Hushed

by Joanne Macgregor

  It feels curiously domestic — me at the sink washing dishes, him half-reading, half-dozing on the bed nearby. If I’m not careful, this might begin to seem real. I could easily lose my head, and my heart, entirely. I remind myself that while I might be playing house with Logan, in reality I’m no more a part of his world than I was two days ago. He’s like royalty, and I’m like the hired help. Scratch “like.” I am the hired help.

  Still, a cat may look at a king, and look at him I do — peeping out from under my lashes at his hands holding the book, at the rise and fall of his chest as he slips into sleep, at the thickness of his hair on the pillow.

  Damn. I might be completely new to this world, but already I’m falling for him, hook, line and sinker. It’s only day one, and I’ve already broken Cilla’s most important rule.

  I need to set some rules for myself to keep my feet firmly on the ground. As I dry and pack away the dishes, I make a mental list.

  Rule 1: Thou shalt not fall in love with Logan Rush.

  I draw a mental line through the rule. Too late for that commandment.

  Take two.

  Rule 1: Thou shalt never expect Logan Rush to fall in love with thee.

  Rule 2: Thou shalt not forget that thee and he are from different worlds.

  Rule 3: Thou shalt not be dazzled, nor confuse fantasy and reality.

  Rule 4: Thou shall enjoy it while it lasts.

  Rule 5: Thou job may not be brain surgery, but thou shalt try to do it well anyway.

  A knock sounds at the door. Logan lifts his head groggily, but I motion for him to relax.

  “I’ll get it, you rest. I’ll be back for you at two.”

  It’s Polyp, with revised script pages for Monday’s shoot.

  “Thanks, I’ll make sure he gets them,” I say.

  When Polyp slinks off, I sit down on the sun-warmed stairs outside Logan’s room, guarding his sleep.

  I spend the second half of the afternoon running interference for Logan, liaising with the wardrobe mistress, reassuring the A.D. that I’ll ensure his star memorises the lines for Monday’s scenes, and shuttling Logan from his room to make-up to the soundstage, and then to the makeshift gym set up in a hot, almost airless office behind Stage 3.

  Logan has to stoop to get into this room — with his high-rise hero hairdo, he’s too tall for the doorway. I go through his lines with him as the trainer puts him through his paces — cardio on a rowing machine, weights on the bench, and painful-looking Pilates stretches, twists and lifts for his abs. It’s wrong to sexually objectify people, I know that, so I try not to ogle his body. His beautiful, sweat-sheened, hard-muscled, breath-snatching body. I fail.

  The piece we rehearse is not a romantic scene — bummer — so I force the breathy desire out of my voice and attempt an American accent when I read the lines of Chase Falconer’s arch-nemesis. I waggle my eyebrows and twirl an imaginary villainous moustache to get a laugh out of Logan, because I adore it when laughs. It makes his face look more open and free, somehow. I also seriously like it when the trainer makes him lie back and bench-press eighty-kilogram weights, because then I can gaze freely at the ab and arm porn without fear of him catching me at it.

  When the trainer calls it quits, I lead Logan to the minibus that ferries the cast to and from their hotel. Britney Vaux is already inside, and as soon as she spots Logan, she straightens her spine, thrusting her improbably large and perky breasts out, and pats the seat beside her.

  “How about a swim at the hotel, Logan? The water will be lovely, and I bought a new teeny-weeny bikini! It’s adorbs — I know you’ll love it!”

  I slide the door shut before I can hear his response. Rule 2: Different worlds. It’s time for me to return to mine.

  I slip off my heels and walk to the parking lot. I’m dead tired, my feet ache like I’ve been walking on daggers all day, I long for a shower, and I’m due back on set at four a.m. on Monday.

  I’m also happier than I can ever remember feeling.

  Chapter 18

  Speechless

  On Sunday, I sleep in late, dreaming of lizards eating eel-sized worms.

  At lunch, I keep up a steady stream of chatter about my job on the movie set. Nana loves hearing the details, but my parents? Not so much. I studiously avoid my father’s pointed looks and gobble down my food so I can excuse myself as soon as possible.

