CUTTING LOOSE

by Kristin Hardy

  "I wouldn't even trust Delaney with Mr. Sincere," Cilla objected as they finished changing, grabbed their gear and walked out into the lobby.

  "Well, it's a good thing she isn't sleeping with him, then, isn't it?" The night air felt cool against Trish's heated cheeks as they walked to the parking lot.

  "Look, this conversation is so not over," Cilla said. "We're going to dinner and you're going to tell me what happened."

  "Only if you promise not to lecture me."

  "I won't lecture you. I don't guarantee I won't have anything else to say on the topic of Mr. Ramsay, but I'm also dying of curiosity. Tell me!"

  "Well, remember when you left me at the party?" Trish began.

  * * *

  They sat at a corner table in Louise's Bistro, the remains of their dinner scattered around them. Cilla took a sip of her wine and looked over the table. "So what is it about us that we can't talk about our lives without food and alcohol present?"

  "It does take a lot out of you," Trish agreed.

  "It's an energetic topic. Especially people like you. I'll never look at a shower massage the same way again."

  "Cleanliness is next to godliness."

  Cilla grinned and dipped a bit of bread in olive oil. "In the interest of avoiding heresy, I'm just going to leave that one alone."

  "Smart move." Trish smiled.

  Cilla cleared her throat. "So wasn't I a good listener?"

  "You were a great listener."

  "Do I get points for refraining from lecturing?"

  "Why do I have a bad feeling about this?"

  Cilla grinned. "Hear me out. I'm just thinking that the last time I heard someone insisting they'd be fine with just sex and they weren't going to get involved, it was Sabrina. You're sounding an awful lot like her."

  "Totally different situation," Trish objected. "They'd had a mad pash before. We always knew she was in love with him. She was the only one who hadn't figured it out."

  "My point, exactly. Actually, the point is, she was in over her head from the beginning."

  "But she's happy now."

  Cilla stared at her, eyes troubled. "Trish, I know I'm being tough on you here, but please tell me you're not hoping for happily ever after with Ty Ramsay."

  "I'm not looking for anything from Ty but a good time." She couldn't possibly afford to think of anything else, Trish reminded herself. Those were the ground rules.

  "Well, all right." Cilla cleared her throat. "While we're talking about tough love, you know there's a whole 'nother issue out there you haven't even touched on."

  "Telling Sabrina." Trish closed her eyes. "She's going to think I'm crazy."

  "Likely," Cilla agreed.

  "But I can't not tell her, that's the thing that's driving me crazy."

  "Assuming you're not already there."

  "Assuming. I mean, it's common courtesy, I know that. Then again, given that it's just a casual affair, do I really have to bother her? I mean, what would you do?"

  "You're the only one who can make that call," Cilla said.

  "What would you want if you were Sabrina?"

  "Let's turn the tables. What would you want?"

  Trish massaged her temples to ward off the sudden headache. "It's so hard to figure. I mean, I think I'd want to know. Oh, who am I kidding," she said impatiently. "Of course I'd want to know. I need to tell her, but God, I dread it."

  "In that case, I've got a piece of good news for you. I talked with Kelly today and she says Sabrina and Stef leave tomorrow for Greece, to work on his documentary."

  "I thought they were done shooting."

  "Guess you never have enough footage," Cilla said lightly. "So anyway, you're off the hook on telling Sabrina, at least for the short term."

  And in the long term, Trish thought, things with Ty would be over. And she was fine with that, just fine.

  Really.

  * * *

  10

  « ^ »

  Ty stared intently into her eyes. "Which is the real you—" he asked "—glossy and sexy or brisk and efficient? Who do you want to be?"

  "It's not up to me," she responded in a faltering voice. "It doesn't matter which one is me, I have to do my job."

  "The reality is," Ty said silkily, "they're both you."

  "There is no me and … and hellfire, ladies and gentlemen, I just said the wrong line." The actress, Caitlyn Reynolds, broke off her probing gaze into Ty's face and flushed. "Sorry, guys." She'd made a name for herself in the lead role of a television spy series. Now, two years later she was embarking on her first film role and she was palpably nervous, even though it was only rehearsal. Ty took pains to put her at her ease, Trish noticed, with jokes and gentle teasing.

