Just Not Mine (Escape to New Zealand)

by Rosalind James

  He let himself out the gate, and she went to the standpipe and unwound the hose from its reel, began to spray her newly planted vegies, and let herself look forward to it too.

  To Wednesday.

  Method Acting

  Hugh turned up at the Courtney Place studios in Henderson three days later feeling a good deal more excited by the assignment than he had been when he’d received it.

  He had his lines memorized. Not much to learn, after all, no more than Koti had. Mostly, he was required, in his one brief scene, to stand around in his uniform looking seriously concerned about what seemed to him like a run-of-the-mill shoulder injury. And to look a bit gobsmacked by Josie, which wouldn’t require any acting at all.

  He saw Koti and Will getting out of Koti’s car, went over to join them, and they walked in together. A cheerful young assistant with a swinging blonde ponytail was waiting in the reception area to greet them. She led them down a broad passage and into a big room featuring swivel chairs and one long wall of mirror like a hair salon, along with a table and chairs where a few people were sitting playing cards—people Hugh recognized as cast members, incongruous in casual clothes combined with heavy TV makeup. They looked up from their game, gave a wave to the three of them, standing in their Blues warmups over the uniforms that still seemed stupid to Hugh.

  And then he forgot about the other cast members, because Josie had come into the room, and she was dressed in a flouncy little yellow skirt and scoop-necked white T-shirt that had Will paying attention.

  “You’re already made up,” Hugh said unnecessarily after she’d greeted each of them with a firmly offered handshake clearly meant to show that whatever happened here today, it wasn’t to be construed as real.

  “Been working all day,” she said.

  “When do you start?” Will asked her. “I heard acting was mostly standing around, a few minutes in front of the cameras.”

  “Not soaps,” she told him. “We film fast, and we start early. I report to my dressing room at seven, finish around six most days that I’m called, and in bed by nine. It’s a glamorous life, and that’s the truth.”

  “Sounds about like being a footy player,” Will said.

  “Except with less beer,” Hugh said.

  “Oh,” she said, smiling at him, “I haven’t noticed so very much beer.”

  “On my best behavior for you, aren’t I,” he said, smiling back.

  One of the makeup artists caught the assistant’s eye, the blonde—Erica—stepped forward, and Josie looked away from Hugh and back at Will.

  Erica told Will, “As you’ve got the biggest part, we want to get you started straight away.”

  “Gregor,” the makeup artist said, shaking Will’s hand and gesturing him toward a chair in front of the mirror. “You’ve got your shirt off for this, right?”

  “That’s what they tell me,” Will said cheerfully.

  “Well,” Gregor said, “we won’t need to spray you down, because you’re a good color already. But you,” he told Hugh, “we’ll do you.”

  “Me?” Hugh asked, taken aback. “What do you mean? I’m not going to have my shirt off.”

  “No, but the camera will spend some good time on all of you in your short shorts,” Gregor said. “And these two are perfect as they are, but you need a bit of color on your legs. We’ll do your arms as well, get the girls excited.” He nodded at a clearly subordinate associate, and she held up a spray can, pointed Hugh over to a separate area where a tarp was laid out on the floor ready for him.

  “Got to get you up to standard, mate,” Koti said, “if you’re not going to break the camera.” He and Will laughed, and Hugh let the girl lead him off, started stripping off the warmups.

  “All the way to the undies, please. Don’t want any pasty white thigh showing,” she said briskly, and he rolled his eyes and complied, grateful that he’d worn the black ones and wasn’t going to disgrace himself.

  She had him with his arms out by his sides, turning in a circle as she chatted and sprayed like he was a horse she was getting ready for the show ring, and he could see the others laughing at him still. And he could see that Josie wasn’t watching him, undies or no.

  He heard her saying to Will, “Once you get that done, we’ll run through our lines a few times, then the director will block it out. You’ll be in bed, just have to turn your head and so forth, maybe do a bit of grabbing with the good arm.”

  “We aim to satisfy,” Will said.

  “See you back there, then,” she said, “and we’ll give it a go.”

