Playing Dirty (13 page)

Her spine snapped ruler straight. “Ex
cuse
me?”

“I’m paying you a generous wage to be available when I need you, and you just go waltzing off without a word to anyone?”

“Seriously?” Fury surged through her veins. “I was there eleven hours!”

“And I was there fourteen!” he roared. “So—what?—you blew off your duties because you’ve got another hot date with your Brazilian stud, or something?”

“Argentinean,” she snapped. “And do I
look
like I’m ready for a date? Do I look like I’m having any sort of fun at all?”

His insulting once-over was the final straw. With a glance at the tie he wore today—an article of apparel she hadn’t seen on him since high school—she wrapped her fist around it, turned on her bare heel and marched for the kitchen. He could walk or he could choke. It made no difference to her.

Swearing a blue streak, he used one hot-skinned hand to unpeel her fingers from around the strip of patterned silk. But he followed in her wake when she kept walking. “Why the hell are you limping?”

“Because I’ve been on my feet for eleven freaking hours and they hurt!”

“Well, if you didn’t wear those stupid heels all the time they’d probably feel a whole lot better.”

She whirled to face him. “Screw you, Cade. I’ve still got a couple hours’ worth of work before I can even
think
about putting my feet up and I’m in no mood to listen to your fashion advice or reprimands for not conforming to your fascist time clock. So if that’s all you came to say, you can just march your butt out of my house.”

“That’s not why I’m here.” Again he shoved his face aggressively close and said between perfect white teeth, “
That
would be to hear you tell me to my face why you blew off the actress who’s going to play Agnes when I specifically sent her to you.”

“Who?” Then her brain kicked in. “That girl with the soul-sucking stare and no social skills?
She’s
going to play Miss A?”

She gave him a straight shot to his solar plexus with the heel of her hand, and, as he straightened, finally getting out of her face, she demanded, “And I was supposed to know this how? She came in while I was scrambling to get everything on the table for the postshoot rush. She didn’t introduce herself, she didn’t say you’d sent her—she just demanded I tell her everything I know about Agnes. When I said I didn’t have the time she stormed out in a big huff without giving me a chance to finish my damn sentence, which would have been to tell her I’d be happy to talk to her after I got the food service ready.”
Okay, “happy” might be pushing it.

Still. Close enough.

But did Mr. High and Mighty say, Whoops, sorry for the misunderstanding, maybe I jumped to conclusions?

Hell, no.

“It’s not like anyone on the crew is in imminent danger of starvation. It’s a helluva lot more important to me that you help the actress portraying Agnes get some insight into her character than it is that you feed the crew,” he informed her flatly.

“Then you should have told me that before I made myself crazy trying to keep up with doing just that! Next time I’ll drop everything and
you
can deal with the cranky people wanting to know why they aren’t getting anything to eat. And tell your precious actress to try communicating while you’re at it!” About-facing, she headed back to the kitchen. “Now go away. I’ve still got a ton of stuff to do.”

Cade knew he should probably do exactly that. They were both way too riled up, and pushing things now was just asking to escalate the situation into something he was sure to regret.

Yet still he tromped behind the angry twitch of her inverted-heart butt, reaching out to grasp her arm just as they rounded the end of the breakfast bar.

Turning on him, she jerked her arm free. “Don’t. Touch me!”

I’ll do more than touch you, baby.
She was flushed and furious, and he wanted nothing more than to back her against the counter, lift her onto it, jerk her knees apart and step between them. He wanted to—

Jesus.
Stepping back, he raised his hands in surrender. Sucked in a deep breath.

And blew it out. “No hands, see? Keeping ’em to myself here.” He looked beyond her at the huge stainless bowl on the counter. It was half full of shredded cabbage, and piles of food spread from one end of the granite slab to the other. Looking back at her, he noticed
for the first time that her usually pristine clothes were spotted with food stains. “What the hell?”

Delicate auburn brows drawing together, lush lips flattening and hands fisting, she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and tapped her foot.

“What are you doing here, Ava?”

“What does it
look
like I’m doing? Prepping food for tomorrow.”

“You’re
making
everything? By yourself?”

“Who do you think’s been making it, the freaking food fairy?”

“I thought you were picking it up from a caterer.” And you could’ve knocked him over with one of her long eyelashes to discover she’d been preparing it all.

She gave him a look that clearly said,
You’re an idiot.
“Have you bothered to
look
at the bills I’ve submitted?”

