“How’d you know?” He smiled politely, feigning humility. Fans liked that—the aw shucks I’m nobody shtick.
She held up a cell phone, a flip one, one with actual buttons instead of a touch screen. “My daughter left me a voicemail.” She tilted her blonde coiffed head as if it helped her to remember. “She said, ‘Don’t come home. Cole Masten is here.’” She opened her purse and dropped in the phone. “Nothing to make a mother come home quicker than to tell her to stay away.”
There was a moment of silence, and he shifted into a new position against the side of the car. So, she lived with her mother. That was something you didn’t see in LA.
The woman eyed him, her gaze shifting over his clothes, and he wondered if any evidence from last night was present. “How do you know Summer?” the question was a polite one, voiced in light tones, but there was a trap in the words, a danger in the vowels.
He spoke cautiously. “I just met her today.” The woman said nothing, and his mouth moved in a search to fill the silence. “A few hours ago. I came here to meet Ben.”
“Do you work on the movies also?” Her hand wrapped around the strap of her purse, and she pulled it higher up on her shoulder.
He studied her. Tried to see a joke in her question. “Yes. I’m an actor.” An Academy Award winning actor. An actor Time Magazine just put on their cover. She smiled as if it was a cute little job. “That’s nice. I’m Francis Jenkins. Summer’s mother.” She let go of the purse’s strap and stuck out her hand.
“Cole.” He shook her hand, and her grip was firm and strong. Funny. He’d always imagined Southern women to be meek and mild, to avoid eye contact and to yield to their male counterparts. Between Summer and her mother, that image was being reworked.
“Why are you out here, in Ben’s car?”
He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his pants. “Giving him and Summer a chance to talk. She may have kicked me out of the house.” He grinned sheepishly, and the woman laughed.
“You’ll forgive my daughter. She’s intent on leaving me grandchildless. You were probably too tempting to that goal.” She winked, and it was his turn to laugh. This woman was nothing like his mother. Nothing like Nadia’s mother—a stuffy blue-blood who showed prize Greyhounds and fluently spoke three languages. He felt the slip of her hand through his arm, and she gripped it tightly. “Be a dear and help me inside.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He tried the Southern moniker on for size, and the woman laughed again.
“An actor, you say? We need to work on your Southern drawl.”
They climbed the steps, the front door swinging open before their feet hit the top. Summer paused, her face surprised. “Mama. You’re home early. And I see you ignored my voicemail.”
“Oh, you called?” the woman said mildly. “I must have missed that.”
Cole bit the inside of his cheek to hold back a smile, the older woman squeezing his arm before she released it. Summer kissed her mother on the cheek and waited until she passed inside, Ben’s greeting to Francis faint through the screen door. When Summer looked to Cole, her eyes held him in place, his body leaning against the porch’s railing just so his legs wouldn’t go weak. The front door fully shut and then it was just them and the setting sun and the whistling crickets.
“Did Ben talk to you about the part?” He shouldn’t have started with that; he should have made small talk about the weather, or politics.
She nodded. “He did.”
“And?” God, this was stupid. Any other blonde in LA would be on her knees unzipping his jeans for this role.
“And I’m curious about the compensation.”
The compensation. That was unexpected. He coughed back a laugh. The porch floorboards were weak, the house tiny, the truck parked under the tree had rust spots eating through its side. Her whole life could be bought with one bottle of wine from his cellar. He scratched at his neck and met her eyes. They flashed at him, and he composed himself, dropping the grin. “What would you like for compensation?”
“I don’t know.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and he mourned the loss of view. “I don’t know what is fair. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“And you trust me to be fair,” he said slowly. Los Angeles would chew up and spit out this girl before she even found her way to an agent’s door. Don’t trust anyone. That was the first rule of Hollywood. He learned that from his first agent, when he was modeling, and the first go-see came up. “Don’t trust anyone,” Martine Swint had snarled, leaning over her desk and pointing one long red fingertip in his direction. “People in Hollywood will build you up just so that they can rob you blind. You gotta be an asshole to not be assholed. Don’t ever forget that.” And he never had.
“I’m asking you for your honest opinion about what a major role in a movie of this size, for someone with my experience, is worth.” She raised her chin.
He took the asshole route. Losing Minka was manna to The Fortune Bottle’s budget, and this slice of Southern Belle was the gift that just kept giving. “A hundred thousand. Your name has negative box office weight; we’ll have to spend a fortune just to get you camera ready, and the filming will take three, four months of your life. That’s being a bit generous, but hey,” he flashed the smile that fixed everything, “I like you, Summer. I think you’d be a good fit.”
She didn’t move, didn’t blink, just stared at him, her eyes narrowing slightly. She had freckles, a light smattering of them across her nose and cheeks. He hadn’t seen freckles in years. Freckles were avoided by sunscreen, concealed by makeup, or lasered off by a plastic surgeon, the records of which would be eventually leaked to the press and made out into something more.
He shifted and she still stared. Maybe he could give her one-fifty. Hell, he could give her five hundred thousand. That was what she was really worth; that was really the minimum for a film this size, with their budget. But if they could get her cheap, then he could pad the film budget, have an allowance for the overages that always came. This was strange, her saying nothing. Maybe it was a Southern thing. California girls wouldn’t shut up—their mouths moved like a biting teeth toy wound all the way up.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?” He straightened off the porch railing.
“That smile thing. It’s creepy.”
He stopped smiling. “Ten million Americans would disagree with you.”
“Then ten million Americans are idiots.”
He said nothing, but decided, right then, that he didn’t much care for this girl. As Ida, her attitude would be perfect—the secretary known for standing up to Coca-Cola executives. But personally, he had enough shit to deal with. A diva as a costar wasn’t something he needed. “Are you interested or not?”
“I’m not.”
His foot stopped halfway back in its step off the top step. “You’re not,” he repeated.
“It’s not enough money. I’m worth more.”
“The toe of your shoe is held together with duct tape,” he pointed out, and she smiled. Smiled. A sweet, sunny smile that was betrayed completely by her eyes, golden knives which could cut through a weaker man’s gut and drag his entrails out for the buzzards.