2
“Enough?”
Piper gave her little sister a half hug. “Love you, but the answer is no.”
“Piper—”
She cut off whatever Della had been going to say.
“See you later. Stay as long as you want. I’ll have Romi lock up after you leave.”
Piper rushed out the door and shut it before Della could say anything else. The last thing she saw was Della’s stunned face.
When she pulled onto the freeway, she glanced at the time. Ten forty-five. She was supposed to be there at eleven.
She swore at the clock, the traffic, and herself, and sped up.
“Would you stop hassling me and just play?” Blake Ryan, child star turned teen heartthrob turned Hollywood’s Hottest Leading Man, according to the magazines, bounced the basketball once, then passed it to his best friend, Marshall, with a little more force than he intended .
“Ouch. I strike a nerve?” Marshall spun the ball in his hand, then threw it back to Blake.
Marshall’s blond hair was already matted to his forehead, and sweat poured down the side of his angular face. Marshall had been number three on the Hottest Men list the year Blake hit number one. “All I said was it seems like you’re avoiding something. Or some one . Maybe both.”
“I’m not avoiding anything.” Blake dribbled the ball and edged to the right. “I’m getting mentally prepared for an important project with a little court time.”
“Give me a break.” Marshall shifted to the right to keep himself between Blake and the basket. “We wouldn’t be out here in hell’s furnace if you weren’t bent out of shape about something. I mean, your backyard is great, don’t get me wrong, but I’d rather be in the pool, not sweating on the court just as the sun starts to boil. So what’re we doing here? Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
Blake grimaced. He was trying not to think about it, which was exactly why he’d called Marshall over for a little one on one.
Damn the man for knowing him so well.
Time to change the subject. “How’d it go with Kellie last night?”
He lunged to the left, but Marshall was too quick and blocked him before he could edge closer to the basket.
“Nice try, man,” Marshall teased. “I’m not that easy. You can’t fake me.”
Marshall whipped his hand around to steal the ball.
Blake blocked with his shoulder, twisted around to the right, and took the shot. The ball swished through the net, then bounced off the court and rolled to a stop near the twelve-foot-high stone fence.
“You’re absolutely that easy.” Blake ran after it.
Marshall bent over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath while he waited. “Yeah, I really am. Still, last night was a bust. She had to go to the hospital.”
Blake grabbed the ball and carried it back to the court. “You get her tangled in that sex swing again?”
“It’s not a sex swing, you pervert, it’s a hammock, and no. Her sister went into labor. She wanted me to go to the hospital with her to see the baby.” His friend shuddered.
“How’d you wriggle out of that?” Blake asked.
They switched places so Marshall could be on offense.
“Told her I had to finish edits on the screenplay so you could have them this morning.” Marshall winked. “For the meeting.”
“That meeting was two weeks ago. I know because that’s when I signed my life away.” Blake tossed the ball to Marshall. “What edits?”
“Stop being such a drama queen. It takes a lot less time to do voice work than it does a location shoot. You don’t even have to leave town. Easy peasy.” Marshall dribbled and faked right, then left, looking for a hole. “I reworked the bar scene. The dialogue needed more snap.”
Blake kept pace with him, arms outstretched to block. “You gotta give that scene a rest, man. If you keep harping on the bromance it’ll turn our cool caper into a sappy rom-com or something. Besides, the fake-out scene that happens before the con needs the most work.”
“Minor detail,” Marshall said. “The con is brilliant. That’s what everybody will remember.”
Marshall dashed right, spun around, and shot. The ball brushed Blakes’s fingertips and veered off past the net to bounce down his driveway.
“Shit,” Marshall muttered.
They both took off after it because if someone didn’t stop the ball, it would roll all the way down to the gate. His house was on a hill, and the run would be more of a workout than either of them wanted right now, especially in this heat.
A few feet down the drive, Marshall stopped running, leaving Blake to retrieve the ball on his own. By the time he managed to get the ball and jog back, Marshall had sprawled on one of the lounge chairs by the pool.
“You realize if you quit now you can’t win the fifty bucks I promised,” Blake told him. “You have to actually play to win.”
“I didn’t have a shot anyway. You’re already up fifteen points.” Marshall squinted at him. “Besides, don’t you have to get going? The read-through is in, what, thirty minutes?”
Blake pulled a couple of bottles of water out of the mini-fridge in the outdoor kitchen and checked the time. “Two hours. Man, I’m not looking forward to this. The script doesn’t feel tight. I bet you anything they aren’t finished.”
His friend gave him a suspicious look and took the offered bottle. “You get to be a cartoon. What’s not to like?”
For one thing, he’d never done voice work before and wasn’t exactly sure how hard it would be to slip into the role when he wasn’t acting it out, and for another, the idea of having to record a song was intimidating, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Marshall. The teasing would be relentless.
He gave a nothing-to-see-here shrug. “It’s in the way. I have better things to do.”
Marshall narrowed his eyes. “No, you don’t. You literally got nothing better to do, because if you don’t finish playing the prince in Scorched , we don’t get to start Conned , and we’ve given blood, sweat, and most of our twenties to get that project off the ground.”
“I know.” Blake stared at the pool that took up a large part of his backyard.
The pool was a gift from his mother for his twenty-first birthday. She’d duplicated the one in his tenth movie, Jake’s Day Off , down to the hot tub and simulated lagoon waterfall. He’d hosted one hell of a premiere party around that pool.
