by Lucy Parker
Immediate, appalling comprehension. That fizzy-champagne feeling she’d had in her tummy since she’d kissed Griff dissipated completely. “They haven’t cast Ferren?”
“Got it in one.” Maya pushed her fringe out of her long-lashed eyes. “Is he really that bad? I’ve never met him, but I do like his films.”
“Another overinflated male ego. When he can be arsed and his feelings are sufficiently soothed, he’s a decent actor. That’s where his positive qualities end.”
So much for The Austen Playbook being a stand-in for a holiday. A couple of relaxing weeks in the country, her sainted arse.
Her leg started to itch hideously during the early afternoon and she lifted her skirt to check it wasn’t getting infected. It looked okay, just a bit red. Freddy caught Dylan staring at where her knickers were almost visible under the raised hem, and hastily shoved it back down, glaring at him. He smiled at her breezily before he slipped back into character, gazing at Maya as she sailed past him in scripted umbrage, his hand flexing into a fist as if he wanted to reach out for her.
“Okay,” Maf said at about two o’clock, from her seat on the stage. She pulled a pencil from behind her ear and made a notation on her copy of the script. “Freddy, you’re done here for the day.”
“What?” Freddy asked, startled, as Sadie smirked in the corner. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Several things.” Maf quirked a brow at her. “But nothing irredeemable. We’re moving on to the courtyard scenes, and Lydia’s a done duck in that version. Enjoy your temporary murder and spend some time this afternoon with your script. I want you off-book by the weekend. Nice job today.”
Considering the source, that was a top accolade, and Sadie’s face dropped into sullen lines.
“By the way,” Maf added as Freddy hastily grabbed her stuff, ready to make a bolt before the director could change her mind, “check your email. We’re sending out the media schedule. Thanks to our head investors, we’re going to end the promo circuit with full pre-show TV coverage. Sunset Britain and The Davenport Report are going to do a first-ever joint broadcast, on both channels, live from the grounds here at Highbrook before the curtain rises. Start polishing up your interview skills.”
Freddy suspected her own face now made Sadie look like a beam of sunshine.
* * *
“Think of the whopping big cheque from the TV broadcast,” Charlie said encouragingly, after one look at Griff’s face.
“The profit share that requires a high level of audience participation through the app, and therefore people not switching off before the first ad break.” Griff shoved his hand through his hair, watching as his staff tried to take location shots of The Henry, while the TV lot were weaving in and out with their own cameras. The separate crews kept getting in each other’s way and fronting off like opposing gangs in a western. The sensible solution would be to put his team on hold until The Austen Playbook wrapped, but the meeting with network investors that would give a final nod to moving his film into full production was in less than a fortnight. “After what I saw earlier, our cut could even out at about five quid. It was more like watching the crowds at Glastonbury than a professional rehearsal. Total chaos.”
“What, even your darling?” Charlie asked, provocatively, and Griff cut him a sharp glance. “How is the fair Frederica today? Still in possession of her very sharp wits, or did you snog her out of them?”
“I know it’s difficult, but if you can’t act your age, at least aim to rise above adolescence.” Griff took the sheaf of papers his assistant handed him and flipped over the first one to check the figures. They added up to the total of needing a serious cash injection, and soon. Money. Always sodding money.
“You didn’t answer the question.”
Without looking up from the sums, he said, “I haven’t spoken to Freddy today. I saw her for about twenty seconds on the stage.”
“And?”
“And she was doing a decent job in a sea of general shite.”
“Anything to add to that?”
“Steve Lemmon has done the seemingly impossible and made Lydia Bennet an even more irritating character than the original.” Griff tucked the papers under his arm. Charlie was grinning at him. “Mind your own business.”
“It’s so weird. I wouldn’t have picked it in a million years. She’s such a sunny wee rocket, and you’re such a bad-tempered bastard most of the time. I’d have thought you’d want to strangle her.”
