Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
G roup sessions with the entire main cast lasted a little over a week. Every day, they focused on scenes dictated by the animators in order to speed up production, and every night Piper followed Blake home to spend a few hours running lines for the next day.
She couldn’t help but notice Blake seemed different ever since she’d spent the night. He was polite, pleasant, and watched her surreptitiously when he thought she wasn’t looking, but their conversations felt a little stiff and centered mostly on work.
What was that all about? Up until that point, she could have sworn he had actually been interested in getting to know her better.
Piper sat in her kitchen, having a last sip of caffeine before she left, when her phone chimed the special ringtone for Della, “You’re So Vain.”
She turned the sound off.
The phone vibrated with several incoming messages.
She stubbornly went to rinse out her mug and put it in the dishwasher .
The phone vibrated again.
She could just leave the stupid thing here in the kitchen for the rest of the day. She didn’t have to read any messages or respond to any calls if the phone wasn’t with her.
The phone buzzed like an annoying gnat.
Piper snatched it up and checked the stream of texts.
Good morning! Know you’re busy. Just wanted to tell you.
Thought a lot about what you said.
I’m sorry I made you feel second best.
You were NEVER that. EVER.
You have an amazing voice, and amazing talent, and there’s no Bellamy Sisters without you.
It was sweet, but Piper wasn’t fooled. Della was great at twisting emotions to get what she wanted, and it was easy to send a text. Too easy. Maybe if she’d said all that in person…but she hadn’t.
I don’t want it to be like before either.
I want something better, for ALL OF US. Together.
That means YOU.
Piper’s heart melted a little. Maybe Della had been listening. She pictured herself on stage with Mattie and Della, stood side by side, singing and sharing the spotlight. The image lifted her heart.
Check this out. Mattie’s latest. Let us know what you think.
Piper clicked the link, and a PDF of a song downloaded. It was just lyrics on a page in a battered notebook with notes in Mattie’s handwriting. The song was about family standing together, and she saw from the scrawled notes in the margins that there were solo sections for all three of them, with the chorus and bridge in harmony together. She could sense the beat from “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge as she read it.
She hummed the notes she thought might go with that beat, then sang the first line. It wasn’t right, but it was enough to prove the song had a lot of potential .
Her get-out-of-the-house-now alarm went off. She should go.
The string of texts waited with silent judgment. She couldn’t leave Della’s messages dangling out there like that. It felt mean.
But she wasn’t ready to answer the question Della really wanted.
She thought about it, then sent two quick messages before she set out for the studio.
The first was to Della. Thanks for this. Recording today, will talk later.
The second went to Mattie. Love the song.
Blake was already in the studio when she got there, to her surprise. She couldn’t hear him because the mics weren’t activated, but from the way his lips were moving, she thought he was running through the warm-ups she’d taught him.
He seemed different this morning. His stride ate the floor in the studio as he paced back and forth. He seemed broody and intense, like a lion who wanted out of the cage.
Maybe things weren’t going well with Marshall’s location scouting. Or maybe something else had gone wrong.
He spun on one heel at the far side of the room and glanced in her direction. He caught her staring and froze.
She waved at him and mouthed, “Good morning.”
Blake’s gaze drank her in and refused to let her go. How did he manage to do that from another room, with thick glass in between them?
She pushed the door open and joined him.
“Slowpoke,” he said.
The moody intensity she’d seen through the glass vanished. She couldn’t tell if he was being himself now, or Jesse.
“I’m thirty minutes early. ”
Blake was never late, but she was usually the first one to arrive after Jeanette, who appeared to live in that booth.
“Anxious to see me? Can’t blame you.” His grin was crooked and cocky and totally Jesse.
“You don’t have to do that. I can get into character all by myself now.” She put her bag down on the couch.
“Tamar?” Blake waved at the booth. “Do you mind if we run through it a couple of times just to get in the mood?”
Tamar gave him a thumbs-up and a big smile.
The digital displays near their stations came to life, and the dialogue for scene one appeared.
“This is just practice, right?” Piper asked.
Blake turned his head from side to side like an athlete getting ready. “Yep. Just getting warmed up.”
