The Cast

by Danielle Steel

  “Something serious?” He worried about her, which touched her.

  “Not yet, and never, I hope.”

  “Not to change the subject, but what did you do to Nick Brooke, by the way? He called me today and couldn’t stop talking about you and how fabulous you are. I think you’ve cast a spell on him.”

  “Not likely. He can have anyone he wants,” she said, flattered, but she didn’t take it seriously. “We had a nice evening at his house. He’s a really great guy.”

  “Well, he thinks the same of you. He said he was going to come early and watch the shooting, to see how the dynamics are. But, frankly, I think he’s coming to see you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said blithely.

  “I think I’m jealous.”

  But she didn’t believe that either. She had heard rumors recently that Zack was quietly dating a major actress, and she was happy for him.

  They talked about the first episode again, and he congratulated her on having the makings of a fantastic opening show. He told her the network would go nuts when they saw it. But it was hard to go wrong with two major actresses like Agnes and Maeve. The others were the icing on the cake. And Nancy knew just how to weave their performances together and create magic.

  Kait tried to keep her mind on their first episode when she went to bed that night, but all she could think of was Candace, winging her way toward danger again. The thought of it was unbearable, and yet there was nothing she could do to stop it. It was at times like that, feeling totally powerless to turn the tides, that she realized again how hard it was being a mother, especially of adults, but at the same time it was also what she loved most.

  Chapter 12

  The scenes they shot at their airstrip on Long Island went remarkably well, and the atmosphere on the set was positive, enthusiastic, and productive. And in the third week of shooting they moved to upstate New York, to shoot scenes in the house, and were hit by a terrible heat wave that made everyone uncomfortable, crabby, and short-tempered, even Maeve, who was the consummate professional, and Abaya, who was usually an angel. Everyone was hot and miserable. And Charlotte started throwing up as soon as they got there. She kept blaming it on the food trucks, and poor refrigeration in the trailer that had been set up as a commissary. She called her agent to complain, and insist they call a doctor. She said she had salmonella.

  “What’s her problem now?” Zack asked when he called Kait.

  “She thinks we’re poisoning her,” Kait said, sounding tired. The heat was getting to her too. “It must be a hundred and ten degrees up here, and the house isn’t air-conditioned.” Everyone was sitting in their air-conditioned trailers until they were called to the set.

  “I’d like to poison her,” Zack said, exasperated. “Is anyone else getting sick?”

  “Not a soul,” Kait confirmed. She was letting the production assistants deal with Charlotte as much as possible, but occasionally she felt she should step in.

  “So what do you think this is about?” Zack asked her. He had come to respect Kait’s judgment more and more. She had great instincts about people.

  “I have no idea. More money, time off, a better trailer, top billing. Who knows with her?” Kait was rapidly becoming experienced with the antics that went on while filming a show.

  “Do you think she’s really sick?” He was worried. She was in a lot of scenes and could really slow them down.

  Kait thought about it for a minute. “I’m not sure. She looks okay, but she could have some kind of stomach bug or bacteria she picked up. I don’t think it’s food poisoning, or we’d all have it. It could be the heat. We called a doctor for her, I think he’s coming later. She’s not running a fever, I checked.”

  He laughed when she said it. “You sound like you’re running a camp for wayward girls.”

  “I feel like it, except she’s the only bad girl on the set.”

  “It’s a good thing you have kids. Call me after she sees the doctor. I just hope he doesn’t tell her to take two weeks off. We’ve been right on schedule so far. I’d hate to see her screw that up.”

  “So would I,” Kait said seriously. She went back to see Charlotte then. She was lying in her trailer with a damp cloth on her head and said she had thrown up again.

  “What do you think it is?” Kait asked her, sitting next to her and stroking her hand gently, as Charlotte suddenly looked up at her with enormous eyes and dissolved in tears. She was obviously frightened, and Kait felt sorry for her, despite what a pest she was at times. “Maybe it’s just the heat.”

  Charlotte shook her head, and went to throw up again. Things were not looking good. She was still crying when she came back five minutes later and sat down facing Kait.

  “I don’t know how it happened…” she said miserably. “I think I’m pregnant,” she whispered. She started sobbing and dissolved in Kait’s arms, as Kait stared straight ahead of her, not wanting to believe what she had heard, but it sounded all too true.

  “Are you sure?” she asked her, trying to get her to calm down.

  Charlotte nodded and blew her nose on the tissue Kait handed her. “I’m positive.”

  “The father?” Kait asked in a choked voice, and the beautiful starlet looked at her.

  “The drummer in a band I hang out with sometimes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Almost. I think he’s the only one I’ve slept with in the last three months, but I can’t remember. I fool around a lot, but I only go all the way with a few guys I know, and two of them have been working in L.A. recently.” Kait hardly found that reassuring, but at least Charlotte thought she knew who the father was. “Almost.”

  “Do you know what you’d want to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’d have it. It wouldn’t be right to get rid of it, would it?” Kait almost groaned. And what about her part on the show? It was the least of Charlotte’s problems, but foremost on Kait’s mind, and Zack would have a fit.

