by G. K. Parks
“Sweetheart, I’m home,” he cooed, leaning down and kissing me. “I’m sorry I’m so late. I sent you a text, but you didn’t respond.”
“What time is it?” I mumbled.
“Late.” He continued to kiss me. “I haven’t been able to get you off my mind all day. It made for some rather interesting meetings.” He laughed softly, his breath against my ear. “The only thing I wanted to do was come home. My last meeting ran late.” He nuzzled against my neck, running one hand through my hair while the other worked on removing his tie.
I inhaled. “Why do you smell like perfume?”
He stepped back, standing up straight. “Samantha was sitting next to me. I guess I got too close. I’ll just jump in the shower and wash off.” He grinned roguishly. “I’ll be right out.”
Before I could say a word, he disappeared into the bathroom, and I relaxed. He was home. That knowledge put my overactive imagination at ease, and I turned onto my side. Now maybe I could get some sleep.
A few minutes later, he climbed into bed. He wrapped his arms around me and nibbled on my earlobe. I sighed, and his mouth moved downward. It wasn’t fair he knew every single thing that drove me wild, and tonight, he seemed determined to arouse me to wakefulness.
“Martin,” I rolled onto my back and looked at him, “not tonight, handsome.”
“In that case, it’s a good thing it’s morning,” he teased, stealing another kiss.
If he kept this up, I would give in, and he knew it. Normally, he wasn’t this persistent. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
“I just missed you. You’re the most important person in my life, and instead of spending time with you, I was stuck in pointless meetings for half the night.” He kissed me again. “With the way you’ve run out of here the last two mornings, I’ve barely seen you, let alone kiss you.” He hovered closer. “I’ve really missed you.”
“I can tell. What time is it?”
“Almost three.”
“I have to get up in less than two hours. I hate to say it, but I need sleep.”
“Fine, but you owe me,” he said playfully before checking to make sure the alarm was set. He curled around me, burying his nose in my hair. “I love you, Alexis. You’re my whole world.”
I barely closed my eyes when the alarm sounded. For a moment, I gave careful consideration to smashing it into the wall. Instead, I hit the snooze button and thought about calling in sick. Martin stirred beside me.
“Not yet,” he murmured, his words barely coherent. He tucked me against his body, his chest pressing against my back. I could feel his measured breaths and the tension leave his arms. The bastard fell asleep, and I wanted nothing more than to join him. We remained in that embrace until the alarm sounded the second time. “I’ll make you breakfast,” he mumbled.
“Don’t. I’ll grab something at work. Go back to sleep.”
Carefully, I disentangled myself from him. He was unconscious before I even climbed out of bed, and I envied him. The point of this apartment was so we’d have a weekend getaway where we could escape from work and the outside world. Unfortunately, that idea went out the window after our first weekend inside the apartment. Now we were cohabitating on an almost regular basis, except, as he pointed out only a couple hours ago, that didn’t mean we had actually spent any time together. Now with the long hours at the studio, I wasn’t sure how long we’d continue to be ships passing in the night.
Grabbing my clothes, I went into the bathroom to change and face another day. The glare of the lights was harsh on my eyes, and I looked out the window at the pitch black night. I was used to working late, but being up so early that I would have considered it late was a new experience. And one I despised. I went to check my reflection in the mirror, but it was still covered in a layer of condensation from Martin’s shower.
I wiped it off and looked around the bathroom. Normally, Martin was rather neat and orderly, but he had been in such a rush last night to jump into bed he hadn’t bothered to tidy up. After seeing the slight disarray, I couldn’t help but think the entire thing was a bit odd. He had quite the sexual appetite, but waking me up at three a.m. wasn’t one of his go-to moves.
One of his shirt sleeves escaped the hamper and dangled freely. A stain on his cuff caught my eye. I opened the cover and picked up his shirt. It smelled of floral perfume. A second stain was on the side of his collar, and I couldn’t help but think it looked like makeup transfer. I also knew it wasn’t from me. I showered before bed, not that I even wore enough makeup to leave a smudge like that.