He and Marshall had come up with the idea for Conned that night. They’d known they had a hit on their hands before they’d even written it.
But that was almost a decade ago, and the movie still hadn’t been made. They’d both put a good portion of their own money on the line, but it hadn’t been enough. They needed a backer if the script were ever going to see the light of day.
So when the studio offered him a deal, it had felt like serendipity and winning the lottery all rolled into one. Their first, second, and third leading man choices for a new animated feature had all flamed out for various reasons, and now they were two weeks from kickoff with nobody even close to being on the hook to play Prince Jesse.
It was a simple deal. If he did the voice work, they’d provide the rest of the funding—twenty-five million dollars—and studio backing for Conned . That meant the marketing might of one of Hollywood’s biggest studios would be behind his directorial debut. It had been an easy yes, even if it did feel like a waste of time to play with cartoons.
“It’s just annoying. Scorched feels cheesy to me. Kind of like how ours was when we started. I just don’t think it’s finished yet, which isn’t a good sign.”
“Hey, ours ain’t cheesy, it’s a future classic.” Marshall peered at Blake over his sunglasses. “We’re going to make something modern and fun. It’ll be a thriller caper with a feel-good ending and franchise potential, and we need that deal you signed to do it. We won’t get the funding if you don’t play your part. You’re not thinking of backing out, are you?”
He wanted to say yes.
He wanted to race right past this stupid animated movie and get on with what he increasingly felt was his life’s calling .
“I didn’t spend my entire childhood on movie sets to be a cartoon. I want to tell a really great story, not ham it up in a studio. I don’t have time to deal with a bunch of people who don’t know the first thing about the business.”
“I thought you said they got Gina Paige to voice the dragon?” Marshall asked. “She’s won like, what, five Tonys? Can’t say she’s inexperienced.”
“Not her. Princess Jewel. Piper Bellamy.”
Marshall snorted. “Can’t say she’s inexperienced either. That girl can sing . She can carry your lame ass through all the songs. Can’t believe you get to meet her and I don’t.”
That stung, mostly because he’d been thinking the exact same thing himself ever since he’d been coerced into taking on the role in order to secure the funding for their own movie. “I can sing.”
He meant to sound confident, but it came out defensive. He could sing, but it wasn’t something he’d ever trained for or practiced, a fact he was now regretting. His mother always wanted him to take singing lessons, but he’d thought they would be a waste of time. He could sing well enough to kill it at karaoke, but he was an actor and soon-to-be-director, not a singer.
“Oh sure, you have some raw natural talent but you’re nothing compared to her . She’ll run circles around you.”
Blake flipped him off.
“Aww,” Marshall drawled in a baby voice, “is it going to be difficult for you, Mr. I Won an Oscar When I Was Ten Years Old? Are we feeling intimidated because we’re finally going to be the amateur in the room?”
“Shut up.”
Marshall, who could always tell when he got to Blake, grinned. “Gee, is someone feeling a little sensitive? Come on, it’ll do you good to have to face something you’re not already an expert at. You’ll get to feel what the rest of us feel every time you walk on set for a change.”
“I’m not worried about the singing, okay? It’s not a big deal.”
“Well, I know you’re not worried about the acting, so if it’s really not the singing, and it’s not the acting, then what…oh. Oh! ” Marshall’s grin widened. “I got it. It’s not a what, it’s a who . It’s a full table read, right? That means Rachel the Leech will be there today.”
Blake closed his eyes and shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”
Marshall hooted a laugh. “Blake and Rachel, together again. Come on, it’s animated. It’s not like you have to show up at the same time as her in the studio.”
“Yeah, but first I have to get through today.” Every time he thought of Rachel Morris, his pulse raced, and not in a good way. More like in a buried-alive sort of way. “I can’t believe they cast her. Seriously, what are the odds?”
“Come on, man, she wasn’t that bad.” The broad grin on Marshall’s face said he knew exactly how bad it really was, and he was delighted about it.
Blake stared at him. “You do remember the day she sent five hundred and thirty-two text messages because I went to a screening with my mother instead of that wrap party, right? And the way she wormed her way into that dance scene? Oh, and the time she reamed whats-her-name”—he snapped his fingers twice, wracking his brain for the name—“Winslow…remember, the short redhead? Rachel cornered her in the makeup trailer and ripped into her about flirting with me. She couldn’t even say her lines after that. It delayed the shoot three whole days.”
Marshall held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, sure, Rachel’s a little high maintenance and a bit psycho, but she’s definitely doable. I get why they picked her. She has a great voice, and she’s a pretty good actress, too. So what if she was a little clingy. It’s been years, I’m sure she’s over you by now.”
“She makes me claustrophobic.” He’d been seventeen when Rachel Morris had planted a kiss on him. She was two years older and a lot more mature, and at first, he’d been very interested in her.
She had fascinating lips that had mesmerized and enticed from across the room. He’d fantasized about those lips for weeks until he’d finally experienced them firsthand.
After the kiss, she’d attached herself to him like superglue, and he’d realized that some things were much better when experienced from a distance—and that his mother had been right. Work relationships could be a bad, bad, bad thing.
“You know, she would probably work for the girlfriend in Conned. Want to ask her while you’re there today?” Marshall’s eyes flashed with barely contained amusement.
“You can be a real ass sometimes, you know that?”
“I do. It’s a God-given gift.” His friend’s shit-eating grin was proud and unashamed.