He did. He also wanted his hands sliding along her skin, and her irrepressible smile against his cheek, and her insane hair on his pillow. His fingers curled into a fist.
“Well,” Charlie murmured, “when you retreat to your lair and start giving her the freeze-out, let me know, will you? I do a good shoulder to cry on, and I think she’s a love. And she does have a very nice arse. It’s so...round.”
His little brother had been trying to push him into losing his cool from the moment he’d learned to walk, talk, and get in Griff’s way.
For the first time in the twenty-six years since Charlie had yelled his way into the world, it worked.
When Griff turned abruptly, Charlie actually took a step back and raised his hands. “Hey. I was kidding. Mostly.” The humour faded from his countenance. “Really not just a quickie snog in the back room, then. Jesus. Are you actually—”
“I don’t know.” Which really encompassed his feelings about the entire situation. Griff cleared his face of expression. He wasn’t sure what he’d just presented to Charlie, but suspected it fell under the heading of homicidal.
He didn’t know what she was doing to him. The physical attraction had hit him hard and early, but it was the rest that was sinking into him, changing the rules of the game.
With every nonscripted word Freddy spoke, every spontaneous move she made, she became a real person, not the half-fictional character that all human beings were to most of the world around them. He crossed paths with people every day, he worked with them, occasionally he was physically intimate with them, but in almost every case, they were and would always be a construct. Comprised of the front they put on, the curated side of themselves that they allowed to be seen in public, and his own projection and judgment, what he expected them to be and therefore what he saw. There were few people he would ever really know, see as they were and not through a hundred different filters of perception.
When he touched Freddy, when he looked into her eyes, he felt as if he was starting to see her. It was sexual, it was physical, but it was also the tentative stirring of a connection that he couldn’t explain, couldn’t put into words even in his own mind.
It was just there. And while part of him wanted to push it aside, reject the unknown, a bigger part of him felt instinctively protective. Wanted to uncover it, shelter it, lay bare the big mystery.
As Freddy had pointed out, he was a researcher by nature.
Charlie shook his head. “You really fancy her.”
“Yeah,” Griff said wryly, in the biggest understatement of his life. “I really fancy her.”
When he walked around to where he’d parked his car on the rear sweep of driveway, he wasn’t surprised to find her there. She seemed to be everywhere, either in body or flitting about his mind when he was trying to clear through the backlog of work.
What he wasn’t expecting was to find her halfway up a tree.
“What the hell are you doing?” He unlocked the car, dropped his things on the backseat, and went to the base of the trunk, automatically examining the branch she was standing on, to make sure she wasn’t about to make a more violent descent than intended. It seemed solid enough. Her skirt had risen high on her soft, curvy thighs, revealing a flash of lace, and a man with better manners might have averted his eyes.
“The wind earlier.” Her voice came through a thick sheaf of leaves. From the neck up, she was hidden in fol
iage. “It blew my empty crisps bag up here.”
“You decided to shin up a tree like Jack and his beanstalk because of a crisps packet?” Griff grabbed her ankle to steady her when her trainer slipped on a patch of moss. “You’ve got stitches in your leg, for God’s sake. And half of these trees wouldn’t even bear the weight of a cat.” He didn’t bother to keep the bite from his voice. It was exactly the sort of irrational behaviour his parents and Charlie would accept without question.
The universe seemed determined to surround him with people who could go off half-cocked at any moment, with zero warning. Trying to anticipate and thwart their impending disasters took a lot of energy he didn’t have to spare.
“Well, I couldn’t leave it up there. That’s littering.” Thanks to Freddy’s tone, he somehow ended up feeling reprimanded, as if he’d just advocated in favour of dumping toxic waste. “My leg’s fine,” she said. “It’s itchy so it must be healing. And your family might let you talk them like you’re Mr. Brocklehurst, but I won’t. You can be as rude to me as you like in print, but I’m not into it off the clock. Knock it off.”