  But it was Trish that he looked to, and to Trish that he flashed the quick smile of promise.

  She wasn't quite sure how she'd wound up here, sitting in a thirty-eighth-floor conference room in the offices of Velocity Productions, watching the cast of Dark Touch running scenes. Then again, she wasn't quite sure how it was that she'd found herself in the midst of a full-blown affair with Ty Ramsay. It was as though she were inhabiting someone else's life. Perhaps the life of her alter ego, a life of excitement, arousal and sex, she thought, feeling a little shiver as she watched Ty across the room.

  But it wasn't someone else's life, and she wasn't a different person. Not really. She dressed the same, she looked the same, she did the same job during the day. And if she started the days off with hot and urgent sex and spent her nights in Ty's bed, it was purely a fluke, wasn't it?

  She had to remember that, she had to remind herself it was nothing more. The time they had together was limited, no matter how she looked at it. If nothing else, Ty's infatuation would eventually wear off as it always did. More to the point, principal photography began in two weeks. Interiors first, he'd told her, which meant they'd do all of the scenes in the S&M club, not to mention the bondage scenes with Caitlyn.

  And Ty Ramsay always fell for his costars.

  "Okay people," said Dale Westhoff, the director, "it might not be immortal but let's work with it."

  Ty and Caitlyn faced each other in their chairs. Trish watched them together as they built an artificial world and made it real. And her mind focused on ways to make the script work.

  "If you're there, you can watch us and write down your ideas," Ty had said that morning. "You're my assistant. Nobody's going to think anything of you being in the room."

  "Wanna bet?"

  He'd looked at her with a glint of mischief in his eyes. "Sure."

  "It was a figure of speech," she'd said impatiently. "My point is that it's not feasible for some inexperienced outsider to give input on a script."

  "It is if the input's good, and I've already told you Dale liked the last rewrites."

  "They'll never tolerate it."

  "Oh, I think they will, and I'm so sure of it I'm willing to make a little wager on it. How about this? We go to the rehearsal and just walk in. If anyone says anything about you being in the room, you win."

  She'd raised an eyebrow. "Since I'm almost sure to win, what do I get?"

  Ty had thought a moment. "You win, I'm your slave for the entire weekend."

  "And if they don't say anything?"

  "If they don't say anything, I win and you're my slave for the entire weekend."

  In the end, she'd agreed. But what had seemed reasonable at the time had become more improbable by the moment as they'd crossed Velocity's bright lobby, a space lined with framed movie posters and graced by a life-sized cardboard cutout of Ty as the hero of Demolition. Half the people in L.A. fancied themselves amateur screenwriters. That didn't mean that any director worth his salt would let one of them sit in on a rehearsal, no matter how much Ty insisted they would. Ty didn't know what he was talking about, she'd sniffed.

  He had, of course, and she should have known it. When they'd arrived in the conference room, the director, assistant directors and half dozen cast members hadn't look
ed twice at her.

  "Why should they care?" Ty had shown her to a seat and handed her a copy of the screenplay. "We've got a script that creaks and only two weeks of rehearsal to get everything nailed down. Schedule and budget, that's what they're worried about, not an extra person in the room. Relax."

  Trish had expected an empty soundstage, or at the very least a theater setting. Instead, the cast members sat around in plush executive chairs while administrative assistants brought coffee and cappuccino to order. True, the conference table had been pushed to one side and some black electrical tape on the carpet indicated imaginary furniture or blocking marks for the actors. Otherwise, it looked more like a room where lawyers should be consulting than where actors should be creating a summer blockbuster.

  At first they just ran lines, sitting comfortably in their chairs. Sometimes Dale let them get through a whole scene. As often as not, he stopped and fine-tuned a reaction or a tone. More than anything, it reminded her of watching spring-training games in baseball. The actors goofed lines, laughed at crucial times, and otherwise screwed up on simple things they'd eventually perform without a hitch later on. Rehearsals were when the cash flowed slowly and they could afford to get tongue-tied or ad lib ridiculous things just because they'd forgotten their lines. Sometimes, it was hilarious.

