The Monday Girl (The Girl Duet #1)

by Julie Johnson

  “One thing you can count on with me, baby — I’ll always tell you the truth, even if it’s a truth you don’t want to hear.”

  “Okay. Then tell me this one.” I suck in a breath as we come to a stop before a door marked STAGE 13 in blocky, bold white letters. “How intense is today going to be?”

  “Most of the intense stuff comes later, when we do the island scenes on the beach. That’s where the real drama and tension of the film happens. The next few days are all fun special effects stuff, don’t worry.” He pauses. “I just hope you don’t have any objections to getting wet.”

  “Why?”

  He reaches out and grabs the doorknob, eyebrows arching in amusement at the look on my face as he throws it open and ushers me inside.

  “That’s why,” he says cheerfully

  My eyes widen.

  Stepping through the doorway, I expect an empty soundstage; instead I find myself at the scene of a plane crash. I’m staring at a mid-sized jetliner, its metal body twisted horribly out of shape as though it’s actually plummeted thirty thousand feet out of the sky and landed in the shallow waters of a coral reef somewhere in Indonesia’s infinite chain of islands. The plane is resting inside a massive water pit, two times the size of an Olympic swimming pool. The cockpit is divided from the cabin and the tail is skewed at a strange angle, as if in the first stages of sinking. Debris floats on the surface of the pool — seat cushions, suitcases, all manner of personal items. A bright red life raft, likely the one I’m supposed to pull Grayson’s waterlogged body into during one of our first scenes together, drifts gently across the water.

  Sloan is standing next to a control panel, accompanied by three men I’ve never seen before. From their black-on-black outfits and the way they keep gesticulating at the plane, I assume they’re special effects designers, testing out their handiwork for Sloan’s approval before filming. This is confirmed a few seconds later when they trigger a button on the panel — fake smoke streams into the air and trick flames shoot out the sides of the twin propulsion engines, which spin like massive deadly blades. Another push of a button makes the body of the plane shudder violently in the pool and begin to sink, manipulated by underwater metal cranes I can’t quite make out from here.

  “Water scenes tomorrow,” Wyatt says, sounding like a little kid at a theme park as he walks toward Sloan. “Don’t worry, you won’t be inside the fuselage while it’s on fire. Apparently it’s against the Screen Actors Guild rules to burn actresses alive. Shame, really.”

  “You’re hilarious.” I roll my eyes and follow him, gulping at the impressive show of flames. They hiss and crackle as the jet is fully submerged, coming to rest on the bottom of the pool with a crash of waves. “Seriously, are we sure that’s safe?”

  “Safe? Of course it’s safe!” Sloan interjects as we reach the group. “These boys here are the best in the business. They’ve done the sets for my last three films — stuff way more complex than a simple plane crash scene. You’re in great hands, Kat, I promise.”

  I smile weakly, watching as one of the black-clad men hits a series of buttons on the panel to raise the plane back up to the surface, plumes of water streaming off the metal fuselage as it slowly emerges and straightens into a less-twisted shape, the tail and cockpit aligning back with the cabin like giant puzzle pieces. It’s eerie — like watching a crash happen in reverse.

  “Is the rest of the cast here yet?” Sloan asks, turning to face Wyatt, his eyes gleaming behind his spectacles. He’s sipping another god-awful green juice, but at least he’s not barefoot today.

  “They should all be here within the hour.”

  “Excellent. I’d like to start running through the choreography for the airport scenes as soon as everyone’s here. I’ve mapped it all out, but it’s going to take more than a few practice runs before we can actually start filming. Anyone heard from Dunn? Is he on his way in?”

  Wyatt shakes his head. “Chances are, he’s still in bed with a bimbo. I’ll have my assistant call him, get him moving—”

  “I’m here, actually.” The warm, male voice cuts through the air like a whip, accompanied by footsteps as Grayson makes his way over to us. Sloan and Wyatt both turn toward the sound of his voice, but I stand there paralyzed, feeling tension saturate the room. Climbing into the mangled wreckage in the water pit before me suddenly seems far less terrifying than turning to face the man at my back.

