Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
P iper spent Saturday evening feeling like an asshole. She shouldn’t have said all that to Blake. It was rude and unprofessional.
And completely deserved.
Was this all just some kind of game to him?
Every day, he sauntered in with a cavalier attitude and that stupid grin and didn’t even come close to his potential. He kept trying to rush through the song like it were bad-tasting medicine he had to choke down.
Music was something he had to endure, rather than something he took pride in, and that lack of joy showed in his voice.
She couldn’t stand this. It felt like something she cared deeply about was being slowly dismantled. She checked the time. Seven thirty LA time was ten thirty in upstate New York. It was Saturday night in August.
Lizzie probably had a wedding going on. Piper didn’t want to disturb her, but she really wanted her big sister’s advice.
She tapped out a text message. Call when avail.
When Lizzie didn’t call right back, she paced around the house while she ran through all three songs, recited lines, and stewed.
Two hours later, the phone finally rang.
Piper tapped on the video chat with a sense of relief. “Lizard!”
Her sister was sitting in the dining room of the cottage behind the main inn. It was quiet but brightly lit. Lizzie had let her hair down but was still dressed in what Piper thought of as her work clothes, a tailored suit coat over a white blouse and slacks. She looked tired but pleased with herself.
There was a cup of tea in front of her and a plate of what looked like shortbread cookies next to it.
Piper’s mouth watered. She’d skipped dinner again. “How’d the wedding go?”
Lizzie picked up the cup of tea and settled back against the seat. “It was a second time around for both of them, so we kept it intimate and romantic, with just the immediate family and friends. Low key, but perfect, and lucky for me not long-winded.”
Piper curled up on the couch and leaned against one of the big fluffy pillows. “Is it too late to talk?”
“It’s never too late.” Lizzie smiled at her with big sisterly fondness before her expression shifted to one of concern. “What’s going on? You look keyed up. Is the movie going okay?”
“No. It’s definitely not okay. Blake Ryan is completely impossible.”
Lizzie dragged the tea bag around in her cup. “What happened?”
It took Piper half an hour to fill Lizzie in on all the frustrations of the day. Her sister listened without much comment until the end, when Piper blurted out what really bugged her about the whole thing. “He said it was good enough. Can you believe that? He doesn’t give a crap about this movie, especially the music.”
“It’s just one bad day,” Lizzie soothed. “It doesn’t necessarily mean— ”
“He’s hamming it up and totally over the top. His technique’s wrong. He doesn’t support the notes, he just blasts them. He goes all breathy when he should be bold, and shouts when he should be projecting. The more I think about it, the more I think he has no idea how to sing.”
Lizzie’s forehead wrinkled. “He hits the notes, right? He’s not off or tone-deaf or anything?”
“No.” Piper fluffed the pillow then sank into it, feeling grumpy. “Not like that. His pitch is fine, most of the time. Good, even. Every now and then there’s a spark of something great. That’s what’s so damn frustrating. He can sing, but he’s not doing it right. I thought at first that he was just nervous, but by the third day, I realized that he either doesn’t care about this project, or he’s a complete amateur. I’m not sure which is worse.”
Lizzie took a cautious sip of her tea. “Maybe he’s a casual singer who doesn’t know how to use proper technique.”
“Honestly.” Piper blew out a breath. “They picked Eddie Ryan’s son. For crying out loud, he should know how to sing.”
“Just because his father is a great singer doesn’t mean he grew up with a vocal coach.”
“Something had to have rubbed off growing up around someone like that, right? I mean, you learned a lot from Mom, and I learned from you and Dad.”
“Not necessarily.” Lizzie shook her head. “According to the article I read, his parents had a really ugly divorce, and Blake stayed with his mom. It’s entirely possible he hasn’t seen that much of his dad.”
“Aw hell. I just assumed…dammit.” Piper groaned. She thought about everything that had happened in the past few days and realized her sister might be right. “I should have seen it. I mean, I did see it, I just thought he was tanking it on purpose. But if he didn’t know what he was doing, then we went at this all wrong. No wonder he overextended. Now he so unds like he gargled with sandpaper and it might be all my fault.”
“Ouch.” Lizzie winced and put a hand over her throat. “You think he did real damage? Or does he just need rest?”
