Bad Reputation

Chapter 4 INT. FANCY RESTAURANT

Chapter 4

INT. FANCY RESTAURANT

“So have I made a terrible mistake?” Maggie asked.

“Ma’am,” the waiter said carefully, the vowel drawn out so long he might as well have been addressing the Queen. “I can show you the way to the chef’s table now.” Because it turned out that the waitstaff at Michelin-starred restaurants couldn’t offer you vital career reassurance, even if you demanded it after you’d gotten lost on your way back from the bathroom, where you’d been hiding from the actress who wanted to disembowel you.

“Yes. Of course. I’m sorry to ... dump on you.”

“Very good.”

It could be considered good only because Tasha hadn’t stabbed Maggie yet.

Ten minutes ago in the hotel lobby, Tasha had taken one look at Maggie, and the temperature had dropped into the range that could only be measured in kelvins. Maggie would’ve declared a tactical retreat right then if it hadn’t been for Cole. He’d clapped Tasha on the shoulder, told her that she looked amazing, and hustled both women into the waiting town car.

I think I’ve annoyed an Amazon warrior , Maggie had texted her best friend, Savannah, during the ride to the restaurant.

If your murderer has great hair, you’re ten times more likely to be featured on a true crime podcast , Savannah had replied.

Which was probably an underestimate. True crimers couldn’t resist beautiful murderers.

The waiter Maggie had cornered pushed the door open to the chef’s table and ushered her inside. The private dining room was sleek and understated, with a single long table. The chairs were all on one side so everyone could look out the glass wall that separated it from the kitchen.

There, at least a dozen people were flying around the counters and cooking surfaces, chopping, sautéing, and plating dishes. The kitchen was a whirl of copper pans and a rainbow of produce, of fire and steam and noise. The mad choreography of it was mesmerizing.

And unlike in the main dining room, no one here was watching Maggie’s famous dinner companions. This, despite the fact that in person, Tasha Russell was actually breathtaking. Her blonde hair and her pale skin seemed to emit light, like a saint in a Renaissance painting. Cole James wasn’t hard on the eyes either. As long as Maggie didn’t look directly at him, her heart rate stayed only slightly elevated, and that was just how it was going to have to be for the next four months.

Elevated ... and curious. Maggie would’ve had to be living under a rock to miss the pictures of Cole and Tasha together. Her concern about their relationship was merely professional, of course. It would complicate her job if they were exes.

But now, Maggie didn’t know what the hell she was dealing with. After the disastrous meeting, she’d had a long call with Bernard Caldwell. He had decades of experience as an intimacy coordinator, and Zoya had arranged for Maggie to be his apprentice. The last three months, he’d mentored Maggie on negotiating consent and managing conflict, and she’d been his shadow and then his assistant on two smaller indie projects in order to get her SAG card.

Technically, Maggie and Bernard were both intimacy coordinators for this season of Waverley . When he’d decided not to come to the UK, she’d had the giddy sense of graduating, at least until Tasha had refused to work with her.

Whatever their history might be, Maggie suspected that Cole and Tasha weren’t together now. But they also weren’t what Bernard had prepped her to expect: Cole James wasn’t some Hollywood himbo, and while Tasha Russell was playing the diva, the drama felt like an attempt to hide something.

Maggie had seen that move from students all the time. Except she had a premonition that when she managed to pry up this stepping stone, she’d find maggots underneath.

“Tash and I know the chef from way back,” Cole said as Maggie took her seat next to his. “The food’s supposed to be good here.”

Maggie almost barked out a laugh. Two Michelin stars, and that only rated a “good”? Movie stars: they’re just like us.

“Forget the food. Let’s hope the wine cellar’s loaded,” Tasha muttered.

“I’d bet Jose has both reds and whites.”

“Good. I’ll take a bottle of each, and maybe a rosé, too, just for kicks.”

“If you have a hangover at our riding lesson tomorrow, Ryan will be pissed at me.” Then to Maggie, he muttered, “He’s the stunt coordinator. We’ve worked with him before.”