  “Goodness, Romy. What’s the rush? It’s like watching a school of migrating sardines being swallowed up by a Delphinus capensis,” my mother says.

  “I know what that one is,” I say as I take my plate to the kitchen. “It’s a dolphin.”

  “It’s a common dolphin, dear,” she calls after me.

  In the afternoon, Zeb comes over to use my PC to submit his final application for university. He has no internet because scrap metal thieves have stolen the phone lines in his neighbourhood again. Zeb knows what he wants to study — business economics. It makes me edgy seeing him taking step after certain step towards his future when I’m still clueless about my own, so I distract myself by treating him to a blow-by-blow account of life in the celebrity lane.

  “It doesn’t sound too glamorous, actually,” he says.

  “I’ll admit it’s a lot of hard work, but it’s never boring. And besides, there are perks.”

  “Yeah, the Beast.”

  “Don’t call him that — he’s much more than just the one role.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  “Well, for one thing, I think he’s a lot more serious about acting than people know. He doesn’t have to do too much in these movies, but I think he could do something more demanding and challenging. I bet he’d be fabulous. Plus, he’s really funny — he teases and strings people along all the time.”

  Zeb hits the final enter key and spins around to face me. “Just make sure he doesn’t string you along.”

  “He’s not like that — he hasn’t put a finger out of place.” More’s the pity. But it has only been one day. I’m not ready to give up hope yet. “I just mean that, well, take Britney for example. Half the time she can’t tell when he’s being serious or feeding her a line.”

  “She sounds like a piece of work.”

  “No kidding. She chucked a donut at the key grip’s head yesterday, and Becka says Britney once threw a stapler at her!”

  “Yet on-screen, she looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Just shows to go ya — you can’t always believe that what you see is what you’ll get in real life.”

  “Are you warning me, Zeb?”

  “You only truly need to worry if he begins saying ‘trust me.’”

  “My eyes are wide open, and my feet are firmly on the ground,” I assure him.

  My eyes, like most of the crews’, are only half-open when I drag myself onto the lot at four a.m. on Monday. I had to set my alarm for three in the morning — my new hair and make-up routine is a major time suck.

  The day is unseasonably cold and breezy. I figure the wind will probably be howling on the beach where we’ll be doing our location shoot, so I make quick pit stops at Logan’s room and the wardrobe department to grab a padded jacket and a blanket before boarding the bus designated for crew.

  The VIP cast will leave a precious half-hour later and travel in a smaller, much more luxurious bus along with a bodyguard or two. I slide into the seat across the aisle from Becka, bundling the coat behind my head and snuggling under the blanket. With a smoky belch from its exhaust, the bus sets off on the highway headed north, followed by several trucks loaded with equipment.

  “Where is this place — Paternoster?” Becka asks me.

  “It’s a tiny fishing village about 150 kilometres up the West Coast. It should take us about an hour and a half to get there — long enough for a nice nap.”

  “Not likely. The chances of Britney leaving me in peace long enough to catch a nap are about on par with Cilla allowing Logan to write his own lines.”

  “Logan wants to write his own lines?”


  “He keeps nagging Cilla to allow him to try his hand at writing a scene. But she says she hired him for his pretty face, not for what’s inside his head.”

  “She actually said that to him?” I ask, appalled.

  “Not directly to him, no. I heard her saying it to Polyp. She likes to keep the talent sweet until the shoot’s wrapped, so she hasn’t given him an outright no. Yet.”

  “That’s not right.”

  “I wouldn’t advise you telling her that.”

  “No. She told me to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open.”

  “That’s our beloved director for you. She cans anyone who speaks up against her. Even Britney makes an effort to watch her mouth around Cilla, which causes her real strain, though you couldn’t tell it from her face — Botoxed up the ying-yang!” Becka whispers the last phrase.

  “Really?” I give up trying to sleep, eager to hear the down and dirty on the high and mighty.

