"There's a script I've got optioned," Charlie said slowly, "but I haven't done anything with it because I know it would take more than I could come up with to do it right. I'll send it over to you Monday. If you're serious about this."
"I'm serious."
"Serious now or serious 'some day'?"
"Serious yesterday. I am so ready for this, you wouldn't believe." Ty lapsed into silence, drumming his fingers on the chair arm. "We'll need a name."
Charlie considered. "Two Guys Productions?"
"And you're supposed to be the creative part of the team? This is going to show up on a screen fifty feet high. How about Zephyr Productions?"
"Oh, sure, you want to name it after a bunch of hot air?"
"You've got a point," Ty allowed and thought some more. "Okay, how about GDI Films?"
"GDI Films? As in 'God-damn Independent'?"
"You know, that scrappy outsider thing."
Charlie mulled it over and nodded slowly. "It works. I like it. So what's our next step? We do the legal stuff, but how do we get things rolling?"
"I was at a party for the premiere of my cousin's doc the other night," Ty said thoughtfully. "Met a guy who might be good for coordinating things."
"As long as that's all he wants to do," Charlie warned. "We don't want to bring in some outsider who's going to try to run things."
"No, but we do need someone good to chase details. This guy sounds solid. I'll follow up, see if I can get more info on him."
"But keep it low-key." Charlie nodded his head to some beat that only he could hear. "So yeah, Sabrina's doc premiered last night, huh? How was it?"
"Really good. No surprise there. Sabrina knows what she's doing. And she gives a hell of a party." Trish, sliding her hand down her hip. Trish, dangling those delicious legs as she sat on the kitchen counter. Trish, silky and warm against him.
"So who is she?"
Ty blinked, then looked out at the canyon. "Sabrina's my cousin, you idiot."
"I'm not talking about your cousin. I know that look. Who is she? Tell Uncle Charlie."
Ty considered denying it, but Charlie always had been able to read him. "No one you know."
"I knew you wouldn't stay on the wagon," Charlie said comfortably.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Come on, even you, action boy, are human. You can say you're giving up women all you want, but you can only have so many gorgeous babes falling at your feet before you cave, right? Carpe diem and all that."
Ty gave him a narrow-eyed look. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"Hey, you're free, single and over eighteen. What's the problem?"
"I wasn't on the cover of the Enquirer once last year," Ty said, almost to himself. "It was kind of nice, you know?"
"You decided to give up women because of the tabloids?"
"No, I decided to take a break because I got tired of thinking I'd found the one and having it end in knockdown drag-outs with people I'd cared about."
The humor faded from Charlie's eyes. "Look, your parents, that love-at-first-sight thing? That doesn't happen to real people."
"So you keep telling me."
"And what you feel on a movie set when you're paid to pretend you're a guy in love with a knockout who's pretending to be in love with you, that's not real, either."
"Okay, okay." If Ty was sick of playing the same parts in films, he was doubly sick of doing the same stupid things over and over again in his personal life. "Give me some credit, I've figured out the whole fooling-myself part. It's not all looks." There had to be more—a real connection, fun, complexity that made him want to get beneath the surface.
"So I take it this one's—er, what do we call her?"
"Trish."
"So this Trish looks like your grandmother, then?"
Ty's mouth tightened briefly, then relaxed as he saw the humor in it. "Not exactly."
"Didn't think so. Look, you have whatever fun you want, bud. Just don't let it interfere with GDI, because we've got a mission. GDI Films," he repeated. "I like it already."
* * *
SERVICING THE STARS read the blue-and-gold sign on the lobby wall of Amber's Assistants. Accurate, Trish supposed, if you counted a recurring bit character on the latest hospital drama as a star. Amber always had thought big.
The receptionist yawned and leafed through a magazine as Trish strode through the lobby and back to her sister's office. Amber sat there behind the polished oak desk, staring at her mouth in the mirror of her open compact while she outlined her lips with glossy red.
