Tall Dark & Handsome

by Wilde, Amelia

  “Yes, but—” One of the crew calls to her from across the set. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

  Matt has already wandered off with his mom, and Maggie jogs across to the craft services table, leaving me alone next to the camera rig.

  Well, not entirely alone.

  “She’s cute, isn’t she?”

  Cannon’s voice comes from directly behind me and I whirl around. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that. Somebody’s going to have a heart attack. And who’s cute?” If he’s coming up to me to tell me that Chloe is cute, I will melt into a puddle on the ground and allow myself to be absorbed back into the earth before anyone can see me.

  “Matt’s mom,” he replies, looking at me with a tilt of his head. “Who else would I be talking about? You’re the only other cute person on set.”

  I shrug him off with a courtesy laugh and put a hand to my chest to rub away that strange, lingering ache. I am not homesick. I’m too old for it, for one thing, and this is my dream job, for another. There’s no reason to wish for that at all.

  “Rereading your notes?” Cannon asks softly.

  I’ve been looking down at a blank page. I flip it too quickly and the corner tears. “Yes.”

  “Do you... need a break?”

  “I can’t do it right now, Cannon.” There’s a bite in my voice I didn’t quite intend, and in the silence afterward, regret rushes in. “I’m… I’m sorry.” I look around to see if anybody’s watching. Nobody is, and blessedly the crew for the extras isn’t lurking around. “I’m just in the middle of—”

  “I got it. But Juno, there’s something you should know.” I turn to look into his eyes. He looks wary, but he still smiles down at me, his grin wicked as ever.

  “What?”

  “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.” He leans in, conspiratorial, and flicks his eyes to the sides as if he, too, is concerned about the presence of listening ears. “I’m also still waiting on a call.”

  “A... call?”

  “I guess it could take another form,” he says easily. “All you said was that you’d be in touch.” His face brightens. “Do you think you meant it... literally?”

  I roll my eyes, willing the heat in my cheeks to subside. “I meant, don’t pester me on set.”

  He raises both hands in the air. “Is this pestering? Because I have to say, I’d consider pestering to be something we could both do in your trailer. It’s been a long morning, and I could certainly use the break, and you don’t seem to have realized that nothing’s going on out here and everybody is standing around waiting for you.”

  I whip my head around. The rest of the crew is talking amongst themselves, setting up for the next scene. “Liar. And no. Not this time. I’m not going to be entrapped.”

  “Fine.” Cannon backs up, leaving nothing but his smile in the space between us. “I’ll be waiting for you later.”

  He saunters off toward the craft services table and I stare down at the notepad. It’s all bullshit, these notes, so I’m going to have to come up with something before we start the next scene. Because I cannot let simple shit like this get to me.

  I’m Juno Anderson, Ice Queen.

  I raise my chin and look in Cannon’s direction. He seems to sense it, because he turns to meet my eyes.

  I bite my bottom lip.

  His eyes gleam.

  Message received.

  25

  Cannon

  Three days after Matt’s mother makes her debut on the set, I catch Juno staring out the window of her hotel room.

  It’s a bizarre time to be mooning over the parking lot, because, for one thing, she’s naked, and two, she should be tangled in the sheets, sex-drunk and happy. Instead, she’s silhouetted by the streetlights that keep the parking lot visible at all times, head tilted at a thoughtful angle.

  I take a little longer than necessary to appreciate the view.

  Then I go and wrap my fingers around the curve of her neck, which is one of my favorite parts of her body. The particular swoop and fall of her neck to her shoulder must be one of those golden ratio things, because I can hardly stand to look at her shirtless. Her skin makes my fingertips buzz with anticipation and it wasn’t ten minutes ago that I had her panting on the bed.

  “You know, for someone who doesn’t want to get found out….”

  Juno leans into me, the curve of her back meeting with the swell of my cock. I should be entirely spent, but all it takes is one brush of her skin to have me jumping to attention.

