by Scott, Inara
But then things with Jake started to disintegrate, and Ryker had become increasingly frustrated with her. By the end, he’d descended to yelling at her and Jake, and she’d resorted to teenage pouts and bad behavior to hide her guilt and nerves. She knew she wasn’t performing well, but who could expect her to? She had Ryker criticizing every move she made and Jake breathing heavy in her ear whenever she turned around.
“I should apologize as well,” he said. “I’ve been a little testy the past few weeks.”
“Testy?” Lena giggled. “I suppose that’s one way to put it.” She pushed up her glasses and gazed at him, pressing her back against the cool fiberglass decking. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Jake watching. Deliberately, she stretched her arms over her head, arched her back, and yawned. “What do you say we start over, Mr. Director?”
He tipped back a long-neck bottle of beer and took a long sip. “What exactly did you have in mind, Ms. Mandaval?”
“You know, get to know each other a little. After all these months of shooting, we’ve never really talked.” She leaned forward playfully and touched his shirt. “For example, who does your shopping? You’re an awfully well-dressed bachelor.”
“I do.” He caught her hand and gave her an amused look. “Lena, I don’t think you want to play this game. He’s not even looking anymore.”
“What?” She darted a look at Jake, who was talking to a white-clad crew member bearing a tray of stuffed mushrooms. Her face burning, Lena turned back to Ryker. “I didn’t think…I mean, I wasn’t—”
“Forget it. Look, Lena, I like you, in spite of all the crap you’ve pulled. You’re petty, insecure, and a complete pain in the ass, but you’ve got guts and you can be a great actress. I see it inside you, and I want to bring it out. Now I realize yelling at you might not have been the best path, but I’m also not going to baby you.” His expression hardened. “You’re an adult, and I expect you to start acting like one.”
“So I take it we’re back to yelling?” Lena said. She ignored the stab of conscience at his brutal dissection of her character and focused instead on the unexpected compliment. She knew she could be juvenile and frustrating—she hadn’t known that Ryker thought she could be a great actress.
“No yelling. This is just straight talk from a friend.”
“A friend?” She mulled over the word. “Really?”
“Okay, maybe straight talk from a boss,” he admitted. “I’m not like Alix, Lena. I’m not going to try to understand what’s going on between you and Jake. I hope we can be friends later, but right now the most important thing to me is being your director and getting you to do the kind of work that’s going to make us all proud.”
“I’m not sure that’s any of her business, anyway,” Lena grumbled.
“Exactly my point. When you come to the studio, I expect you to leave all that baggage at the door and give me one hundred and ten percent of that potential I know you’ve got locked inside you. I don’t expect you to play little jealousy games with me, and I don’t expect you to engage in histrionics and walk off the set. Maybe everyone else lets you get away with it, but I respect you too much to do that. Understand?”
She swallowed hard. It was difficult to imagine Ryker Valentine respecting her. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she’d done anything to deserve that respect. Unexpected tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and she dropped her sunglasses hastily over her face.
Ryker’s tone softened. “Lena, your career is on the verge of something spectacular, and I want to see it get there. But that won’t happen as long as you act like you aren’t worth the film you’re printed on.”
He took hold of her shoulders. He didn’t shake, just left his hands firmly in place. Lena couldn’t look away, his gaze so intense she quailed inside while moisture continued to fill her eyes.
“I’d like to put this all behind us and start again, this time without any nonsense. You’re going to start acting like a person who believes in herself, and I’m going to stop trying to yell you into next year.” Unexpected warmth lightened his eyes. “We’re going to make a movie that takes everyone’s breath away. Got it?”
Lena nodded, unable to speak.
Ryker dropped his hands and patted her encouragingly on the shoulder. “Now enjoy yourself. This is the last day off you’ll be getting until we finish this show.”
#
“Thanks for sitting with me.” Gunther cradled a glass of deep crimson cabernet in one hand. He sat back in the white leather captain’s chair, his free hand resting idly on the steering wheel of the yacht.
