“Do you see how Madeline Little is watching me?” she hissed, appearing genuinely frightened as she eased behind him.
My gaze battled through all the lovely ladies nearly falling out of their bathers around the pool, until I spotted my young costar amongst the revelers.
“What?” the producer’s daughter asked, joining in my laughter as if she were in on the joke.
Madeline looked like a lion stalking its prey in the bush. Her piercing green eyes were locked onto Adley, while her face split wide open in, what I could only imagine, was her best attempt at a welcoming smile. The effect was grotesque.
“Why is this starting to feel like the sequel to Single White Female?” there was real unease in Adley’s question, but she’d moved too far behind Cam for me to see if her facial expression matched.
A violent snap jostled me from my nosiness, and I turned to the girl whose name was as trivial as her presence had just become. Her bony hand was still raised at my eyelevel where she’d just snapped her fingers.
“Are you listening to me?”
“I’m sorry, no.” I told a lie and a truth. I was neither listening nor was I sorry about it. “I’ve got kangaroos in the top paddock tonight, I’m afraid. I spotted someone I know, and they’ll be as mad as a cut snake if I don’t go say g’day. Have a spiffy night!”
When in doubt, always leave them with a little jargon from the Lucky Country to really throw them off. I made my escape as her face crumbled with confusion, darting towards the house.
“Where’d she go?” Madeline came out of nowhere, popping up in front of me.
Under the weight of the small girl’s glare, I couldn’t blame Adley for being nervous. Madeline was scary, especially since she looked a little like a she-devil, her auburn hair set ablaze by the sinking sun.
I glanced back to where Adley had been standing with Cam, and found him observing the view of the rolling hills alone.
“Calm down, ankle biter.” I called on my most charming smile.
She glared harder. I shivered.
“Honestly, I don’t know where she went, but I’d say your best chance of finding her is sticking near Cam. She doesn’t exactly know anyone else.” I could feel guilty for selling Adley out later. I was just happy to be working my way back into Madeline’s good graces. Holy dooley, she could be intimidating!
She jerked her chin in a stern nod, and turned on her heel. Three steps later, she turned back to me.
“What’s an ‘ankle biter’?” she asked of the nickname I’d used.
“I’ll be sure to text the translation to Fran so she can add it to your list.”
Madeline nodded her approval, before slinking off in the throng circulating around us.
After another thirty minutes of mingling, I felt like I’d adequately fulfilled my duty. I’d kept an eye out for Adley’s reappearance, but with Madeline glued to Cam’s side, the sharp tongued vixen remained invisible. With the dwindling possibility of another Adley vs. Adley showdown, I had no interest in staying.
I considered finding the tart from earlier, but even the minimal effort of excusing my behavior wasn’t worth it. Setting my beer down, I slipped out the back and headed down the driveway. I slowed down, approaching the tall, iron gate that protected the famous director’s house. Apparently I wasn’t the only one making a getaway, although Adley’s reasons for escaping were slightly more legitimate than boredom.
She was staring up at the obstruction as if measuring her chances of scaling it.
The dry heat had forced her hair into a ponytail that sat high on her head, every shade of blonde imaginable swung down her back. Her gauzy cover-up didn’t do much to hinder the absolutely stunning view of the deep red swimming costume, nestling her pert ass. I had no problem identifying her physical appeal, even if I found her temperament lacking and unpleasant.
“This is called a gate.” I spoke as slowly as I was implying she was. “You press a button to open it… I’d heard the American education was bodgy, but I had no idea it was so crippling.”
She must have jumped a full kilometer in the air, surprised either by my presence or close proximity. A graceful hand clasped over her heart, and again, I couldn’t help but note her body’s finer attributes. It wasn’t that I found her face unattractive – far from it, in fact.
I could appreciate a painting without wanting to put it in my house. My preferences tended to sway a little more exotically. Adley was almost too pretty, her symmetrical features smoothed to the point of defying deeper beauty. There was nothing of interest about her face, nothing that was due a second glance.
“I had no idea how many celebrities got their jollies stalking the innocent,” she shot back, her reply an arrow arching through the air right at me.
“Says the girl who accused me being arrogant. What is it, exactly, that makes you worth stalking?”
She huffed, and crossed her arms over the chest I was already regretting my admiration of.
“Are you going to let me out or did you just come down here stare at me?”
An incredulous laugh bubbled from my lips. Was she serious? Like I would follow her down just to be blessed with such stunning charm. Yeah, right. I marched over to the keypad and fingered in the quick series of digits.
We stood in silence as the double gates swung open on either side of us, and I purposefully ignored the questioning looks she littered me with as we both exited, walking in the same direction. It was obvious Cam hadn’t mentioned to her that Georgia wasn’t the only production member sharing the neighborhood with him. While Georgia’s huge estate was custom built and one of the first in the area, Cam and I lived in the newer section, made up of nearly identical mini-mansions, all looking like they’d come from some variation of the same cookie cutter. Our matching houses were even on the same block, just a few homes down from each other.