  She turned to leave, and Hugh saw Will watching in the mirror as she twitched off in that little skirt. And despite her words, despite his own, he burned.

  It was boring, after that, until it wasn’t. Hugh’s and Koti’s brief scene had been filmed, Koti, of course, lighting up the screen with his hundred-kilowatt smile, and Hugh managing his own four short lines without any difficulty at all, not that anyone would be looking at him. And then more waiting around until, at last, he and Koti were standing and watching the filming of Will and Josie’s scene from behind the cameras.

  Will was in a hospital bed cranked up high, his shoulder in a sling, a single white bandage stretched across his broad brown chest. Just putting the bandage on had taken forever, because they’d wanted to make sure they had obscured as little as possible of the tattoo decorating his left arm and shoulder.

  “That’s money in the bank,” the director, Mike, had said with satisfaction. But at last, the thing was on, Will and Josie had rehearsed the scene what seemed to Hugh like an unnecessary number of times, and they were filming.

  Josie came into the room, jerked her head at the door, and the nurse, the blonde Hugh now knew was, in real life, named Valerie, and very pretty indeed—opened her mouth, closed it again, lifted her chin and stalked out of the room, rebellion written in every line of her tidy little figure. Josie—Dr. Parker—smiled with satisfaction, walked to the foot of Will’s bed with the grace of a panther, picked up his chart in a manicured hand, and came around to his bedside, flipping pages.

  She sat on the chair beside his bed, opposite the bandaged shoulder and IV bottle, crossed one elegant leg in its sheer black stocking over the other, the tight red dress beneath the open white lab coat riding up a truly incredible distance at the motion, and Will’s eyes followed it, as they were meant to do. Not much acting at all required there, because she was swinging that leg a bit now, one black stiletto was dangling, somehow, off her toe, and she was pursing her red-painted lips and sucking on the end of a pen in a performance that would have had Hugh’s blood pressure spiking to dangerous levels if she’d ever come near him in a vulnerable state.

  “How are you feeling this morning, Will?” she asked him after she’d finished her little oral demonstration.

  “Not too bad,” he said, attempting to shove himself up in the bed a bit more and stifling the subsequent wince in manly fashion.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “we don’t want you doing that.” She leant across him, reached for the remote that operated the bed, pressed the button, and his upper half rose a few centimeters, even closer to the breasts that she’d displayed so tantalizingly close to his face.

  She settled herself back in her chair again, taking her time. “Anything you want to ask me?” she purred. “Any questions I can … help you with?”

  “What time do you get off work?” he asked with a laugh.

  “Now,” she said, that crossed leg swinging again, that shoe dangling, “that kind of talk will get you put in the naughty corner, and you don’t want that. We surgeons have special ways of dealing with naughty patients.”

  She picked up his good hand, held it in one of her own, wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “Your pulse is racing,” she told him. “Jeopardizing your recovery, undoing all my brilliant work. You’re getting me angry, and you don’t want me angry.”

  She leant over him again, propped herself on one elegant hand, her chest very nearly tou
ching his own. And then she brushed her parted lips over his ear, one long, slow journey up, then down again, before murmuring, “You don’t want to know what might happen then. You wouldn’t want to hear about the kinds of things I can do to very … bad … boys.”

  His hand came up, dropped to the sheet again, his face showed equal parts arousal and confusion, and again, Hugh didn’t think he was doing as much acting as he might have been.

  And then the door opened and the nurse was back, and Josie was standing, imperious and forbidding, handing the chart to her like a mistress tossing her coat to a servant. She offered Will one more cool, meaningful smile, slunk her way to the door with that predatory glide, and he watched her go.

  “All right?” the nurse asked him, all concern, and he smiled at her, looking a bit shaky.

  “Yeh,” he said. “Phew. Is she always like that?”

  “Oh,” she said, her lip curling, “Our Dr. Eva is one of a kind.”

  And that was it. Done.

  Erica took them all back to get their makeup off, and Hugh could sense the relief in all of them, even though their gladness at being finished couldn’t hold a candle to his own.

