Hot Set, page 20
He runs a hand through his hair, which is so stiff with spray it sticks up like a line of weeds. “I thought I made it clear I didn’t want you on set for love scenes.”
Anger pops like a firecracker in my chest. “Not my call.”
He slaps a hand on one of the weapon racks, knocking swords together in an ear-splitting clang of metal. “For fuck sake, none of it’s real.” He’s on me in a flash, catching my head in lion-paw-sized hands. Thumbs press into my temples. “Clear out the mess in your head about Niks and me, will you?”
I break his hold. “And how am I supposed to do that when, by your own admission, there’s a secret between you two that I’m denied access to?” Before he can interject, I stab a finger in the air to stop him. “It’s not just the scene. I saw you two cuddling up and whispering afterward.”
Jack lowers his lids. I can’t tell if calm or fury will be in those wild Atlantic irises when he opens them. I seize the opportunity to put a few more steps between us in case it’s the latter.
He speaks with eyes still shut. “I don’t know how to explain things so I’m not the bastard here.” Then he’s looking at me with that straightforward honesty that dumps my heart into his hands. “It was Niks’s first ever intimate scene with her own body, not a double. It shook her up. It’s goddamn embarrassing when you come right down to it, but there’s nothing for it. We do it because it serves the story.” He closes his robe and ties the sash. “You, being a writer, should appreciate that and not crush my balls over it.”
It’s next to impossible for me to believe Niks wasn’t all-in for a few hours in bed with Jack, choreographed or not. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you two looked pretty tight after Alan called ‘Cut’.”
“I was being kind, not loving on her.” He moves in very slowly as if I’m a horse about to rear. “Do you believe me?” I don’t back away. I want him near. I want to be in his arms.
Jack lays his hands on my shoulders. “Gilly, I’ve been trying to get to you all week. Why are you locking me out? It’s got my insides in a snarl.”
I lay my hands on his. “Mine, too, but we don’t have a choice anymore. Meg painted a pretty damn clear scenario.”
And then I am in his arms. Jack’s touch flattens all my best intentions at resistance. He rests his cheek against the top of my head. “There’s got to be a way ‘round her doomsday predictions.”
If only I could believe him. Stay here in the dark where no one can intrude on what we’ve found in one another. The stink of Nik’s perfume on Jack’s skin snaps me back to reality.
The dark.
The lies.
The secrets.
The snuffing out of what should be celebrated.
I reach behind my back where his hands are clasped and twine my fingers through his. Gently laying them on the lovely bed of springy hair covering his chest, I shake my head. “I can’t do this again—be with someone and not be with them. I won’t be an object to be valued in the dark and then denied in the light of day.”
“I’m not him, Gilly.”
“No, but this situation makes you have to act like him.”
I hear the rumble of Jack’s anger rise in his chest like a curtain of steam. “How can you compare me in any way to that bastard? Have you no trust in me at all? In what I feel for you? Where’s the faith?”
“I can’t have faith in something that will ruin me.”
I might as well have clouted him on the head with one of the maces hanging against the wall. His look of absolute devastation is unbearable. I turn away.
“Ruin you. That’s how it is then?” His breath comes in short huffs.
“You heard Meg. Your future is bruised, but mine is finished if we’re together. There’s no way around it. I’m making the same mistake I made before with Treat. I’m sublimating myself for an ‘us’ that is impossible.”
“Stop throwing that man in my face. I am not him and won’t ever be.” Jack moves close to take my cheeks in his fingers. “‘Us’ is a beautiful thing to me.”
Tears roll down my face. “To me too. I wish there was a way, but there isn’t. If you care for me, please let this go.” I pull his face to mine and lay a soft kiss on his lips. “Let our beautiful thing stay beautiful before it blows up in our faces.”
Jack walks backward away from me. “You’re the one kicking it to shit.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. Please try and understand how huge the stakes are for me, for my future.”
The overhead lights cast dark shadows beneath his eyes. “Gilly, can’t you see how invested I am in us?”