My insides went cold. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Surely, there was a reasonable explanation for everything. Shaking it off, I dropped the shirt into the hamper and finished getting ready. Then I grabbed my bags, tossed a final look in the direction of our bedroom, and left the apartment. This was the last thing I needed right now.
Five
“Can you show me that again?” Clay Chaffey asked. He was in his mid-twenties, fresh-faced, and excited to play with toy guns. Unlike Gemma and Lance who seemed rather indifferent to the firearm instruction, Clay was obsessed. “How come every time you spin to disarm it looks so cool, and when I do it,” he spun, grabbing the barrel of the gun from the stuntman and attempting to take control, only to drop the weapon to the ground, “that happens?”
“You don’t have the magic touch,” Kurt Wen, the stunt coordinator, insisted. He was in charge of this training session; I was simply consulting. “Alex, if you’d be so kind.” He held the barrel of one of the prop guns, and I took it from him. “Pay attention, Mr. Chaffey.”
I aimed the prop gun at Wen, and he put his hands up. He crossed his right over the top while maneuvering his left into position. He did this exaggeratingly slow so Clay could see how it was done. Then he popped the weapon free from my grip, spinning it, and aiming it perfectly at me.
“Okay, I see.” Clay scooped up the weapon and handed it back to the stuntman. He tried again, and it clattered to the ground. “Dammit.”
Wen chuckled, ducking his head down. When he looked up, his eyes met mine. “Any other suggestions? You’re the expert.”
“Don’t let the kid anywhere near a real gun,” I whispered.
Chaffey glanced in my direction. “What?” From the look on his face, I knew he didn’t hear what I said.
“You’ll get it. You just need practice.” I took a step back, catching a glimpse of Dinah working on the proper hold and grip. “Straighten out your arm.” I knew what scene she had in mind, thanks to the readthrough yesterday. “Shift your weight to the balls of your feet. You’re moving. You want to keep it fluid.”
Dinah looked at me. “Holding the gun one-handed is what you’d do? Two feels better. More natural, like the way Kurt showed us and the trainers taught us back in L.A. Those six weeks of weapons and fight training were for a reason, right? We shouldn’t be switching everything up now.”
“You aren’t. We’re adding to the skills you’ve already learned. The difference here is you’re moving down a hallway. You’re alone. You can’t see the enemy, but they might be able to see you. So you want to make yourself the smallest target possible. Your back will be against the wall, and you’re sliding forward. Two hands mean you have to be squared to the front. One means you can stay sideways. However, when you come to a doorway or the end of the hall, you can place both hands on the grip, pull your elbows in, take a breath, and pivot into the unfamiliar area. If a hostile were present, you’d be in position to fire in the preferred two-handed style.”
“Show her what you mean,” Kurt said, having caught the tail-end of the conversation.
I executed the maneuver in the makeshift hallway. Dinah watched, and as soon as we broke up the session so the actors and stuntmen could perform a few more practices before going on with their day, she scribbled the notes I’d given her in her pad. At least she wanted to do a good job, unlike Lance who was sprawled out in his chair, one leg thrown over the arm while the other dangled in front of him. He was on hi
s phone with his agent while his assistant ran to fetch him some water and a clean shirt.
“All right,” Kurt declared, “let’s break for lunch. Afterward, we’ll run through a few of the fight sequences so our consultant can make any necessary changes to the routines before we break it down for you.”
Clay continued to work on his disarming technique. Lance barked at his assistant who apparently returned with the wrong shirt. The PA turned and disappeared in the direction he just came. Dinah headed in my direction, but Gemma intercepted. Something happened in the wardrobe trailer concerning yesterday’s fittings, so they had to get refitted for a few costumes.