Cole might be trying to pretend Tasha wasn’t annoyed with him, but Maggie suspected he cared very much about Tasha’s feelings—and, strangely, about Maggie’s too.

Maggie had been prepared for Cole to be good looking; he was basically professionally hot. But what didn’t translate to the glossy spreads in magazines or his high-testosterone movies was his sweetness. If Tasha intrigued Maggie because of her evident badassery, Cole held her attention because he was too easy to like.

People were mostly awesome, or at least that had been Maggie’s hypothesis until she’d been fired. In that instant, the world had turned into Whac-A-Mole but with assholes.

Cole’s innate sweetness was a fall of rain on the hard plain of Maggie’s soul. Even now, green shoots were popping up inside her. This. This is what you used to feel like—and maybe could again.

Maggie reached for her water and took a long drag as a tall, slim, gorgeous man entered from the kitchen.

“Tasha, love, I’ve been working over a hot stove all day for you.”

“You have no idea how excited I am.” Tasha jumped up and kissed Chef Jose Alpin on both cheeks.

“Jose catered the set for Chaos Principle . We shot it here, at Shepperton,” Cole explained in a whisper to Maggie. “We’ve wanted to check out this place ever since he started it.”

Cole’s breath made Maggie’s cheek tingle, and it was hard not to trace the path of the sensation with her fingers.

“And who did you bring along without giving me a heads-up?” Jose asked, his tone mild.

“Hiya, man.” Cole stood up to shake Jose’s hand. “This is Maggie. She’s our intimacy coordinator.”

“Your what?”

“See.” Tasha snapped her fingers decisively. “This is my point. How can you need something if you don’t understand what it is?”

The chef rolled his eyes at the starlet before leaning across the table to shake Maggie’s hand. “I’m sure Maggie’s indispensable if Cole brought her along.”

At that, Maggie hit her limit for the number of smoldering men she could handle today.

But Jose was still smiling that panty-melting grin, and Maggie had to say something . Trying not to sound breathless, she offered, “If me being here messes up your menu, I’m happy to just have a salad.” She’d perused the menu online, almost died when she’d seen the prices, and then told herself that you only live once. But it would be far healthier for her bank account if she ate like a rabbit.

“Nonsense.” Jose shot Cole a look. “I get why you needed intimacy coordination at dinner. I may get one too.”

Tasha threw herself back into her chair. “Less chitchat, more eating.”

“Your wish is my command, princess.”

Jose held the door open, and three servers entered. In unison, they set a plate and a cocktail down in front of Tasha, Cole, and Maggie.

“To start, we have carabineros,” Jose explained. “It’s an Atlantic prawn, and I’ve prepared it with a sauce made from Sardinian Camone tomatoes and a tomato vodka that we make here on site. The drink pairing for this course is a caipirinha. Enjoy.”

When Cole had said they were going to a Brazilian restaurant, Maggie had imagined steaks, salsa verde, and potatoes. Had she ever heard a chef mention what kind of tomatoes a sauce was made with before?

No, but then again, she’d never seen a sauce that was so vividly, almost painfully red. It smelled like sunshine, with the barest hint of pepper and the beach.

Jose and his merry band of servers exited, and Tasha immediately scooped up her prawn. She took a bite and moaned. “This is why we put up with Jose.”

Cole reached for his cocktail. “You just don’t like that he isn’t impressed with you.”

“I know, right? It’s fucking uncanny. But so is this carabinero.”

Seafood wasn’t Maggie’s favorite, but it wasn’t as if she’d ever have the chance to eat the supersecret, superspecial chef’s tasting menu at a two-Michelin-star restaurant ever again. And it was so beautiful, her mouth was watering despite herself.

She took a tentative bite, and it turned out Maggie didn’t mind seafood if Jose prepared it. Intense tomato flavors exploded in her mouth, perfectly balanced between sweetness and brightness, with the prawn—lightly salty and buttery and not at all fishy—harmonizing with it all.

“What do you think?” Cole had watched her trepidation, and he hadn’t touched his own food while he’d waited for Maggie’s response.

“I don’t normally go for seafood, but this tastes like summer in the best way.”

