded knowingly. But I felt sick hearing everyone else’s sordid details. Star was different. Star was beautiful. Divine. Special. I felt I’d sullied her in some way, sharing details about her with strangers. I needed to get the hell out of this dirty meeting and see her in person. Tell her I wanted to make a go of it. A real relationship. Flowers, dinners. The whole damn lot. I needed to know if it was love I felt or simply lust, and the only possible way of finding out for sure was to woo her.

The old fashioned way.

I slipped out of the meeting but, with my head in my hands, went careening into someone glued to her iPad. We were both at fault. “Sorry,” we both said simultaneously.

I looked up. “Holly?”

“Jake, what a coincidence!” Then she furrowed her brows. “I came to this branch because I though I was being incognito.” She laughed.

“Me too,” I admitted. We’d both been caught.

“So, how’s it going with
Skye’s The Limit
?”

“Great,” I told her. “How are things working out with my uncle? Is he treating you nicely?”

“He’s a dream,” she answered with a grin. I’d gotten Holly the job. I’d fucked her and then felt guilty: a sort of severance pay. “How about that wild child, Star Davis?” she went on. “You’ve got a lot on your plate with her.”

“She’s fine, really,” I said, wishing I could have some sort of anonymity in this bloody town.

“I see she’s having some fun with your AD?” Holly said with a little smirk.

“
What
?”

She shoved her iPad in my face. “Twitter feed. That’s why I crashed into you. This one’s trending as we speak.”

I looked at the screen. There was Leo, his lips centimeters away from Star’s face, as Star gazed at him with her big fucking baby-doll blue eyes. My heart began to pound uncontrollably.

“Eat-A-Pita parking lot, couldn’t keep their hands off each other apparently. Sexy guy your AD. When she’s done with him, pass him my way.”

I stood there, dumbfounded. Star was punishing me. Or maybe not. Maybe she genuinely didn’t give a damn. And as far as Leo was concerned? He was fucking well fired. And if I had my way he’d never work in this town again. Dammit, I’d trusted him! I’d told him Star was off limits! But then, poor guy, as far as he knew I was still with Cassie. And it had been my own bloody fault that he was chaperoning Star home in the first place! No, I wouldn’t fire him, but . . .

“Well, bye, Jake, see you around. Good luck with that little vixen. Rumor has it she’s tipped to win an Oscar—great performance they’re all saying. Early days though, eh? If she’s hanging out with a Russian they’re big on vodka shots and partying hard—”

“Bye, Holly,” I interrupted. “Say hi to my uncle for me—tell him I’ll call him soon.”

I’d left my phone behind so couldn’t call Leo. Bastard! I had to stop them! Right now!

I started running faster than I’d ever run in my life.

I
OPENED MY EYES, expecting to find light, but stared into the unending darkness. I caught my breath, panicked by the eerie silence and deep black that was now my vision. I had no idea what time it was, nor where the hell I was. Some kind of bedding was beneath me. It was pitch, pitch black. My head felt groggy and I ached, but not with a headache when you have a pain behind your eyes from too much alcohol or something, but a hazy, flu-like feeling, thick in my brain. I tried to recall something—anything—but all that came to mind was the fact that I must be late and I should be on set.

That’s right—I remembered suddenly—we’d be flying out early to South Dakota. My hands padded out in front of me and I felt an unfamiliar, hard mattress beneath me, some rough sheets, and I realized I was shivering. I pulled the sheet up around myself and felt my naked body, although I still had my bra, panties, and thigh-highs on. The mattress was directly on the floor. I walked my fingers to the edge of the bedding and felt the tackiness of linoleum. I tried to lift up my head and sit.

My lids felt heavy, swollen, and my head and shoulders slumped back down in a thud. I felt numb again and let myself fall back into a muzzy, dazed sleep.

T
HEY’D BEEN GONE for twelve hours. No news. Disappeared into thin air. The more I was finding out, the more painful their betrayal was. Star betraying her profession, and Leo betraying me. I’d given him a chance. Plucked him from obscurity. Star was being given a chance, too, by the studio—the role of a lifetime—and she was throwing it all away. For what? So we had a little scene in my trailer?—she got pissed off at me. So, what? It was no reason to bail on the movie
itself.
I still couldn’t believe what they were telling me was true. Something didn’t add up.

Brian poured us out another coffee. It was six a.m. We were in my kitchen, waiting for more news from the private investigators I’d hired. The law didn’t recognize “missing persons” when they hadn’t even been gone twenty-four hours. Besides, it was their right, as adults, to do whatever they liked. Why would they waste taxpayers’ money hunting down a runaway couple “in love?”

The ten-second YouTube video clip played over and over in my mind. Leo leaning in and saying, “Sleeping Beauty” and Star’s eyes half-mast, full of lust, or full of something.

Brian was still talking—I was only half paying attention; my mind was focused on losing Star to Leo.