This
was the Ava he remembered. The Ava who from kindergarten to senior year had stood toe-to-toe with him and never hesitated to give him shit—or to call him on his own.

He much preferred dealing with this Ava over the woman who gave Miss Manners a run for her money. “I look at
all
the bills, babyface. I assumed you were scoring us one of your killer discounts like the ones you got for the housing.”

She blew out a disgusted, “Pfft.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say something?”

“Why didn’t
you?
Or have Beks tell me? I’ve never worked a documentary before. You said do the food service—I thought this was what you expected. Besides, it was fine until the number of people I was feeding started multiplying like rabbits. God.” She shook her
head. “Your communication skills rank right up there with your crappy actress’s.”

“Hire someone to either do it or help you do it.”

She gave him a curt nod. “I’ll get on that first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, I still have a Thai salad and a pot of soup to make.” She flapped a dismissive hand at him. “So go away.”

He found himself doing just that. A wry smile tugging one corner of his mouth, he closed her front door behind him.

Yep. No doubt about it. It sure rocked to be such a hotshot producer.

It was always a power rush to know you could command so much respect.

T
HE FOLLOWING
morning, Ava contacted one of the caterers she used and hung up with a smile on her face, knowing that her workload would drop dramatically by this afternoon. In some respects it lessened immediately, since there was no need to prep all the replacement food for the stuff that got gobbled up this morning. With the sudden wealth of time on her hands, she went looking for the actress Cade had hired to play Miss A.

She found her pacing the upstairs hallway, muttering under her breath. Introducing herself, Ava learned the actress’s name was Heather McNulty. She led the young woman to a guest bedroom, sat her down and explained a little about her relationship with Miss A. Then she invited her to ask whatever she wanted.

Two hours later, she still thought Heather’s social skills were lousy, and her reservations about the actress’s ability to portray Agnes weren’t exactly allayed. She hoped she was wrong—but didn’t have a wonderful feeling about the chances. Heather could barely string three or four words together when you talked to her about anything other than Agnes. How on earth could
she convincingly portray the complexity of Miss A’s personality?

The actress was intense about her craft, though. Ava would give her that. She must have insisted on practicing the deep timbre of Miss Agnes’s voice close to a hundred times, trying to get it exactly right. It was admirable, Ava supposed—but tiring. Correcting the woman sure wore the hell out of
her.

But she was willing to supply Heather with every scrap of information at her disposal if it would help her do Miss Agnes credit.

After the younger woman strode off, still mumbling to herself, Ava decided she needed to watch Cade film Heather’s first segment, which was being shot today—if for no other reason than to reassure herself it wasn’t as bad as she feared.

Surely that wasn’t possible.

The grips had moved the hair and makeup gear out of Miss A’s bedroom suite and moved the filming equipment in. When Ava slipped into the sitting room, she found it in the state of controlled chaos she’d come to expect. Grips were still moving gear around, the lighting engineer ran tests and the boom operator adjusted his microphones. Across the room, Cade and Louie discussed she-wasn’t-sure-what in low voices, during which Cade leaned several times to look at something on a small screen.

Beks had told her the scene they were shooting this afternoon featured a disagreement between Agnes and Daddy Wolcott over Agnes’s desire to take flying lessons. When Ava had asked why, the PA explained it would establish Miss A’s take-charge-of-her-own-life personality faster and more interestingly than a voice-over would and recommended Ava imagine the brief
dramatization followed by photos and an old newsreel snippet of Miss A with her plane, followed by Jane talking about how great it would’ve been to have known Miss Agnes then.

All of which sounded very cool—as long as the acting didn’t blow.

Stomach uneasy, she leaned against a far wall as Cade left the director of photography doing his technical stuff and crossed to talk to the actors, who were dressed in clothing of a much earlier era. The longer she had to wait during the interval between discussion, positioning and shooting, the more her tension increased.

Finally they called for silence on the set. When they had it, Cade said, “Roll camera,” then called for action after Louie let him know the cameras were up to speed and ready to roll.

The actors began their scene, and as Ava watched, the knots in her gut loosened one by one. The change in Heather once she was the focus of the camera was a revelation. One that made her remember what Poppy had said last November about Cade’s reputation for discovering hot new talent destined for a meteoric rise to the top.

Maybe face-to-face Heather didn’t display a discernible personality of her own, but she sure as hell came alive when the camera rolled. No. She did more than that. She promptly took it a step beyond and
became
her subject.

At least in this instance.

