Chapter 3 INT. POSH TOWN CAR
Chapter 3
INT. POSH TOWN CAR
Three Months Later
London made Cole feel like a hick. The mix of massive stone buildings and modern skyscrapers and intersections called circuses was dizzying. When the English called a building old, it was, like, actually old. And then there were the British accents.
It was just so classy , it made Cole feel like a dirty lumberjack. He kept wanting to apologize for the Boston Tea Party or for not going to college.
“Stop fucking fidgeting.” Tasha was sitting next to him in the back of the town car on the way to a rehearsal space. With her blonde hair in some kind of perfect twist and in white from head to toe, she looked as if she belonged in London. Tasha absolutely didn’t have a class problem ... except for the part where she swore like a pirate. A perfectly arranged, foulmouthed pirate.
Cole ought to be swabbing the decks. It hadn’t occurred to him before he’d gotten into the car with Tasha that jeans and a leather jacket weren’t fancy enough for this meeting. He probably shouldn’t have brought them to England at all. It should’ve been all frock coats, all the time. “This was a mistake.”
“Not taking separate cars? Yes. I’d forgotten how jittery you get before filming.”
“No, me taking this part. I can’t play the son of a baron. Who am I fooling?”
“No one. You’ll be fine. They hired you for these.” She poked him in the stomach affectionately.
“Ouch.” Cole was pretty sore. It had been an abs day.
It was always an abs day.
“See? You’ve been working your ass off to prepare for this part in the ways that matter. You have to walk in there as if you own the place. Like you’re going to win an Emmy.”
“But I’m not.” He might hand Emmys out, but he didn’t win them. Hot frat boy and action hero weren’t the kind of roles that raked in golden statues, but those were what Cole had spent the bulk of his career playing. The truth was, it didn’t even make him sad. He knew he wasn’t that kind of actor.
Tasha rolled her eyes. “Then you have to project the attitude that you not winning was a goddamn oversight. You’re doing them a favor. You have to believe that.”
For Tasha—beautiful, bankable, and with multiple Oscar nominations— Waverley was a detour. While she’d denied it up and down, Cole knew she’d taken the part to help him. It was maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him.
But for Cole, this was the mountain peak he’d been climbing toward, and he wasn’t sure he could summit. Just look at this place, at the rows of creamy stone houses and the literal palaces and the warehouses converted into hip museums. He didn’t belong here.
His doubt had him breathing hard, as if the oxygen in the car was slowly depleting—which sounded like a scene in some crap movie he’d make.
When they stopped in front of the rehearsal space, a couple of bored paparazzi were congregated near the door, smoking. They put out their cigarettes with obvious annoyance, as if Cole and Tasha had arrived too early.
Cole hopped onto the sidewalk and held the car door open for Tasha. In keeping with their usual shtick, she kept close and Cole let his hand linger on her lower back while the paps dutifully snapped a few pictures. In ten minutes, those images would be doing the rounds on social media, making a dozen hashtags trend around the world.
It was a little game they played together. It had started by accident, but Tasha had insisted they keep it up because it kept Cole’s name in the press—in a good way. Every few years, they’d go through another intense cycle of Cole and Tasha are getting serious this time before the story became Tasha’s broken Cole’s heart—again!
Honestly, it wasn’t fair. One of these times, Cole ought to be the one to break her heart, but the fans preferred to think of Tasha as a cold ice queen, with him as the golden retriever panting behind her.
Cole didn’t enjoy lying, but he and Tasha never said anything about it at all. They just arranged a scene every once in a while, and fans supplied the rest, seeing things that weren’t there in Cole’s and Tasha’s body language and facial expressions. It was kind of amazing, actually, the level of detail some people would pull out of the pics and the theories they’d come up with.
And it wasn’t like there was anyone in Cole’s life for this to bother. It sounded like a dodge, but Cole had been so focused on his career, he hadn’t had time to date the last few years. Besides, when he’d been a little less focused and he had met women, they hadn’t seen the real man who was under Cody Rhodes or whatever G.I. Joe he’d been playing that day. His friendship with Tasha was about as good as it got, and he was okay with that. He had to focus on his career. That was what mattered.
Zoya Delgado met them at the door of the rehearsal space. “Cole, Tasha, it’s good to see you again.”
The auditions had gone on for several months, and Cole had gotten to know Zoya fairly well. The show was her baby. She’d adapted it, and she even wrote and directed some of the episodes. Zoya was deeply invested in Waverley being good, being right. After making so many projects that no one seemed to truly care about, Cole appreciated that this one was different.