He rambled on, “ ‘
So they broke their contracts, then ‘sue them,’
a police officer said to me, thinking he was being smart. The law doesn’t give a fuck, Jake. You did the right thing to hire private investigators—the cops aren’t going to lift a finger to help us. They have gang shootings in South Central—a runaway movie star and her side-kick are the least of their problems.”

I looked at my watch again. We should have been at the airport by now, settling into our cabins later this morning, and setting up shots for the golden hour, this evening, when we’d be commencing the car chase.

“It’s just not like Star,” Brian repeated for the umpteenth time.

“How do you know, what is, or isn’t, ‘like Star’ ” I snapped. “She’s an alcoholic/drug addict, Brian—she’s done this sort of shit before.”

“No she hasn’t, Jake. She may have turned up sozzled on set, but she still
showed.
She’s a professional. ‘The show must go on’ . . . that’s the kind of person she is. She wouldn’t simply bail on her job like this, whatever personal problems she’s having.”

“I can’t get over
Leo
,” I muttered. “How could he do that to me? After all I’ve done for him?”

“Come on, Jake! He’s an opportunist. A poor boy from Russia—”

“Ukraine, not Russia, there’s a difference, Brian.”

“Not really. You can’t fool me that it should be part of Europe with all this European Union crap. It’s still got the Iron Curtain mentality—their people are half starving to death. Underprivileged is the same the world over, especially in the East. A poor, working class boy, that’s Leo. Criminal record, you told me. Jailbird. Served time. Star has
money
. She’s beautiful. He must have thought all his Christmases had come at once, dollar signs flashing in his eyes.”

I longed to explain to Brian that it was
me
she’d been with,
me
she desired, but I didn’t want to give him the pleasure of saying, “I told you so” and that it was my fault for fooling around with such a vulnerable teenager, fresh out of rehab, and I’d brought this upon us all. Besides, Brian was right. And maybe the Cassie stuff had really got to Star. Perhaps Star’s feelings were genuine for me and I’d hurt her quite badly. But then the vision of Leo and her, as good as kissing, sent another fresh spike of jealousy ripping through my veins—I could feel the tightness of my mouth, my fists clenched—I wanted to punch somebody. I wanted to punch my own reflection in a mirror. I’d fucked up. Big time.

Brian went on, “Both their passports are with them, or at least missing, so they must have taken them. Suitcases packed, with clothing also missing—all this confirmed by Star’s assistant, Janice—and Star’s Porsche gone. You think maybe they decided to go on ahead of us to the Badlands?”

“If so, her Porsche would have been parked at one of the airports. Unless they decided to take a road trip and join us in a few days’ time. Do some sightseeing in Mount Rushmore, or the Black Hills, or something.”

“But Star knew we were meant to be shooting this evening—she wouldn’t just not show.”

“But their phones were left behind, Brian. Left on Star’s kitchen table. That spells abandonment to me. They’ve scarpered off somewhere to be together. I just don’t
get
it, though. So fucking
unprofessional
.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Jake. Leo? yes. Star? Not a chance. She’s been in this business from the age of two.
The show must go on
—that’s every actor’s mantra. It’s part of an actor’s DNA. Come rain or shine, no actor worth his or her weight abandons a project midway. It’s like a sailor with his ship. There are unspoken rules. This just doesn’t make sense.”

“So what do we do now?”

Brian shrugged. He was chewing Juicy Fruit and drinking coffee at the same time. “Shoot around her? That’s what Pearl Chevalier wants us to do. Use the stuntwoman we hired and a double for the car chase and wait until Star shows to do the close-ups and two-shots. Maybe she’s just gone AWOL for twenty-four hours. Needs to clear her head. Who knows? But we have a lot of money at stake here, Jake. Payrolls, unions—I just don’t think we can persuade the insurance to cover this. It isn’t an ‘accident’ or anything. We’re in a fix—a weird predicament. That’s why a bodyguard was hired especially to watch her—” he raised his bushy eyebrows at me—“so this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. I think all we can do is keep the investigators on it—see if they can track them down, which won’t be easy without their cell phones acting as GPSs—and wait until she calls.”

“
If
she calls,” I mumbled. Guilt gathered thick in my throat. It was my fault that John had been given the go-ahead to let Leo drive Star back to my place. He probably wouldn’t have agreed had he not seen Cassie in floods of tears, begging him to take her to the airport, and flinging her arms about his bear-like body—a damsel in distress. She’d wanted to get away from me as soon as possible, so when he called my cell I told him yes, to take Cassie to the airport—to book her into First Class—use the company credit card, which I’d pay back, and to give her whatever cash he had—I’d pay that back too—and yes, that it was fine for Leo to accompany Star home. But “home” turned out to be Star’s house, not mine, where she’d planned her getaway.

What a fucking fiasco.