Ava could totally see her as a young Miss A. She had the mannerisms down cold, and her persistence in trying Agnes’s voice over and over again, until Ava had finally agreed that that,
that
one, was about as close as it got, had paid off in spades. The longer Ava listened
to the actress speak her lines, the more she found herself grinning.

Yep. The woman had nailed it right on the proverbial head. She’d absorbed every detail Ava had given her and used it to turn herself into Miss Agnes.

It was a little spooky.

But it was also pretty darn amazing. So much so that Ava had the strongest urge to call Jane and Poppy to tell them to get their fannies over here to see it for themselves.

She doubted Cade would appreciate her inviting people onto his set, however, so she would just have to settle for calling them.

First she had to make sure the afternoon order, which she’d asked the caterer to provide to round out what she’d brought in this morning, had arrived. Then she needed to take some time to catch up on her own business.

She headed back to the kitchen, where things were temporarily quiet. And managed to check quite a few items off both her concierge and her father’s birthday party lists before Beks found her there a while later.

“Hey,” the PA said, breezing into the room.

Ava smiled at Beks’s red lipstick, black Betty Blow-torch T-shirt with its skull and crossed pistols, short black skirt and clunky shoes. “Hey, yourself. Are you the vanguard? I guess I’d better check my table to make sure it’s ready if the crew’s on the way.” Then she tilted her head, listening. “Wait a minute. How come I don’t hear anything?”

Beks laughed. “They’re still filming. My part up there is done for a while.”

“In that case, I’ve got some new stuff from a caterer
I’m going to be using from this point on if you wanna give it a try. They’re taking over entirely tomorrow.”

“No more homemade soup?”

“Nope. My evenings are mine, once again.”

Beks gave her a crooked smile. “Cool for you, but bummer for us. I love your soups.” Her expression brightened. “Still, now you’ll have time to go dancing with me.”

Ava perked up. “Really? I
love
to dance!”

“Yeah, I got that impression the day your friend had me bring music up to the makeup room for you. You bust some mad moves, too. So, whataya say? You know a place where we could go? I’ll see if the crew I share the house with wants to join us and you can ask your friends.” She made a face. “Not that I’m sure I can interest any of the guys in going. You know how a lot of men can be when it comes to dancing.”

“I do, but if they don’t wanna come, who needs them? We aren’t our mamas—we don’t need no stinkin’ boys before we can get up and dance.” For no good reason, that gave her a brief flash of Cade back in their cotillion days.

She promptly slammed a lid on it. “But I do know a couple of guys who like to dance.”

“Yeah?” Beks was all interest. “They single?”

“One of them is. The other is married to Jane.”

“One’s all I need.” She grinned. “Where do you think we should go?”

“The Alibi Room in Post Alley is, like, custom-made for you Hollywood types. A group of filmmakers own it and the club helps support independent films and their creators. Lotsa talking about filmmaking during the day. But the DJ rocks weekend nights—and sometimes they even get a live band.”

“Sounds great. What do you think, Friday night?”

“Yeah. I’ll talk to my friends, but I’m in even if they’re busy.”

“Ooh, this’ll be fun. I’m pumped.” Beks cocked her head. “Annnd, it sounds like we’ve either got elephants stampeding upstairs or filming has wrapped up. I’d better grab something to eat while the grabbing is good.”

“Y
OU’RE A
fucking masochist, you know that, Gallari?” Stuffing his hands in his pants pockets, Cade paused just steps inside the Alibi Room’s downstairs dance club the following Friday night. “And talking to yourself isn’t helping you sound real intelligent, either.”

Not that anyone could hear. The thumping music being spun by a DJ no doubt drowned out his words for anyone standing less than a foot away.

But, Jesus. What was he doing here?

He’d been smart enough to say no when Beks had extended an invitation that included Ava and her friends. But the more he’d heard her and a couple of the grips talking about meeting up with them here tonight, the more he’d gotten a jones to dance with a certain Ms. Spencer.

So there she was across the room, sitting at a table with her usual posse—Poppy and Jane and some of the same guys he’d seen them with last year when he’d accosted her in that Columbia City bar. He knew better than to look for a welcome.

Nothing new there, of course. But did he really want his crew to see that in action? They respected him. He’d like to keep it that way, yet it likely wouldn’t happen if he joined them and they learned what he’d done to her back in high school.

He turned to go.

“Hey, boss! Over here.” Beks lurched out of the gloom and grabbed his arm. She gave him a big grin. “Glad you could make it.”

