“Maybe the theater department was the wrong place to look,” Tommy told me. “Have you been in here all day long watching auditions?”
I nodded at him. “Yes, I have.” The Blackbox theater that I’d sent the entire day in was beginning to feel like a prison. The featureless walls swallowed up all light and hope. I’d watched an endless parade of cute little coeds come in and read for the part today, but my movie didn’t need a cute little coed. It needed a damn warrior princess. “And five hundred auditions later, I’m no closer to finding what I looked for. In fact, I may have lost ground. My brain is entirely fried now.”
I was looking for something special. Someone special. Princess Amaranth wasn’t a major character in ‘The Winter Castle’, but she was crucial. My movie just wouldn’t work without her. Although not the lead, Princess Amaranth was the lynch pin. This movie was one I’d been wanting to make my entire career, but it wasn’t going to be easy. This was my ‘Lord of the Rings’. It had to be perfect. Perfect.
“What exactly are you looking for again?” Tommy asked.
He would know, if he’d read the classic children’s book. But he was Tommy, so he hadn’t. Although nerdy, Tommy was nerdy in a very different way from me. He’d never been into high fantasy or Sci Fi like me or our brother Derek. He was into… wait for it… math. Math! What a total weirdo.
I thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t the easiest thing to put into words. Amaranth was a complicated character.
“Well?” Tommy asked.
“She has to be ethereally beautiful, but also sexy,” I explained eventually. “Smart and fierce but also vulnerable. Young but still somehow ageless. An old soul. And she has to be able to believably command a battlefield full of soldiers while still being a little, cute elven princess.”
“Do you want to cast her or date her Holden?” Tommy teased. “You got all sentimental while describing your princess.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah, that’s me,” I joked. “Mr. Sentimental.”
Tommy laughed. I was, by far, the most pragmatic and least emotional of my brothers. That was probably why they all ended up as actors and I went into directing. Sharing my feelings was not exactly my strong suit. I was often described as being cold, distant, and even unpleasant. But ordering people around worked great for me, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it, too.
However, just because I didn’t typically run around being emotional, didn’t mean I lacked emotions. I just didn’t like advertising them in front of strangers (another reason I sucked as an actor). The idea that I was getting sentimental was ridiculous.
“Still sounds like you’ve got the hots for the fictional princess.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” I was being sarcastic, but mostly I just didn’t want to admit that I’d genuinely had a massive crush on Princess Amaranth when I first read the book this movie was based on as a middle schooler. She’d been my dream girl. Maybe she still was, a little bit. It would be just like me to fall in love with an unattainable fictional character. Despite what my brothers all thought of me, I was not opposed to relationships in theory. Just in practice.
“Right now, I just want to find her,” I told him. “I’d settle for that.”
“Well, she probably isn’t a sorority girl with that laundry list of requirements,” Tommy admitted.
“Probably not.” I sighed.
“Then let’s get out of here,” Tommy suggested. “How about we check the library?”
I frowned at him. “Why the hell would I check the library?”
“Do you have a better idea?” He challenged.
“Yeah,” I said, standing up and stretching. The crick in my neck felt like it was strangling me. Nope, it was my tie. I took it off. “I do.”
“What?”
“Dinner. And drinks. Several drinks.”
“You’re so quick to give up. Come on. The walk will do you good and it’s on the way.”
He wasn’t wrong. All six-foot-two inches of my body felt sore from being smushed into the little theater seat all day. Walking sounded pretty good.
“Okay fine,” I told him, figuring the library couldn’t possibly be any worse than the Blackbox theater. “Let’s try the library. But if we don’t find Princess Amaranth in there, we’re going to dinner and the first round is on you.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
* * *
On a Friday night, the UCLA library wasn’t exactly the most happening place on campus. In fact, it was nearly deserted. We wandered through the silent stacks, not bothering to be quiet. If there was a shushing librarian on duty tonight, she must be on another floor. She was probably asleep.
“Why this film?” Tommy asked as we walked. “Why this story? You’re successful enough now that you could pick anything.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “You should read it.”
“I’ve got homework,” he reminded me. “No time for novels about princesses and knights. Certainly, no time for dragons. How about you just tell me.”
I rolled my eyes. “This isn’t a book you describe to someone. It won’t be as good.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a master storyteller?” he challenged. “Tell me a story.”
Hmm. Okay. That was a good point. But the book was six hundred pages long, and that was only the first one in the trilogy. It would take all night to walk him through the details.
“It’s a fantasy epic,” I told him. “It’s complicated. There’s a lot of plot. But there are two empires at war with each other, a battle mage trying to find his way in the world, a princess in exile, and a lot of fighting and political intrigue. There are also dragons, unicorns, elves, dwarves...”
Tommy had tuned me out. “And we’re looking for that princess now, right?” he interrupted. The details had gotten to be too much for him already. Tommy wasn’t actually dumb, not by any measure, but his interests tended to be more concrete.
“Yep,” I replied. “Much like the hero of my story, I’m looking for the lost princess.”
“What does she look like in your mind?”