Calling it a warm-up took all the pressure off.
“Let me just run through my emotional state,” Piper said. “I’m angry that my sister was taken, worried that I won’t be able to save her, scared that she’ll be attacked in the forest, and I’m more than a little anxious about navigating this adventure alone.”
“Sounds right,” Blake said.
“I’ll just jump in, then.” She took a deep breath, let it out, then said her line. “Which way do I go? Right or left?”
The intercom clicked on. “Uh,” the reader said, “do you want me to fill in the extras for this, or are you just going to flash through your own dialogue?”
Piper looked at Blake and shrugged. “Read?”
“Yes, please. Let’s do the whole thing front to back.”
The reader said the lines for her snarky map.
She felt a little stiff as she said the next few lines, but this wasn’t a real take, so she didn’t worry about it too much. Instead, she tried to remember how it felt in Blake’s living room, doing lines with him and Marshall.
“Will you please go away? I’m not in the mood for games.” The line she’d just said rolled off the screen, and Blake’s part took its place.
He was supposed to say, “Oh it’s not a game, Princess. It’s an adventure.”
When Blake didn’t say anything, she glanced at him.
He tilted his head in a move she’d come to associate with Jesse and grinned. “What are you in the mood for, Princess? Are you in the mood for a story? Love? Adventure? I’m up for anything, as long as I get to tag along wherever that map leads.”
He pointed at the invisible map in her hands.
She fumbled for a line to say. Her next line wouldn’t fit anymore. Then she realized he was playing the same game they’d played in the living room.
This was a warm-up, after all. Not the real thing.
She could go anywhere she wanted.
She felt a rush of adrenaline and excitement. She turned the screen off and instead focused on what Blake had just said. He wanted the map she was carrying.
Why?
Right!
The line came to her in a flash, and she said it out loud in her best scornful voice. “You can’t even read a map.”
“I can too.” He thrust out his jaw.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s my map and there’s no way I’m telling you what it says.”
“I already know what it says.”
“Oh really? Prove it.” She pretended to stow the map behind her back. She’d slipped into character so easily she wasn’t sure when it happened, but she loved it.
She loved being Princess Jewel.
This was fun. She liked ad-libbing like this. It felt creative and free, and it reminded her of how it felt to be on stage. That fun, alive, being-lifted-into-another-world feeling was addictive .
She wanted more of it. A lot more.
He crossed his arms and looked smug. “It shows the secret lair of a powerful dragon that’s hoarding a one-of-a-kind protection stone.”
She blinked. “You can’t know that.”
“Am I wrong?”
“How did you know?”
He leaned toward her. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course.”
“So can I.” He turned his face away, looking smug.
She stomped her foot. “You’re…you’re…”
“Charming? Helpful? Incredibly supportive?” Blake flashed her a flirty look over his shoulder.
“Incredibly…obnoxious. I’m going”—she sniffed and pointed to the back corner of the room—“over there. You’re not allowed to come with me.”
“Come on, Princess,” Blake cajoled. “You need me and my magic compass. It always points true. Let’s work together.”
“I need to save my sister. You don’t care about that.”
“I do,” Blake said with a sincere nod. “You have no idea how much.”
“You don’t even know my sister,” she protested.
“But I know you, and I like you. I’m sure I’ll like her too.”
“I’m rescuing her from an evil sorcerer, not setting you up on a date.”
They argued back and forth, with Jesse trying to convince Jewel he was the man to solve all her problems, while Jewel tried to convince him she didn’t need a man to save her.
Suddenly, Blake’s eyes widened, and he pointed. “Minions!”
A touch of actual panic rushed through her, and she squeaked. “Minions? Where?”
Blake beckoned to her. “Run, Princess, run! ”
“We’re stuck between them and a raging river! How do we get across that?”
“Can you swim?” Blake asked.
“No. Can you?” Piper asked.
“Sure.” He looked doubtful. “Maybe we can make a raft.”
It was such a ridiculous thing to say that she put her hands on her hips. “Right. We’ll just run to the hardware store and buy rope and logs and hammer and nails. I’m sure the minions will wait.”