Jack O’Leary believes if he pushes hard enough, the world will tilt the way he wills it. When he’s made up his mind, there’s no reasoning with him.
I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes before I look at him. “The situation has gone beyond what you and I want. It’s going to damage both of us, and possibly even Meg and the show, in a huge way if we don’t end it now. Please accept that.”
He paces back and forth in front of me. How I love his adorable skinny legs with huge bare feet that have a slight turn out like a dancer. The stance he takes before me is far from a graceful pirouette. It’s no-nonsense battle ready. “You could stand not talking to me for nearly a week when I was going mad with missing you.” Weariness softens the angles of his face. “That tells me our being together means more to me than to you because I’m in fecking misery and you’ve chosen to move on.”
Frustration with this whole damn situation raises my body temperature a thousand degrees. I stamp my foot hard to keep from blasting apart. “This is killing me, Jack. Absolutely killing me.” A flicker of hope lights his eyes. I can’t let it get any brighter. “If word of our relationship ever got out, you could recover. I won’t.”
“You’re givin’ too much power over to Meg and True Time.”
“It’s not just them.” I scrape my foot across a seam in the floor tiles. “It’s fans who drive the success of this show. I mess with that, and it could piss Bobby off enough to get rid of me.”
“Bobby and I are tight. I’ll come clean about how much I adore you, and he’ll have to be on our side.”
Adore.
Fucking adore.
Not love.
This is Treat all over again. Gilly Bettencourt is worth adoring but not loving. A rush of anger heats my face.
What is so lacking in who I am that the men I let into my heart can’t say they love me? I won’t lay my future on the line only to be adored. Not this time. Adored has an end date. A drop of sweat slides down my temple. I will walk away. “This is as far as we can go.”
He turns his back on me to grip the top bar of the weapons rack. His robe falls off his shoulders, and I see the muscles of his back ripple. “So, you’re writing us off as a mistake.” His knuckles are so white I’m afraid the bar is going to bend. “You’ve decided I’m nothing more than the next in a line of unattainable men you’ve welcomed into your bed.”
Air rushes out of my lungs so fast he might as well have punched me. I clutch my chest and try to take a breath.
His fists drop to his side. “Where’s the Jack O’Leary in that?”
First adored and then this. After what we’ve shared, how can Jack reduce my affection to a mistake, to a list? Does he truly believe I don’t know him for the wonderful man he is? Can’t he see it’s our situation and not me that’s crushing what might have been?
I double over, clutching my stomach, and stagger out the door.
Jack’s panting and grumbling masks my exit. He apparently doesn’t realize I’ve left the room until the door almost swings shut.
“Gilly, oh Jesus God. I went too far. I didn’t mean it. Come back.” His feet slap on the floor, coming closer, so I speed up. He only voiced what must have been festering in his mind.
And maybe there’s truth in it. I knew Treat was off limits, but I let us happen anyway. Now I’ve done it with Jack. From our first rendezvous in the stables, he laid out the obstacles. What did I do? Play the game again. Attach myself to the impossible. If I want to be loved, why do I keep accepting inevitabilities that, by their very nature, can’t go beyond adored?
Tearing down the corridor, I shut out the sound of my name being called as he tries to follow. When I reach the crossover to the other wing, I slam the door behind me and lock it with Jack O’Leary on the other side.
Chapter
Twenty-One
I stumble down the hallway like I’ve downed five pints. I feel like the puppet I had as a kid, the type where you push up on its base and all the strings holding it together go slack.
Forget the writer’s room. Too many people will be nearby pounding keyboards to finish their version of the last episode.
And Jack might come looking for me there.
I hurt him, and he hit back.
Leaving Treat felt nothing like this. Walls collapse, trapping me under wreckage. My spirit is crushed into smaller and smaller pieces.
Doolin’s language classroom is dark. I duck inside and slam down the switch before the automatic lights go on to reveal my hiding place. I skirt the table to the farthest corner of the room and slide down the wall. Hugging my knees, I rock back and forth, wailing inside while trying to keep quiet on the outside.