I frowned. “I don’t necessarily have a description in mind. I feel like her looks aren’t that important. In the book she’s got long blonde hair, green eyes, and fair skin with freckles. Tall, but not super tall. Sweet and innocent, but she also looks like she could bite your head off clean of your shoulders like a praying mantis if you pissed her off.”
“Well, I hate to be wrong but don’t think she’s here,” Tommy said, looking around. “I guess we should go to dinner.”
I didn’t answer. I was staring.
“Holden?” Tommy asked. He came to stand next to me to see what I was looking at. I was too frozen to reply.
There she was. Sitting alone at a table, staring into a laptop and looking annoyed at the screen, was my Princess Amaranth. Long blonde hair, green eyes, and fair skin with freckles. She was gnawing on the end of a pen. Tommy saw my expression and laughed.
Chapter 3: Ainsley
“Excuse me,” a man’s voice said, snapping me out of my physics concentration zone. “Can I sit here?”
I didn’t even look up to see who was talking to me. I wanted no more boys in my life today. Or, by judging by this one’s velvety deep voice, men. No more men, either. I’d had enough men today and I was fresh out of patience for them.
I’d been in the zone for about three hours now. The physics flow state. It wasn’t always easy to get on a roll like this. I knew if I allowed myself to get distracted, I’d be hard pressed to find this productive, zen-like flow again. I still had several hours of work to do tonight and getting distracted by some dude would put that at risk.
I spit out the end of my pen to reply. I shouldn’t have been teething on it. It had germs. “There are a million empty tables in here and you want to sit at mine?” I snapped, trying to keep my focus. If I moved my eyes from where they were on the spreadsheet, it would be hard to find it again. “No thank you. This table is taken.”
/> His voice was tinged with humor. “You won’t share?”
“I’m an only child.” I’d never really learned to share, but that wasn’t why. It was because I was too busy. I’d never had many friends. My mom pushed me through grade school and high school in eight years instead of the usual twelve. It hadn’t left time for things like friends, sharing, or normalcy.
“So, you like to be alone.”
“My, my you’re very perceptive,” I replied, still staring at my laptop. I was already feeling my flow state slipping away. “I’m clearly working on something here. While I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice guy, I’m really not interested in having company.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say yet,” he said. He had a nice voice. Deep and tinged with humor.
“I don’t care.” Sexy voice or not, I had no time for guys. I’d been morose earlier. I needed to focus. Getting all distracted by men was probably the worst thing I could do for myself. My mom had gotten distracted by a guy when she was about my age and it had pushed her doctoral degree back fifteen years when she got knocked up. I didn’t need that nonsense in my life.
“Is your homework really that pressing? Surely, you’ve got until at least Monday, don’t you?” His voice was like velvet. It almost tempted me.
“I’m not doing homework,” I told him. “I’m a professor, not a student. And I’m really not in the mood to be hit on by strangers in the library tonight. I don’t want to go on a date.”
“You think I’m hitting on you?” he asked. He sounded amused.
“I’m guessing it’s not my prime table selection that has attracted you over here.” My sarcasm game was strong. Usually it was more than enough to run men off.
“It is a perfectly nice a table,” he admitted. “It looks good for studying. Quiet. Private.”
“There are dozens just like it,” I reminded him. “Go find one of your own, please.”
Take the hint, I thought at him furiously. It’s not even a subtle hint. It’s barely a hint. More like a billboard of romantic unavailability. Considering that I’d been staring exclusively at my laptop this entire time, you’d have thought he could read between the lines.
“I don’t want to study,” the stranger said to me. I could hear a smile in his voice. “Studying isn’t really my thing. I’d like to talk to you though.”
He didn’t take the hint.
I rolled my eyes at the laptop. “See, you are hitting on me.” The last thing I needed was to get into an altercation with the guy, but he didn’t seem to be listening to me. “Look. I’ve had a rough day. Please just leave me alone. I’m in no mood to be hit on by weird guys tonight.”
“Actually,” he replied, “I’m not hitting on you at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do want to talk to you though.”
“You want to talk to me about physics?” I asked. That was the only other possible explanation for his persistence. Maybe he was a hapless grad student who needed help. I was even less interested in him now.
“Physics? God no. Gross.” His dismissive tone made me recoil.
“Gross? Okay, you should go now,” I told him. I put my head down and tried to refocus on my laptop.
“I’d really like to cast you in a movie,” he said in a rush. “Please, let’s talk.”
I looked up at him. The guy in front of me was clearly not a student. He also wasn’t a faculty member. I definitely would have remembered him, and I’d never met a college professor that looked anything like him. I’d never met anyone that looked like him.
Tall, with dark hair, light eyes, and the sort of classic good looks that made my heart do frantic, unfamiliar little thumps in my chest, the man in front of me was definitely not a college kid. He was in his early thirties, if I had to guess. He was also wearing a smart, tailored suit instead of the uniform of the undergraduate male-- unwashed, wrinkled, overly casual. I didn’t know what to say.