Shit.

He looked down at her. “Yeah, look, I was just leaving,” he yelled, then lowered his voice when the song wound to a close. “I realized I need to go over the dailies tonight while I’ve got the chance. We’ve got a full filming schedule tomorrow.”

She wove her arm through his and tugged. “But you’ve got time for a beer, right? And a dance. There’s never enough guys who like to dance at these things. I know Ava’s right when she says we don’t need no stinkin’ boys to get out on the floor—but it sure is fun when you get a chance to dance with one.”

Well, hell. Beks had a way about her that just made you hate to disappoint her. He’d feel as if he was kicking the world’s friendliest puppy if he said no. “One drink, one dance.”

“Deal!” She towed him across the room as the DJ spun a new tune.

To his relief, he saw Ava and company abandon the table, Ava already getting her groove on before she hit the dance floor. Maybe, just maybe, he could knock back a beer in record time, pull Beks to the opposite side of the floor for her dance and beat feet out of here with his working relationships still intact. It might not stop Ava’s friends from assassinating his character after he left, but if that’s what they were inclined to do, there wasn’t a helluva lot he could do to prevent it. He’d just have to hope for the best.

His plan might have worked if there had been more than two waitresses working the packed club. As it was,
although one of them swung by to take his order, he watched Ava dance three dances and still his beer didn’t arrive.

On the other hand, he got to watch Ava dance.

God, the woman could move. It was as if her body were an instrument that knew every note, every beat to whatever song was playing and flowed in sync with it. Even as a girl, back in the god-awful cotillion class days, she’d been the best dancer. But watching her hips move like oiled ball bearings back then hadn’t had him shifting in his chair the way he was now.

“Jesus.” He looked away.

When he looked back again a new song had started, and she and her cronies were retiring from the floor. Seeing them head back, he dropped a ten on the table in front of his chair in case the waitress deigned to show up and leaned over to interrupt Beks’s conversation with the new grip. “You ready for that dance?”

“Yes!” Excusing herself to the new guy, she surged to her feet and danced away from their table with him following in her wake.

By the time their number came to an end, Ava was back on the floor and a draft sat sweating gently on the table along with his change. Thinking this was turning out okay—if he didn’t mind that he was acting like a chickenshit and had yet to even say hello to the woman—he sat and downed half his beer in one swallow. Leaving a couple bucks, he started gathering up his change. He’d kill off his beer and do exactly what he’d told Beks he was going to do: go back to the mansion and run the dailies.

Poppy dropped into the chair next to him. “Hello, Gallari,” she said under the music.

“Poppy.” He nodded. “You’re looking good. Did Ava
tell you how great you three turned out in your interview?”

“Yes.” She studied him unsmilingly for a moment. “She also said we have to be civil to you tonight.”

“She did?” Something inside him lightened, and a corner of his mouth crooked up in a small smile as he found himself searching the dance area for her again. “Huh.”

“I could always ignore her instructions, of course,” Poppy said, regaining his attention. “Janie and I put aside our differences for Miss A’s documentary, but I’m on my own time now—I don’t have to be all grown-up and professional. And I imagine I could make some trouble for you with your people here.”

His smile turned cynical. “You think they’d care as long as I continue to employ them?”

“I think Beks would.”

Shit.
His blood chilled. Because Beks would. She’d never look at him the same way again.

If he were still the same boy who’d taken that bet back in high school, he probably wouldn’t give a damn. But he hadn’t been for a long time, and he did care about retaining her respect.

All the same, he shrugged. “I can’t stop you,” he said. “You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. All I can say is I’m not that guy anymore. And I really regret what I did.”

“I might even believe that. But I want you to know that if you hurt Ava again—”

“I’m not looking to hurt her!”

“Good. Because if you do, I will find a way to make you pay.”

He was half bitter over her refusal to let him live down his age-old mistake and wholly envious over the
women’s relationship. Looking her in the eye, he told her the truth. “I wish I had a friend half as good as you.”

She shrugged and climbed to her feet. “You reap what you sow.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe if I’d had a friend like you I wouldn’t have sowed in the first place.”

She stilled for a minute. Studied him in silence. Then gave a brisk nod. “There is that possibility, I guess, if you come down on the nurture side of the old versus-nature debate.” The music changed to a slow number, and she turned away to tap the shoulder of a tall, olive-skinned man whose teeth shone white in the dim light when he turned in his seat.