“Jack. Oh, Jack.”
I want him here beside me, wrapping those warrior arms around me until all my sadness evaporates into his warmth.
“Why did you have to say ‘adore’? Anything but ‘adore.’”
I drop my head to my knees. Tears blind me. I’m granted less than five minutes of solitude before I hear voices on the other side of the door. Shit. Do I stand up or just hope they don’t come in?
Doolin and Deidre enter, laughing like loons.
“I thought they had a mind to boot us off the range this morning when you let your club go flying after the ball,” says Doolin.
“That’s what you get for trying to convince me it’s fun to whack a ball with a metal stick.”
Doolin falls onto a chair and slaps the table. “The face on the whole line of ‘em on the driving range frozen in backswings when you marched out in front of them to pick up your club.”
“I only asked them to hold up for a minute.”
“It’s just not done that way, love.”
When Doolin pulls Deidre onto his lap for a kiss, I figure that’s my cue to make myself known. I clear my throat.
Deidre spies me over Doolin’s shoulder. “What in the name of Saint Patrick on a biscuit happened to you, girl?”
Doolin sets her on her feet as he rises. “Are you all right, Gillian?”
Deidre fans an arm over me. “This is no portrait of ‘all right’.” She approaches and holds out a hand.
I take it and wobble to standing.
She narrows her eyes and stares into mine. Pressing lips together, she gives a curt nod to the chair at the end of the table, and I sit. Treating Doolin to a sunbeam of a smile, she waves him to the door. “Give us the room, darling.”
Doolin asks Deidre a question in Irish that I don’t understand. Judging from his reaction, I must look like I was the sole survivor of a plane crash.
“Nothing like that,” she says, patting my hand. “Why don’t you go make a nice cup of honey and lemongrass tea for our girl?”
“As you say. Right. I’ll be doin’ just that.” Doolin bustles out, clearly relieved to be given a task that doesn’t involve talking to the sodden wad of misery slumped in his classroom.
As soon as the door closes, Deidre sits next to me. She twists me to face her so our knees touch. “Our man came after you, didn’t he?”
I swallow five or six times before I’m able to speak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She frowns. “Darling, my life is all about the tangled mess of romance. I know it as clear as a patch of blue through an Irish rainstorm when I see it in the wild.”
A sob busts out. If only I could confess my broken heart to the person who has splattered heartache across thousands of pages.
“Look, if I was forced to watch Doolin rub nasties with another woman, I’d spit nails at the both of them.” She wipes my tears. “Dissolving into a puddle is the high road.”
Alarms go off in my head like air raid sirens from a World War II movie. I can’t talk about Jack. About us. The repercussions may oust me from The Chieftain’s Son for good. No matter how much I want to confide in Deidre, my secret has to stay a secret.
“Thanks for picking me off the floor.” I nod to the corner. “Literally. You don’t know how much I appreciate it, but I’ve got to get to work.”
When I try to stand, she pushes me back into the seat. “If you won’t spill, allow me.”
I feel raw and exposed. There’s fear deep in my gut that Deidre knows the truth about Jack and me.
“You’d have to be dead not to give Jack O’Leary a second look. So, we’ll start there.”
“Deidre, please.” If she knows, who else has guessed? The knot in my stomach jumps into my throat, and I can’t swallow.
She holds up a hand. “Attraction. Definitely mutual. He meant to be subtle and, to most eyes, he was.” Tapping the corner of her own eye, she laughs. “These see all, dearie.”
“We shouldn’t talk about this.”
Deidre pats my knee. “Let me ease your mind straight off. I haven’t said anything about the two of you, and I don’t intend to. You can relax.” Her full lips stretch into a smile. “And for the record, I think you’re grand together.”
It’s useless to deny my connection to Jack in front of Deidre anymore. I do believe she’s trying to help, not out us. I need a mom right now, and she’s the closest thing around. I decide to trust her. “Okay.”