  “Oh yeah, every eight weeks. She had another boob job last year, and the nose was done before she ever even started in the business, back when she was a beauty pageant queen. She denies it publicly, of course — likes her image as a natural-born beauty.” Becka snorts in disgust. “As if!”

  “Well, she is beautiful,” I concede. “But she already uses Botox? Really? It’s not like she even has any wrinkles yet — she can’t be older than twenty-two.”

  “Twenty-four,” Becka mouths. “But don’t tell anyone. Anyhoo, she has the injections to prevent wrinkles in the future. There’s a short shelf life in this job. On the dark side of thirty your ingénue and romcom options start fading.”

  “Wow.”

  I consider that for a while, staring out into the dark beyond the window. To be over the hill at thirty is pretty bad. And sad.

  “What did I tell you?” Becka says a little while later when her phone buzzes an incoming text message. “Let the bitch-bossing commence.”

  “Britney?” I ask.

  “Where am I supposed to get a skinny soy chai out here?” She indicates the open spaces on either side of the road. “Do you think there’ll be somewhere at the village I can get it?”

  “I sincerely doubt it.”

  “She is such a PITA!”

  “A what?”

  “A pain in the ass.”

  I laugh. “I definitely got lucky with Logan.”

  Becka sits bolt upright and goggles at me, a wide grin splitting her face. “You did?”

  “No. No. I don’t mean that. No way!”

  She makes a sound like a disappointed kitten and slumps back in her seat.

  “I just meant I’m lucky to be assisting him, rather than someone like her. He’s really easy.” I realise what I’ve just said. “And by that I don’t mean he’s —”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Logan’s a sweetie, we all love him. Especially Britney. She’s got her claws out to catch him.”

  “She likes him?”

  Becka shrugs. “Who knows? But she wants him. It would be a great career move for her — for both of them. Imagine the huge celebrity wedding, babies, maybe a reality show along the way.”

  I shudder. “And … is he, you know, into her?” I try to keep my voice casual.

  “The official rumour mill has it that they’re a couple off-screen as well as on-screen.”

  “There’s an official rumour mill?”

  “Oh yeah, Cilla ‘leaks’ news all the time. She often gets me to feed juicy tips to reporters. She says it’s good publicity for the movies if people think Logan and Britney are an item.”

  I’ve read about the Rush-Vaux romance rumours in the fandom and on the celebrity news sites, of course, but I always just assumed it was wishful thinking. There have never been any photos of Logan and Britney actually holding hands or kissing — except as their on-screen characters.

  Have they or haven’t they hooked up? Are they or aren’t they a couple? It’s a game of hide and tease played with their fans across the world.

  “So are they?” I must know.

  “Who knows? Even if they are, like, together, Cilla wouldn’t allow them to make it official. She likes to keep the public guessing. The anticipation goes out of it when it’s confirmed one way or the other. And then what if they broke up before the release of the movie? PR Disaster of Brangelina proportions. We probably won’t know either way for sure until a good six months after this movie’s released.” Becka highlights an item on her list and returns to sending emails on her phone.

  I nestle back into my seat, thinking about what I’ve learned, and I must drift off, because when next I peer out of the window, we’re driving down the main street of Paternoster, headed towards the beach.

  The small village is still shut up tight in the predawn darkness — and although there are signs for art galleries, pottery sheds and several restaurants, there’s no hint of the sort of speciality shop that would dispense a skinny soy chai.

  Even in the pale-yellow glow of the few street lights, the village is picturesque enough to inspire the location scout and the second unit cinematographer to start identifying possible establishing shots.

  Becka’s delighted by the simple, white-washed thatched cottages; the reed-roofed verandas decorated with strings of shells, cork buoys and old fishing nets; and the stony front gardens dominated by old rowing boats filled with earth to make quaint flower gardens or veggie patches. Lights shine from inside a few of the small cottages — the fisherman are already awake, getting ready to go out in their colourful boats to bring in the morning haul of snoek or crayfish.

  “This place is too cute!” Becka says.