“Bad guys always lie in wait. It’s their defining characteristic,” Blake said. His lips twitched.
She burst out laughing.
“Okay, that was fun until it fell apart,” Blake said with a chuckle.
“Hey, every kingdom should have a hardware store.”
The intercom clicked on.
“Delightful,” Tamar said. She beamed at them through the glass. “I like this take. A lot. Let’s take a break. I want to get Paul in here.”
The intercom clicked off. Tamar spun in her chair and appeared to be texting.
Piper and Blake exchanged glances.
“What’s that about?” Piper asked.
It had been a silly warm-up exercise, not an actual take. So why did Tamar look so excited?
“If I had to guess…” Blake sighed. “I’d say she wants to rework the scene.”
“Rework?” The way he said that it sounded like a bad, bad thing. But Tamar had seemed excited. “It was just for fun, right? We were just warming up.”
“It was fun.” Blake grimaced. “But more than that, it was really good. You can feel when a scene just works, and what we just did…it worked. ”
She studied his face. Everything from his shoulders to his eyebrows was slanted down. He looked tired or maybe defeated. It made her anxious to see him look like that.
“Then why do you sound so depressed?”
Blake pulled out his phone, crossed to the couch, and sat down. “Because If I were her, I’d be rewriting the scene right now. Which will mean looking at every other scene just to make sure it flows. I’ve done the same thing a hundred times on Conned . Usually takes us two or three weeks to make a big change like that.”
“Three weeks.” She processed that little gem of information, along with the look on his face. The stress rolling off him wasn’t about Scorched . It was about Conned . “You mean if you move the kiss like I suggested the other day you’ll have to rework the whole script?”
“Not the whole script. Just the back half,” he said with a rueful smile. “Especially right now with Marshall tied up on a location hunt.”
“I’m so sorry.” She sat down next to him. “I didn’t know. You should put it back where it was. I take back everything I said.”
He shook his head. “No. You were right. It’ll make a stronger third act if we move it.”
She chewed her lip, not quite sure what to say.
He rubbed his face. “It could be a good thing, actually. If they put off the voice work for a week or two, I can join Marshall in Vegas. Maybe speed things up there. But—”
The intercom clicked on.
“Um,” Jeanette said, “can you two come in here, please?”
They both stood up.
“Sure,” Piper said.
The apologetic look on Jeanette’s face told Piper that Blake was right. The schedule had just been derailed.
She glanced at him. His expression had gone carefully neutral .
He tucked his phone in his back pocket and gestured for Piper to go through to the booth first.
She squeezed his shoulder. “Buck up. It might not be as bad as you think.”
“In another reality, maybe,” Blake muttered under his breath.
Piper opened the door to a flurry of excited chatter, with words like rewrite, rework, and rethink floating out above the rest.
Blake huffed a soft sigh of resignation behind her.
Paul spun to face them. Piper had time to notice his bright-purple shirt with tiny pink dots that could have been crabs—or maybe lobsters? —before he pulled her in for one of his trademark bear hugs. He didn’t have an accent, but Paul sure hugged like he was from the South.
“That was brilliant!” He emphasized each word. “Brilliant!”
“Thanks,” Piper said. She returned his hug with genuine enthusiasm. “It was just a warm-up, though.”
“Oh it was so much more than that,” Paul said. He pulled back but didn’t release her shoulders. “ So much more. And you…”
He let her go to give Blake a hug. “Well done, Blake. Well freaking done. I knew you were the right man for the job. I told Tamar you were the best choice. Didn’t I, Tamar?”
Tamar made a noncommittal noise of what might have been considered agreement, but she didn’t take her attention away from the tablet in her hands.
Paul was shorter and rounder, and it looked almost comical watching Blake try to keep some distance between them without actually pulling away.
“Thanks, Paul.” Blake’s distant tone was lost on the man.
She had no idea how Blake managed to sound so polite even when she knew he was so stressed he could barely stand still. In the heat of all the excitement, she doubted anyone in the booth had noticed he wasn’t exactly thrilled.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you did.” Paul waved his hand at the monitor, where a playback of the scene continued to play. “Diane always said she hated the new opening we came up with, and she was right. She was absolutely, one-hundred-percent, kick-me-in-the-ass right. Wasn’t she, Tamar?”