  I ignore it in favor of being the gentleman that I want to be.

  “It’s dark in here,” she murmurs, her mind obviously somewhere else.

  “Yes, but it’s light outside.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  I point two fingers directly out at the parking lot. “Streetlights, Juno.”

  “Oh,” she says distractedly. “Yeah.”

  I turn her around to face me and draw her into the room. I don’t love the fact that she’s been standing at the window with her body on display to anybody who might walk by, but I’m far more concerned about this mood of hers. In the darkness of the hotel room, her eyes are a silvery gray. “Professional question,” I start.

  She rolls her eyes, the ghost of a smile flitting around the corners of her mouth and disappearing again. “This late?”

  “It’s never too late for professionalism.” I take her hand in mine and draw her toward the bed. For all my cock wants to go another round, my legs are aching from the shoot today. It was a combination of stunts and reshoots, as physical as you can get on a film set, and it feels like actual heaven to sit back on the bed. Juno stays standing, but she lets me hold her hands.

  “You’d better ask before it gets to be too early for it.”

  “Never too early.” I kiss one of her knuckles, then the next one. “What’s on your mind?”

  She tries to pull away from me, but fuck that. I curl an arm around her waist and pull her down on the bed with me. “Cannon—”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t hear you when you’re standing there, staring off into the distance and refusing to admit that something is wrong.”

  Juno rolls over onto her belly and mumbles something as she presses her face into the pillow.

  “That’s a pillow. I’m over here.”

  She lifts her head and presses her cheek into the pillowcase. “I said, it’s stupid. It’s so stupid that it’s not worth talking about.”

  “Nothing is too stupid to be said in the dark.”

  “That’s…” She laughs, shaking her head. “That’s an insane rule.”

  “More of a guideline.”

  Juno lets out a slow breath. “Are you really asking, or is this a setup for one of your—”

  “I swear, I will not have sex with you. I’m only asking.”

  Her smile is sly. “Not ever? I think we should discuss the terms.”

  “Nice try.” I run a hand down to her elbow, over her hip. “Tell me why you seem so far away.”

  Juno considers this. “Time is running down for the shoot.”

  “Yeah, but that’s nothing different. It was always going to be fast and dirty.” She might think it’s ridiculous to only discuss certain topics in the dark, but people are more willing to open up when they’re not being blinded by cheap hotel lights. “Is this about Matt’s mom?”

  “No.” She rolls onto her back and looks up at the ceiling. “She was cute. She was fine.”

  I study her half-lit profile. “I didn’t know you were approving set visitors. We’re way the hell out in the middle of nowhere.”

  Juno grimaces. “I didn’t realize... at the time... that I was approving a set visitor. You were busy selling me on the hotel room at the inn, and how we didn’t have much time, and how life is slipping away.”

  “You approved a set visit while we were doing that?”

  “Before.” She pulls the sheet up over her chest and pins it down with her arms. �
�Before, on the way up the stairs. Maggie texted me and I skimmed it. I must’ve been distracted.”

  “Shit.” I put my hand to my forehead so abruptly she turns to look at me. “That’s the opposite of professional. Very sloppy. How dare you?”

  A little smile. “You are impossible. You know that? One second, I’m supposed to be less Type A, and the next, I’m being negligent.”

  “Who knows what damage that woman could have done? She has the perfect disguise. Mom clothes, Midwestern manners...” I click my tongue. “You could have been letting the Trojans into our midst.”

  “She literally just walked on set. There was no fake horse involved.” Her face settles, a hint of sadness, and I lie on my back next to her, close enough that it’s no stretch for her to curl her fingers through mine. And then I deploy the greatest trick—one of the only tricks, really—that my mother taught me. I wait.