  I force my feet into motion, pivoting around when it becomes impossible to avoid his arrival any longer. Looking gorgeous as ever in a plain black t-shirt and jeans, he’s standing with Sloan and Wyatt, listening to something Sloan is saying, but his eyes are locked on me. I’m instantly caught up in his intent green stare. I want to evade it, to look away, but I can’t; I’m trapped like a fragile-winged creature in tree sap, reduced to an artifact in iridescent amber the longer his eyes hold me captive. In those long, dragging seconds, I see a thousand thoughts swimming in the space between us.

  We need to talk about the other night, his eyes communicate wordlessly.

  No, we really don’t , I fire back with a jerk of my chin.

  Sloan’s words die out; I think he realizes he’s lost the attention of his actors. In my peripheral, Wyatt crosses his arms over his chest and looks slowly back and forth between Grayson and me, his expression wary.

  “Kat,” Grayson says lowly. “Can I talk to you alone for a second?”

  “Actually, I have to go get fitted for my costumes now.” The excuse is out of my mouth before he’s even finished his question. “Right, Wyatt?” I look at him, desperation in my eyes. “Right?”

  “Right,” he agrees slowly.

  With a relieved sigh, I start heading for the side door.

  “That’s fine, Kat,” I hear Grayson call after me, sounding amused and frustrated at the same time. “We’ll be spending all day together. I’m sure I’ll find time to talk to you between takes.”

  My breaths are ragged as I slip out the door and head for the sanctuary of my dressing room, where Helena’s mocking lipstick message greets me like an old friend.

  Eight

  “ E ight rock-hard inches .”

  - An exaggerator.

  T o my everlasting relief , Grayson is wrong about us finding time to talk between takes. After getting fitted for my costume — a gauzy blue sundress and impractical platform espadrille sandals, just the thing you’d want to be wearing during a plane crash — I’m sent to hair and makeup, where they apply approximately forty-eight products to my face in an attempt to give me a “natural, no-makeup look.” Successfully transformed into Violet, I head back on set and find the rest of the cast and crew gathered for Sloan’s twenty-minute pre-shooting pep talk.

  I meet the actors playing Susan and Frankie, the ill-fated husband and wife who’ve hired me as their au pair during a summer holiday in the islands, as well as an adorable seven-year-old actress named Amy with bright blonde pigtails, who’s taken on the role of their onscreen daughter. Several other extras playing plane crash victims, pilots, and flight attendants are milling about, already in costume. Sloan wraps up his speech with a moment of communal silent mediation to “channel the cast’s energy into one form” and from that moment on, we’re so busy I barely have time to think, let alone talk with Grayson about things better left unacknowledged.

  Sloan is a cerebral director, who sees the movie play out inside his head long before he starts rolling film, so we spend the entire morning walking through the crash scenes step-by-step on a set built to look like the inside of an airport terminal. The designers have also created an impressive, full-scale plane interior for in-flight scenes, complete with rows of reclining seats, round thick-paned windows, plastic tray tables, and overhead storage bins.

  Time ticks by slowly as Sloan moves around the space, adjusting our props and repositioning our bodies as though we’ve never done anything so complex as take a seat inside an aircraft before. Grayson seems less than enthused — I hear him grumble some
thing about it “not being the first time he’s ever boarded a plane, for Christ’s sake” under his breath, making the two extras standing closest to him giggle.

  I try to act attentive as we are told where to walk and how to stand and when to move, but by midday, I feel an edgy sort of intensity settling under my skin. I’m eager to prove myself. To show them all that, second-choice or not, I’ll play this part better than Helena ever could’ve. To actually start making this damn movie instead of walking through it and talking it to death.

  I sense a similar impatience from my dark-haired co-star; Grayson looks downright grumpy. Even Wyatt, standing in the wings, seems frustrated. I can tell we’re all starting to wonder whether our director might have a few screws loose, when suddenly Sloan smiles like he’s discovered the cure for cancer and claps his hands together in unbridled excitement.