“I don’t know.” Piper bit her lip. Oh God, what had she done? She’d attacked the studio time with him like she would have for her own albums. But if he was new to it, the pace would have been impossible to keep up with for very long. Still, he’d only really shown signs of distress this afternoon. “Hopefully just rest. I gave him my throat drops, but I doubt he uses them. I told him to rest his voice, but I doubt he does that, either. He was so busy arguing with me I doubt he noticed what I actually said.”
She swallowed against the guilt now piling up inside her stomach. “How do I fix this? Make him sit in a eucalyptus steam bath? Hope he spontaneously combusts so they have to find someone else?”
“His throat is injured,” Lizzie said in a matter-of-fact, it’s-obvious-if-you’d-just-open-your-eyes tone. “You know what to do for that kind of injury, but he might not. So coach him on how to take care of his throat, then maybe show him how to avoid hurting it again. Once you do that, move on to how he should be emoting rather than shouting.”
Piper sat back. “What if he refuses to listen?”
“Who on earth could refuse you when you put your mind to something?” Lizzie’s fond smile eased some of the stress she’d been feeling all day.
This wasn’t an impossible problem to solve. She and Blake Ryan just needed a do-over, that’s all.
After Piper ended the call, she sent a quick text to Neil. She needed to get some supplies, and she needed Blake Ryan’s address.
Need Blake Ryan’s addy. Have a present for him.
A few seconds later, he responded, Will it explode?
She laughed. No .
Swear?
Pinky swear.
The next morning, Piper pulled up to a gate connected to a twelve-foot-high white stucco wall that surrounded an entire block near Runyon Canyon. A shiny gold plate declared that the property was on the National Register of Historic Places, but she couldn’t read the fine print without getting out of the car.
She double-checked the address.
She was at the right place.
Surely, Blake wasn’t old enough to warrant historic treatment. He was barely thirty.
She peered up, trying to get a look at the house behind the high wall, but all she could see through the ornate iron slats of the gate was part of the driveway as it curved behind a thick crop of trees. It was an inviting glimpse of luxury and stately elegance, but the fence said get lost in a polite, regal sort of way.
A small cottage with a red tile roof and stone walls that matched the fencing stood next to the gate. She rolled up to it.
A dark-haired man with full-sleeve tattoos wearing a black T-shirt that stretched across biceps formed from hours lifting heavy things peered through the window at her. There was a speaker box just underneath the window. It wasn’t a guard shack; it was more like a sentry outpost.
Piper wiggled her fingers at him. “Hi. I’m here to see Blake.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Piper Bellamy?”
She flashed him her patented fan-friendly smile. “That’s me.”
“Well I’ll be damned. The Piper Bellamy, right here in our driveway. He said you might show, but I didn’t believe him. My name’s Lee. My daughter’s a huge fan. ”
“That’s so sweet. Thank you, Lee, and tell your daughter I said thanks for listening and she totally rocks.”
“I’ll do that. She’ll be thrilled.” Lee tapped something, and the gate began to move aside. “You’re on the list, Ms. Bellamy. Go right on through.”
“I am?”
He winked at her and waved her on.
She was on Blake’s entry list.
She wasn’t sure what to make of that. She hadn’t put Blake on her list. If he showed up at her place without an invitation, she wasn’t sure what Romi would do. The woman was suspicious about everyone except Lizzie and Mattie.
The driveway ended in a circle at the bottom of a set of red stone steps that led up a steep incline to what looked like the adult version of the guard house after it had eaten a ton of steroids and mutated to the size of Rhode Island. The Spanish mission-style mansion gleamed up there in the morning sun like something out of a fairy tale.
The steps looked intimidating. She glanced at the gift basket currently filling the entire front passenger seat and sighed. She hadn’t realized she’d be hauling it up a mountain.
It seemed fitting, somehow, like some sort of penance for her bad behavior.
She got out and wrestled the giant basket into her arms. She kicked the car door closed. She couldn’t see a damn thing and had to peer through the stalks of eucalyptus like a koala.
By the fifth step, she was already winded. It wasn’t the climb, it was holding what felt like fifty pounds at such an odd angle and having to inch her way up. Damn her genetics for making her so short. If she were Della’s height, she wouldn’t be having such a hard time.
