Wild Honey

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

A Biography of Suzanne Forster

I
T WAS “HIGH NOON”
at eight
A.M.
in Sasha McCleod’s tiny Redondo Beach, California, kitchen. It was Sasha’s year to cut out the things that weren’t working in her life, and she’d promised herself that her compulsive tidiness would be the first thing to go. Sasha McCleod was going head-to-head with her demons this fine January morning.

Her shoulders squared, she continued her stare-down with the dirty breakfast dishes she’d just put into the kitchen sink.

Messiness is not genetic, she told herself, stepping back from the sink. It can be learned. She took a long, fortifying breath. Today dirty breakfast dishes, tomorrow the top off the toothpaste, and next week, she decided recklessly, undies on the bedroom floor.

She turned away from the sink, and with a sigh of victory glanced at the framed photograph on the opposite wall. Bird Colonel Jack McCleod, U.S. Air Force, stared back at her. “No offense, sir,” she said, “but there’s got to be more to life than polishing doorknobs to a high gloss. I’m not lowering my standards,” she explained. “I’m just relaxing them a little.”

The words were barely out of Sasha’s mouth, and she felt the tug of opposing inner forces. Even at thirty she was still her father’s daughter, and the urge to achieve perfection in everything was strong.

The kitchen wall phone went off like a burglar alarm, startling Sasha out of her dilemma. It rang again before she reached it. “Hello?”

“Alexandria McCleod?” a raspy male voice inquired.

“Yes,” she said tentatively. In the next seconds all she could hear was the wheeze of heavy breathing. A prank call, she decided, smiling. And she knew exactly who the prankster was. Mike, her office manager at the health club, also known as Top Cat or T.C., was infamous for his practical jokes.

“Alexandria, this is Louis Ryan, your agent,” the man said. “And, lady, have I got a break for you. A fabulous deal—” He broke off in a raucous fit of sneezing, interspersed with what sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Her
agent?
Now Sasha knew it was a practical joke—and not a very good one. She’d given up her acting career over a year before and hadn’t heard from her theatrical agent in at least that long. She’d literally haunted Louis Ryan’s office after he’d taken her on as a client. Eager to work, she’d gone out on audition after audition. But the rejections finally wore her down, especially since the casting directors’ reasons were always the same. She looked too much like a famous actress. She’d had just two acting jobs in all that time, both commercials. The last one, for Yum Yum Yogurt, was a standing gag around The Fitness Factor, the small health club she owned and operated. “No Emmy nominations yet?” the staff members were fond of asking her.

“There’ll be a limo to pick you up,” the man added, his voice gurgling as the sneezing tapered off.

“Nice try, T.C.,” Sasha murmured coolly.

“Nice what?”

“Sure, a limo,” she said, “and I’ll bet I won the Irish Sweepstakes too. Now, stop this foolishness, T.C. and make yourself useful. Sharpen pencils or something. I’m on my way. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

With characteristic briskness she hung up the phone, grabbed the bulging athletic bag from a kitchen chair, and started for the front door. As her hand closed on the shiny doorknob, the phone rang again.

She turned back to it, faintly annoyed. T.C. never did know when to quit. Jogging back, she whisked the receiver up. “Okay, wise guy, what now?”

“Miss McCleod? Now, listen to me. There isn’t much time. This
is
Louis Ryan of Talent International—and I’ve got an urgent offer—for
you.
”

The athletic bag slipped from Sasha’s fingers and dropped to the floor. “Oh my God...Lou Ryan?” she whispered. “You don’t sound like Lou Ryan.”

“Asthma,” he said. “Who can breathe in this weather? Ninety-degree heat in January, first-stage smog alerts. The air outside my office is staring back at me! Agghh,” he wheezed, “don’t get me started.”

“Lou, did you say...a fabulous deal?”

“Now she wants to talk business,” he muttered.

“Yes, I said a fabulous deal. Can you make an audition today?”

“An audition?” She hardly could believe what she was hearing. “I think so. When?”

“Now. The rep of a major studio called this morning. They’re sending a limo to pick you up.”