“I’m glad you two could get here before the table read. It’s going to be such a long shoot, I know.” They’d rehearse in London before moving to Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands for the exterior shots and finally to a Glasgow studio for the interiors. Altogether, it was going to take almost four months to shoot the season’s nine episodes. “But I wanted to touch base, and I thought it would be good for you two to meet Maggie Niven.”
“Maggie?” Tasha said. “Who’s that?”
Zoya signaled, and a woman approached them with a tentative smile. Honey-brown hair fell almost to her elbows, curling a bit at the ends, and framed her pale heart-shaped face. She had light eyes, though she wasn’t close enough for Cole to make out if they were green, blue, or gray.
Her gaze slid over Cole, and she focused on Tasha. “Hey, it’s great to meet you. I’m your intimacy coordinator.”
Cole’s heart tripped into his ribs.
Dammit. This was not the moment for his libido to jerk awake after a long hibernation. It was the time for him to kick ass at his job.
“What?” Tasha demanded.
Zoya wasn’t bothered by his friend’s tone. “Didn’t Greta”—Tasha’s agent—“tell you? We decided to add an intimacy coordinator this season. Maggie will help you, Cole, and the rest of the cast block and rehearse the scenes with nudity and simulated sex, but she’s also going to be a liaison between the actors and the production.”
Maggie nodded. “It’s my job to make sure there’s no friction.”
“You could’ve just bought a can of WD-40.” Tasha directed that right at Zoya, as if Maggie didn’t exist.
That was a little rude. What was Tasha’s problem?
Although maybe Cole should also be pretending Maggie didn’t exist, because he kept noticing the way her sweater fell over her curves or the freckle crowning her lip, and he didn’t like it. Dating someone on set was something he’d done back when he was young and stupid. It was a bad idea, much like embezzlement or participating in celebrity group videos singing “Imagine.”
Cole dragged himself back to what was safe: being easy to work with and kind to all crew members. “I think this is great.” He said it partially to defend Maggie—who he’d met ten entire seconds before—but also because he honestly thought having an intimacy coordinator for the show was an excellent idea.
Cole’s body was his career. It had always been that way, and he’d never been confused about why he got hired for jobs, what was expected of him, or how he was going to be filmed. But having someone on set whose entire job was to advocate for him? Cole was down with that.
“Maybe for amateurs,” Tasha shot back. “You an amateur, James?”
“No, but—”
“Because I’ve been making movies since I was seventeen. I don’t get why we need this.”
Cole was confused. This didn’t feel like a diva thing, which would be par for the course for Tasha. It smelled more ... anxious than that.
“Rhiannon Simmons is a relative newbie,” Zoya said of the twenty-two-year-old who was going to play Madge Wildfire. Geordie was going to seduce her too. That guy got around. “She and Cole have love scenes. And Owen Roy has some concerns that we discussed during his audition.”
“Isn’t he part of the chaste, boring B-couple?”
Zoya swallowed a laugh. “Yes, but I still don’t want to be the subject of his tell-all memoir in a few years. I don’t want him to write a tell-all memoir in a few years. Waverley is a strictly no-trauma zone.”
Tasha muttered something under her breath. Cole couldn’t make out every word, but her tone was skeptical and profane.
“This is becoming the industry standard,” Zoya said.
“So it’s required ?”
Interesting. Cole had never seen Tasha be this difficult about anything other than her willingness to do her own stunts. The woman was fearless.
So Zoya thought they needed some extra help during the love scenes. What was the problem?
Maggie was watching Tasha and Zoya’s exchange without any emotion. They might as well have been discussing something that didn’t affect her at all. Her eyes—they were light green—shifted to Cole, and she caught him watching her. She tipped her head to the side, and while she didn’t smile, the lines around her mouth grew deeper.
Cole’s answering grin was reflexive, and it made him feel like a doofus, but he couldn’t have smothered it if he’d tried. Maggie was really pretty, and she’d absolutely caught him checking her out.
Beyond the hint of amusement, though, Cole couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She was better than he was at keeping her expression neutral.
Cole’s cheeks were heating now, apparently unaware that he was too old—way too old—to get a crush on a coworker.
She wet her lips, and he—
“Don’t you think, Maggie?”
Maggie startled and turned back to Zoya. “Yes.” She said it firmly. It wasn’t a question; it was an answer. A confident answer. Maybe she was better at multitasking than he was and she actually knew what she was committing to, because he didn’t have a clue.
Her conviction was pretty hot.
“So let’s just sit down and talk through the process,” Zoya said to Tasha. “Then you, Cole, and Maggie can figure out how to move forward from there.”
Tasha harrumphed, but, like, in a chic way, and they all took seats around the conference table.
