Page 12 of Act Like You Don't Care
He shook his head at me and pointed me toward the door. "So," he said as we headed out across the lot. "They've changed what they're shooting today."
I ignored him—this was the second time they’d changed the schedule for today and right now, I didn’t give a shit. If we were doing a different scene, I’d have to pick up the lines during rehearsal—I’d done it before but I was too tired to have my usual bitchfest about it. So while Will talked, I finished my coffee and debated proposing to my assistant. Will was good at making sure the coffee wasn't too hot, and that it was strong enough to jump out of the cup on its own and kick me awake on the days that I needed it. It had saved my ass more than once when I'd misjudged my partying. Not that I was looking to be married, but if it kept him around, it might be worth it. At least a proposal.
This coffee was amazing.
I came back to the conversation with a start when I heard the words 'personal security' drop casually from Will's mouth. "What the hell?" I demanded. I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and refused to budge.
"Come on, we're going to be late." Will took a couple of steps farther along the hall and turned to beckon me forward, for all the world like I was a half-trained puppy. "We're going to be late," he repeated more emphatically.
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what you meant by personal security."
"Tam, they’re all going to be waiting there for us right now!"
I just shook my head and leaned a shoulder against the wall. "I can wait. It'll give me more time to drink my coffee."
Will threw his hands up in the air. "Fine, but if I get fired, I'm coming to live with you."
"The only person that can fire you is me, so spit it out. What personal security?"
Will put on that look that only flabbergasted mothers and beleaguered assistants could wear. "I don't know any details, just that there was another letter this morning and something else that had them scurrying around like a kicked ant’s nest. And they want to talk to you after the morning's shoot is over."
"What was in the letter?" I pushed off the wall and started down the hallway. A shiver went down my spine, and a weird tingly feeling like someone was watching us crawled over my scalp but I pushed it all away. Right now, I had to act like I wasn't scared. "Something related to the pig?"
"You're really not bothered by this, are you?"
I glanced across at him and put on my best swagger. "It's an over-imaginative fan. Security here will catch him soon, and then we won't have to worry. Besides, how often am I alone around here?" I gestured to the crowd around us, growing thicker as we got closer to the set. "No one's going to get to me." But I couldn't stop the little voice in the back of my head that kept saying,He got a dead pig in. He could get a dead actor out.
Will shook his head in apparent wonder. "Someday, I want to have balls of steel like you. Come on, you need to get to the reading room."
He headed up the hallway and a few moments later I followed, as soon as my knees were less rubbery.
I pasted a smile on my face when Will glanced back at me, his expression still worried. No need to let him know that my heart was racing like I was in a horror movie. That wasn't the image, was it? And image was everything in Hollywood.
Tam
Rehearsal went okay. I actually remembered most of the lines from when I’d first gone through the script and they’d only needed to prompt me twice.
I pulled Pete off to the side while they did the final set-up for the scene we’d just rehearsed. "Why are you still talking about a bodyguard?" I demanded.
"We want you to have a security presence. A very visible one,” he said, ignoring the tantrum I was building up to if he tried to force the issue. Oh, the tabloids were going to love this.
"No!" I squared my shoulders and crossed my arms over my chest. "I'm not going to let him terrify me. And I won't have the fans thinking I'm a coward."
"You're not being a coward," Pete told me sternly. "You're being careful, and making sure you're around to finish this film. And the next."
Damn, he's got me there.I bit the inside of my lip and, at Pete's gesture, sat down in one of the chairs scattered around the edge of the set. "I hate this."
He pulled another one over and sat next to me. "We're not enjoying it either, but we don't want you to get hurt. Your fans would skin me if I let you get killed during my movie. Though if you want to go work for Samuel Morgan and be murdered, be my guest." Pete’s voice was completely deadpan, but the black humor wrung a reluctant smile out of me.
"Yeah, you know I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole." Morgan. The few times I had worked with him, he’d frustrated me with his insistence that I wear less than I was comfortable with.It’s Hollywood, baby. You don't get ahead without a little skin.
Well, I had proved him wrong. And I wanted to keep proving him wrong.
I looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then sighed. "I don't want them. I can look after myself. What if I got a panic button with an alarm, would that be enough?"
"If he’s close enough that you need the panic button, he’s too close for them to get to you in time. Just meet with them, okay? Hear what they have to say."
Nothing was going to say helpless more than a couple of hulking brutes following me around day and night. "I've worked my entire life to not be shoved in the omega box. What do you think this is going to do to that?"
