Home Matters (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella, Book 1) (4 page)

Olivia yanked her hand away and stabbed her outstretched finger to her temple. “Are you slow or something? My screen test, you moron,” she practically yelled. “You came in all smarmy, a-and ‘you look like Tinkerbell—’”

“I never specifically mentioned Tinkerbell—”

“Got me all fired up… hostile-like, in front of the director,” Olivia interrupted. She wasn’t interested in his clarifications. “No way will the show sign me now.”

Pete shook his head like she couldn’t be more wrong. “Are you kidding me?” he said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “That’s what they’re looking for—tension and drama. If we can create it organically—
like we did
—then the show comes off more authentic. Viewers eat it up.” He took Olivia by the shoulders, captured her gaze in his. “We gave them exactly what they wanted.”

She hated to admit it, but his hands were strong and reassuring against her trembling body. “So, you were helping me?” She blinked up at him, wishing she could believe what he was saying. Except that agonizing voice inside her head continued to wail that she was ruined. And her undoing had been… All. His. Fault.

She wiggled out of his grip. “Why would you do that?”

He shoved his hands into his pants pockets and glanced away. “You remind of someone, I guess.” A shadow of sadness skittered across his blue eyes, but that mischievous look of his returned before she had a chance to consider what it meant.

“So what? You’re saying I should be thanking you?” she said, to which he simply lifted a shoulder. “Unbelievable. You actually expect me to be grateful to you for provoking me during the most important—”

“Miss Pembroke?” a voice called from the reception area. “Is Olivia Pembroke still out here anywhere?”

Olivia swallowed back her venom. She stepped out from the alcove that concealed the restroom doors to see the director’s assistant searching the faces of Baron Broadcasting’s next victims.

The assistant spied Olivia and motioned for her to follow. “Come with me,” she insisted, then turned, heading back toward the soundstage. “Pete, you too,” she called over her shoulder.

Olivia’s tantrum backpedaled a half step. Could it be that Pete had been trying to help her after all? The mere possibility made her even angrier.

She lobbed a suspicious look over her shoulder at him.

His face stretched wide into a Cheshire grin. “You’re welcome.”

The Savannah air was moist against Olivia’s skin as she leaned over the drafting table, studying a current floor plan for the house the show planned to remodel. The main floor consisted of a maze of small rooms connected by thin hallways. Looking back to the electronic tablet she had cradled in the crook of her arm, she ran her lines in her head while trying to remember which walls she needed to delete, and which ones she was supposed to simply move, once they started shooting.

“Eleanor?” Olivia pointed to the wall separating the kitchen and family room. “Why can’t we just take out this wall but leave the back façade of the fireplace, exposing the brick, and add some wrap around shelving?”

A petite woman who chronically dressed in black, with spikey hair and wire eyeglasses, Eleanor was Olivia’s “on-screen” design assistant while in actuality, the show’s “real-life” designer. As it turned out, the show’s execs hadn’t been concerned with her lack of design experience, nor had she needed to exaggerate about her design training, because she wasn’t being required to actually do any… designing.

Eleanor’s beady eyes gave Olivia a look that said
Are you dumb or just pretending to be?
“Why on earth would we want to do that?”

Olivia tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She hated the way people in general tended to pay blondes more notice while, at the same time, treating them with less respect. She’d made it her life’s mission to prove to the world that hair color and intelligence were not mutually exclusive.

She soldiered on. “Well, for starters, it would block the sightline from the front door to the sink?”

“Look Olivia, I appreciate your input. I really do,” Eleanor said, though she looked more irritated than grateful. “But like I told you yesterday, when you wanted to move the kitchen sink to the island, and the day before that when you thought removing the butler’s pantry would compromise the historical integrity of the home,” she recapped, “I’m the designer, and you’re my… window-dressing, so to speak.” Before Olivia had a chance to respond, she turned on her heel toward the front door and headed outside to where the film crew was in the process of setting up to shoot their segment.

Olivia didn’t appreciate being demeaned to an ornament, and normally she would have protested, but she had a more pressing issue to contend with at the moment. It was Thursday, the third day of a very tight shooting schedule, and given that she was standing in a half-demoed kitchen—Pete’s handiwork, she assumed, even though she hadn’t seen him since they’d left LA—she was having trouble shaking the feeling that this design was an epic mistake. One that all of America would assume had been hers.

Pressing the tablet to her chest, Olivia tore off after Eleanor. “Right, but you’re taking down every single wall on this main floor,” she said, not ready to let her objections go just yet. “As a born and bred Southerner, I can assure you that folks down here prefer a certain amount of coziness. This design feels more like a loft than a warm, inviting family home.”

Eleanor stopped on the front stoop and bent her arm over her mouth. “The homeowners said they wanted an open plan,” she said on the trail of a nasty barking cough.

Not wanting to chance catching whatever virus had laid siege to Eleanor’s immune system, Olivia took a step back. “No,” she disagreed. “If memory serves, they said ‘a more open’ plan. That implies fewer walls, not no discernible division whatsoever.”

Palming her throat, Eleanor continued, “Olivia, were you or were you not the one who told me how William let it slip—just yesterday—that the Calhouns’ had expressed a change of heart and requested he show them loft-style condos instead of single family homes?” she asked. “I have it on good authority his people have been down by the river scoping out townhomes for two days now. Besides, completely open plans are best for entertaining.”