Ryker peered out over the water from his seat beside Gunther. From the flybridge, the water looked glassy and smooth and remarkably distant.
“Of course. Though in the interest of full disclosure, I’m not sure I had a choice.”
Gunther grinned. “That is very perceptive statement. I knew I liked you, Ryker. You and I understand each other.”
“You want to hear more about how things are going with Jake and Lena?”
Gunther shook his head. “You can handle your actors. I knew when you cast them that you’d have your hands full, but you’re up to the job. No, I want to hear how things are going with Alix.”
From high above the front deck, Ryker could barely make out Alix’s and Jake’s heads. Jake appeared to be pointing something out to Alix on the shore. Ryker imagined Lena somewhere right behind, her eyes shooting daggers into Alix’s back.
Ryker deliberately swirled his beer in the bottle and studied it for a moment before he answered. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
“I’m just curious. You seemed particularly close at the party on Friday. I meant to thank you, actually, for looking out for her. Anthony Sloane is a prick, but he’s an important source of funding. I can’t afford to alienate him completely, or I would have let you punch his lights out.”
Ryker was fairly certain Gunther’s easy-going aura was masking some deeper emotion, but a self-masochist streak forced him to prove it. “Things are going well. But of course, you were right, she’s incredible. No one does sex like Alix Z.”
Though he had expected to garner some reaction with his bald statement, he was surprised by the intensity of the fire that leaped to Gunther’s eyes. Gunther’s fingers tightened on the wheel for just a moment, and then he relaxed and forced a short laugh.
“We made a lot of money with her movies. She gave it all away, did you know that? Paid me back the money I loaned her to attend school and then funded some scholarship with the rest.”
Ryker grunted. “She told me.”
Gunther turned to him, surprise widening his glacial-blue eyes. “Really? She doesn’t normally share that sort of information.”
“I noticed,” Ryker said dryly.
“Did she also mention all the hell she went through when she was growing up?”
“She told me she was a foster kid. Bounced around a lot. Is that what you mean?”
“You grew up in South Central, so I think you have some idea of what her schools and neighborhoods were like. But you had a mother, and, unless I’ve misjudged you, you’ve got a pretty thick skin. Alix never did. When I met her, she was like a little baby porcupine, trying desperately to grow her quills but never having quite enough to ward off the pain they put her through. It wasn’t just that no one cared about her. That would have been bad enough. But they seemed determined to break her spirit—convince her that life was hopeless, that she’d never get anywhere and she shouldn’t bother to try. They thought she shouldn’t take art or music. They wanted her to spend the rest of her life working at some fast-food restaurant.”
He pursed his lips in disapproval. “I put her first camera in her hands when she was a freshman in high school, and it was like giving food to a starving man. That camera became her lifeblood, Ryker. Through that lens she saw all the things she had been denied all her life. Love. Hope. A future.”
“And?” Ryker met Gunther’s stare. “Why do I get a feeling th
ere’s a moral to this story?”
“I’ll be honest with you. When I saw how Salva’s Revenge was going, I knew you needed help. But I also knew by giving you Alix’s address, I was feeding her to the lions. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted Alix within a hundred yards of you, and I’m still not. You’re a damn good director, but you’re also a tough bastard.”
“So you put the movie first.” Ryker shrugged. “I can appreciate that.”
“No.” Gunther’s voice, curt and hard, lashed out. “I would never sacrifice Alix because of a movie. But I thought, I hoped you might be good for each other. I thought she might be able to teach you a little bit about how to keep on caring, even when everything tells you to stop.”
Ryker stared. He’d never have thought Gunther Hartcourt, of all people, would have fallen for all that emotional nonsense. “And from me? What did you think she could learn from me?”