Maggie folded her hands on top of a stack of scripts. Little colored paper flags stuck out of them, and he’d guess she had an entire system. Blue probably meant one thing and red another and green something else. He wanted to ask about it, just as a matter of professional curiosity, but next to him, Tasha was a gray cloud, threatening a thunderstorm.
Right, he had to smooth things over with his best friend, who seemed spooked for some reason, and then he could have a completely Drew-approved conversation with the intimacy coordinator.
“Whatever happened to ‘You’re doing them a favor’?” he muttered to Tasha.
“You’re looking at it.”
“You okay?”
“Fucking peachy.”
If the peach had grown prickles and a bad attitude, sure.
But across the table, Maggie was proceeding as if everyone in the room was totally on board. “Before we get into the details of how you’d like to work, I wanted to hear about what drew you to this project.”
She looked at Tasha expectantly. Tasha just glared.
“I’ll go first.” For a beat, Cole imagined saying It seemed really cool, and it’s super popular but also bookish, and I think that would be good for me . He liked to be honest, but that was obviously too honest. “Zoya’s approach sold me,” he said instead. “The show’s fresh and different, and I wanted to be involved in Waverley in one way or another as soon as I saw it.”
“What do you find compelling about Geordie?” Maggie asked.
“At the start of the season, he’s selfish. He lets his friend take the fall for their smuggling operation. He breaks Madge’s heart, and he gets Effie pregnant and doesn’t marry her at a time when that’s, like, really bad. But he’s going to grow—to accept responsibility for his actions, to become a husband and father, and to take his place running the family estate. It’s his growth that made me want to play him.”
“That’s great, Cole,” Maggie said. “I agree that Geordie and Effie are fascinating, and we can use the love scenes to show their arcs. How they go from being two volatile people who share intense chemistry to being two people who’ve matured and are making a commitment to each other. At the end of the season, I believe they’re in love and are going to parent their baby and build a life together. I mean, I know it’s sexy and thrilling, but it’s also really moving.”
That was everything Cole wanted for his character ... and probably also for himself. Maybe not the love part, but definitely the growth and redemption.
Next to him, Tasha’s posture had softened. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she was at least following the conversation now.
Maggie must have picked up on the shift, too, because she said, “I was thinking we could begin by talking through the nudity and the love scenes. Zoya can walk us through the rough blocking and costume stuff, and you can red-flag anything that you have concerns about. Obviously we’ll go through these in greater detail later, and you can always come to me if any worries pop up, but we wanted to take a five-thousand-foot view to start. I have them marked.”
Of course she did.
She held up the script for the first episode. “So let’s start with the moment when Geordie leads the mob into the jail and tries to free Effie.” Effie was going to refuse, but the script had Geordie and Effie going at it up against a wall first.
One thing Cole could say for Zoya: she knew what the audience wanted, and she had no hesitations about giving it to them. And what they wanted was him naked. Early and often.
“Right.” Tasha held up her hand. “I’m certain you’re nice and you’re good at what you do, Maggie.” Her tone hinted she was not actually certain about that. “But—”
“This is only my third job,” Maggie said. “And really, it’s my first one not as a shadow or an assistant.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m changing careers. I was a high school drama teacher, and—”
She’d been a high school drama teacher? Adorable.
The job, not Maggie.
Well, also Maggie.
“ Excuse me? ” Tasha repeated, and they were back to her “petulant, anxious diva” routine.
And she’d accused him of being jumpy.
Maggie smiled sweetly, as if they were having a normal exchange, and said, “Yup.”
“She’s working with Bernard Caldwell, one of the best in the business,” Zoya put in. “He’s the senior intimacy coordinator, and she’s the junior IC. Sadly, Bernard broke his leg in a recumbent bike accident, so he didn’t want to travel to the UK, but he did all the preproduction and is consulting with Maggie every step of the way. We’re lucky to have her.”
Zoya was trying to make it clear she’d made her decision and she didn’t intend to hear any debate on the matter.
But, of course, Tasha ignored Zoya’s will in the way some people ignored those warning labels on pillows that said Don’t remove this . “I was never on board with the idea of an intimacy coordinator, but you have got to be kidding me with this. I’m a professional, Cole’s a professional. Let’s just go .”
With a sweep, she rose from the table and blew out of the room.
Silence settled while Cole tried to decide what was the best way to apologize for Tasha’s behavior without having it sound like he was criticizing her, because he was certain she had a good reason for being a brat to Maggie. He just needed to pry it out of her, and then they could fix it together.