  “There it is!” He stares around the group of disgruntled actors. “You all look positively miserable. No — you look like a group of people about to board an airplane. Ill-tempered, impatient, and irritated things are taking too long. That shiny, first-day-of-filming enthusiasm has finally disintegrated!” His pushes his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose and heads for the massive camera on the tripod. “That means we’re ready to film.”

  I’ve heard of method actors — I’ve never heard of method directors.

  I roll my eyes at Sloan’s tactics and hear a snort from Grayson’s direction. Wyatt is shaking his head, but there’s a small smile on his lips as the cameras finally boot up, the overhead lights flip on, and the black-clad members of the tech crew take their positions. I feel a bubble of excitement rise up inside me like helium as we all get into our places around the fake airport terminal like passengers waiting at their gate. My heart thunders against my ribs when a film assistant with a clapperboard yells, “Scene One, Take One!”

  This is really happening.

  Sloan’s dedication to getting us into the right mindset may’ve been manipulative, but it’s also pretty damn effective. It’s easy to slip into character as the cameras finally start rolling. I let Katharine Firestone fall away and become the young, hopeful girl who’s landed the job of a lifetime — a summer nannying position in the tropics, with a cute kid to look after and a family that seems too good to be true. A switch flips inside me and I stop seeing the set, the cameras, the PAs and prop managers waiting in the wings. I’m just a girl walking through an airport, suitcase wheeling along behind me, about to jet off on an adventure. Impatient to start my life.

  I’m Violet.

  The rest of the day flies by so fast, it’s a blur in my mind. Over the course of the day, we do at least fifteen takes of the airport scene — who knew walking through a terminal could be so damn complicated? — before Sloan is satisfied. I lose count of the times we film the crash flight scenes. Even the man with the clapperboard is looking weary as he holds up the black slate for the last time and announces the double-digit take number.

  I feel buzzed, almost drunk, when Sloan calls “Cut!” for the last time and orders us to head home for the night. For a moment, I just sit there breathing in and out, trying to regulate my heartbeat. The emotional turmoil of surviving a plane crash — not once but dozens of times in a single day — has left me shaky and drained, as though I really lived through a trauma.

  It wasn’t difficult to conjure real terror while sitting in my fake plane seat, which shook and rattled to simulate turbulence, with only a thin fabric belt across my lap separating me from free-fall. There’s something disturbing about seeing flight attendants ruffled, their faces etched in lines of panic instead of that typical cool composure… something unsettling about watching air masks fall from the overhead compartment as the lights flash and the air around the plane seems to somersault forward… something terrifying about clutching the hand of the little actress playing my summer charge, shoving a yellow inflatable life vest over her bright blonde pigtails, all the while knowing she’ll never make it out of the water…

  It may be fiction, but the emotions it has stirred within me are quite real.

  Ignoring the catered spread of sandwiches, soups, and salads they put out for the actors, I make my way back to my dressing room in a daze, absently noting that someone’s finally cleaned Helena’s lipstick from my mirror as I get undressed and return my costume to its zippered garment bag.

  Only when I’ve wiped the makeup from my face and changed back into my own clothes does the adrenaline rush thrumming through my veins start to wear off. Grabbing my purse off the vanity table, I feel utter weariness start to sink into my bones. My bodily needs, suppressed for hours as I pretended to be someone else, return with a vengeance. I’m not sure what I require first — a bed, a bathroom, or a hot meal. Frankly, I’d be fully prepared to accept any of them.

  I’m not prepared for what I encounter when I step outside my dressing room.

  Grayson is leaning against the wall directly across from my door, arms crossed over his chest, hair even messier than usual, eyes half-lidded as he waits for me.

  “Shit, Dunn, you scared me!” I say, heart pounding against my ribs. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Listen, I don’t know what you’re expecting, but—”

  “Kat,” he says in a quiet voice that makes my heart clench. “Let me drive you home.”

  “What?”