The competition on this show was much more intense than Olivia had ever imagined. Winning the homeowners to one side or the other meant a hefty bonus for the winning side, and, more important, job security. She needed this win as much as Eleanor, which had her giving another thought to whether or not she wanted to push. As usual, she couldn’t help herself.

“But this couple didn’t say they liked to entertain,” Olivia asserted, then quickly corrected herself. “Well, except when they were reading from the prompter. Why these shows think everyone is obsessed with ‘entertaining’ is beyond me.”

Eleanor spun her eyes skyward. “Your enthusiasm is admirable, really, but need I remind you—again—your job here is not to question mine. All you need concern your pretty little head with is convincing the family they love our renovation and thus choose to stay in this home. I’ve lost too many homeowners to William’s sweet-talking ways, and I’m not losing the first challenge of this season,” she said as she skipped down the front steps, her bony fingers gliding along the wrought iron banister. “So I suggest you get on board with this design if you’re going to have any chance of swaying the family to stay.”

Olivia huffed out a breath and chased Eleanor down to the front sidewalk. “I wouldn’t have to ‘sway the family to stay’ if we would just listen to them, give them what they want.”

Eleanor’s quick pace hit a sudden stop. She shot Olivia a perturbed look. “They don’t know what they want. That’s why they hired us.” She scanned the faces of crewmembers milling about the thin sidewalk and street. “Marty,” she called over to the show’s producer.

Thumbs dancing across the screen of his phone, he typed a few last steps before looking up. “Yes, love?”

Eleanor hooked a thumb in Olivia’s direction. “Do something…”

Uh-oh
. Olivia’s heart sprinted a lap around her chest. She’d pushed too far.

Marty slipped the phone into his pocket, his willowy stride bringing him to Olivia’s side in three sweeping steps. “Olivia, dear.” He lowered his pointy chin and rounded his grey eyes. “Let’s go over this again. While it’s Eleanor’s responsibility to conjure up award-winning designs, it’s yours to be the beautiful, unwittingly charming new face of
Home Matters
.” He dragged a fingertip along the blunt edge of Olivia’s bob cut. “With which, I have to say, so far you’ve done an excellent job.”

Olivia thought she should smile, but her lips refused to turn up. She may have appreciated the compliment had it not come as a brush-off in disguise. The scenes they’d shot so far had been mostly opening segments with the Calhouns where they discussed budget and “deal breaker” lists with William and her. In other words, necessary requirements for both their current, and/or future home they’d later use to consider when making their final decision. And then there were those shots of Olivia or William walking pensively along a scenic street. Her favorites were the segments with William where they compared each other’s challenges in the form of back and forth jibes aimed at convincing the other he or she had the tougher job ahead. But through all this, she had yet to hear whether or not she’d been meeting expectations.

“I was just…” she started to explain her misgivings over the design when she caught sight of a group of fans. Held at bay by yellow caution tape, they were holding paper masks with
her
face printed on them. The show had a pack of groupies that followed it from location to location. Most of them were Team-William, but evidentially she’d somehow picked up a few supporters of her own. Then the upward skyrocketing number of her social media followers flashed before her eyes. The show’s first episode hadn’t even aired yet, but the early buzz generated by the network had driven thousands upon thousands of new fans to her Internet pages. A few paparazzi had even been waiting outside the hotel this morning to take her picture.

And working with William had been more amazing than she could have imagined. He was generous and beguiling. The spark of affection they’d lit during her screen test had ignited into the perfect onscreen, and off-screen, mix of friend and foe. Her career, her future, was ticking through the final countdown to “lift off.” Was she going to blow all the progress she’d made thus far over a design—a matter she technically knew nothing about?

“Well, of course.” She gave Marty a repentant smile. “The design’s perfect.”

A triumphant grin stretched across Marty’s long face. He looked like he’d stuck a banana between his cheeks. “Splendid,” he agreed, then turned to the director. “Gus, are we just about ready to roll?”

Gus held up a couple of sausage-like fingers. “Two minutes.”

Mortified by how easily she’d surrendered to being nothing more than a puppet with a pretty face, Olivia averted her gaze back to the tablet in her hands. If she didn’t learn to control her feral tongue, she’d plummet from being an almost somebody to a nobody again faster than a flowerless bachelorette at a rose ceremony.

Searching for clarity, she turned her eyes over the outer façade of the home. Tall windows flanked in black shutters, three on the top floor and two on the main, engulfed the front of the mansion. The front door sat to the left. Adorned in Greek-style accents and haloed by a half-moon window, it was covered by a small balcony. Two street level windows peeked out from behind the black iron railing, and a third from under an arched opening beneath the stoop. From the left side of the house, another balcony held up by pillars shaded a small veranda that looked out over a garden, veiled by trees draped in Spanish moss. Down the street in both directions, similar homes stood lined up like a row of dominoes turned on end. Knock one over, and the rest would fall in turn.

“One, nonfat, hold-everything-that-makes-it-worth-drinking, latte,” a happy voice sang in Olivia’s ear. Startled, she looked toward her assistant, Tristi. On the stout side of slim, she wore a plaid mini skirt, dark tights, and Dr. Martens boots. A knit cap caged her riotous mass of blonde, chin-length ringlets. She pushed the cup into Olivia’s hand and nodded across the narrow street. “Looks like
someone
has a stalker.”