Before he could figure out what to say, Zoya got to her feet with a sigh. “Let me chat with her. Maggie, don’t worry, this isn’t about you. You keep talking with Cole, and I’ll be back in a few minutes with our leading lady.”
They watched Zoya leave, and then Cole said, “Tasha isn’t normally—no, okay, she’s normally like this. She’s kind of ... dramatic.” Although the fireworks were typically more like a mask. This felt real.
“She’s an actor.” Maggie didn’t seem to be offended, which was good because Cole didn’t want to trash his best friend. “I’ve been watching your old work. You’ve done a decent amount of intimacy—a lot of nudity and some simulated sex.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of ... expected, I guess, with the type of parts I do.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“It’s the job.”
Her eyes narrowed. That hadn’t been what she’d asked, but she didn’t push him on it. Instead, she said, “Tasha, though, hasn’t. The movies you made together, Chaos Principle and Fuse , there was some kissing, but no nudity, no simulated sex.”
There had been a love scene in the first version of the script for Fuse , but Tasha had convinced the director to cut it. Cole hadn’t asked why. He’d been too grateful to be making the movie. The truth was he hadn’t thought he’d had enough power to make any kind of demands. If they wanted him to get naked, he did. If they wanted him in bed with this costar or that one, he got in the damn bed.
Whatever Maggie was implying, it almost didn’t make sense.
“Tasha was worried about getting typecast in rom-coms.” He was fairly certain she’d said something like that to him once.
“Hmm.” Maggie clearly didn’t believe the explanation, and Cole didn’t really either.
Huh, how had Tasha avoided getting naked on screen for so long?
“Do you think she has concerns about the scripts for Waverley as written?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Super fair.” A pause. “Do you have concerns about the scripts as written?”
“Not really.”
“No—or not really?”
Cole scratched his cheek before doing something that made him feel as if he were stripping down to his boxers: telling Maggie the truth. “I don’t think so, but no one has ever asked me that. At least not anyone who cares about the answer.”
Once again, he forced himself to meet her eyes, and he and Maggie shared a long look.
Finally, with almost painful gentleness, Maggie said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Cole cleared his throat. He readjusted his jacket. He crossed and uncrossed his arms. Every part of him was suddenly screwed on too tight. “It’s fine.”
“It really isn’t.” She let that sit between them for a minute. “But I’m here for you and for Tasha, and also for Owen, Rhiannon, and Leanne. This is a new role for me—Tasha’s right to be skeptical—but I care a lot about getting this right. I want the production to be safe for you.”
Safe.
The word could’ve been from a language Cole didn’t speak. His career hadn’t been anything like safe, both because of the choices he’d made and also the choices no one had thought to give him.
For Maggie to offer that to him now? Some soft space opened in his chest that he hadn’t known had been there.
“I—thank you.” His voice was quiet, as if it came from far away.
“My pleasure.”
When the door opened and Zoya stuck her head in, Cole jumped. He’d forgotten other people were supposed to be in this meeting.
“Tasha’s done for the day. She took your town car, Cole. Since we have time, we should pack it in and try again tomorrow. I can run you back to the Rosewood, if you want.”
“Um, yeah. That’d be great.”
“I appreciate your openness.” Maggie stood up and started to gather her stuff. “I’m just this random person, and you don’t know me, but I hope I’ll be able to make a difference.”
Cole was tempted to say something ridiculous, such as You already have . But he kept that inside. It would be too much, and the goal—his goal—was to be professional.
What he needed to do here, what Drew would tell him to do, was to get Tasha on board so that Maggie could do her job and he and Tasha could do theirs.
“Look, Tasha and I have a reservation tonight at Troncos. It’s a Brazilian place where we know the chef. It’s a few blocks from the Rosewood. Are you staying there too?” He had no idea if they put the crew up at the same hotel as the cast—though he was going to feel like an ass if the production team had dumped her in a Motel 6 in the burbs.
“Yes.”
“Great. Why don’t you come with us? Maybe we can ... get on friendly terms and thaw Tasha out. Let’s meet in the lobby at eight.”
Maggie had slid her scripts into a canvas bag. She was staring fixedly into it, as if she didn’t want to look at him.
That bothered Cole more than it should have.
“She’s not going to mind if I crash your dinner?”
“No.” Actually, yes. But it didn’t matter. Maggie was great. Once Tasha talked to her more, she’d realize it, and whatever was going on today would resolve. “And once she gets to know you, it’ll work out. Trust me.”
Cole hadn’t realized how invested he was in Maggie’s answer, or that he’d been holding his breath waiting for it, until she said, “Okay.”
The entire ride back to the hotel, he told himself he only cared because it was what a professional would feel.