  “Maybe you’ll get a chance to come explore later.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The bus driver deposits us all in a road near the beach. Becka and I grab our bags and troop through the chilly darkness towards the shore, while the technicians unpack equipment from the trucks. The cinematographer is delighted with the foul weather. The clouds and the ghostly mist blowing in from the sea will, he says, “add texture to the dawn,” and the wind will give “a sense of drama.”

  A thin line of gold on the horizon is just beginning to lighten the sky when the minibus with Logan, Britney, Polyp, and Cilla arrives.

  Cilla — minus her pet dragons today — is no sooner out of the vehicle than she starts yelling instructions through a megaphone.

  “Everyone — hurry up and haul ass before we lose the light!”

  I reach the catering table before they’ve finished setting up, and cadge a double-espresso for Logan. I find him, on his own, shivering in the dark on the leeward side of an equipment truck. He’s wearing only a pair of low-hanging, cut-off denim shorts, and rubbing an oily Vaseline mixture onto himself — all over his bare arms, his smooth chest and his knotted abs.

  Sweet mother-of-pearl.

  I stare, wide-eyed. Speechless at last — although for a reason that would not please Cilla. When Logan notices me standing there, I stick out an arm and hand him the small cardboard cup of espresso.

  He downs it in one go. “Th-thanks.”

  His teeth are chattering. And are his lips tinged blue? I’m tempted to kiss some pink back into them.

  I shake myself mentally. Perhaps I shake myself physically, too, because Logan gives me a puzzled look. Then I reach into my giant tote bag and pull out his jacket and the blanket.

  “Ta-da! I come prepared,” I say, consoling myself that his body will only be hidden until they start filming which, judging from the commands being shouted all around us, should be any minute now.

  “I love you!” he says dramatically.

  “I bet you say that to all your assistants.” I’m grateful for the dark which hides the evidence of my heated cheeks.

  “Only the ones who come bearing gifts.”

  He takes the coat, but drops it on a nearby equipment box, and instead holds the jar of cream out to me.

  “Can you help? I can’t reach my back, and without a mirror, I’m not sure I’ve g
ot it everywhere on my front. They want me to have a sweat sheen — which isn’t g-going to happen in this weather — so I need to oil up.”

  “You want me to … rub this on your back? And chest?”

  Not only am I having trouble talking now, I’m having trouble breathing. And I’m suddenly very hot in my own jacket.

  “Yeah,” he says. When I don’t move, he adds, “Do you mind?”

  “No! Um, no — not at all.”

  He turns around, and there’s his back — all smooth skin and curved muscle — mine for the looking. And the touching.

  I scoop up a big glob of the cream from the jar, warm it between my hands, and smooth it onto his shoulders. As if in a dream, I massage it around the curve of his neck, then back and forth over the corded ridges of his shoulder muscles, and down the length of his spine and the tight lines of his waist to where the base of his back disappears below the denim of his shorts.

  Logan sighs in pleasure when I rub against the tension in his neck and shoulders, but as I continue, he grows still and quiet. My hand stops moving but lingers against his skin. As Logan turns — very slowly — to face me, my fingers trail above the denim waistband, across the hollow of his back, around his hip, over his taut abdomen, and come to rest just below his navel. In the pit of my belly, something tightens then melts. Perhaps my ovaries are exploding.

  Logan looks down into my eyes. His are the endless reflecting blue of the darkest sapphire. The wayward lock of black hair falls to rest over one eye. We’re alone in a bubble of heat and awareness. The noise, the wind, the cold — all have vanished. Sucked out from the air around us, like oxygen feeding a flash fire. My heart hammers me closer to him. A pulse beats in his throat. His head dips towards mine. His lips move.

  “Logan? Logan!” Cilla’s harsh voice ruptures the moment. She lets rip with a stream of curses, demanding to know where her leading man is hiding.

  I draw in a ragged breath, look away, clear my throat. Logan hasn’t moved a muscle.

  “Now this spot right here doesn’t have enough glisten,” I say, striving for a light tone as I smear a dab of cream on his collarbone.