She settles back in her seat. “You both tested the waters and liked the way it felt. Dove in pretty deep, from what I saw run across your face on set today.”
I stare at my lap. “Yep.”
She raises my chin with a finger. “And all the while you were held prisoner on that set, you had a dark, little song playing in your head with all the reasons you can’t be involved with Jack O’Leary.”
I nod.
“I’ve been called a human can opener when it comes to digging down to the core of a person, and I know Jack. He’s as real as they come. If he was swimming in the deep water with you, he meant to.”
“It was a huge mistake. Too fast. Too intense.”
Deidre lays a finger on my lips to quiet me. “Only a fool overanalyzes such a gift.”
I search her eyes for any intention other than brutal honesty. I’m met with a direct, calm insistence that she believes every word she says.
“Darling, it doesn’t take much to sense an unhealed gouge inside you that I’m guessing wasn’t put there by Jack. Don’t you see it’s that war wound trying to convince your brain you’re stepping in a pile of something best avoided, not truth?”
I try to hold back, but the damn bursts. Freeing a handful of tissues from the box on the table, I mop up the worst of the damage. “Meg found out about us.”
“Ahh,” says Deidre, her lips twisting in an unattractive way. “And the witch hopped on her broomstick, heaving fireballs at the two of you.”
“She’s not a witch for doing her job. Everything she said against us makes perfect sense for the good of the show.” I blow my nose and breathe in long and slow to reset. “Jack is supposed to be a super magnet to attract fans, this uber available god walking the Earth.”
She hands me another tissue and points to the pool on my chin. “Trust me, seeing the way Jack O’Leary looks at you, he’s anything but available.”
I dab at the puddle in the groove beneath my bottom lip. “That doesn’t matter anymore. We sneaked around and got caught.” I stare out the glass wall. “I want to belong here. I can’t get fired.”
Deidre closes her eyes and shakes her head. “You’ve broken up with him. I suspected this might be fresh wound licking.” She squeezes my shoulders. “Listen to me, Gillian. You don’t take risks or get into this state over someone who isn’t worth it.” Shaking me none too gently, she raises her voice. “You are in love, my dear.”
I pull away. “I can’t be.”
A smug look crosses her face. “Ah, denial. I love torturing characters until they drown in what you’re feeling right now. It’s all part of the process of earning the love.”
I preferred her sympathy. “Well, it’s a shitty part of the process.”
“Maybe, but when destiny finally grants that happy ending, it’s all the sweeter.”
“Destiny is crapping all over me. I have a script to write, and I’m a wreck. Every creative bone in my body is shattered and useless. How am I supposed to write a script when I can’t put a cohesive sentence together in my head?” Oh, my God, what if I can’t write the script? Is Traipse of Moonlight my swan song? I am a one hit wonder.
“Oh, honey. Do not let your creative juices freeze over troubles with a man, even one as lovely as Jack.”
I sniff and dab. “That statement doesn’t exactly match up with your dedication to love and happy endings.”
She laughs. “In my books, loving a man makes my women have more confidence in themselves. You won’t catch me writing a woman giving up who she is for romance. That is not love. Love strengthens who you are. It doesn’t diminish the fire in a woman’s soul. It ignites a blaze.”
Deidre squeezes my upper arms so tightly I nearly cry out. “Use this misery. Use the passion that’s raging through you. Dump it all into Donal Cam and Nieve’s despair over losing each other.”
I blink until my eyes clear. She’s right. I’ll channel every negative morsel to feed my creativity, not squelch it. The roiling soup of awful rising up around me is exactly the right tone for the season finale.
“Go bring my people off the page, Gillian. Give me grit and pain and sorrow so thick there’s no getting through it.”
I throw my arms around Deidre’s neck. “You may have just rescued me.”
“For now, my dear girl.” She holds me at arm’s length. “Promise me, when you finish this script, you’ll heal that gouge inside and claim the blue sky you deserve.”