“Catering can be hit or miss,” Cole said, “but Chaos Principle is the best I’ve ever eaten on a set.”

When they finished their first plates, those were instantly whisked away, and another set was delivered.

“How many dishes is Jose planning?” Tasha asked one of the servers.

“Fifteen.”

Maggie emptied her glass.

When they had finished the fanciest Caesar salad Maggie had ever had, the dressing for which had been basically the Platonic ideal of creamy, Cole leaned back in his chair. “So the meeting this afternoon didn’t go as planned. I thought we could have a nice meal, and then—”

“Nope,” Tasha interrupted. “I don’t want to talk about that. It’ll just make me angry. What I want to do is enjoy this food and recover from my jet lag.”

“Tasha doesn’t do well with international travel,” Cole said to Maggie.

He kept doing that, offering context or explanation, as if he knew that Tasha needed to be translated. He obviously understood Tasha, but he was also being very considerate of Maggie.

There her stomach went again—missing the bottom stair and wiping out.

Luckily, the servers materialized again, now with plates of roast chicken. The skin was golden and crispy, and the aroma had unlocked some feeling in Maggie’s chest that could only be characterized as home . She felt like that mean critic in Ratatouille , except without the whole being-a-food-writer thing.

The entire meal had her feeling grubby and ignorant. And it wasn’t just that she was sitting next to two people whom she’d seen a thousand pictures of. It wasn’t just the white-glove treatment the staff lavished on them. It wasn’t just that each dish was more elaborate than the last, containing flavors and aromas and ingredients Maggie had never heard of. It wasn’t even the cocktails going to her head ... though, okay, it was that too.

It was that this meal felt like a personality quiz in the back of an old Cosmo . Tasha was chic and discerning, Cole was affable and open, and Maggie was a peasant.

It didn’t help that Tasha kept resisting all Cole’s attempts to talk about Maggie’s role or filming the show.

When she’d been dealing with a student with opposition defiance, Maggie would try to establish common ground with the kid and to offer them choices, all while trying to figure out what was causing the resistance. This afternoon, Tasha’s temper tantrum had almost wrecked Maggie’s fragile confidence. But because she’d been here before, she knew that the real key was you couldn’t, under any circumstances, get dragged into a power struggle. It was sincerely one of those situations where you won by not playing. Solving someone’s resistance took time.

But Cole barreled right in during the dessert course. “So I gotta ask, why are you so opposed to this? You’ll do what the production wants when it’s training, but—”

“Please,” Tasha scoffed. “I’d rather wax my cunt.”

Maggie was grateful she hadn’t had any food in her mouth.

“Something that’s supposed to be about protecting actors: that’s where you draw the line?”

Tasha sipped her wine and ignored Cole.

A beat passed. Then another. Then ten.

Finally, Tasha said, “I don’t have a problem with intimacy coordination in theory .”

Cole looked at Maggie and beamed, as if to say Now we’re getting someplace .

Maggie’s heart leaped into her throat.

Resting, Cole’s face had a sculpted beauty, with his high cheekbones, straight nose, and architectural brows. But when he smiled, his features went goofy. Happiness, like the kind he was trying to share with her now, muddled his cheekbones and wrinkled his nose.

He suddenly looked boyish, but somehow so much better looking. Cole was touchable when he smiled.

Except Maggie had no business thinking that.

Which was why it was a relief, totally a relief, when he took that smile with him as he turned back to Tasha. “So you have a problem with Maggie?”

“No.”

Now that oxygen was getting to Maggie’s brain again, she could tell Tasha meant that.

“But I was blindsided this afternoon, and I don’t think it’s necessary for us to work with Maggie. If other people on the set want her, like Owen and Rhiannon, that’s fine. I’m sure that she’s ... fine. But can we just eat our baba in peace?”

The golden custard looked amazing—everything had been amazing—but Maggie would much rather go down this rabbit hole, even if she was simply observing this conversation and not participating in it.

“No,” Cole said to Tasha. “This is a weird thing to dig in about. Also, I realized today that you haven’t done much nudity since Cosa Nostra .”