  And sometimes it was enthralling, especially when they began using the blocking marks to actually walk through scenes. Seeing the actors respond to one another not just with dialog but with physical movement brought it alive. It didn't matter that they weren't in costume, that instead of a prop gun, Ty picked up a stapler. What mattered was the reality they created.

  Trish couldn't take her eyes off him, the way, in the blink of an eye, he'd inhabit his character. One moment, he'd be smiling at her from across the room. The next, there'd be am aura of danger and unpredictability cloaking him, the sense of a man who could be completely amoral, and yet on whom everything ultimately rested.

  Caitlyn was doing an astoundingly effective job of being the young undercover agent lured into a world of decadence. Her character was in Ty's thrall, looking at him as though he were her guide to some mesmerizing place, looking at him as though he were all she could think of.

  It didn't matter, Trish told herself. It didn't matter that Caitlyn was beautiful and radiant, it didn't matter that she and Ty were heartbreakingly perfect together. Sure, they'd wind up having an affair once shooting started. How could two people that gorgeous not? Trish knew she was only borrowing good times with Ty. He belonged with a luminous star like Caitlyn. Trish understood it and expected it.

  And tried her damnedest to tell herself it didn't matter.

  The thing was to stop focusing on the two of them together. She needed to focus on what she was there to do. She needed to focus on the dialog, on how to fix the scenes. She needed to give them wonderful words to say to each other so that they could fall in love.

  Her mind shied away at that. The script, she thought. It wouldn't take much, just some adjustments, adding a few lines of dialog. Toughen up the heroine. Don't make her a whiner, make her a strong investigator who's suddenly facing a side of herself that she's never known. Someone caught by a fascination with darkness, a fascination with risk. And Ty's character would be the one to seduce her with the promise of danger. But would he be the real threat, or would her focus on him make her miss the real murderer?

  Immersed in scribbling, Trish didn't realize the group had taken a break until she became aware of Ty standing over her. She looked up and flushed. "Sorry, I was in the zone."

  "So I see. Can I take a look?" Ty took the pad she proffered and scanned what she'd written.

  "It means a shift from the current characters," she explained, "but I think this gives it more edge. Besides, Caitlyn's rep comes from being a fragile flower who rises to the occasion. The goal is not to reinforce that rep but to turn it on its ear, have her play against type."

  Ty nodded and skimmed the lines, glancing across the room periodically. "Dale," he called out as the chunky director came back into the room. "Over here."

  Dale Westhoff might have been one of the most bankable action directors in Hollywood, but he looked more like a well-fed computer geek who stayed in his dorm room, coming out only for junk food and Star Trek conventions. His hair was a tangled bird's nest, his clothes rumpled; his glasses were perpetually slipping down his nose. He had a reputation for irascibility; she'd already seen he didn't suffer fools lightly.

  "Dale, this is Trish Dawson, my assistant."

  Dale made a little frown of impatience and ignored Trish's outstretched hand. "We're on the clock here, Ty."

  "I thought you'd want to meet Trish. She's the one who wrote the dialog I brought in last week," Ty added.

  Now, Westhoff actually turned to look at her. "You did that rewrite?"

  "I'm not sure I'd call it a rewrite. It was just a few ideas."

  "Never mind," he interjected. "What's your experience?"

  Trish shrugged. "I went to UCLA for scriptwriting. Wrote a couple of one-acts. I was the on-staff script doctor for the drama department."

  "That new dialog was good work. We're swapping it for the current scene," he added, plucking Trish's annotated script out of Ty's hand without asking and scanning it. He frowned and looked up at her. "So what are you doing here, rewriting the whole damned script? You know, we've already got ourselves a screenwriter."

  Her first instinct was to duck, but from somewhere, temper rescued her. "It's not hard to want to edit when you see this script," she said. "I was just entertaining myself. I saw some problems and I had a few ideas on how to fix them."

  For the first time, a gleam of humor entered Westhoff's eyes. "That makes two of us. My idea is to use it for kindling. What's yours?"