Tossing down a handful of labeled keys, Trish flopped into the client chair, wondering why Mondays always felt so hectic. "Tell me again why you pay Laurel to answer non-existent phone calls instead of getting her out to do some actual work like errands or appointments?"
Her sister shook back her mane of expensively maintained blond hair. "It gives us a professional look."
"I'm sure you could be just as professional and you'd save the cost of her salary."
Amber looked as though she'd been asked to clean the sewer. "I'm trying to run a business, here, in case you hadn't noticed," she said frostily. "Having Laurel frees me up to recruit new clients. For instance, Russell Nelson says one of his costars is looking for a personal assistant, and Russell's recommended us."
"Even so, how can you afford her?"
"I don't really think it's any of your affair, Trish. I'm the owner, and I say we can."
Trish didn't have the energy to get into it. "Look, the day's nearly over and I've still got four more things on my task list. You need another set of hands working, Amber. I can't do it all."
"The revenue won't support it."
Trish stared at her sister for a moment. Amber was, as always, serenely capable of maintaining a glaring contradiction. Six months before, when Trish had been newly laid off and unable to find another job, going to work for her sister had seemed like a good alternative to starvation. She'd help out with getting the business on its feet, pay the bills with a low-stress job and maybe finally finish that screenplay she'd always dreamed about.
It had only been once she'd started working that she'd remembered just how effectively she and Amber could drive one another crazy. Sisters, she thought with a sigh. The relationships defied reason.
Amber stared at her, eyes an impossible sapphire blue courtesy of colored contacts. "Look, you knew it wasn't going to be easy when you came on board. New businesses never are." She snapped shut her compact. "What do you have left to do?"
"If you could do the two dog feedings I've got left, I just need to drop off some groceries and deliver a pair of concert tickets."
"I suppose." Amber wrinkled her nose. "I hate that smell on my hands."
"You hate the smell? Did I tell you the Rizzettis' Rottweiler yakked in my car?"
Surprise flickered for only a moment. "Well, you were taking it to the vet. You should have left it in the crate." Amber rose.
"You know my car won't take a crate that big. Next time, I'm taking your Xterra."
"Great. Then my car will reek, too."
Trish's smile wasn't entirely pleasant. "Welcome to my world."
"Don't start getting crabby. You're not qualified for the nutritionist or personal trainer jobs and you don't exactly dress like a personal assistant." Amber smoothed her fake Prada down over her size-four hips. "One of these days, Trish, you'll realize that appearance counts."
Oh, and didn't that just take her back to the bad old days of junior high, when she'd been a painfully shy fringe dweller still padded with baby fat. Big sister Amber was the kind of girl the Beach Boys had sung about, blond and tanned and bikinied, whereas Trish's redhead's complexion had earned her only neon sunburns and a chronically peeling nose. Amber had been the cheerleader, the homecoming princess, always at the center of attention. In elementary school, Trish had naively assumed that as she got older, she'd suddenly, magically transform into Amber, surrounded by bunches of popular
friends, and sought after by the cute boys.
Except that it hadn't happened that way. Instead, she'd been an out-of-place loner most of the time. Getting a growth spurt and losing the baby fat the summer after graduation hadn't changed things, either.
And college had taught her that thin women got their hearts broken, too.
Well, she'd given up wanting to be the golden girl, and image wasn't everything, no matter how much Amber wanted to think so. Trish pushed back her unruly curls. "Believe me, I didn't walk out of my house today with this mop. It was an end-of-the-day treat, courtesy of your plumber."
"Billy?"
"Yes, Billy. He didn't manage to get the faucet set right."
"A leak?"
"More like a private version of dancing waters."
"Minus the music."
"Oh, no. He had Bon Jovi playing on KMET."
