by Tara Wylde
“So fill out the back of your driver’s license and tell your family that you want to be a part of Wisconsin’s organ donor program.” Ryan drops down in a crouch and gathers Nathan close in a one-armed hug. Even though Nathan is visibly tired, the wide-eyed look of adoration he gives Ryan is just as good as the first time they shot this scene nearly—I glance at my watch—three and a half hours ago. “Your generous gesture could save Nathan’s life.”
He waits a beat before standing up. He rubs the back of his neck and looks at Logan Hendricks, the director of this project. “How was that one?”
Logan shrugs. “It looks good but I’ll have to look at the footage before I’ll know for sure.” He glances around at his team; all of them look exhausted. “I’d like some close-up shots, so if you don’t mind working with Philip—” He gestures to his assistant director, “—with those for a few minutes, I’ll take a look at this last take and see if we need to reshoot it”
“Fine.” Ryan glances at Nathan, who looks like he’s half asleep. “But can we give Nathan a break? He’s running out of juice.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Logan says dismissively, his mind already focused on something else. “Whatever you say.”
“Do you see that?” Margo turns toward me with a wide smile. “That easy nature and directability is one of the reasons that Ryan has become most directors’ first choice, especially when it comes to dealing with a nuanced character. He always listens, never loses his temper, always tries to do what they want, and he also provides some smart feedback. Guys like him are few and far between.”
Don’t I know it.
I tuck my hands into my jean pockets and study the agent. She looks just as fresh and perfect as she did when she arrived on the shoot. “If directors like him so much, how come he needed a girlfriend so badly?”
Margo shrugs. “Directors like actors who are happy to create a project that fits their image. Studio execs are another story. They’re less interested in art and more concerned about the bottom line. Having a girlfriend not only gives Ryan something relatable to talk about when he’s on press tours, but also means more pictures online and tabloids, and the more his face gets splashed around, the more people buy tickets to go watch his movies.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
Margo snorts. “It might be one of the few things about this business that actually does.” Her eyes narrow as the assistant director drags his massive handheld camera toward Ryan. “Excuse me. I need to oversee this situation.” She doesn’t wait for my reply before she marches to Ryan.
“Good ole Margo, she can’t leave anything alone.” Jenna glides to a stop beside me. She sips from a paper cup that’s full of coffee and stares at her sister and Ryan. “Almost makes me glad that I gave up acting. She takes a personal interest in her actors, which is great when you’re starting out, but drives us veterans nuts.”
“Ryan doesn’t seem to mind,” I point out as he laughs at something Phillip is saying.
“Ryan is a saint,” Jenna replies.
My cell phone buzzes in my pocket, startling me. I tug it out and look at the screen. Seth’s number. “Excuse me, I need to take this.”
Jenna shrugs in a dismissive manner, giving me the impression that she’s barely listening, so I punch the answer icon. “Hello.”
“Lucy? Hi. Seth here.”
“Have you found anything else out?”
“Yes and no. I was right; the cat was hit by a car. The bullets were fired into it several hours after it was killed. The lab also said that it had been refrigerated for a few hours.”
My stomach clenches at the thought of someone storing a dead, mutilated cat inside their home, their fridge, for any length of time.
“Also, I’ve run through the list of names of people who knew you were out of town yesterday and they all have alibis, and none seem to have any motive to stalk and terrorize you. They seem to like you.”
“Okay, so it’s none of those. What happens next?”
“I’m back to thinking that maybe it’s one of Ryan’s fans who was watching the Tigers game and saw you and Ryan on the kiss cam. But tracking them down is going to be tough. It’s going to be a big list.”
That’s not what I wanted to hear. The sight of that poor cat, of knowing someone had managed to stick it on my car, had been practically in my house, scared me to death. “Let me know if you figure something out.” And I’ll start researching security systems so whoever this sicko is can’t get close to my car and house ever again.
“Will do,” Seth promises.