Taking the receiver with her, Sasha peeked out the kitchen window and gasped. A black Cadillac limousine rivaling the length of her apartment idled in the parking lot. “It’s already here!
What
studio? What’s this all about?” she asked.

“Damned if I can figure it out,” he admitted. “I’m not allowed to say who called or what studio he represents, but I can tell you the request is legit. They want you to audition. And if you get the job, it’s big money.”

He mentioned a figure that made Sasha’s jaw go slack. “What do they want me for?” she asked. “A movie? Television? Why all the secrecy?”

“Slow down,” he said. “I’ve already told you everything I
can
tell you. The studio’s got a tight lid on this project. Any leaks and they come after my head. You pay me for my advice, Ms. McCleod, so I’ll give you some. Go on this audition and read like you’ve never read before. Whoever they want you to play, play her for all you’re worth. Burn up that script with your interpretation.”

“But—”

“And when you’re done,” he added cryptically. “Say nothing, and see nothing. Know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t, Lou. I don’t understand at all. Say nothing? See nothing? What does that mean?”

“Sasha, it’s
big
money.”

He quoted the amount again, and Sasha’s protests died on her lips. Her brain began clicking like an adding machine. She had a balloon payment coming up on the fitness center’s second mortgage. The money from this job would cover it three times over! “Are you sure this is legit, Lou? I mean it’s not X rated or anything?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said it’s a
major
studio!”

“Right,” she said, her heart beginning to pound. She glanced at the car again and wondered if she was dreaming. After all those months,
years
of rejection, somebody wanted her badly enough to send a limo? It made no sense.

“What’s it going to be?” Lou pressed.

It wasn’t like her to go into anything uninformed or ill prepared, but after all, she thought, it wasn’t as if she were committing herself to anything. It was just an audition. “Okay, I’ll do it. Sure,” she said, laughing nervously, “I’ll do it.”

“Great,” Lou answered. “Call me when they cut you loose. Good luck!”

Sasha hung up the phone and looked down at her outfit—turquoise leotard and tights, matching leg warmers, and running shoes. Her long blond hair was pulled back and woven into a French braid that hung down below the curve between her shoulder blades. She wore no makeup except a bit of blusher, mascara, and lip gloss.

The doorbell rang as she was fishing for her jeans in the athletic bag. Her heart sank. There was no time to change. She would have to go as she was. A leotard to an audition? A sinkful of breakfast dishes? she thought. “Someone up there is testing me,” she said on a sigh. It was more than any perfectionist should be expected to deal with in one day.

The doorbell rang again more insistently as Sasha walked to the door and swung it open. She smiled politely at a man with a pale, pencil-thin face, which was lost behind a huge pair of wraparound sunglasses. “Hello,” she said, sizing him up instantly as posing no threat. His uniform bagged over a bony frame not much taller than her own five feet eight inches.

Minutes later, headed for an unspecified location, surrounded by windows as opaque as the driver’s glasses, Sasha began to question the wisdom of her decision. Another twenty minutes passed, and her doubts mushroomed. What could she have been thinking about when she got into the sleek black motel of a car? She had no idea where the driver was taking her, who wanted to audition her—or even if it really had been Lou Ryan on the phone.

The window that separated her from the driver was opaque, too, and tapping on it raised no response. She told herself not to panic, but a sudden claustrophobic wave of heat stirred her nerves and her imagination. She’d been kidnapped. Her abductors were going to sell her to swarthy men who hid switchblades in their boots.

“Whoa,” she murmured, settling back in the seat, “you’re a shade mature for the white slave market.” Nevertheless, in the next moments her fertile imagination had her vividly displayed in a bazaar in some exotic port, a shivering nymph on an auction block with a cloaked marauder tweaking off veils one by one to drive the bidding higher....

Sasha swayed with the movement of the car and caught herself. Adrift in escalating scenarios of abduction and seduction, she’d lost track of time, but suddenly she realized the limo was finally slowing, pulling over. Maybe she could persuade them to release her if she told them she was thirty and had an appendectomy scar.