Gunther sighed. “I don’t know. She’s always been a loner. Even in high school, she never had many friends. I suppose it comes with moving around so much. But it isn’t healthy. She needs people, whether she admits it or not. When she lived in LA, I forced her to go out now and again. But once she moved to the beach, I couldn’t even do that. The fact is, Ryker, you’re a charming son of a bitch. I thought maybe you would give her an excuse to come out of her shell. Seems every year she’s been retreating further and further into it, and I’m scared someday I won’t be able to bring her out at all.”
“I see.” Ryker took a long swallow of beer and stared at the water. He heard Alix’s laughter float up from the deck below, and he frowned. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“I think I made a mistake.”
The bald admission caught Ryker unaware. He spun around to stare at Gunther, who was looking over the ocean with a pensive expression. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s too vulnerable. Even after the porcupine grows his quills, his belly is tender. I see how she looks at you, and I don’t like it. You’re going to hurt her.”
Unease settled over Ryker’s shoulders like a dark cape. “We aren’t…I mean, we haven’t…”
Gunther brushed off his words with a flick of his fingers. “I have no interest in whether you’re having sex or not. Frankly, it might be good for her if you did. But there’s something more going on. I want to know what your intentions are.”
“Christ, Gunther, I’m not a sixteen-year-old boy for you to play Daddy with. My relationship with Alix is none of your business,” Ryker growled.
“The hell it isn’t.”
“Look, she knows where I’m coming from. I’ve been honest with her every step of the way. I don’t do romance, and I don’t do love. If she gets hurt, it’s her business.” The words sounded merciless, even brutal. It was as he intended, but Ryker had to struggle not to wince as he said it.
Gunther’s mouth turned down in disgust. “Don’t be an ass. I don’t care what you think she knows. I’m warning you—stay away from her. I hate to have to disable my best director, but I’d do it in a second if I thought you were playing games with her.”
“There’s no game,” Ryker said. “And don’t worry, regardless of how much of a monster you may think I am, I have no intention of hurting Alix. Thanks to your insistence, we are making a movie together, but that’s it. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Gunther dismissed him with a flick of his fingers. “See that I don’t, Mr. Valentine, or there will be hell to pay.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Alix watched nervously as the crew hurried around the set, bumping into one another and almost dropping plates and glasses at every turn. They were shooting a party scene, and between takes, the crew had to do the painstaking work of restoring every prop to pre-party condition. With only five days left to film in June, Ryker had everyone working at breakneck speed, though with Jake and Lena performing better these days, it wasn’t with the same air of frustration that it had been when she first arrived.
More than a week after Gunther’s party, Ryker still avoided touching her at all costs, but he’d gotten comfortable being alone with her again. For the past two nights, he hadn’t even found an excuse to bring the interns or Amir along when were in the screening room. That was a big change from the first few days, when he’d filled the set and every other room they were in together with people.
“No, Maria, there’s no way.”
Alix tried not to eavesdrop on Ryker’s cell phone conversation, but it was impossible with the two of them only a foot apart, watching as the crew restored picked-over plates of food and replaced empty beer bottles with fulls.
“I’m sorry, but we’ve got a huge shoot tonight. I’ve got a studio full of extras I don’t intend to pay twice.” Ryker looked up from his conversation to bark at Frank. “That take looked lousy. We need to do it again.”
Weeks ago, Ryker’s bark had sounded fierce, unrelenting, and intimidating. Now she knew it for what it was—the voice of a perfectionist who knew precisely what he wanted and refused to rest until he got it.
Ryker turned back to his cell and continued to argue with Maria but with an increasing note of resignation. He tore his fingers through his hair, scattering the already rumpled strands across his forehead in a gesture Alix now knew was his habit when he was filled with nervous energy. His long legs ate up the small space as he paced and talked—another nervous habit, Alix had discovered. When she got anxious, she curled up in a chair and bit her fingers. When Ryker got anxious, he paced.
Yes, she knew that about him and so much more. She knew that he liked his coffee with cream, no sugar, and didn’t care if it was two days old, as long as it was hot. He dressed to the nines even when they were walking around the set on a Sunday morning and was partial to cool linen shirts and long, snug-fitting chinos that showed off his tight behind.