  “You have to make that decision yourself,” Kait said quietly, the doctor arrived then, and Kait left them alone. She went back to the trailer she was using as an office and put her head in her hands on her desk. She didn’t hear Agnes walk in behind her.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Agnes said in a strong voice, Kait jumped and grinned at her.

  “It’s not.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  “No, but thank you. I’ll work it out.” Charlotte’s assistant came to get Kait then, and she left Agnes in a hurry. The doctor had come and gone by then. He’d confirmed Charlotte’s own diagnosis since she had taken a pregnancy test that morning, after she’d sent an assistant to a nearby drugstore to get it, and she looked at Kait with big, innocent eyes.

  “I’m going to have it, Kait. I don’t want another abortion.”

  “What do you want to do about the show?” The rest was Charlotte’s problem to work out. Kait only had to deal with the show.

  “I want to stay on. Can I?” Her eyes filled with tears as she asked. “It’s such a great part for me.” Kait nodded and knew it was true. But what would they do with Chrystal in the story?

  “How pregnant are you?”

  “About three months, I think. It won’t show for a while. I didn’t show last time till I was five months pregnant.”

  “You have kids?” Kait looked shocked.

  “I got pregnant in high school when I was fifteen and gave it up for adoption. I’ve had two abortions since, and I don’t think I should do that again. I’m twenty-three now, that’s old enough to have a baby, don’t you think?”

  “That depends on if you’re prepared to take on the responsibility,” Kait said seriously.

  “I think my mom would help me.”

  It all sounded like a mess to Kait, with a possible drummer father who wasn’t even her full
-time boyfriend but just a guy she hung out with, and not even the father with any certainty. She was “almost” sure, but not totally. “I have to talk to Zack,” Kait said, looking stressed. She left the trailer a minute later, headed straight for her office, and called him.

  She got him at his office, about to leave for lunch. “We have a problem,” she said bluntly.

  “She’s really been poisoned?”

  “She’s pregnant. Three months. She wants to keep it, and stay on the show.” She did a rapid calculation. “That means she’ll have it in January. We’re on hiatus then, so she could come back to work after the baby, if she’s willing, or we could even film her having the baby. She says you won’t be able to see it for another two months, which gets us till the end of September. We’ll be finished shooting by then. We could move all her scenes up front and shoot them now, so by the time she looks pregnant, we won’t need her, and we can bring her back right afterward, if you still want her. Or we fire her now and replace her.” She was thinking on her feet, trying to save the show.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, are you shitting me? Who’s the father? Does she know?”

  “I don’t know, maybe some guy she sleeps with, among others. She’s not sure. We could write the baby into the script if you want to keep her. Since she’s the bad girl in it, it could work. We’re talking about 1940 here. She could decide to keep it, which would be very brave for those days, but kind of works with the theme of the show. We’d have to hire a guy for her,” Kait said, her mind racing.

  “No, we don’t. She doesn’t know who the father is, but keeps it anyway. That would be brave, and they might love a baby and an unwed mother on the show. If we’re stuck with it, we can make it work. I’d rather do that than fire her. She’s a big name, even if she drives us nuts. And for God’s sake, get Becca on it right away. Let’s shoot all her scenes from before the pregnancy in the next month, and then we can shoot her again when she starts to show.”

  They were thinking in sync about it and Kait agreed with him.

  “I just want to warn you, I may kill her the next time I see her. And I have to tell the insurers that we have a pregnant woman on the set now.”

  “What do I tell Charlotte?”

  “That she is the luckiest woman on TV, and we’ll keep her on. It actually might work in our favor, though I sure as hell wouldn’t have hired her if I knew she was pregnant. It’s kind of a fitting plot twist for a promiscuous bad girl. And she can have some kind of bad boyfriend, who runs away and we never have to see him, if that works better for you and Becca.”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Good. I’m late for lunch at the network. I’ll call you later. And she has to do her job, she can’t lie around whining over this. She’s young and healthy, tell her to get back to work.”

  “Terrific. I’ll let her know.” Kait went back to Charlotte’s trailer then. She was looking better and had color back in her face.

  “What did he say?” Charlotte asked, terrified. She was sure they were going to fire her.

  “We’re going to write it into the show, if you want to stay.”

  “I really do, and I promise I won’t be a problem. I wasn’t sick last time. It must be the heat. I just called my agent and told him.”

  “We’ll make it work,” Kait reassured her. “We’re going to shoot all your non-pregnant scenes up front as soon as we can. And once you start to show, we’ll write it into the scripts. Becca and I can work on that. How do you feel now? Are you ready to go back on set?”

  Charlotte nodded meekly, and was grateful to her and Zack. “Thank you for not firing me,” she said, as docile as a lamb.

  “No more tantrums today, okay?”

  “I promise. I’ll do whatever you tell me.”

  “Go see them in hair and makeup and be ready to roll in half an hour.” They’d have to adjust wardrobe for her eventually too. Kait felt as though her mind was exploding as she went to find Becca and warn her of what was coming. They were going to be spending some long, hot nights together adjusting the script and adding Chrystal’s illegitimate baby to the story. She ran into Maeve along the way.