  I wait in the silence, letting my mind wander. It’s like opening a door for people to walk through, just standing there, blandly smiling, presenting no threat. Eventually, it’ll seem like the right thing to do. Only, in my mother’s case, she was never actually waiting for anyone to walk in the door. She was never waiting for anyone to spill their secrets. Her silence wasn’t a comfortable, coaxing one. It was the silence of someone who had other plans.

  I might have played the game too well, because Juno’s breathing becomes soft and even. Did she… fall asleep? Was the sex too good to hope for conversation afterward? Should I—

  “I was wondering,” she says tentatively, as if the thought just crossed her mind, “what it would be like to have someone visits you on set like that.”

  “Has anybody ever visited you on a set? You must have worked on hundreds by now.”

  “I worked on quite a few in college, and afterward. I’ve been assistant director more times than I can count.” Juno’s voice is thoughtful. “I’ve directed a few indie movies, smaller films, things like that.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck rise. “But did anybody from your family ever visit you?”

  I can see the curve of her frown. “Tessa did, once. She was still in college back then. It was before she got into medical school. It must have been... I don’t know, winter break? Something like that. She came to see what I was up to.”

  “Let me get this straight. Your parents never came to see you on a set? After all this time?”

  There’s a long silence. “I never invited them,” she says simply, as if this is explanation enough.

  I want to press her. I want to ask her if they ever tried to invite themselves, but I’m almost certain I already know the answer. It makes more sense, then, why Juno is so desperate for this to go off without a hitch. She wants to take back a trophy with her. It’s a hard habit to break.

  “I’m glad you’re not a doctor.”

  She shifts under the covers, blankets rustling. “You are?”

  “Fuck yes. Doctors…” I wave a hand in the air. “They’re good for saving lives, but they don’t know how to have a good time. Always worried about medical emergencies.”

  “That’s kind of their thing,” Juno argues, and I can hear her love for her sister in her voice. “Kind of like your thing is worrying if your abs don’t look amazing on camera.”

  “I never worry about how my abs look on camera. Have you seen me lately?” I sit upright, throwing back the covers. Juno scrambles to get them back. “Look at me. Does this look like the body of a man who worries about things like that?”

  She giggles, the sound fresh and bubbly, like champagne, and falls back against the pillows. “Don’t make me laugh. I have to get up early in the morning.”

  “I don’t know if you know this, but…” I lean down and nip her earlobe with my teeth. “I have to be up at the same time. We work at the same place.”

  Juno opens her eyes wide. “Oh my God. What? Why didn’t you say something?”

  My lips are an inch from her ear. “We work at the same place,” I whisper.

  She shoves me away, the movement playful. “What is wrong with you?”

  “That was me saying something.” I run my palm down over the flat of her stomach, treading toward the space between her legs. “Now you know... we’re coworkers.” I stop an inch from her most sensitive place and Juno lets out a frustrated groan. “Are you still okay with this, now that you have this knowledge?”

  “If you stop right now, you’re fired,” says Juno.

  26

  Juno

  Ten days left in filming, and I am faced with the cruelest reality of life—that sometimes everything is bullshit.

  Honestly, I didn’t anticipate my dream job involving so many last-minute fixes, but here we are. I’m caught between loving it and hating it. There’s probably something to the fact that I’m not in college anymore and I can no longer drink a case of Red Bull and power through the night, but I’m doing my best.

  And it might not be enough.

  I collapse into my bed at the end of the day, head throbbing, heart pounding, and try to relax.

  Ten days left. Ten days left.

  I have ten days to get all the shots I could possibly need for this movie, and then it’s going to be a wrap. There’s an outside chance I could ask for more time, but I’d hate to have to do that, so I won’t. I won’t be the director who came groveling on her knees to ask for another two weeks. That would not make me look like a confident person. Not at all. Even worse, I can’t think of a way to phrase it that wouldn’t give the impression that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

  It takes several minutes, during which my heart rate does not go down, to realize that Cannon’s room is dark and silent.

  That’s... unusual.