Just because everyone else was too busy for lunch, that didn’t mean I was. There was also a good chance most of the talent just didn’t eat. I stood next to the table craft services had set up at the side of the soundstage and waited for an espresso. So far, everything Kellan told me was true. Actors were assholes, or at least Lance was. And craft services didn’t seem to have an issue fulfilling my requests. The only thing I hadn’t witnessed yet was drug use, but since Kellan said it was here, it probably was.
“Hey,” Kurt came up beside me, “FBI, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I did not expect you.” He narrowed his eyes. “Current or retired?”
“Shit. I know I look terrible today, but retired, really?”
He smiled. “I’m sorry. For the record, I don’t believe you’re old enough to be retired. You don’t even look old enough to buy liquor. But most active agents have better things to do than spend days on set.”
“Do you have a lot of experience with consultants?”
“What’s a lot?” He reached for a bottle of soda from the cooler and twisted off the cap. “I just think it’s weird we managed to get an FBI consultant this late in the game. The script’s been done for weeks, minus the constant tweaking, and for the last two months, I’ve been in charge of working out the action sequences. The actors have been in boot camp training for the last month and a half. It’s just weird.”
“Tell me about it. I got the call two mornings ago to meet with a client. The next thing I know, I’m on set.”
“So you are active?”
“Nope.”
“Retired?”
I gestured at my face. “Do you think the makeup artists can do something to fix whatever has you convinced I’m at least twenty years older than I am?”
“There’s nothing to fix.” He grabbed a scone off the table and took a bite. “You’re not active or retired, but you are FBI.”
“Was.” I glanced at the table, but the thought of eating made me ill. “I just started in the private sector a couple of months ago.”
“How do you like it so far?”
“It’s a job.”
He snickered. “You are not what I was expecting. I’ve been doing this for twenty-five years, and I’ve worked with a lot of consultants. The last movie I worked on had three former special forces guys advising us on boot camp, weapons training, and what deployment is actually like. Let’s just say I never would have known they had been special forces. They looked like a bunch of beach bums who spent their days drinking, and every time they opened their mouths, they regaled us with stories from their glory days that were even less believable than a lot of scripts I’ve read.”
“Are you asking why I don’t have a beer belly?” I rather enjoyed being a ballbuster.
“This is coming out wrong. When I was told an FBI agent would be consulting on the film, I expected someone older who likes to blow smoke, not someone who could kick my ass seven ways from Sunday.” He pointed a finger in my face. “You look more like the idealized version than the real thing. Are you sure you’re not an actor?”
“Positive.”
“Yeah, so anyway, about the fight training. They should have most of the moves down, but as you saw with the weapons training, it doesn’t always stick.”
“What are you going to do about Clay’s lack of coordination?”
“Probably CGI in his face on someone else’s body or the director will cut around it.”
For the next thirty minutes, Kurt rambled on about grappling techniques, throwing punches, and what looks best on film compared to what might be most effective in real life. He was a talker, but more than that, he wanted to convince me he knew what he was doing for fear that I might ruin the choreography he’d already spent weeks perfecting. The most I could do was promise that wasn’t my intention.
Filled with enough espresso to keep a herd of elephants awake for several days, I took a seat next to Kurt and watched the stuntmen demonstrate a few scenes. Obviously, the actors would replace them at some point, but this was to give me an idea of what it should look like. And it looked good. Since part of the film revolved around training at Quantico, I shared my personal experiences, but Kurt had done his research. The good thing about being a consultant was I didn’t have to teach or train, just offer insight. Although, that wasn’t exactly how weapons training had gone.
My phone buzzed, and I took a step away from the group. It was Amir. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I couldn’t pull any DNA off the card. Have you spoken to the security detail yet?”
“No. Why?”
He smacked his lips, the sound reverberating through the earpiece. “No reason.”
“Amir,” I hissed, but he hung up. I cursed, wondering what that was about.
Dinah avidly watched me instead of her instructor. Her brows scrunched, and she nearly took a blow to the face. I rubbed my eyes and went back to my chair, trying not to be a distraction. After an hour of watching what was starting to look more like a dance routine rather than a fight sequence, Kurt called it quits. Gemma and Clay were scheduled to shoot a few scenes in three hours and needed to get to hair and makeup before changing into their costumes.