Amber fell into her infectious belly laugh that always came as a shock, and despite herself, Trish found herself laughing along. And somehow, as so often happened, her irritation evaporated. With Amber, it was never in the middle—Trish either wanted to strangle her or hug her.
Sisters, she thought with a sigh. Relationships with them definitely defied all reason.
* * *
Trish pulled her mail out of the box and headed back across the courtyard toward her apartment, sorting through the envelopes as she walked. On the walkway ahead of her, a diminutive white-haired woman in a bright blue velour sweat suit tottered grimly along, pulling a wheeled carrier basket behind her.
Trish hurried up to her neighbor. "Let me get that. Ellie, why don't you let me shop for you?" she scolded. "You shouldn't be out running around when it's getting dark. I'm at the grocery store almost every day for work. It wouldn't take me any time at all."
"It's good for me to walk. I need the exercise." Ellie waved Trish off, but she surrendered the wheeled carrier basket to Trish quickly enough. "Besides, the Farmer's Market has some good end-of-the-day deals."
Trish lived in the oldest part of Park La Brea, within walking distance of the L.A. Fanner's Market and the L.A. County Museum of Art, not to mention the La Brea tar pits. She'd taken one look at the black-and-white tiled floors and the forties' ambiance of the apartment complex and fallen in love.
Back in her days of making a cushy salary at Focus PR, it had been easy to swing the rent. Now, she barely held on, spending her days running errands for Amber and her nights doggedly working on her screenplay meant that she was picking away at her savings all the while. She'd have to do something soon—like sell the screenplay or move somewhere cheap. For now, she pushed the thought out of her head.
Trish lifted the carrier basket over the threshold of Ellie's apartment. "Into the kitchen?" she asked, pushing her hair back over her shoulder.
"I'll get it from here, dear," Ellie instructed, pressing her hand. "You go work on your movie."
The problem, Trish thought later as she sat at her desk, was that work required concentration, and hers was currently shot. She was trying to tell the story of Callie, a woman who'd raised her younger siblings since she was eighteen. Now, ten years later, Callie watches them move into their own lives, finding herself simultaneously giddy and petrified at doing the same. She begins to spread her own wings; as she does she realizes that friendly, polite Michael McAdam down the street, the Michael McAdam she's known from a distance for years, harbors a romantic interest in her.
Trish's challenge was to add to the story, to take it from a small-time cable movie to a cinematic release. The key was Michael, who has loved Callie from afar and finally sees his chance with her. Michael has challenges of his own, though: a fugitive brother with mob ties, who puts Michael in the position of weighing family against morality and public censure—and the possibility of happiness with the woman he loves.
It all played itself out clearly in her mind. In her wildly optimistic moments, she imagined the story on the screen. The rest of the time she figured that just finishing it was enough, just doing what she'd always said she was going to.
And the finishing part was the challenge. She was trying to polish the lead-in to Callie and Michael's first kiss. The problem was that every time Trish tried to put herself in Michael's head and listen to his words, she kept hearing Ty Ramsay's voice. Every time she tried to imagine Michael's expression, she saw Ty Ramsay's face.
A clutch of butterflies chased one another in her stomach. For years, she'd imagined kissing someone again. The real thing hadn't even come close. It was just as well that Brett Spencer, the boy from college that she'd, well, dated certainly wasn't the right word. The boy who'd scalded her heart and humiliated her was, perhaps, more accurate, but that dignified it with more pathos than it deserved. He'd been a jerk, and a lousy kisser to boot.
The latter she could thank him for, not to mention the couple of guys who'd come later, because they'd kept her from knowing what she'd been missing. It would have been much harder to watch all the years go by if she'd had Ty's kiss to remember, she thought, touching her fingers to her lips.
Enough, she told herself, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes. She had a whole weekend to write and a draft of a screenplay that needed revisions. The polishing was key, polishing she wasn't going to get done if she spent the entire time mooning around over a kiss that said guy had probably forgotten ten minutes after it had ended. First things first, she needed to get her hair out of her face; then she could tackle the rest.