I wasn’t about to explain myself to her. It was much too satisfying watching the worried gears spin in her head as she tried to figure out why I was seemingly following her back to Cam’s. I doubted she’d accuse me of trying to go home with her, when I’d already called her out for being conceited. Her pride wouldn’t let her. She had no choice, but to continue through the gated community like nothing was amiss.
For three whole minutes we walked in silence, but I could tell that was a real accomplishment for her. She didn’t seem like the type to let things sit on her mind for long.
“No one’s going to bother you? Not to inflate your ego further or anything, but aren’t you supposed to be famous? Shouldn’t there be fans and paparazzi hounding you at your every waking moment?”
A gruff noise came from the back of my throat.
“The paparazzi can’t legally get in here, not that it always stops them, but the guards here are good about keeping the community free of disturbances.”
“So you live here too,” her statement was spoken sensibly, as if she was just saying it for the sake of storing the information for later. She kicked a pebble as we kept pace together. The soft clicks on the pavement pausing before she caught up with it again.
She didn’t look around at the houses towering behind their manicured lawns, and it made me study the development through new eyes. I wanted to know what she thought about miniature mansions that were big enough to house more than one family, and probably went unoccupied for months at a time when their important owners were off ruling the one percent.
Had she grown up in a house like one of these? In The Girl in the Yellow Dress, Adley Adair had grown up in a picturesque home in a suburb similar to this one, but meeting the real Adley made me question a lot of the book’s authenticity. Everything else in the book was like reading the truth of your own first love. It was honesty that went deeper than the pages, and called to life something forgotten in my own soul. The book spoke to a forgotten notion of first love and the scars it left behind. That was why it was so popular.
It was impossible not to connect with Cam’s Adley Adair. His words pai
nted the portrait of a delicate ballerina faced with an unimaginable choice. He’d made her so much…more. His character was a thousand times more whole, more real, than the woman beside me.
As hard as I looked, I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of that girl.
The Adley I’d met was hard, like a diamond with none of the sparkling appeal. It bled into everything she was; the way she walked and the stiffness around her mouth when she talked to anyone who wasn’t Cam. It was in her stance, and especially, in her eyes. They were an impenetrable navy, dense and unyielding.
I doubted I’d ever be able to see what Cam had seen in her. Who knew if that girl even existed anymore.
And yet, knowing all that, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I couldn’t stop myself from trying to find the girl in the rough.
“What?” She nervously wiped her mouth like the cause of my examination was leftover food or a stain on her lips.
“Nothing.” I dragged my focus away. There was nothing I could do for the scowl bending my mouth though. “You’re just…unexpected.”
“You keep saying that,” she complained, frowning right back at me.
I couldn’t stop thinking it either. The real problem was deciding whether it was a good or bad thing.
Chapter Three
Adley
I’d been on set for two weeks, and was utterly unimpressed with what Hollywood had to offer. First of all, I really didn’t get what all the fuss was about celebrities. Okay, so I admit that I had a weak moment when first confronted with what some could perceive as perfect male bone structure, but all it took was Declan Davies opening his mouth for my temporary idolization to be cured…completely.
I thought it was really ironic that celebrities had the audacity to bitch and complain about the paparazzi stalking them. From where I was standing, the only person getting victimized was me.
Madeline Little had obviously picked up some tips from her adoring fans over the years, because she was certainly adept at keeping tabs on me. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without her making a surprise appearance, trying to chat me up about my ‘motivations’ and ‘inner struggles’.
My second day on set, she’d actually held the toilet paper hostage in an attempt to get me to talk. Luckily, I always keep tissues in my purse.
Cam thought it was hilarious. He said I deserved it for bailing out on him at the cast and crew party. However, he made it perfectly clear that he didn’t think it was too funny when he’d been left to be the focus of Madeline’s attention all night. She’d ended up getting him to promise to write her a full character analysis of Adley, just so she wouldn’t follow him home at the end of the night.
Thanks to the new assignment, and not to mention all his work apart from The Girl in the Yellow Dress, Cam was mostly MIA throughout my days. Left to fend for myself, I was far less inclined to be amused by his plight. The only times I got to see Cam were on our daily rides to and from work, and occasionally, at lunch. Most days I was stuck eating from the crafts table, on a bench away from the cast and crew.
“Cut!” Georgia Torres yelled, disrupting the scene that had just been playing out under a mass of lights and boom mikes.
It didn’t startle me like it had the first twenty-seven times the forceful director had done it. Somewhere around the fifteenth exclamation, I’d grown accustomed to her gravelly voice shouting the command. Madeline’s lackluster performance required a lot of frustrated ‘Cut!’s. She was awkward and dry, killing the momentum and quality of each shot, no matter how stunning the other actors’ performances were. I knew little to nothing about the filmmaking process, but the resentful vibe permeating around the set clued me in that it wasn’t the norm.
Georgia was a rounded little lady, with of a mass of curly hair that was dark brown where it hadn’t managed to be overtaken by grey. She couldn’t have been much older than fifty, and other than her hair, it was hard to tell she had any age to her at all. Her face was smooth and almost completely free of wrinkles. Plus, she had the spirit of a twenty-five year old, keeping pace with all the young actors, as she rode them as relentlessly as a drill master.