  The adjoining door is cracked open and I can’t resist. I pad across the hotel carpeting and push it open.

  No sign of him in either bed. They’ve both been crisply made by the housekeeping staff, and we’ve been on set all day. A studio, actually, thirty minutes away, which we snagged some last-minute space to shoot the interior scenes with Chloe. I take a deep breath of his scent on the air and remember:

  The dailies.

  Fuck me.

  Two days in the studio, and I’m dreading yesterday’s clips. The scenes with Chloe are some of the more quietly intense ones in the film, and I know—I know—I’m not supposed to take any of it personally. I’m not allowed to take any of it personally. They are actors, doing a job, and my job is to tell the best story possible for everybody involved. I can’t get hung up on the way he looks at her when the cameras are rolling.

  I stalk back to the bed and whip the tablet from the bedside table. Might as well get this over with before it consumes the rest of the night. It’s an early call tomorrow, and if we have to go back in the studio...

  “We might have to go back to the studio,” I say to the empty room. I am not going to let my personal feelings about Cannon get in the way of excellence. Even if it feels like a knife to the gut to see the two of them flash onto the screen, a still frame of my worst nightmare.

  I prop myself up against the pillows in the dark, a separate app open on the screen so I can tap out brief notes.

  And then I watch.

  I watch while they argue, her eyes shining with tears. I watch how his hands cup her face, tilting it gently toward his. I watch as he presses his lips to hers—tentative, an apology—and I watch as she hesitates for the perfect interval before she kisses him back, tears sliding down her cheeks.

  I don’t notice the tear slipping down my own cheek until it hits the tablet like an errant raindrop.

  “Fuck,” I whisper, pulling up my shirt to wipe my face. I can’t believe I tried to tell Milton that this movie didn’t have a strong romantic component. The romance is overpowering. It’s so fucking sweet and tender, and it looks so real.

  My heart feels bruised, sifting through the clips.

  I gave him tons of shit for being a terrible actor, but he’s not. And I’m not saying th
at because he is the best person I’ve ever encountered in a sex scenario bar none. I might hate watching these scenes, but it’s not because the work is subpar. Maybe he’s finally risen to the occasion of a film worthy of his talents. Or... maybe he was always this good, and I was blind. It doesn’t matter. Now I see.

  And what I see makes a lump rise in my throat.

  He’s not here, and with the curtains closed against the streetlights, my mind can run free.

  What if he’s not acting?

  I scroll back to the beginning of the scene and watch it again. My heart beats jaggedly, which is stupid, because this is exactly what I wanted the leading man to do. I wanted him to be quietly powerful. I wanted him to be vulnerable. I wanted him to be wounded and then made whole throughout the trajectory of the film, which I dragged kicking and screaming into existence.

  It’s so stupid.

  My eyes burn, probably from staring at the screen too long.

  Before I can turn it off, a face appears above the top edge of the tablet.

  I scream like I’m scared shitless, which I am, and drop the tablet onto my own chest, where it falls to the floor with a soft thud. And he’s laughing, laughing his head off, while he covers my mouth with his hand.

  “Holy shit,” he says, his voice rocked by the continuing laughter. “I’m sorry I said you couldn’t act. This is the performance of a lifetime.”

  I wrench Cannon’s hand off my mouth and shove myself upright, blinded without the light of the tablet. “This is not a performance. I thought you were…” Adrenaline surges through my veins, bright and bitter, and I leap out of bed and run straight into Cannon in the process. “I thought you were a murderer.”

  His laugh mellows to a low rumble. “What were you looking at on that tablet?”

  “Dailies.” I sound defensive. Awesome.

  “Are you sure?” He runs a calming hand over my hair as I crouch down and gather up the tablet, straightening its case, cheeks flaming. “You looked like I caught you watching something illicit. I’ve…” His tone turns thoughtful. “I have to know.” Then he snatches the tablet out of my hands, lightning fast.