After some quiet scrabbling and rustling above his head, she dropped back to solid ground and turned. He was standing close enough to catch her if she slipped, and she ended up pressed lightly against his body. His hands seemed to move naturally to the curves of her hips. Her skin was warm though the thin fabric of her dress, the material sticking to her in the heat.
Her fingers curled lightly against his shirt. “Charlie said you were in Henrietta’s office before half past six. I think you have a problem with delegation.” She moved her hands, flattening her palms against his chest. Her doe-brown eyes moved over his face, then locked on his, studying him. An increasingly familiar teasing glint appeared. “Hello.”
Griff felt a crease tuck into the side of his mouth as his lips curved. “Hello.”
Freddy rubbed slightly with her fingertips, and he felt her touch as a jolt from chest to groin. One tiny stroke and his breath was deepening, becoming weightier. He’d always despised not feeling in control of his surroundings or his body’s reactions; it was one of the reasons he loathed flying and couldn’t stand being ill.
He could imagine Freddy’s reaction if she knew she was being mentally compared to a head cold.
Reason, then, would suggest that he should release his hold on her, and break hers on him.
He didn’t.
“I need some parameters,” Freddy said, and he wondered where her erratic thought processes were skipping off to now. “Because fair warning, I’m a chronic toucher when I’m with someone I have any kind of close relationship with. I kiss and I cuddle, and if I’m sexually attracted, I touch a lot and often don’t realise I’m doing it, so if you’d rather I keep my hands to myself, you can say so.”
Griff looked at her without blinking. “Do you always leave yourself this wide open?”
“No. Professionally, I’ve rarely been as frank as I should be. With my family, I’ve just sat back and avoided rocking the boat. But I’ve always been transparent when it comes to my private life. I just need to apply the principle to other areas,” she said, her mouth briefly turning down. “Ask people what they want, say what you want, and it’s all out on the table. Everyone knows where they are.”
You could also employ a bit of subtlety, and not lay yourself bare for the world to tear strips off. There were aspects of her philosophy on life that he found appalling. “There are more effective ways to get what you want.”
“Oh God, the Slytherin.” Freddy coughed delicately. “So, licence to snog?” She hesitated. “For now.”
Officially the strangest conversation he’d ever had with a woman, but he couldn’t say he hadn’t had adequate warning that Freddy was likely to throw him unexpected curveballs.
She looked up at him with a definite challenge in her gaze, but also a flicker of vulnerability. Exactly to be expected if she was going to merrily open herself up to rejection from all angles, but it hit him right in that new, growing core of protectiveness.
He cupped her cheeks and bent his head. They were staring at one another from a distance so narrow that the slightest movement would bring his lips in contact with hers. “Touch away,” he said. A heartbeat, a whisper of warm breath on his mouth. “For now.”
She took him at his word and brought her bare arms around his neck, pulling him forward into a kiss. There was no slow, questioning build-up this time. It was like plunging headfirst into a hot spring, enveloping heat and a rush of physical sensation that was almost suffocating in its intensity.
Wrapping his hand into the frizzy tangle of curls at the back of her neck, Griff held her in the shelter of his arm and she curved her body, angling perfectly so they came together like a couple of puzzle pieces. She opened her mouth, stroking her tongue to his, and he grunted low in his chest as his body reacted with a speed he’d thought he’d aged out of. She smiled against his cheek, and did something with her hips, rotating them into his in a teasing shimmy.
“Fuck.” They were still within plain sight of the house, and that reality was rapidly sliding away from him.
“That was my signature move from the Chicago segment of the royal charity performance. I believe you compared it in the Post to a millipede being electrocuted.” Freddy’s voice was husky in his ear, but her laugh seemed to hit him in the chest. “Ain’t irony fun?”
Then their mouths were meeting again, kissing over and over, and his hands were shaping over her back, and lower. Charlie needed to keep his opinions and his eyes to his fucking self, but he wasn’t wrong about certain...attributes. It was round, and he was painfully hard. His hands stroked her thighs, and Freddy took his wrists and moved them back to her waist without breaking the kiss. His hold drifted back after a few seconds, and she sighed against his lips.