That was, in the mildest sense, a lie. Maggie had pointed it out to him. But she suspected Cole was saying this not to take credit for Maggie’s observation but in order to shield Maggie from any more of Tasha’s wrath.

Tasha ground her teeth, slowly, making a show of it so that Cole and Maggie would realize she didn’t want to talk about this. It wasn’t a power thing, not quite. Maggie had the sense that she was doing it for herself as well as for them.

“How did you get this job?” she finally asked Maggie.

That was fair. Maybe if Tasha trusted Maggie, this would go better. “I met Zoya on Hear Her , and she thought I would be a good fit for this.”

Her parents still weren’t over their shock. If her being a high school teacher had been mildly disappointing, going to work in Hollywood, especially like this, was spitting in their eyes.

“Because you were fired for directing a sexy play?” Tasha asked. “Yeah, I looked you up.”

That was almost a relief. “You know, it isn’t even a sexy play. I was fired for doing a play. Whatever other excuses the school board might have come up with, the empathy and imagination you need for theatre were the real problems.”

Tasha considered this. “Have you ever been on a television set?”

“I’ve always liked movies and theatre. An older cousin of mine was a PA at Sony for a while, and then he worked as an assistant director on a couple of indie films. I did an ‘internship’ for him one summer when I was in college. Mostly I got coffee and flirted with grips.”

Maggie considered detailing her time with Bernard, but Tasha didn’t want Maggie’s résumé. Tasha was after something more elemental here.

“The truth is, as a performer, I had debilitating stage fright and not very much talent. My Cali summer was fun, but it didn’t feel real. And then it dawned on me, there were other ways to have a life in theatre.”

“So you became a drama teacher?”

“Yup. Then a lightning rod. And now I’m here.” Maggie licked her lips, trying to pick her words carefully. As if there were some combination of syllables out there that would defuse the tension and make Tasha see that Maggie was on her side. “This can be whatever you want it to be. I can be as involved as you want in the scenes, or we can touch base about your hard limits and you never have to see me again. You define how this goes. I’m just here to support you.”

Maggie had the sense that Tasha might not even know what her hard limits were . But she was now stone-cold certain that Tasha’s resistance wasn’t about Maggie’s lack of experience as much as about on-screen nudity itself. But she wasn’t going to tip her suspicions now.

Hey, so I’ve noticed you might be traumatized would go over about as well as an IED.

Tasha pushed her spoon through her custard, considering Maggie’s offer. “Where were you during Cosa Nostra ?” she finally mumbled.

Now they were getting somewhere.

“What happened during Cosa Nostra ?”

Maggie had seen the movie, of course. Tasha had played the daughter of a mafia don who’d been forced into an unhappy marriage with a rival family’s son and rebelled by seducing several soldiers and capos. It had struck Maggie as a fearless performance, especially given that Tasha had been a teenager when she’d given it and that she’d spent a distressing amount of the film naked or in bed with this guy or that one. It was the part that had made her career.

Several pieces suddenly clicked into place for Maggie, enough to make the picture of the puzzle come into focus. It was still missing chunks, but Maggie suddenly could see the outline of what they were working on.

“Nothing.” Tasha got to her feet. “Absolutely nothing, except I got an Oscar nomination. Now I’m going to complain to Jose, because this is clearly not reserve caviar.”

“What was all of that about?” Cole asked when the door swung shut behind her.

“I’m not sure.” Maggie could speculate, but none of her guesses were good.

“She gets like this before filming sometimes. It’s not you. Once the camera’s rolling, she’ll settle down. Tash is a total professional.”

“Uh-huh.” Maggie wanted to know what being a “total professional” entailed—and what it might have cost Tasha.

When Cole and Maggie had finished their meal, Jose came in along with the servers. “I just saw Tasha, and she asked me to pass along her regrets.”

“For?” Cole asked.

“Taking your car and heading back to the hotel.” Jose scratched his cheek. “She did pick up the bill, if that eases the blow.”

At the very least, that helped Maggie’s credit card.

Cole laughed. “She always does this.”