  “Never had a surgeon do that to me,” Koti mused as a wardrobe mistress unwrapped Will’s bandaging, while the makeup artist—Gregor—wiped Hugh’s face down. “I’d remember that, anesthesia or no. Now I don’t think it was enough that I wasn’t the patient. I’m thinking having Kate watch this show at all is going to put ideas into her head.”

  “And that would be,” Hugh pointed out, “why they call it entertainment.”

  “Yeh,” Will said. “Entertained me, all right. The rehearsal was good enough, but she took it up a notch there. Had me sweating. This girl’s single, right?” he demanded of Hugh. “And your neighbor? And somehow available all the same, because you’ve failed one too many concussion tests?”

  “No,” Hugh found himself saying. “Not.”

  “Not?” Will asked, brows raised. “Not, you hope? Or not, she actually isn’t?”

  “Not,” Hugh said. “Full stop. Find somebody else.” He climbed out of the chair to face Will, and he wasn’t joking, and Koti studied the two of them for a moment, then jerked his head at Will.

  “Get the makeup off, cuz,” he told him.

  Will gave Hugh one last look. “Not,” he sighed, and did as Koti had asked. “Got it.”

  Erica had gone away once she’d delivered them back to makeup, and now she came back into the room, approached Hugh.

  “Josie wonders,” she told him, “if you’d like to come on back for a second.”

  “Yeh,” he said. “Of course.” He saw the look Will and Koti exchanged, told himself she wanted another chat, and that was a good thing, wasn’t it?

  He followed Erica around a few corners, down a passage, stopped at the door she indicated, the one with “Jocelyn Pae Ata” printed on a plaque. No actual star, but she didn’t need a star, because she was one. The girl left, and he lifted his hand and gave the door a quick rap with his knuckles.

  “Come in,” he heard, and he opened the door and stepped inside.

  She was sitting on a padded pink stool in front of a big square mirror outlined with lights, exactly the way he’d have imagined, creaming off the heavy makeup that had made her look a different person—the hard, cruel person she wasn’t. Her heavy hair was down, and she was beautiful.

  She smiled at him in the mirror. “How’d you boys go, then? Everyone in one piece? Thought I’d better check.”

  “Dunno,” he said with a grin of his own. “Not sure Will’s ever going to be the same again. I think a whole new world’s just opened up for him.”

  She laughed. “Shocked him, did I?”

  “Well,” he said, “if you get one of those letters, about the boots and the tying-up and all, let me know, because that could be him getting carried away.”

  “You going to protect me?”

  “You know I am.”

  She smiled into the mirror, finished wiping off the makeup, swung around on the stool, and he saw what he’d been doing his best not to notice since he’d come in, that she was in a dressing gown. Another silky one, long this time, in a sort of bronze color that shimmered in the light of all those bulbs. She was covered from neck to ankle, but that didn’t matter, because he could still see that vee of skin at her throat, catch a glimpse of shapely calf above her bare, high-arched brown feet with their pink-painted toenails.

  Feet that he’d seen over and over again during the months of their acquaintance, because she didn’t like wearing shoes any more than he did. She was wearing more than she’d done when they’d laid her brick, more than she’d done when she’d served him dinner in her white dress on her new patio, and definitely more than she’d done when she’d pulled off that same white dress and gone for a swim in her black bikini. But she hadn’t been wearing a silky dressing gown that clung to her curves, held closed with a sash that his hands itched to yank open so he could see and touch what lay beneath. And the two of them hadn’t been in an intimate, completely feminine little room with the door shut, and there hadn’t been a double row of costumes hanging just to one side of his shoulder, and some of those costumes hadn’t been hanger after hanger of bras, undies, and, in some cases, suspender belts. White, ivory, red, black. Silk and lace. Lots and lots of lace.

  He glanced at them again, he couldn’t help it, and she smiled. “Admiring my wardrobe?”

  “Well …” His gaze met hers, and they were both still smiling, but her eyes had widened, her lips had parted, and she wasn’t acting now. “How often do you take your clothes off on this show, anyway?” he asked her, the words coming out a bit husky.