“Fine,” she mumbled. “Keep fondling my cellulite, then.”
“What?” His mouth went to her neck, lightly sucking, his hands addicted to the feel of her warmth and softness, and she shivered, an abrupt jerk, and cuddled into him.
The sound of equipment crashing to the gravel around the front of the house, and muffled voices, brought them both out of the sexual fog.
“I wonder if that was our stuff breaking or yours.” Freddy leaned back against the tree, smoothing her tumbled curls out of her face with trembling hands.
“If it follows the general trend of this summer, mine.” Griff fastened his belt. He hadn’t even felt her tug it open. Jesus. He released a short, hard breath.
“Gee, thanks,” Freddy murmured, and he looked at her.
“Not you.”
She looked back at him silently, and after a moment, he checked his watch. “I need to get going. Are you late back to rehearsal?”
“No, I’ve been given my marching orders for the rest of the day. Maf’s running the scenes where Lydia’s a cyanosed corpse. Lying silently on the floor doesn’t require a lot of rehearsal.”
“The silent bit might require some practice,” Griff said blandly, and Freddy aimed a light kick at his boot.
“Dick,” she said. “What are you doing this afternoon?”
“I have an appointment at Mallowren Manor, about fifty minutes’ east.”
“It sounds like something out of Scooby-Doo.”
“It’s the estate where your grandmother met my grandfather at a house party.”
They turned back towards his car, Freddy collecting her bag from a low brick wall nearby and slinging it over her shoulder. “So, what’s at Mallowren Manor now?”
He opened the car door and stood leaning against the roof. “An elderly lady by the unlikely name of Wanda Wanamaker, who remembers both of them and is keen to charge us thousands of pounds to film scenes on location there.”
“Are you going to?”
“From recent aerial shots, it’s even more of a crumbling
wreck than Highbrook, but you never know. It might turn up something.”
“That’s always been my philosophy. I’m sure it’ll be interesting.” Freddy glanced at him, the car, and then, with studied care, examined her nails. “It sounds fascinating.”
Reluctant amusement was a warm tug under his ribs. “Freddy,” he said, with exaggerated politeness, “would you care to come for a drive in the country?”
“Why, thank you, Griff, I’d love to.” Freddy grinned at him. She waited until the car was moving before she added, “You don’t mind if I run my lines on the way, do you? I’m on a short deadline to ditch the script.”
He was worryingly happy to have Freddy come along for the ride.
Significantly less keen on being trapped in an enclosed space with Lydia Bennet.
They got stuck behind a tractor on the country lanes, and Griff tapped his fingers impatiently on the wheel. One of the best parts about being home was the break from London traffic jams. He was suddenly remembering the downsides of rural life.
And God, Lydia was a whiner. There was also a downside to Freddy’s knack of completely inhabiting a character.
They picked up speed on the main road, although they were forced to stop at a service station to stock up on “road trip supplies” for a journey of less than an hour in decent traffic flow. He would have gambled on their survival without sustenance, but Freddy claimed to suffer from low blood sugar. He was ninety-nine-percent certain that was a blatant lie, but it wasn’t a bluff he was prepared to call, so she got her Maltesers.
As a silver lining, she took a break from the script to eat.
“Why did it only last two years?” Freddy asked, when the scenery was flashing past the windows and she had a sweet tucked into the pocket of her cheek like a squirrel.
“What?” Following the nasal instructions from his GPS app, he turned into a quieter road.
She swallowed her mouthful of chocolate. “The affair between Henrietta and Sir George. All Dad’s ever said—to me or in print—is that it ‘ran its course,’ which sounds like code for ‘no idea.’ If their relationship was so intense and passionate that it inspired her into writing one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century drama, and him into building her one of the most epic gifts ever—why did it end?”