Just when she thought she might have to abandon the basket in order to save herself from a spectacular fall, strong hands took it from her.
Blake hoisted her gift easily to one side and gave her an appraising look. “Was there a funeral?”
His voice sounded a lot better this morning. Relief made her jittery, or maybe it was just the climb.
“Thanks. That was heavier than I thought it was, and these steps are…wow. Your house is huge.”
His lips twitched. “Thanks.”
A hot flush burned her cheeks. “Going to invite me in, or should I just go?”
“Sure. Mi casa es su casa. ”
Piper followed him up the rest of the way to the front door while he toted the basket without any apparent strain.
He wore a dark-gray sleeveless T-shirt, basketball shorts, and bare feet. When they’d been in the studio, he’d been in jeans and a light denim jacket, so she hadn’t really noticed how defined his arms—and, hell, everything else—were.
She’d done her best to act like Blake was just another guy, but now it slammed home exactly why he’d been named Sexiest Man of the Year. His hair was a little mussed, his arms belonged on a superhero, and his tan literally glowed in the morning sun.
He was a freak of nature. A god sent to tempt and torture mere mortals, and he kept glancing at her with such deep confusion that it would have been comical on any other man, but on him, it just looked intensely, seductively sexy.
“Come on in.” Blake carried the basket into the living room and set it down on a large square coffee table with a thump.
She might have gone a little overboard on her apology-in-a-basket.
Piper stared around her, entranced. The smooth stucco walls and arched doorways gave the whole place an airy, light feeling, while the exposed wood beams made it cozy. Arched picture windows gave her a peek at a sparkling, grotto-style pool just past a large, tiled patio out back. It was like she’d stepped out of California directly into the Mediterranean.
“Your home is spectacular.”
“Thanks.”
She tore her gaze away from the backyard to study the man who called this amazing place home. “It’s not what I expected at all.”
“How so?”
“I thought you’d have more of a man-cave. You know, big screen, oversized chairs. Beer fridge.”
“That’s down the hall.” Blake stared at the wicker basket. “What is this?”
Right.
She hadn’t come here to ogle the man’s resort-style pool or the man himself. She’d come to fix things.
She turned her attention to the goodies she’d brought with her. “I was thinking after I left yesterday, well really after I talked with my sister, that you might not know what to do to heal your vocal cords, so I brought you a little help.”
“A little…” Blake gave her an incredulous look.
She pulled out a humidifier and handed it to him. “Use distilled water, and keep it in whatever room you’re in. I have three so I don’t have to move them around. A steam shower is great too. Or a steam room. From the looks of this place, you probably have one.”
She was so full of nervous energy that she was actually babbling. Why was it so hot in here? Didn’t he have air-conditioning?
“No. I don’t.” He hesitated, as if deciding whether he should say something, then muttered, “I think there’s one at the gym.”
She pointed at the stalks of eucalyptus. “Take this into the shower or steam room with you. It’s great for your sinuses and really helps the throat.”
“You want me to take weeds into the shower?”
“It’s not a weed.” She pulled out the stack of lozenges she’d taped together into a tower. “You can never have too many of these.”
“Great.” It was the first item that made him perk up. “I tried to find these last night, but nobody had ever heard of them. I went through that box you gave me by ten.”
“You did?” It was her turn to look dumbfounded. “I didn’t think you listened to me at all.”
“You were impossible to ignore.” He pried one of the boxes loose and opened it. “Besides, my throat hurt, and while these do taste like the underside of a compost pile, they really helped.”
“Oh. Good.” She was happy he’d taken at least some of her advice. Maybe the next part of this conversation wouldn’t be as painful as she thought it would be. “There’s more.”
She tugged out the boxes of tea and the tea kettle. “I thought you might not have a kettle, so I brought one, and this is my favorite tea. I always drink this before and after a show.”
She put the kettle down next to the humidifier and fished out several dark jars of honey. “This is for the tea. Manuka honey, from New Zealand. It’s excellent for throat health, and if you have a cold, use it to make a hot toddy.”
Her accent came through thick and heavy the longer she spoke. She cleared her throat.
“What the hell is a hot toddy?”
“Call me when you’re sick and I’ll make you one.” She looked down at the basket. It was almost empty. “It’s probably a Southern thing.”
Blake peered into the basket. “What’s the whiteboard for?”