Tamar glanced up. “That’s a little harsh.”
Paul waved her comment away. “It was weak. We knew it was weak, but we had to do something. Her original version was a little too dark for our brand and every time we tried to brighten it up, it wound up being some sort of shouting match. We hoped with the right talent it would work out in the end.”
He gave them a broad smile. “You two brought the fun . It’s exactly the tone we were looking for but couldn’t quite seem to nail down. Of course we need to reshape the entire first half to fit this new take, and I don’t think the last scene works at all, now. We’ll have to get the whole group back in, which could be a bit of a scheduling nightmare but it’ll be worth it. The chemistry between you two is absolutely perfect. You nailed it. Diane is going to be thrilled .”
Piper caught the word reshape in that verbal tsunami and cringed. She didn’t dare look at Blake.
“I didn’t know you hated the script,” she managed to say. “I thought it was cute. An animated Romancing the Stone , with magic and dragons. How could that be dark?”
“Exactly,” Paul said with a decisive nod. “That’s what I said. Magic and dragons are fun , not dark. At least, in my movies they are. Right, Tamar?”
Tamar joined them, cradling the tablet in one arm. “ Modern fun. Yes.”
“Right. Right,” Paul agreed. “Modern. Totally modern, but with swashbuckly flair. I want Indiana Jones and Kathleen Turner teaming up with Smaug…okay not Smaug, but you get the idea. That’s why we had Jewel shouting at Jesse in the opening scene. I like what you did so much better. I can’t wait to see the rest of the scenes with this new approach.”
She chanced a glance at Blake. His face was smooth and polite, without a trace of the stress he had to be feeling, but he had his hands shoved in his pockets. Was it to appear cool, or was it to hide his clenched fists?
“How long will it take to reshape the script?” Piper asked.
Tamar looked at her tablet. Piper could see a calendar with so many appointments it looked like a rainbow. “I’d say two, maybe three weeks if we rush. That puts us in the third week of October.”
“We won’t pick up recording again until late October?” Blake said. “This is a Christmas premiere, right?”
Tamar waved his concern away. “It’s tight, sure, but I think it can work and it will be fabulous. We’ll want to rethink the initial duet, too. We might be able to get to that next week. It would be nice to get your take on the new direction before we record it again. How’s your schedule, my dear?”
Piper glanced at Blake. “It’s open. I have a concert in a couple of weeks but that’s it. I’m happy to help with the lyrics, just let me know when you need me. The sooner the better, right?”
“Thank you, dear. Be sure to send me the date of your concert so I can make a note of it.”
The idea that it would take weeks to get back on track flitted through her brain and settled into her gut where a nice garden of guilt had sprouted. “What will this do to the deadline? Will we still make the premiere?”
Tamar looked a little doubtful, but Paul jumped in.
“We have to make that deadline,” Paul said. “ Trust me, we’ll make it happen. We might be squeezed toward the end, but what movie isn’t, right? ”
Tamar looked at Blake. “Are you available next Wednesday or Thursday?”
“Whatever you need, Tamar. I’m yours.” Blake’s smile was now warm and accommodating, when seconds ago he’d looked like a man on the brink of a high cliff. How did he do that? “Just text me the new schedule when you have it.”
“Thank you.” Tamar looked from Blake to Piper. “Both of you. Marvelous work today. We’re done for now. I’ll be in touch.”
They said their goodbyes to everyone in the booth, then headed out into the late-morning heat together. Blake moved with an easy stride and smiled at everyone they passed, while Piper wrestled with her conscience.
On the one hand, she was flying high from Paul and Tamar’s overwhelming approval of their silly warm-up take on the scene. This was all new for her, and it felt fantastic to know she’d done something so well they wanted more.
On the other, she felt bad about what that success meant to Blake.
To her, it was everything.
To him, it was another speed bump, another rough spot to smooth out, and another hassle to deal with.
She didn’t know why that thought bothered her so much, but it did. Very much.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I didn’t realize when we were playing around that it would throw everything off like that.”
