“That’s okay,” Chris said, disappointment written all over his face. “I understand. Some other time.”
But Fleur knew there wouldn’t be another time. It had taken all of Chris’s courage to ask her out once, and he’d never do it again.
Fleur tried to talk to Belinda about Chris in the cab on the way home, but Belinda refused to understand. “Chris is a nobody. Why on earth would you want to go out with him?”
“Because I like him. You shouldn’t have…” Fleur pulled on the fringe of her cutoffs. “I wish you hadn’t put him off like that. It made me feel like I was twelve.”
“I see.” Belinda’s voice grew chilly. “You’re telling me that I embarrassed you.”
Fleur felt a little flutter of panic. “Of course not. No. How could you embarrass me?” Belinda had withdrawn from her, and Fleur touched her arm. “Forget I said anything. It’s not important.” Except it was important, but she didn’t want to hurt Belinda’s feelings. When that happened, Fleur always felt as though she was standing in front of the Couvent de l’Annonciation watching her mother’s car disappear.
Belinda didn’t say anything for a while, and Fleur’s misery deepened
“You have to trust me, baby. I know what’s best for you.” Belinda cupped Fleur’s wrist, and Fleur felt as if she’d been about to fall off a precipice, only to be snatched back to safety.
That night after Fleur had gone to bed, Belinda stared at her daughter’s photographs on the wall. Her determination grew stronger than ever. Somehow she had to protect Fleur from all of them-from Alexi, from nobodies like Chris, from anyone who stood in their way. It would be the hardest things she’d ever done, and on days like today, she wasn’t sure how she’d manage.
The blanket of depression began to settle over her. She pushed it away by reaching for the telephone and quickly dialing a number.
A sleepy male voice answered. “Yeah.”
“It’s me. Did I wake you?”
“Yeah. What do you want?”
“I’d like to see you tonight.”
He yawned. “When you coming?”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
As she began to pull the phone away from her ear, she heard his voice on the other end. “Hey, Belinda? How ’bout you leave your panties at home.”
“Shawn Howell, you’re a devil.” She hung up the phone, grabbed her purse, and left the apartment.
Chapter 9
Hollywood wanted Jake Koranda smart-ass and mean. They wanted him staring at a piece of street scum over the barrel of a.44 Magnum. They wanted him using pearl-handled Colts on a band of desperados and then kissing a busty broad good-bye before he walked out the saloon doors. Koranda might only be twenty-eight years old, but he was a real man, not one of those pansies who carried a hair dryer in his hip pocket.
Jake had hit it big right from the start playing a drifter named Bird Dog Caliber in a low-budget Western that grossed six times what it had cost to make. Despite his youth, he had the rough, outlaw image that men liked as much as women, the same as Eastwood did. Two more Caliber pictures immediately followed the first, each one bloodier. After that, he made a couple of modern action-adventure movies. His career rise was meteoric. Then Koranda got stubborn. He said he needed more time to write his plays.
What was Hollywood supposed to do about that? The best action actor to come along since Eastwood, and he wrote shit that ended up in college anthologies instead of staying in front of a camera where he belonged. The fuckin’ Pulitzer Prize had ruined him.
And it got worse…Koranda decided he wanted to try writing for film instead of the theater. He called his screenplay Sunday Morning Eclipse, and there wasn’t a single car chase in the whole damned thing. “That highbrow shit is okay for the stage, kid,” the Hollywood brass told him when he started shopping it around, “but the American public wants tits and guns on screen.”
Koranda eventually ended up with Dick Spano, a smalltime producer who agreed to do Sunday Morning Eclipse on two conditions: Jake had to take the leading role, and he had to give Spano a big-budget cops-and-robbers afterward.
On a Tuesday night in early March, three men sat in a smoke-filled projection room. “Run Savagar’s screen test again,” Dick Spano called out around one of the fat Cuban cigars he loved to smoke.
Johnny Guy Kelly, the film’s legendary silver-haired director, popped the lid on a can of Orange Crush and spoke over his shoulder to the lone figure sitting in the shadows at the back. “Jako, boy, we don’t want you unhappy, but I think you left those genius brains of yours in bed with your latest lady friend.”
Jake Koranda pulled his long legs from the back of the seat in front of him. “Savagar’s wrong for Lizzie. I can feel it in my gut.”
“You take a long, hard look at Cupcake up there and tell me you don’t feel something someplace other than in your gut.” Johnny Guy pointed his Orange Crush toward the screen. “The camera loves her, Jako. And she’s also been taking acting lessons, so she’s real serious about this.”
Koranda slouched deeper into his seat. “She’s a model. One more ditzy glamour girl who wants a movie career. I went through this with what’s-her-name last year, and I swore I’d never do it again. Especially not on this picture. Did you check Amy Irving again?”
“Irving is tied up,” Spano said, “and even if she wasn’t, I gotta tell you I’d go with Savagar right now. She’s hot. You can’t pick up a magazine without seeing her face on the cover. Everybody’s been waiting to see what she chooses for her first film. It’s built-in publicity.”
“Screw the publicity,” Koranda said.
Dick Spano and Johnny Guy Kelly exchanged glances. They liked Jake, but he had strong opinions, and he could be a stubborn son of a bitch when he believed in something. “It’s not that easy,” Johnny Guy said. “She’s got some smart people behind her. They’d been waiting a long time to find exactly the right picture.”
“Bullshit,” Jake retorted. “All they want is a leading man tall enough to play with their little girl. It doesn’t go any deeper than that.”
“I think you’re underestimating them.”
Cold silence drifted their way from the back of the room.
“Sorry, Jake,” Spano finally said, not without some trepidation, “but we’re going to overrule you on this one. We’re making her an offer tomorrow.”
Behind them, Koranda uncoiled from his seat. “Do what you have to, but don’t expect me to roll out the welcome mat.”
Johnny Guy shook his head as Jake disappeared, then once again looked at the screen. “Let’s hope Cupcake up there knows how to take some heat.”
Belinda had dragged Fleur to all of Jake Koranda’s pictures, and Fleur had hated every one of them. He was always shooting someone in the head, knifing him in the belly, or terrorizing a woman. And he seemed to enjoy it! Now she had to work with him, and she knew from her agent exactly how dead set he’d been against casting her. Part of her couldn’t exactly blame him. No matter what Belinda believed, Fleur was no actress.
“Stop worrying,” Belinda said, whenever Fleur tried to talk to her about it. “The minute he sees you, he’ll fall in love.”
Fleur couldn’t imagine that happening.
The white stretch limousine the studio had sent to pick her up at LAX delivered her to the two-story Spanish-style Beverly Hills house Belinda had rented for them. It was early May, unseasonably cold when she’d left New York, but warm and sunny in Southern California. When she’d come over from France three years ago, she’d never imagined her life taking such a strange direction. She tried to be grateful, but lately that had been hard.
A housekeeper who looked like she was at least a hundred years old let her into a foyer with white walls, dark beams, a wrought-iron chandelier, and a terra-cotta floor. Fleur took the suitcases away from her when she started to carry them upstairs. She chose a back bedroom that looked down over the pool and left the master bedroom for Belinda. The house seemed even larger than the photos. With six bedrooms, four decks, and a couple of Jacuzzis, it had more space than two people needed, something she’d made the mistake of mentioning to Alexi during one of their phone conversations that substituted for visits.