I disconnect the phone and am startled to look up and find Ryan right in front of me.
“Hey.” He nods to the phone in my hand. “That sounded serious.”
I quickly fill him and Jenna in on what Seth told me. Both look concerned.
Ryan bows his head and presses his forehead to mine. “It looks like we’re within an hour of wrapping up. Then they shouldn’t need me here for a few days and since you have the week off, how about you and I hop a plane and go somewhere else?”
It’s a tempting offer. “Like where?”
“I don’t know.” Ryan thinks for a moment. “I vote for a quiet little B and B. Maybe in New England where we can make love and get to know one another.”
“Sold.” I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him.
“Hey!” Jenna digs her elbow into my ribs. “Mind his makeup.”
“Oh, yeah.” I pull back. “That’s not something I’ve ever had to worry about.”
“And you shouldn’t now either.” Ryan leans in and steals another kiss. “Makeup repair is exactly why Stephanie is hanging around. She’ll tell you it’s her reason for existing.”
I push against his chest. “Go back to work so we can get out of here.”
Ryan laughs and beelines for Stephanie, who is happily flirting with a doctor who decided to swing by and watch the filming.
I return my cell phone to my back pocket and look at Jenna. “I need to take a bathroom break.”
Jenna nods. “I’ll go with you.”
Lucy
“Well…” The woman tilts her head to one side, the movement causing a little avalanche of glittery snowflakes to cascade from her frozen curls to her shoulders. “You’re the woman who has managed to capture the eye of the Manipulator and the heart of Heat Flare.” She narrows her eyes. “I believe I was told that your name is … Maxie?
Stubbornly ignoring the potentially crippling terror pooling in her belly, Maxie juts out her chin. “I’m Maxie. And I don’t have to ask who you are. You’re the icy bitch who destroyed my apartment before freezing half the city.”
The Frost Queen laughs. It sounds like icicles being knocked off eaves. “Yes. Yes, I am. And that was only a small preview of what I’m capable of.”
I push the stall door open, letting it bang against the neighboring stall, make a beeline for the sink, and start washing my hands.
Behind me, a toilet flushes and a second later a stall door swings open and I spot Jenna’s curly blond hair out of the corner of my eye.
“One of these days,” I tell her as I fill my palm with soft soap, “someone will tell me why public bathrooms never seem to have any hot water.”
“Hot water costs money, and hospitals don’t have much.”
Something about Jenna’s tone sends a chill through me. I glance up at the mirror and my blood runs through me.
Jenna’s standing behind and a little to the side of me. Both hand are raised and wrapped around the grip of a black pistol that she has pointed directly at the back of my head.
“Jenna.” I spin around and gape at her. “What are you doing?”
Her mouth flattens into a grim sneer. “What does it look like?”
I stare at the gun in her hand, not liking the way the large black hole is pointing at my forehead – or the way that Jenna’s hands are shaking.
Please, I silently pray, let that be a very realistic movie prop.
I wre
stle my nerves into submission, and repeat myself. “Jenna, what are you doing?”
“I had it all worked out. Ryan and me, we got drunk together after we finished working on a movie one night and I asked him why he and I hadn’t fallen in love.” Tears stream down Jenna’s face, leaving thick mascara tracks on her cheeks. “Do you know what he told me? That he didn’t think he could ever fall for an actress. Especially not one that he worked with on a regular basis.”
“But you’d already fallen for him,” I guess.
Jenna nods. “Can you imagine how much it hurt? Hearing Ryan, the sweetest guy in the world, the guy I’d fallen in love with, who I knew was my one and only, telling me that he could never want me because of my career.”
“I imagine it was pretty bad.” My mind whirls, trying to think of a way out of this situation.
If this was happening in my book, it’d be no problem. Dillion would use his powers of mind control and have her release the weapon. And Heat Flare, he’d use his powers to melt the revolver right out of her hand. Messy, but effective.