She hadn’t known him very long, but she liked Blake a lot more than she probably should, and she hated that she’d done something to add to his already ridiculous workload.
“It’s not your fault. I was the one who suggested it.”
“True.” She waved that part away. “But you only did that because you saw I was nervous. You wouldn’t have needed to warm up if it wasn’t for me, so it’s my fault.”
A shadow of a smile lifted his lips. “It’s nobody’s fault. It was a great take. The movie will be stronger for it. Can’t really fault them for doing something I’d do myself.”
“But it’s going to put the movie behind. A lot. We’ll have to re-record the one song we thought was finished.”
He shrugged. “Yep.”
She didn’t believe this cavalier attitude he was portraying for a hot second, and it didn’t make her feel any better to have him blow off what she knew was a very big deal. He was getting screwed because they’d stumbled onto something they never would have found if he hadn’t gone out of his way to help her on the very first day and every day after that.
“How bad will this mess up the schedule for Conned ?”
“Hopefully, it won’t. It’s too soon to tell, really. To be honest, it could be a good thing. It gives me a few days at least to focus on other issues.”
They crossed the open expanse of lawn and into the shade of the garage. The way he’d said other issues was ominous.
“What happened this morning? When I got here, you were pacing back and forth like you were trying to escape.”
“Oh. That was nothing.” Blake pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Just one more thing to deal with, on top of the fifty thousand other things. But hey, that’s the life of a director, right? Where’d you park?”
She pointed at the back row. “Over there, near the end.”
“I’ll walk with you.” Blake waited for her to lead the way, then fell into step beside her.
They bypassed what looked like a tourist group by ducking behind a row of SUVs.
“Did something else burn down?” She deliberately slowed her pace so they had more time to talk.
It was midday, and there were people everywhere, but there was nobody close enough to hear their conversation and no cameras recording everything they said .
It was nice.
She liked walking with him, chatting like they were old friends.
“Someone we’d tapped for a role has backed out. It happens.”
She let out an audible gasp of fake shock and put her hand on her chest. “Someone dissed Blake Ryan and Marshall Weston? Who on God’s green earth would do that? They must be out of their minds.”
His lips twitched. “You sounded very Southern just then.”
“I’m always Southern,” she said in her best drawl. “It’s just usually on the inside.”
She dropped the accent. “Seriously, though, if I were cast in a movie with the two of you, no way I’d turn it down. Who was it?”
“Jessica Bullock. We’d tapped her to play the girl next door, as it happens.”
Her jaw dropped in real surprise this time. “You got America’s Sweetheart to play the lead girl? Wow.”
He sighed. “Well, not anymore, but yes. We’ve all been friends since we did Jake’s Day Off when we were teenagers. She was willing to do Conned on points alone, which helped a ton with the budget. Guess we’ll have to rethink that.”
“She must really have believed in the project, to take profits over a set payday. What changed her mind?”
“She still believes in it. She wants to invest, but she doesn’t want to do the shoot anymore. At least we found out now and not two months from now. Gives us a little time, I guess.”
Piper was surprised someone Blake knew would do that to him. It sounded like such an asshole move to promise to work on a project and then back out that.
Then again, she’d noticed over the past two years of trying to get Scorched off the ground that a lot of Hollywood types might say one thing but do another. The first three men tapped for Jesse had all backed out, the last one only two weeks before they were supposed to kick off. She’d never seen Tamar look so angry, and even Paul had been so down he’d worn a plain blue shirt for three days straight.
“Why’d she pull out?” A thought struck her that took a little of her breath away. “Oh God, it’s not because you moved the kiss, is it?”
He looked amused. “No, nothing like that. Well, I suppose it started with a kiss but not the one in the script. She’s pregnant.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I guess she and her partner have been trying for a while and it finally happened. She doesn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize the pregnancy so she’s stepping back from acting.”
“I get that.” She stopped in front of her car and dug around in her purse for the keys. “That really sucks, though. You, Marshall, and Jessica Bullock in one movie together would be box office gold.”
He gave her a questioning look. “You don’t think Marshall and I can carry it?”