From her director’s chair, she dropped the foot me to the ground, and waltzed to stand inside the set with a hard-faced Madeline.
The set was styled into a quaint bathroom. Every bit of available space in the small three-sided room was taken up by bathroom essentials, like a shower, toilet, and a sink topped by a rectangular mirror.
After almost half a day of watching Madeline struggle through the simple monologue, I’d used context clues to discern that the bathroom was modeled after the dingy dorm Cam and my brother, Thomas, had shared at Duke.
At seventeen, I’d stood in that bathroom, and made the single most life-changing decision of my young existence. The real-life experience that the scene was based on should have made it hard for me to watch. All I felt was detachment. Madeline might have said the words the script asked for, and twisted her pretty face to mimic the emotions I’d felt firsthand, but there was no real connection.
She was older than I had been then, but it still came across like she was a little girl playing pretend.
“It’s a little…cold,” Georgia spoke softly, but the natural strength of her voice carried across the soundstage easily. “Are you still working with your acting coach?”
The whole cast and crew on set was doing the same thing I was – listening intently, while trying to look like we were doing anything else. I was just happy that Madeline’s attention was somewhere else for once. It was one of the rare moments when I got to really look at her, as opposed to the rest of the time, where I did everything in my power to avoid being in the same room with her.
“Yes,” Madeline responded with hollow sureness. Her green eyes turned their ferocity inward, hardening to an impenetrable shade of emerald. “She says I’m making progress.”
It was the first time I’d ever looked at the beautiful starlet and thought of something other than a predator. She looked like a teenager, someone who was trying her best and still failing. It softened her, and I couldn’t help but to relate to her in some small, insubstantial way.
“I don’t know what else to do, Madeline,” the director told her with fatigue, exhaling deeply. “We’ve got to get something usable today. The studio’s on my ass about the schedule… And you don’t seem to be connecting with Adley anymore than you were three weeks ago.”
No matter how many times my name was used around set, it still caused a jolt in my stomach. Each time, it sent me into fight or flight mode, and I was well aware which response I tended to lean towards. Instinctively I took a step backwards, and bumped right into a hard body that had snuck up behind me while I’d been eavesdropping.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Firm hands grasped my arms, holding my body in place so I was forced to remain facing Madeline and Georgia. His voice was riddled with the sweet twang he used off camera, and it brushed against my ear as he spoke with barely contained irritation.
His animosity didn’t surprise me. When it came to me, Declan Davies didn’t seem to understand emotions that didn’t involve scowling. He loved to frown. He did it all the time, like when he found me ducking into random hiding spots at Madeline’s approach; or when I caught him watching me and Cam cut up around the set, on the rare opportunities the writer graced us with his presence.
“That’s really none of your business,” I replied curtly. Giving him the satisfaction of seeing me struggle to get out of his hold just wasn’t an option, but my body wiggled reflexively despite my resolve, as if testing the boundaries.
“Business?” he breathed low in my ear. His voice didn’t carry, and we were isolated while the rest of the people at hand watched the painful exchange between the actress and director. “Funny you should mention that. Business is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. Isn’t it your job to help her? I was under the impression that was the whole point of your being here.”
Not even
pride could stop me from jerking free, and I clumsily wheeled around to glare at him with fire burning its way up my chest.
Declan didn’t verbally strike again though. His hands were raised to me, signaling surrender, but one eyebrow was arched with pointed speculation. I was only thrown off by the gesture for a moment, but by the time I’d regained myself, he’d strode away as calmly and silently as he’d approached.
I turned and stormed away.
Ass.
Declan made it sound like I was the bad guy. He acted like I was hoarding all of my secret character knowledge away from Madeline’s grasp and laughing with glee as she failed. I repeat – ass. He was wrong though.
It wasn’t my job to explain to Madeline the ins and outs of what made me, me. I was there for Cam. The studio had asked me to come to California to meet everyone, and keep an eye on things for Cam when he was busy with other projects.
It most certainly wasn’t my job to do Madeline’s work for her. Wasn’t she the actress? Wasn’t she the one who was making a living portraying characters? Adley Adair in The Girl in the Yellow Dress should’ve been like any other acting job for her.
Fuck him. No, seriously, he could go to hell. Declan Davies was an ass.
Why did he even care so much?
My feet, which had been hurrying through random corridors, began to slow, and I considered Declan’s actions.
He couldn’t actually care for Madeline, could he? It was hard to imagine cold, scowling, unapproachable Declan Davies caring for anyone. I suppose they could’ve been involved romantically, but he didn’t seem like the type to get so worked up over girl, even if she was his girlfriend.
Madeline was beautiful though, maybe the only person attractive enough to match Declan, but his protectiveness didn’t seem like the kind evoked by a lover. If anything, it reminded me of the way Thomas used to act about my boyfriends in high school. Well, before I’d started a secret relationship with his best friend.
Someone I Used to Know Page 3