But I don’t have any superpowers. I don’t even have any regular powers. The best I can do is hope to make her see reason, or at least relax her guard enough so that she lowers the gun long enough for me to figure out a way to take it from her. And I don’t have the faintest idea how the hell I’m going to accomplish that.
“Pretty bad!” Hysterical laughter rips through Jenna, but the gun doesn’t waiver. “Pretty bad doesn’t even begin to cover it. Had Ryan ripped my still beating heart from my chest with his bare hands, it would have been less painful.”
If I’ve learned one thing from the movies, it’s that the key to not getting shot is keeping the bad guy, or in this case, hysterical woman, talking. But it’s not like Jenna is giving me much to go on.
“So, what did you do?” Even as the words tumble past my lips, I wince. Talk about lame.
Luckily, Jenna is beyond the point of caring what I think.
“And you know what?” She sniffs. “Up until that point, I believed in love. I thought that as long as I had love, the world would be all sunshine and glitter parades. I was sure that Ryan was going to be my knight in shining armor. That he’d slay all my dragons and treat me like a princess. And in a single drunken moment, it was ripped away from me. Because of my career, which was the same damned thing as his.”
“He’s a hypocritical bastard.” The words seem disloyal, but I figure that agreeing with her instead of trying to defend my lover will decrease the odds of her shooting me.
Keeping one eye on Jenna, I slowly shuffle my right foot across the floor, toward the door. After sliding it about two inches, I shift my weight over top of it, and bring my left foot to rest beside it.
Since Jenna misses the entire process, she fails to adjust the gun. Now, instead of pointing at the dead center of my forehead, it’s aimed at the left side of my skull. Not good, yet slightly less scary. But still about as deadly, assuming she can shoot even halfway straight.
“He really is.” Jenna tips her head to one side and stares at me with sad eyes. “How come you get it and no one else does?”
“I’ve been there, with my old boyfriend. He wasn’t mean, but he had a knack for saying things and twisting situations and words so that he got his own way. It took me a long time before I realized what he’d done. It made me decide that all men are jackasses.”
“But Ryan isn’t supposed to be.” Jenna unwraps one hand from the gun and wipes the back of her hand under her eyes, smearing mascara across her cheeks. It looks like a sad Halloween mask. “I thought he was one of the good ones. He made me believe he was, and then he rejected me.”
He is, my mind screams.
My heart aches with the knowledge that I haven’t told him that I loved him. I know more than most people just how precious love is, how quickly things can go wrong and it slips away forever. How could I have been so careless?
The thought of Ryan going through the rest of his life thinking I didn’t return his love makes my heart bleed for him.
“I quit my job for him,” Jenna wails. “A job I loved. I left it without a second thought. It made me sad, but I thought that if that’s what it took for me Ryan to fall in love with me, it would all be worthwhile, that with him by my side, I’d be happy as an agent.” She sniffs as the tears start to fall faster.
“I gave him some time to get used to the idea of Jenna the agent, to stop thinking of me as an actress. And then, I set part two of my plan into action. I convinced Margo that the studios would take more of an interest in him, give him a crack at leading roles, if he had a girlfriend. I let him think that a pseudo girlfriend was the perfect solution. I was sure he was going to pick me.”
“And he picked me instead.” It’s scary, but I can kind of understand how that pushed her over the edge.
“Exactly,” Jenna shrieked. “The two of you even used the phrase I created, pseudo relationship. How could you do that?”
I decide that there’s no point in telling her that Ryan was the first one to use it.
“And just like that, you got everything I ever wanted. The kisses, the adoring looks, the pictures all over social media. It’s not fair. It wasn’t right. You’re living my life.” Another sniff and more tears.
An idea starts to form. It’s risky, but it’s all I’ve got. I just need to get the timing just right.