“Oh.” She pulled it out, along with the dry erase markers and the miniature eraser. “This is so you can write what you want to say instead of talk. Vocal rest is the absolute best thing to do when you’ve pushed it too far.” She handed the board and a marker to him.
He took them, then barked out a laugh. “I’m not doing that.”
“Why not?”
“Talking is literally what I’m paid to do.” He set the board down in the basket and dropped the marker on top of it.
“You’re not going to take the time to let your throat heal?” A little of the resentment she’d felt yesterday resurfaced. “Does your next super-important project require you to speak? Or are you going to pantomime everything?”
“The apology was going so well until just then.” Blake carried a box of throat lozenges over to the couch and sat down.
“Excuse me?” Piper stalked over to the middle of the living room and stood between him and the TV.
“You’re obviously feeling guilty.” Blake gestured at the items now scattered all over the table. “So you came over here to tell me how sorry you are.”
She had been feeling guilty. Until he’d said that. “I’m not sorry. I’m concerned that your slap-happy attitude is going to ruin this movie.”
“My…what?” He looked up at her, rolled the lozenge around on his tongue.
Why was this man so infuriatingly annoying? “Look, do you know how to sing or not? Because I was under the assumption that someone who was cast in a musical movie would know how to sing. Was I wrong?”
“Of course I can sing. What do you think we’ve been doing all week?” He flung the box of throat drops onto the coffee table.
“I didn’t ask if you could sing like you’re in a karaoke bar. I asked if you knew how to sing.”
“Hey, my karaoke skills are legendary.” He leaned to the right. “Can you shift to the left a little? I can’t see the game. ”
She stared at him. Her fear was confirmed in the shifty way he kept avoiding her gaze and the deliberately casual attitude. “You don’t know.”
“Know what?”
She closed her eyes and counted to ten. “You really don’t know how to sing.”
“Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”
She opened her eyes to find Blake giving her the strangest look. It was part confusion, part defensive, with a whole lot of attitude.
She wanted to pick up the eucalyptus and hit him with it. When she was done with that, she wanted to ask Tamar just what the hell they were thinking, casting this…this…
Damn, his eyes smoldered when he argued. It wasn’t fair.
He raised an eyebrow at her and sat back with a negligent arm crooked over one of the sofa pillows. “Don’t tell me you lost your voice. Surely a professional like you wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Oh I have a voice. I’m just refusing to let you bait me into screaming at you like you deserve.” She gathered up every ounce of patience she had. “Why are you doing this movie?”
“I’m under contract.” He shrugged.
“But…why? You obviously hate music, and you’ve never done any singing professionally. You act like standing next to me in the studio is pure torture. So why do it? Why not move on to that great thing you have waiting for you?”
“I don’t hate music.” He clenched his jaw and shifted as if the couch had suddenly become uncomfortable. “I’m doing this project because I said I would. Period.”
She got the feeling he’d been about to say something else. What was he hiding?
“I’m sure if you told Tamar that you damaged your vocal cords they could get someone else to sing for you. I’ll tell her for you, if that makes it easier. ”
“I don’t need you to make things easier and I’m not letting someone else sing for me.” He glared up at her. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with me. I’m singing that damn song.”
“No, you’re not. That’s what I keep trying to tell you. That thing you’re doing? It’s not singing. It’s shouting, it’s talking, it’s messing around, but it’s not singing.” She threw up her hands, exasperated. “Which you’d know if you were a professional singer, which you obviously aren’t. So what, I’m just supposed to accept you doing a bad job? Why are you so determined to pretend to sing?”
“I might not be up to your standards, Princess, but that’s just tough.”
“You could back out. It’s not a big deal. Just tell Tamar and Paul that you have more important things to do. Hell, the guy before you called it quits because his dog died.”
“I’m not backing out.” He glanced to the left as if something in the distance caught his attention. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He slurped on the throat lozenge. “Because I made a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“You want to know? Fine. I’ll show you.”
He walked down the hallway to a set of double doors and flung them open.
She stepped inside what could loosely be described as an office. An arched picture window opposite the door was blocked by a classroom-sized corkboard, a round conference table took up most of the middle of the room, and a slab of wood he must use as a desk stretched across the back wall.