For Lena’s sake, he tried to curb his habit of yelling at the actors when a scene didn’t go as he wanted, but when he was tired or frustrated, his temper could still get the better of him. He was sparing in his praise, but that only made it more valuable, and she could see Jake and Lena glow with pride when he told them they’d done well.
“No, no…of course you can’t skip your exam. I’ll take care of it. I’ll be there to pick up Fifi in an hour… Yes, you owe me huge. I’ll see you soon.”
He slammed the phone closed and heaved a giant sigh. “Maria’s got an exam after work today, and the woman who usually takes care of Felicity is sick. In fact, everyone in the entire city who does daycare is apparently sick right now. Rosalia’s got some school-board meeting she can’t miss, Emilio and the boys are out of town, and someone has to pick up Fifi. You’ll have to take over.”
Alix stared. “Me? Take over? You mean shoot the scene without you?”
“You can do it.”
“Of course I can do it,” she replied, her mind racing through their schedule for the rest of the day. “But you’ve got meetings until seven tonight. You’ve got lighting changes to discuss with Frank, they’re bringing over the new trailer at four, and then you’re meeting with Gunther about the budget at six.”
“I’m glad to know someone’s keeping track of my schedule,” he said.
Alix felt her face light up in a blush. “There’s a lot to be done. I’m just trying to keep it all straight.”
Ryker ran his hands through his hair and resumed his pacing. “You and me both. But Maria can’t miss this exam. She already missed one a couple of weeks ago when Fifi had that fever, and the professor’s a real bastard. He told her he’d flunk her if it happened again.”
“What if…what if I pick her up?” Alix nibbled on her lip as she thought through the possibilities. “I was going to get everything ready and prepare Lena and Jake for their big love scene tomorrow, but that’s probably not necessary. I can take Fifi to your house and hang out with her until Maria’s class is over.”
Ryker shook his head. “I can’t let you do that.”
“You thi
nk Fifi wouldn’t go for it? She doesn’t know me very well, I suppose.”
He gave a wry chuckle. “Fifi would go home with Hannibal Lecter. She was born without the shy gene. No, it’s nice of you to offer, but I can’t have you doing that.”
“I had a number of foster siblings when I was growing up. My babysitting skills may be a bit rusty, but I’m sure it’s like riding a bike. I’ll figure it out.”
“It isn’t that,” he said, wrinkling his forehead. “I saw you playing with the kids at Rosa’s house the other night, and I’m sure you’d be a great babysitter. But it’s a family thing. I’ll take care of it.”
Alix paused for a moment to enjoy the discovery that Ryker remembered her playing with the kids at Rosalia’s house. Then she resolutely squelched the feeling of pleasure. She’d worked hard to stop reacting like a puppy every time Ryker smiled at her. There was nothing between them and never would be.
She forced herself to lay a casual hand on his forearm. “Ryker, don’t be silly. We’re friends, right? Friends help each other out.”
He stared at her, glancing briefly at her arm, his dark eyes hard and intense. Fascinated, she watched as he swallowed, and she felt the muscles under her hand twitch.
“Friends?” he said. “Yes, I suppose that’s right.”
“You suppose?” Alix gave him a playful swat. “You mean we’ve been working together fifteen hours a day for the last three weeks, and you aren’t sure?”
Friends.
Surprisingly enough, the word felt right. They’d had their detours, but somewhere in the midst of everything, they had developed an honest-to-God friendship. Ryker argued with her when he thought she went too far in her attempts to put a romantic gloss on Jake and Lena’s love scenes, and she pushed him to admit his personal views on love had colored the way he directed his actors. They hadn’t yet shot the scene in which Jake’s and Lena’s characters had sex for the first time but had discussed it in excruciating detail, from the first kiss to the moment of ultimate surrender, and had managed to do so without losing their minds or their clothes. They had shared late-night cups of coffee, challenged each other’s theories about communicating with their audience, and groaned over scenes that didn’t work the way they wanted.