“I wanted you gone. I thought if you got scared, you’d end things and, I don’t know, lock yourself in your house for a few weeks, and Ryan would come running back to me.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You didn’t.” Jenna raised her hand to swipe at her eyes again. Seeing my chance, I lower my head and charge.
Ryan
Stephanie brushes some sort of flesh colored powder over my face. “You and Lucy looked pretty cozy there a few minutes ago,” she says. “And I can’t help noticing that every time you’re not in front of the camera, you have this big dopey grin plastered all over your face.”
“Do I?”
Stephanie flicks my nose with one of her long fingernails. “You know damned good and well that you do. Now spill.”
“I’ve fallen for her. Hard.”
“Really?” A slow smile spreads across Stephanie’s face. “I’m so happy for you.”
“There are still some problems, a lot of things we need to work out, but I really think she’s the one.”
“That’s great, Ryan.” Stephanie looks genuinely thrilled. “Really great. I mean, if you can find someone, maybe there’s hope for me too.”
“Of course there is,” I assure her. “If you want, I can ask Lucy if she has any friends we can pair you up with.”
“Maybe someday.” Stephanie glances out a nearby window. “Though I’m not sure that I want to spend a lot of time in this town. It’s nice but a little too small for my taste, so it’d have to be a friend who doesn’t mind traveling to California.”
“I’ll let her know.” I glance up and skim the room. Margo is bugging one of the grips. Keegan is leaning against the far fall, watching the proceedings with a bored expression. Nathan is dozing in the wheelchair he’s been using as a prop for the promotional video. I don’t see Lucy anywhere.
A stab of concern shoots through me. “Excuse me,” I tell Stephanie.
I don’t wait for her to respond before hurrying across the room. I ignore everyone who tries to say something to me as I make my way to Keegan.
“Where’s Lucy?”
The large man nods down the hallway. “Went to the bathroom with Jenna.”
“Okay.” I start to relax, when Keegan looks at the nearby clock and frowns. “Come to think of it, they’ve been in there a while.”
My gut clenches as we both look toward the bathroom wall. “Do you think it’s possible that whoever has been leaving messages for Lucy is in there?”
Keegan looks troubled. “I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem-”
BAM.
Everyone spins a
round as the shot echoes through the lobby and up and down the hospital hallway.
Ryan
I run faster than I’ve ever run before in my life.
My feet slip on the linoleum, but even that doesn’t slow me down as I charge down the hall toward the women’s restroom.
I slap both hands on the door and push, but it doesn’t budge. I push again. It moves maybe an inch, but not enough for me to even see what’s on the other side, much less enter.
Keegan nudges me to the side and braces his broad shoulder against the door and shoves. Someone on the other side yelps as Keegan forces the door open, one slow inch at a time.
Visions of the mutilated cat dance before my eyes. It doesn’t matter that it was killed on the road, the thought of Lucy stuck in a small room with a person capable of sending such a message … Black dots dance before my eyes. My hands clutch at thin air as I struggle to stay upright. I can’t lose it right now, not while Lucy needs me.
Feet thunder down the hallway toward us, but I barely notice. All I can do is imagine the horrible things that wait for me on the other side of the door.
As soon as the gap is wide enough, I throw myself through it, desperate to do whatever I can to protect and help Lucy.
I trip over something and fall, my knees connecting with the floor with a teeth-jarring thud.
Heart pounding in my throat, I half turn to see what I tripped over, fully expecting to see Lucy’s broken body lying in a pool of blood.
Instead, I find myself looking into Lucy’s fully alert, bright with life, beautiful hazel eyes. She’s sprawled across Jenna’s chest, using her weight to keep the sobbing woman pinned to the ground. Lucy’s nose is bleeding, but otherwise she doesn’t appear to be injured.
“Lucy? Jenna?” I spin around, expecting to find an armed assailant, a crazed fan, standing on the opposite side of the room, but the only thing I see is that the mirror above the bathroom sinks is shattered and a pistol is laying in front of one of the stalls.