Two armchairs sat in the corners on the right, a large rolling whiteboard hid the left wall, and a corkboard with sections taped off labeled Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3 blocked part of the window. Color-coded cards were pinned in each section with descriptions of scenes from a movie scrawled on them .
She’d seen a storyboard like that at Day Dreams Studios. They were constantly updating it to show changes or to request feedback on a new idea, but those had a sense of organization to them. She could easily see how one thing led to another, and how different scenes related to each other.
The whiteboard was covered with a riot of colored sticky notes, doodles, and arrows pointing from a headshot of one person to a picture of a bar or house or pond. It looked like a murder board in a detective show, except as far as she could see, there was no dead body. The word “Conned” had been scrawled in red at the top.
Standing in the middle of this room felt like being in the middle of a hurricane. Absolutely everything in the room was covered with papers, notes, or books.
Piper took a closer look at one of the cards on the whiteboard. Marshall and Blake recruit the team .
“Conned?” She stared at Blake, the one steady thing in a room that threatened to overwhelm her with clutter. “That’s the next movie?”
“Yep.” Blake pulled a sticky note that said Location Scout - Vegas off the whiteboard and stuck it under the name Marshall. “We start shooting in late January, which means we’re already behind.”
She shook her head as she turned a slow circle. “I don’t get it. If you had something else going on and it’s this”—she gestured at the room—“unhinged, why did you say yes to Scorched ?”
He leaned against the desk and looked very much like an overlord surveying his kingdom. “The studio and I made a deal. I play Jesse, they back Conned .”
“So you’re being held hostage.” So much of his behavior was starting to make sense. “ Scorched really is a speed bump for you. You don’t get what you really want until you’re done dealing with overzealous pop stars, is that it? ”
He flinched. “It’s not like that.”
She gave him a hard stare until he relented.
“Not exactly like that. I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I wasn’t willing to give a hundred percent. I’m committed, okay?”
“Committed to what? Because all I’ve seen so far is someone hiding behind a good voice and attitude. You really should have told me you didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked you to use your diaphragm. I would have explained it better. I would have shown you how to get more volume without hurting yourself. I would have…dammit. This is my fault. I should have realized why you kept hamming it up like that.”
His apologetic smile somehow made him look almost shy. “You figured it out eventually.”
“After we wasted a week.” She shook her head. “And here I thought you were in a hurry.”
He snorted. “It feels like the treadmill is running so fast I can’t keep up, but that’s no excuse. You’re right. I should have said something. To be honest, I was hoping everyone would be so busy hearing you that they wouldn’t notice I wasn’t exactly keeping up. Or, if they did, they’d chalk it up to character interpretation rather than my weak singing ability.”
“You’re not weak. You have a great voice that you’re not using. That’s what’s so damn frustrating.”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze, and for the first time, she noticed something underneath all the charisma and bravado on his face. Something like embarrassment or shame. That flash of honesty undid the knot of frustration and angst that had weighed her down ever since they left the studio yesterday.
She sat down gingerly on the edge of one of the chairs. Paper crinkled under her in protest. “Can we pretend the last week didn’t happen and start over? This time, without all the shouting?”
“Sure.” He looked a little relieved by her suggestion. “If there’s something I’m not doing right, you’re going to have to tell me how to fix it. Break it down into steps. Assume I know nothing.”
“That won’t be hard.” She bit her lip. He was finally being honest with her. The least she could do was meet him halfway. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He waved off her comment. “If you tell me what I can do to get better, I’ll do it. But I’m one thousand percent committed to Scorched, and I don’t half-ass anything. I’ll keep trying until I get it right.”
“I guess we’re stuck with each other because I’m not the type to bail on a project either, but I know I have a lot to learn. How about I teach you how to sing, and you teach me how to act. Deal?”
The challenge flashed through his eyes. “Deal.”
She held out her hand. “Hi. I’m Piper Bellamy, and I’m your new vocal coach.”
“I’m Blake Ryan, and I’m your drama guy.” He squeezed her hand, and something conspiratorial passed between them.
“Okay. Good.” She nodded and stepped back. “You need to rest your voice. We can start fresh on Tuesday. Um, good luck with all this.”
Blake walked her to the door and watched her get into the car. She felt his gaze on her all the way down the driveway.
She could get lost in those stormy blue eyes.