Kurt returned to my side, talking a mile a minute. I smiled and nodded, but Dinah had made it obvious she wanted my attention earlier. While she waited for Kurt to leave, she bent over to pick up her water bottle. Lance came up beside her. His hand traced the curve of her spine, stopping at the waistband of her yoga pants. He was careful not to be inappropriate but only by a small margin. He was smiling with one of those patented sexy grins that begged forgiveness even though it oozed nothing but trouble. I’d seen that look plenty of times, and a pit settled in my stomach.
I came out of my chair, pretending to stretch but trying to get a bit closer to hear what the bastard was saying and to block out Kurt’s incessant yammering. I could barely make out the words. However, I could read body language.
Dinah stood up straight, holding her water bottle in both hands directly in front of her. Lance, on the other hand, kept his posture loose and arrogant. He had something to say and nothing to fear.
“C’mon, Lance,” she said, “we’ve talked about this. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” As if those dimples could get him anything he wanted. “My agent thinks it’s a good idea. Even the studio is on board. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is you.”
His smile dropped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When you’re stumbling out of some club at four a.m. and the flashbulbs are going off all over the place, who’s going to be hanging off your arm?”
He stared at her as if the question didn’t compute.
“That’s what I thought,” she snapped. “Do whatever you want, but I’m not agreeing to it. And my team won’t either.” She turned on her heel, and he grabbed her arm. Spinning, she batted his hand away. The sound of her smack drew the attention of several of the nearby crew who all quickly diverted their eyes.
“Don’t play like that,” Lance said, his voice full of swagger in his attempt to save face. “You know you can’t say no to this. What about Maui? Did you already forget how great that was?”
She put her bottle down on the chair. “We are not talking about this now.” She looked around, he
r eyes catching mine for the briefest moment. “Not here.”
“Then when?”
“Later.”
“Promise?” he asked, and she nodded. “Good.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and called to his assistant who was hovering a few feet away.
As soon as he was gone, Dinah deflated slightly. She glanced around, but Elodie wasn’t nearby. “Alex, are you busy?”
I glanced at Kurt, who was still droning on about the differences between Brazilian jujitsu and Japanese jujitsu or koryu. “Maybe you should focus more on incorporating Krav Maga,” I said, causing the light bulb to flick on over his head. While his wheels started spinning in another direction, I excused myself and followed Dinah out of the building. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Okay.”
Six
“Kurt brought up an interesting point,” I said as we walked back to her trailer. “You and the rest of the actors have been training for six weeks in preparation for this movie. Why didn’t you go on your so-called ride-along then?”
She snorted. “I’m the new kid on the block. I’m also one of the oldest actors on the set. Gemma and Clay are barely old enough to vote, and Lance is Hollywood’s heartthrob. My manager didn’t have the pull to ask the studio for all the things I wanted. And they aren’t exactly thrilled to be investing in me at this point, not when I only have one indie feature under my belt. After we flew here to film, I asked the director. Neil pulled some strings and negotiated you into the current contract we had with Cross Security.”
“And to justify it, I’ve had to act like a technical consultant to the writing staff and stunt coordinator.”
She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Pretty much. Are you mad?”
“No. Tired, yes.”
“The worst should be over now. Aside from weighing in on a few scenes Neil has already cherry-picked, your work here is done. I just need to get to know you. See how you function and think. Watch how you carry yourself and handle yourself in real situations.” We reached her trailer, and she carefully opened the door. After a wary look inside, she climbed up the steps. “This would probably be easier if I could have gone with you while you conducted an investigation, but since you’re not an agent and the insurance wouldn’t give me clearance for a stunt like that anyway, I guess I’ll just have to settle for hearing your stories and taking a few unauthorized field trips.” She gestured at the white couch against one wall. “Make yourself comfortable.”