“Of course you can. Are you kidding?” She rolled her eyes. “Forget Jessica. Every woman in America will see this movie just to catch a glimpse of you two. Especially if you take your shirts off. Make sure you do that.”
“True.” He puffed his chest up and shot her a burning look.
“Definitely do that, too.”
“Can’t go wrong with a little eye candy to spice up a plot,” he said in a low, incredibly sexy, leading man growl.
He was kidding. He had to be kidding, but an image of him standing bare-chested in the desert under the moonlight flashed through her mind, and she nearly choked with the sudden desire to run her hands over his chiseled abs.
What was she thinking? He wasn’t coming on to her, he was just fooling around .
She hurried to say something, anything, before he noticed how flustered she was. “It really does suck, though. It can’t be easy to recast.”
He deflated, and she caught a glimpse of the strain around his eyes. “It’s not ideal, but it is what it is. I’ll work around it.”
Her guilty conscience poked at her a little harder. Here was a man who’d done everything she’d asked him to do with the songs, who had gone out of his way to help her out, and now he was in a bind. She didn’t have anything going on besides Scorched . She had all this time on her hands, except for her Wednesday Morning Coffee Chats .
Any good Southern girl would offer her help, right?
Sure.
It wasn’t because she wanted to spend more time with him, or because the thought of going back to her empty house was so unappealing.
Definitely not that.
She met his gaze. “Anything I can do to help?”
She could have sworn relief flashed through his eyes, but then it was gone, and he’d retreated behind his trademark life-is-good smile.
“Nah, it’s all good. Thanks.” He opened the car door for her and waited for her to climb inside. “Drive safe. I’ll see you when I see you.”
She didn’t like the tension in his shoulders or the slightly overwhelmed tone behind the word good.
“Stubborn much?” She leaned against the side of the car and ignored the open door. “Seriously, why would anyone in your shoes say no to a helping hand?”
He looked startled. “Excuse me?”
“You know, in our family, Lizzie did most of the heavy lifting when it came to scheduling and herding us from place to place, but I helped organize and strategize, and I’ve done a lot of my own scheduling for the past five years. Not to mention, I’m an absolute whiz at social media and public relations.”
“Why are you giving me your resume?” His eyes glinted, but she wasn’t sure if it was from amusement or irritation.
She tossed her bag into the car. “Because I feel guilty about being partially responsible for the bind you’re in, and I want to help. Think of it as a thank-you, for teaching me how to act.”
“I didn’t teach you how to act,” he said with a snort of laughter. “I showed you how to get started, that’s all.”
“Whatever. You helped me out a lot, and I’d like to return the favor.”
He considered her with an appraising look. “What exactly could you do to help me?”
“If you’re having trouble with road crews or costume design or catering, I know people. Feeding movie people can’t be that different from feeding roadies.”
She almost had him, she could tell by the way he hesitated. Or maybe he was just figuring out a polite way to turn her down.
When he didn’t answer right away, she pressed on. “Come on. Don’t make me go back to my house alone. My calendar is clear so I have nothing to do but sit around and think about family drama and I’m so not in the mood. You’d be saving me from myself.”
He appeared to be considering it until his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and swore under his breath.
“What?” She tried to peek at it, but it was too far away.
“Marshall.” He sighed and looked up at her. “You’re serious? This isn’t just a polite offer I’m supposed to turn down?”
“You think Southern people offer to help thinking you’ll say no?”
“I don’t know about Southern people, but in this town that’s pretty much the norm.” His phone buzzed again. “I have to jump on this. Marshall’s trying to make a deal on a ghost town. ”
“You know, from anyone else that would sound crazy, but from you…” She pushed off from the side of the car. “I’ll follow you back to your place and we can talk about how I can take some of the crap off your hands. I’m handy with the phone, the internet, and talking people into doing things.”
He looked amused. “I see that.”
Piper climbed into her SUV, then gave him a pointed look. He laughed and took off toward his car, which today turned out to be something sleek, silver, and futuristic instead of the Prius he’d driven earlier, with a logo she didn’t recognize. When they reached the freeway, he accelerated so fast she had no hope of keeping up.
She imagined him laughing all the way to his house, that rich, rolling sound that tickled her insides and made her want to laugh with him.