“Did you enjoy the meal?” Jose asked Maggie.

“I honestly have never eaten so well. You had flavors in there I hadn’t even imagined .” Going back to eating normal-person food was going to be disappointing now that she knew what she was missing.

“Beyond imagining, huh? We should take out ads with that line.” Jose rolled his shoulders, pleased by the praise but also accepting it as his due. He was good looking, and damn, could he cook, but he was arrogant. “You two should come back while you’re in town,” he instructed Cole. “I can try to blow her mind again.”

Maggie shot a sideways look to Cole, who, she was certain, would never bask in a compliment like that.

The actor met her eyes and shrugged, as if to say You brought this on yourself.

It took a second for Maggie to put herself back together. She still wasn’t used to what happened in her gut when he acknowledged her. He was worse than the nitrous oxide at the dentist.

Maggie had no doubt Jose could succeed in exploding what she thought food was a second time. But not wanting to try to parry his mild flirting, she said to Cole, “I can call an Uber. Or it’s what, like eight blocks? I don’t mind walking.”

“Let’s do that.”

On the street outside Troncos, Maggie stopped to button her coat. England clearly hadn’t gotten the memo that by May, things should’ve warmed up, and Cole was regretting not bringing his own jacket.

“Are you going to get mobbed?” Maggie asked.

Cole almost laughed before choking it down. That might sound rude. Maggie was new to Hollywood, and she probably didn’t get that he wasn’t famous, not in the way Tasha was. “That’s more of an issue for, like, Harry Styles. Central Square was never big over here, and the rest of my stuff ... it’s been lower profile.”

“You don’t seem low profile to me.”

“Compared to Tasha, I am.”

Cole shot a sidelong glance at Maggie. The town houses lining the street were built of sandy-colored stone, and her silhouette glowed against it. The cheeky tilt of her nose, the rosy pout of her lips, the proud jut of her chin: her profile was a question mark.

The woozy feeling in Cole’s gut was the answer.

This is a work dinner, you dweeb, he reminded himself for what seemed like the millionth time tonight. If it felt like something else, something more, that was only because the neighborhood could’ve been a studio back lot. The charmingly narrow rows of houses, the converted Victorian brick factory across the way, and the inky sky above them, studded not with stars but with twinkle lights. It was the place doing this to Cole, not the woman. He needed to remember that. Anyone could get swoony when they were walking through this wonderland. That was why unwashed Americans, such as himself, ought to avoid it.

Maggie sighed—and not in a swoony way.

“You’re not letting Tasha get to you, are you?” Cole asked.

“No.” Maggie sounded as if she meant it. “I don’t think her hesitation about working with me is personal. I just want to figure out how to help her.”

“She’ll get on board.” Cole gently maneuvered Maggie around an uneven bit of pavement. “Tonight was a terrible mistake.” If he’d thought dinner would soften Tasha up, he couldn’t have been more wrong—as per usual.

“You were trying to help.”

“But not actually helping.”

“You did, though. I have a much better idea of what’s going on with Tasha now.”

“Good, because I don’t.” Something serious was up with his friend, something that had her spooked and anxious.

But he and Maggie weren’t going to solve that mystery tonight. Maggie would crack Tasha eventually. He was certain of it. She clearly had good intentions and a knack for this.

He was curious about Maggie’s previous gig. “I didn’t know there was some mess at your old job. I should’ve googled you.”

Maggie’s eyes went wide. “It’s really ... unpleasant, how it ended. Please don’t look it up.”

“I won’t.” If anyone knew how false stories, or true stories shot in an unflattering light, could haunt you, it was Cole. If Maggie didn’t want him to probe her past, he wouldn’t. “I understand how it can be when you get a bad reputation and people think they know you,” he said, very softly. “Especially when you don’t think you’re that person at all.”

For a second, he wasn’t certain if she was going to respond to that, which was fair enough. She didn’t owe him anything.

But at last, she said, “Feel free not to answer this, but how do you handle it?” She’d matched his tone: quiet, without posturing or restraint. Like a whisper in the dark. Like a confession by a lover.