Trish searched under the papers on her table until she uncovered the oversized hair clip that she knew was there. With an impatient huff, she piled her hair up on her head and fastened it in place. There. One distraction out of the way. As to the other distraction, a little discipline would take care of that.
Old Dire Straits played in the background and she began to type. At first, the words came to her in fits and starts, then she started to become immersed. Slowly but surely, the lines started to fill the computer screen, making her smile.
The buzz of the telephone shattered the calm. Trish reached out for the receiver. "Hello?"
"It's Ty Ramsay."
And in an instant, Trish was slammed back to Sabrina's roof, to starlight and the taste of Ty's lips, to the feel of his hands. Nerves vaulted through her. "How did you get my number?"
"You left way too quickly the other night."
Trish swallowed, searching for her composure. If she were smart, she'd stay a million miles away from him. She'd heard all of Sabrina's warnings, and anyway, she should have learned her lesson from Brett Spencer. Guys like Brett and Ty lived in a different world and someone like Trish would do well to keep that in mind. But oh, she couldn't forget the heady wonder of the party, that sense of every moment existing in a wash of golden light. "I seem to remember saying goodbye."
"Not to Sabrina. She was looking for you."
"Yes, I know." She'd already been grilled by Sabrina and Cilla, both. Fortunately, her long-standing reputation as the group party pooper made her early departure easy to explain. Or, depending on how Ty had come to call her, maybe it hadn't. "Did Sabrina give you my number?"
Ty laughed. "No. I have my ways of getting information. It helps to be connected in Hollywood."
"I suppose." She crossed over to her sofa.
"So we never did resolve that immovable object paradox."
"It's not a paradox if the irresistible force and the immovable object don't meet," she said, sinking down into the cushions.
"Well, we definitely met. You can't deny that."
And she felt the little tug in her stomach just thinking about it. "Yes, but the irresistible force and the immovable object are separated now, so there's nothing to resolve."
"Oh, I think there is. And I definitely think we should discuss it further. In person."
Trish took a breath. "Thanks for asking, but I told you last night, I'm not interested." She'd be out of her mind to get involved with him, however much she might be tempted.
"Well … we had a g
ood time, until you realized who I was. So, I don't know, should I go back to wearing the mask and wig? Would you go out with me then?"
She laughed despite herself and put her feet up on the coffee table. "I can just see it now, you wearing the mask into the Sky Bar. The paparazzi would love it."
"Better yet, you could come to my house. That way, we'd actually get some privacy."
"I'm sure," she said dryly. No way was she going into the lion's den.
"I'll be a complete gentleman, I swear. You can borrow my whip and discipline me if I get out of line."
She traced a little pattern in the plush green fabric of the couch. "I'm not trying to be rude. I just don't see it working."
"It seemed to be working last night."
How could she be any clearer than that? What did it take? And why couldn't she make herself take it to the next level and tell him to take a hike?
"Look," she tried, "I'm really not trying to be difficult. You're just … out of my league." And she needed to remember it.
"Why, because of my job?"
She gave a short, humorless laugh. "You're the only person I can think of who would refer to being world-famous as a job, but yes, that's part of it. You're a G-boy. You're … I don't know, too big a star. Too good-looking, too rich." She made a noise of impatience. "I don't run in your circles and I'm not going to try."
"So, basically, what you're telling me is that if I were homely and worked at a convenience store you'd go out with me?"
Trish couldn't suppress the smile. "I'd think about it."
"I could get plastic surgery," he offered. "That would take care of the looks. Probably the job, too, now that I think about it," he reflected.
"You can't be that hard up for a date."
"No, I'm not. And that should tell you something right there."
"Yes it does." Suddenly, she was tired of being backed up against a wall. "It tells me that you're one of these guys who gets off on the challenge. I don't want to be your latest hit-and-run, thanks very much."
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