  He pushes off the wall and steps into my space. My mouth feels parched as he stares down into my eyes.

  “Let me drive you home.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “Because I’d like to. And because I think, bullshit aside, you’d like that, too.”

  “I live, like, forty minutes from you,” I point out. “We aren’t exactly neighbors.”

  He doesn’t say a word. He just stands there, waiting for me to make up my mind.

  I sigh.

  He’s determined to talk to me about the other night — I suppose we might as well clear the air sooner than later. After all, I’ll be spending every day with him for the next few weeks. I got lucky today, but it’s going to be pretty impossible to keep dodging him. Especially once we’re in Hawaii, and the cast dwindles down to just the two of us.

  “Fine,” I agree, too weary to fight him. “Let’s go. But you’d better not kill me in the Porsche you bought to impress models.”

  “I don’t drive a Porsche.”

  “Whatever,” I mutter. “Just lead the way.”

  He smirks and starts walking. I glare at his back as we make our way toward the side door to the parking lot, stopping to say goodbye to Wyatt as we pass him in the narrow hallway.

  “Need a ride?” Wyatt asks me. “I was just headed to your dressing room to offer to drive you back to your place. Or I can have one of the AXC drivers take you home — we have a service on retainer here.”

  “I’m taking her home,” Grayson interjects. There’s a note of challenge in his tone, as though he’s daring me to contradict him.

  Wyatt’s eyes slide to me. “Katharine?”

  I nod.

  Something indecipherable flickers in his blue eyes. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Sloan’s going through the takes from today right now, but it looks like the airport scenes and interior flight shots are pretty solid. We should be able to get you two in the water tomorrow to start filming on the raft, so make sure you get some sleep tonight.”

  “Yes, Dad,” I drawl sarcastically.

  He smirks, but the humor fades out of his eyes when they move to Grayson. “Night, Dunn.”

  “Night, Hastings.”

  Neither of the men moves — they just stand there, eyes locked in some weird battle of wills I’m not entirely sure I understand. I’m not privy to whatever silent words they exchange, so I turn and start walking for the side door.

  “I’ll be outside, whenever you two finish eye-fucking,” I call back over my shoulder.

  Men .

  I’m standing in the
parking lot soaking up what little remains of the sunshine when Grayson finally catches up with me. It’s gorgeous outside, especially after being on set all day — warm and windy, more like summer than an October evening. I’ve always found it hilarious that in Los Angeles we don’t really experience fall — at least not the way they do in New England or up the coast — and yet one day every year, as if alerted by some unspoken signal, everyone in the city starts wearing layers and scarves and boots. Who gives a damn that there’s been no significant alternation in weather patterns? Here, seasonal shift is dictated by fashion choice, not actual climate change.

  “You ready?” Grayson asks, stopping to look down at me. He gestures at a sleek black sports car on our left. If it were an animal, it would be a lynx or a jaguar or another deadly cat — low and lethal. “This is mine.”

  “I thought you didn’t have a Porsche.”

  “I don’t.” He grins and walks around to the passenger door, pulling it open so I can climb in. “It’s a Bugatti.”

  “It’s a deathtrap .”

  “Just get in, will you?”

  I scowl as I climb inside and allow him to close the door after me, strapping myself in and eyeing the complex navigational system. I’d sooner be able to launch a rocket into space than figure out how to start it.

  “Thank god you had Ryder’s car the other night,” I murmur as he settles into the driver’s seat. “I never would’ve gotten you home in this thing.”

  He glances over at me. “Oh, we’re allowed to talk about that now?”

  “Isn’t that the whole reason you asked to drive me home? To discuss the other night?”

  “Maybe I just enjoy your company.”

  I snort. “You spent all day with me.”

  “And yet, I’m not ready to say goodbye.” He waggles his eyebrows. “What does that tell you?”

  “That you make crap life choices.”

  He laughs, flashing a set of mega-white teeth. “It’s a keyless ignition. You use this button over here.” He punches his thumb into a shiny silver lever and the car purrs to life. “See? Not so space-aged.”