  “You mean you haven’t been watching to see?” Her own voice was low, teasing, and his body responded to it like she’d pushed a button, because she had.

  “I have been,” he said, “which I’m sure you’ve guessed. Wondering if I missed the good stuff. Because this …” He reached a finger up to hook a filmy bit of silver lace decorating a scrap of pale pink, let it fall. “This would be the good stuff.”

  “I don’t always show them,” she said. “But I usually wear them, because Dr. Eva does. Because she’s always aware, no matter what else she’s doing, of what she’s got to offer, what she’s got that they all want.”

  “This would be what they call Method acting, then,” he said, and she shifted on her stool, the carefully closed neckline of the gown opened a little wider, and he could see an edge of ivory under there, scallops of lace against the golden brown of her skin.

  “You have been studying,” she said. “Want to see the rest of it?”

  Hell, yeh, he did.

  “Come here and I’ll show you, then,” she said.

  She stood, a graceful movement, turned to open a drawer in a cabinet beside her, and he saw the shape of her under the gown and covered the space between them in two strides.

  He was looking down into a shallow drawer divided into diamond-shaped compartments, each containing a filmy mass of … something. Black and gray and nude this time, with black heavily represented.

  “These are my other secret weapon,” she told him, pulling out one black bundle and unrolling it. “Dr. Eva’s stocking collection. These are fishnets,” she added unnecessarily. “Always effective.” She rolled them up again, put them back into their spot. “The ones with the seam running down the back are good too, and these.” Another silky length dropped from her hand, black again. “Don’t need the suspender belt for these, which is helpful when Dr. Eva’s wearing knits. And when she finds it more convenient to do without her knickers.”

  “You go out there,” he managed to say, “without your knickers on? Wearing those?” They had lace at the top, were nearly transparent beneath, and he needed a dress rehearsal. Right now.

  “I do,” she said, her smile inviting him to share her secrets. “Want me to tell you next time that happens? Increase the entertainment value?”

  He didn’t a
nswer. Instead, he took the stockings from her hand, dropped them back into their drawer, and shoved it shut with his knee. Then he reached for her shoulders.

  “I think we both know the entertainment value I want,” he said, just before he lowered his mouth to hers.

  This time, it didn’t start out gentle. It started out hot and hard, and it got hotter, because her mouth was opening under his, welcoming the invasion of his tongue. His hands were tight on the backs of her shoulders, until she reached up to grab his upper arms. Her hands were gripping him hard, then, and she was making noises into his mouth, little smothered sounds deep in her throat that were rapidly pushing him past the point of thinking.

  He had to plunge a hand into her mass of hair then, because he needed to pull her head back to kiss that throat. His other hand was at her waist, and she was holding on, gasping, turning her head to the side so he could do it some more. He found a spot that made her squirm, and stayed there, the sound of her breath with its keening undertone competing with the roaring in his own head. His hand moved down a perfectly curved hip, his fingers closing over the roundness of her, and he didn’t have a choice. He had to give her a stroke or two there, to run his hand over her curves, and she was sagging at the knees now.

  He couldn’t have that, so he let go of her hair, put a hand on either side of her waist and lifted her onto the top of that chest of drawers, which was exactly right, because her knees parted, and he was standing between them, grasping the edge of the dressing gown and pulling it aside so he could touch her, his hand stroking higher over the silk of her skin, his thumb drifting up over the soft, secret flesh of her inner thigh.

  He wanted to watch, but she had her own hands in his hair, was kissing him with a hunger he needed to satisfy, because that was what he was here for.

  He did his best, took his time, kissed her until she was melting into him, until her own tongue had come out to play. He explored the curve of her upper lip, gave the deliciously plump lower one the nip he’d been imagining for weeks now, drawing a gasp from her, a little whimper that had his blood heating. And eventually, he found his other hand reaching for the opening at the front of the dressing gown as if it had a mind of its own, and he was parting it, breaking the kiss and pulling back from her to look.