Sexy. He was sexy. I didn’t know how else to describe him to myself. The hormonally motivated part of my brain was going off like a slot machine that just hit the jackpot, but the rational part was much more practiced. It overrode the instinct to bat my eyes, bite my lip, or push my cleavage up. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do after that.
“You’re not a student here,” I stammered instead.
“I’m definitely not a student here,” he agreed, sitting down across the table from me. “I’m Holden Prince.”
He held out his hand I shook it in a daze. He had very nice hands. Strong. Big. Long fingers. In a dizzy rush, I imagined them on me and had to pull myself back to reality with a concerted mental effort. I wanted this stranger to touch me? What was happening?
“Hello Holden Prince,” I managed. He was so damn good looking, and his expression said he knew it. Meanwhile, I was over here forgetting how to talk. “I’m Ainsley.”
Holden Prince. The name was almost familiar. But it didn’t ring a bell.
Was I supposed to know who that was? I wracked my brain.
“I’m a director,” he said, staring at me expectantly.
“Okay.” Holden Prince, director. Director of… movies? I didn’t really watch movies. A little Netflix now and then. But usually documentaries, not regular movies.
“In Hollywood.” He clearly thought I should know who he was. He was in for a massive disappointment. I didn’t keep up with movies, or actors, or anything like that. I could rattle off a number of the world’s leading physicists though. He wasn’t on that list.
“Great,” I told him, blinking and starting to recover my wits. “I’ve never heard of you. I’m not a big movie watcher. And Hollywood gossip stuff doesn’t really interest me.”
He frowned at me. I don’t think he was expecting this reaction. Perhaps he was used to women fawning all over him. Given his good looks, that would only make sense. I felt a little tiny thrill that I wasn’t what he expected me to be either. I didn’t fawn. Too much pride. I sat up straighter.
“I’m here on campus trying to cast a role for my next movie,” he told me. “I think you’d be perfect for a role. I want you to screen test for it.”
I frowned. “You’re funny.” He was messing with me. This sexy, Hollywood guy had come in here just to mess with me? That seemed kind of mean.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I think I want you to be in a movie. My movie.”
“Me?” I questioned dubiously.
“Yes. You.”
I laughed in his face.
He was seriously barking up the wrong tree. Except for the bare minimum required during my high school years, the performing arts had never been on my radar. My mom maintained that extracurriculars were for people whose curriculars were subpar. You only needed to be well rounded if you weren’t exceptional in the first place.
“It’s not a joke,” he told me. A little line appeared between his very beautiful, dark blue eyes. “I mean it.”
I shook my head at him. “It has to be a joke. If you’re really here to cast somebody in a movie, shouldn’t you be, like, watching to people audition? The theater department is not located inside the library.”
“I’m aware,” he said. He made a long-suffering face. “I tried the traditional approach. I did the cattle call audition. For the last seven hours I’ve listened to every wannabe actress at UCLA read lines. It’s been terrible.”
“So, you thought you’d just come bother random people in the library instead?” I asked. “That’s not weird.”
He spread his hands wide. His eyes were very blue. “No. Not random people. One exceptional person. You.”
My mouth dropped open. He was so direct. And he was staring at me like I was something out of his dreams. He was definitely something out of one of mine.
But he was nuts. He was actually crazy. As sexy as he was, he was just as clearly nuts.
“You… shouldn’t be here,” I said, realizing that maybe the guy in front of me was actually merely unhinged. Maybe he’d just wandered in o
ff the street. Maybe he wasn’t a Hollywood director at all. Just another crazy dude. “I think you need to go away now.”
“What can I do to convince you to screen test Ainsley?” he asked. He was staring at me so intently I wondered if I was blushing. But I was crazy to believe him.
“Nothing,” I told him, shaking my head. “Even if you are a film director—and that’s a huge ‘if’ because I’ve certainly never heard of you—there are people out there who would be better choices. They’re called actors. I’m not an actor. I’m a physics doctoral candidate. If you needed someone to help you with some celestial body calculations, I could perhaps assist. Need some assistance with an electromagnetism problem? Again, me. But acting? That’s not me. Not my department. Go talk to Dr. Edelson in the drama department. He’s a great guy. He’ll help you find someone right for the part.”
“Patrick Edelson was the one who supplied me with the endless supply of sorority girls. None of them were right for the part.” He rolled his eyes.
Okay, he knew Dr. Edelson’s first name. Maybe he was telling the truth. Still…
“Eventually you’ll get lucky and find one you like,” I told him.
He shook his head at me. “I won’t. Princess Amaranth can’t be played by a UCLA sorority girl.”
I paused. “Princess Amaranth... from The Winter Castle books?”
“You know them?” He asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.
“I read them when I was a kid,” I admitted. I nibbled on my bottom lip. “I loved those silly books so much when I was a seventh grader.” I hadn’t meant to be drawn into conversation, but it was hard to resist talking about my favorite books.
Holden grinned. “So, what do you say?”
Let Down Your Hair will be available for Pre-Order Soon!
The Little Barmaid Page 25