The jet lag, the food, and the wine were mixing with this picturesque setting. They were making Cole feel as if he knew this woman already. As if he could trust her.

It made no sense—it made absolutely no sense—but this night was stripping away the mask he usually wore around people. And for all that he didn’t know Maggie, he suspected that she was taking off her mask too. That they were both speaking more freely, more honestly, than they usually did.

It was a little terrifying ... and something else. Something equally visceral, equally raw, that he didn’t want to name.

“Hmm.” They’d gone another half block before Cole worked up the courage to keep telling her the unvarnished truth. “I made up rules, like a code, for the person I wanted to be. The person I thought I ... was. And I follow them. If I can be that man every day, then eventually they have to realize that’s who I am, right?”

“Right.” She said it as if she understood completely.

His words started coming faster then. “When I laid it out for myself like that, it helped me know what was true. I think I lost reality there for a while, because I kept hearing all these stories about who I was. And maybe I even believed them for a bit. But I won’t let myself get confused again.”

Even if that meant denying himself. This goal, he had to feed it everything. Ambition was a hungry mofo.

They came to a corner. Across from them, a busker was playing “Some Enchanted Evening” on the trumpet. Cole would normally find all of this sappy, but tonight, it fit. It did feel like an enchanted evening.

“Hey, he’s pretty good.” Cole patted his pocket and pulled out a couple of bills. He loped across the street to drop them in the guy’s case.

When he returned to Maggie, the expression in her eyes—he didn’t have the words for it. It was heat and longing, all the things he’d spent the better part of twenty years not letting himself have. Not trusting himself to have. Not feeling worthy of having .

“Shall we dance?” Cole had meant it as a joke about the way he was feeling. The spell that this night had cast on him. But his words came out stilted and formal—and needy, so stupidly needy—and it turned into a real question.

He wanted to dance with her.

Heat swept down his body, from his hairline to his toes. Brisk spring night? Nah, Cole might as well have been hiking the Grand Canyon in August.

For a second, he thought Maggie was going to play along. That she wanted to play along. She took a step toward him, and his palm was itching to touch her.

Then she shook her head, and when she looked at him again, he knew she was being reasonable. Her eyes were cool, her expression no longer dazed. “That’s a different song. Both are by Rodgers and Hammerstein, though.” She was saving them both by pretending to misunderstand him.

Smart. Maggie was really smart.

“Oh, oh—right.”

Maggie started walking faster. “I’ve directed most of their musicals at one point or another. Occupational hazard!” Her voice was high and cheerful and kind. So kind.

But it didn’t matter. Cole was going to relive this humiliation for the rest of his life. For one minute, he’d let himself want something—want someone.

This was embarrassing. Like naked-in-front-of-the-class-nightmare level of embarrassing.

At least the sting of the cold night air on his cheeks was sobering. Harsh, but sobering.

“I understand what you were saying about wanting to stay ... focused.” Maggie was clearly trying to get them back to a more professional footing. “To live your values.”

“I can’t imagine you getting confused.” Obviously she was more grounded than he was. Much wiser.

“You don’t know me very well.”

“I’d like to.”

Oops.

It was true , but it wasn’t helpful. In fact, it was the exact opposite of what he needed to be doing here. He should fill the hole in, not dig it deeper. “As friends, I mean,” he added clumsily. “For us to work together, we’ll have to become closer.” God, how was he making this worse? It was already so bad.

“I knew what you meant.” But Maggie’s tone was too brittle to be convincing. She was probably regretting every second of this night, and he couldn’t blame her. He was out of practice being around normal people.

Thankfully, they rounded a corner, and the hotel, with its stone carvings and cupola, popped into view. “Here we are, no thanks to Tasha.” Cole offered Maggie an apologetic smile, trying to decide how to best fix everything he’d just awkwardly broken.

But Maggie was there, better and smoother than he was. “Thanks for dinner. It was out of this world.” She gave him a small wave. “I’m going to take the stairs.”

Because she couldn’t wait to get away from him. Awesome. Reasonable.

It was going to be a long four months if Cole kept shoving his foot in his mouth around Maggie.