  The corner of her mouth twitched. "I don't believe that for a minute. You know it's a solid story or you wouldn't be working on the project. It's just that the characters need tuning and the dialog needs work."

  "Understatement of the year," Westhoff murmured, lapsing into silence as he read.

  Trish resisted the urge to say more. All it was likely to do was irritate him. He'd either like it or he wouldn't; it wasn't as if her future was resting on what he thought, anyway. Her eyes met Ty's.

  The seconds ticked by and Westhoff turned the pages. At least he was reading and not throwing it down, she told herself. He wasn't the sort to waste time being polite.

  Westhoff stirred. "This is good," he said abruptly. "I can see a few things I'd want to tweak, but it's head and shoulders over what we've got now." He glanced across the room to one of his assistant directors. "Jack," he called.

  A tall, thin guy with a hipster haircut looked up. "Yo."

  "I need my laptop."

  Trish looked at Ty, who winked. "You might start canceling your plans for the weekend," he said in an undertone.

  She made a face at him.

  Jack bustled up. "Here it is, chief."

  Westhoff nodded. "Great. Jack, this is Trish, Trish, this is Jack. I want you to get her set up here with a copy of the script file. She's going to do some work for us. Get her a copy of the production notes, too." He looked back at Trish. "Rewrite this scene first. Put the changes on a disk and the secretary outside will print 'em for you. Let's see how your lines sound with actors reading them." He glanced at his watch. "Okay, five more minutes and we get this show on the road, people."

  "So." Ty waited until Dale was gone, then looked at Trish like the cat who ate the canary. "I believe someone was telling me there was no way they'd be allowed even to sit in on rehearsal, wasn't that it?"

  "'I told you so's are so tacky."

  "Oh, far be it from me to say I told you so. I might, however, mention that we had a little bet riding on the outcome, a little bet that someone just lost."

  "A bet?" Trish looked at him blandly. "That wasn't a bet, it was a joke."

  "You don't seem like the type to welch on a deal," he commented. "Pay up, Dawson."
/>
  A little buzz of excitement ran through her. "Fine. What was it again? A weekend?"

  "A weekend as my slave," he finished. "And since today's Friday, I believe it starts in about five hours."

  She shot a glance at the ceiling, tongue in cheek. "Fine, if that's what you want."

  "If that's what you want, master," he corrected.

  * * *

  The sun dipped toward the horizon as Ty drove his yellow Boxter up Pacific Coast Highway. Trish glanced at the red-gold stripe the setting sun painted on the blue water. On the inland side, bluffs rose high and sheer. On the other side, the ocean foamed against the rocky coast.

  She rode silently beside him. "Do you think Dale meant it, about getting me a contract for the work?" Ty was right, this would mean a guild card, she thought, the first step toward a legitimate career as a screenwriter.

  "I can't see why not. Dale might be a little rough around the edges, but if he says he's going to do something, he does it."

  The miles whisked by. There was a place in the world for ragtops, she thought, then did a double take. "Hey, wasn't that your turnoff back there?"

  Ty moved his shoulders. "Yeah? So? I figured we could get out a little."

  He drove until the houses had faded away and the highway was just a ribbon of asphalt winding along the water. It whipped around a curve and dipped between the bluffs and a soaring hummock of rock on the seaward side. His move into the turnout was sudden and practiced.

  The sandy, weedy space next to the bluffs might charitably have been called a parking area. Ty stopped the car and turned off the ignition. In the sudden silence, the waves whispered over the ticking of the cooling engine.

  "What are we doing?" Trish asked.

  "The beach is great in winter. The only people here are the surfers, and they only come out in the mornings, before the offshore wind wrecks the breaks." He opened his door and beckoned to Trish. "Come on, we've been working hard. We've got some time coming."

  * * *

  It was easy to cross the four lanes through the sporadic traffic to reach the soft sand on the other side. They walked slowly down toward the water. Trish was as relaxed as he'd ever seen her, Ty thought, as he tangled his fingers in hers. The warm light of the setting sun made her skin glow. She laughed as the wind tossed her hair into her eyes and at that instant she was all he'd ever wanted.