  “How’s the princess?” she asked with a disgusted look in the direction of Charlotte’s trailer. She was more trouble than she was worth, in Maeve’s opinion.

  “I have bad news for you,” Kait said, straight-faced.

  “Shit, now what? She wants a pedicure before she goes back on set?”

  “Mrs. Wilder, I regret to inform you that your fourteen-year-old daughter, Chrystal, is pregnant. She’s going to give birth at the beginning of season two. She’s keeping it. And she may not be sure who the father is.” It took a minute for it to register, but suddenly Maeve got it and stared at her.

  “Are you kidding? She’s knocked up? Holy shit! What did Zack say?”

  “He agreed to keep her and write it into the show. We can have her give birth on set. Or at least do a whole delivery scene with you and Agnes delivering the baby.”

  Maeve burst out laughing at the thought of it. “Well, that should be interesting. I can’t wait till you tell Agnes. I don’t think she pictures herself as a midwife.”

  “We have to move up some of her early scenes, while she’s not showing, so the schedule is going to get a little scrambled, but I think we can pull it off, without running late. Becca and I have work to do,” Kait said as she saw Becca in the distance and waved to her. “Sorry about the bad news about your slut of a daughter, Mrs. Wilder.”

  Maeve laughed again then, and went to find Agnes to let her know about Charlotte.

  The news was all over the set by the next day. Charlotte looked faintly embarrassed, and a few people congratulated her, and the costume designer told her that her own baby was due in September.

  They got back to work in earnest shortly after Charlotte had told Kait the news. They were resilient, and Becca was already working on the adjustments to the scripts in the scenes that involved Charlotte, and writing a new script for the episode where she would tell her mother she was pregnant. Kait was just grateful she’d never had to face that problem, and even more so that Charlotte was not her daughter. Neither of Kait’s daughters had ever gotten pregnant, whereas this was the fourth pregnancy for Charlotte at twenty-three, with a guy she wasn’t even sure was the father.

  But all Kait had to worry about now were the scripts they were changing. As she explained, it actually provided a new wrinkle to the story, and Chrystal Wilder deciding to keep the baby, and her mother letting her, made her a brave woman in 1940. Having the baby and fessing up to it was a bold move in those days, and almost unheard of. And Hannabel would have plenty to say about it. Agnes could hardly wait, and had some ideas of her own on the subject. Anne and her mother would have a couple of major arguments over it. Loch didn’t need to know until he came home from England, and he’d be shocked by his wife’s decision to let their daughter keep the baby. No decent man would ever want to marry her in the circumstances back then. Kait had already figured out that they’d need a baby on the show in season two, but that was easy enough to cast. Kait had thought of everything.

  Charlotte’s behavior was exemplary on the set from then on. There was no more complaining about her wig, her dress, or her makeup. She didn’t say a word. She threw up only once, and came right back to the set after she did.

  “This could be the best thing that ever happened to us working with her, if it calms her down,” Maeve whispered to Kait. Charlotte was so grateful she was still on the show that she didn’t cause any problems for at least a week, which was better than she had been so far. And the scripts Becca came up with, incorporating the pregnancy, were among the best Kait had read. It was beginning to seem like a blessing in disguise for all of them, and hopefully for Charlotte most of all.

  The news of Charlotte’s pregnancy was instantly eclipsed by a call from
Zack with major news. He had met with the head of the network. And based on the dailies they were watching carefully, and the powerful cast they had on board, they had agreed to greenlight them for the additional nine episodes. They would have to work harder and faster and come up with nine more scripts, but it was fantastic news. The entire cast cheered when they were told.

  * * *

  —

  Kait was so busy dealing with Charlotte and the script changes to accommodate her pregnancy and the additional nine scripts she and Becca were working on that she was the last one to notice Dan going in and out of Abaya’s trailer every day. Agnes pointed it out to her with a look of amusement. Kait was worried as soon as she heard about it, and went to visit Abaya during a break the next day. She knew how much Abaya had disliked him until then and how he had harassed her, pressing her to go out with him.

  “Is something going on with you two? Is he bothering you?” she asked, trying to sound casual about it.

  “Not really,” Abaya said at first. “Well, maybe something’s going on.” She blushed. “Actually, sort of. We had dinner a couple of times this week.”

  “What happened to your thinking he was a sex addict and a pervert? How did that change so quickly?” Kait was worried.

  “He says he’s never met anyone like me, and he’s crazy about me, Kait. He keeps bringing me flowers, and he had a really difficult childhood.” Abaya’s beautiful face was full of trust and innocence, and Kait’s heart sank as she listened to her.

  “Dan is a pretty busy guy,” she said, referring to the half dozen women he had already slept with on the set. Kait didn’t want her to be next and get hurt. She tried to say that as gently as she could.

  “This is different, I can tell. He respects me.”

  Kait almost groaned out loud and wanted to shake her, but she had no right to interfere. She warned her again to be careful, and crossed paths with him on the way to Abaya’s trailer after she left. She looked at Dan fiercely.