by Cate Cameron
“No. Wait, does yours?”
“No,” Charlotte said with a grin. “Relax. You’re not being contract-snubbed. If you need an assistant, you should call Adam and get him on it; you’ll have to meet the top candidates, and it’ll be easier to do that during rehearsals than when we’re actually shooting.”
“No,” Ashley said with a sigh. She leaned her head back against the hard window. “I don’t want an assistant.” She didn’t want anything except for Josh. And he was the one thing she couldn’t have.
* * *
“SHE’S going to stage some sort of weird guerilla mothering intervention pretty soon,” Kevin said as he handed the wires down to Josh. “That’s all I’m saying. It’s been four days since Ashley left, and Mom’s getting a bit intense. You can come over for dinner tonight and let her poke at you a little, or you can live your life in fear of her rappelling down the side of someone’s cottage and shooting you with a stun gun before tying you up and force-feeding you chicken soup.”
Josh ducked himself under the water and jammed the inflow pipe beneath the cement block with a little more force than was strictly necessary. The cottage he was working at had run out of water in the middle of a multi-guest weekend, and they needed their plumbing fixed, so Josh had called Kevin for help in order to get the job done more quickly. But he was regretting his decision. The summer people could have gone without water for a few more hours if it meant Josh wouldn’t have had to listen to Kevin’s nagging.
Josh stayed underwater for as long as he could, savoring the cool green peacefulness, but eventually had to put his feet down and poke his head out of the water. “Hit the pump,” he ordered, and after a moment’s hesitation, Kevin leaned over and flipped the switch. The hum was satisfying and Josh could feel the water at his knees being sucked slowly in through the end of the pipe. “Okay,” he grunted as he heaved himself out of the chest-deep water and up onto the dock.
“Okay, you’ll come for dinner?”
“Okay, let’s see if the reservoir is filling up.” Josh slipped on his sports sandals and stalked up the hill in his wet shorts, Kevin trailing behind him.
“Charlotte says Ashley’s a mess,” Kevin said quietly.
Josh turned to glare at him. “What the fuck are you doing? Is that supposed to help somehow, you telling me that?” Josh shook his head. “Seriously, Kevin, what’s so hard about just leaving this alone? Do you think there’s some magic solution? Do you think I could ever be happy down there? Do you think Ashley could ever be happy up here, for good?”
“It doesn’t sound like she’s too happy down there, either,” Kevin said slowly. “And it doesn’t seem like you’re too happy up here. So you’re both miserable. It just seems—”
“Seems what?” Josh prompted angrily. If Kevin could get this off his chest, maybe he’d shut up about it for a while.
“Seems like if one of you moved, then at least one of you would be happy. Instead of both of you being miserable.”
Josh shook his head. “Nobody’s miserable. We’re adjusting. That’s all.”
“Adjusting,” Kevin said slowly. “Oh. That’s okay, then. Sorry about the misunderstanding. I guess ‘adjusting’ must look a lot like ‘miserable’ from the outside.”
“Fuck off, Kevin.” Josh swung down into the little concrete room beside the cottage’s holding tank. He checked the pipes and then opened the hatch and heard water pouring into the reservoir. Okay. That was working, at least.
He climbed up and went to knock on the cottage door. Michael Montgomery answered, the glass in his hand combining with the angle of his posture to make it clear he’d found something to drink other than water. Cal’s brother was one of the few locals who owned waterfront, and he could only afford it because his family also owned half the town, in addition to the furniture factory that was about the only year-round industry in the area.
“Water should be back up and running,” Josh said. “Seems like your intake pipe got clogged. It’ll take a half hour or so for your reservoir to fill back up; Kevin will stick around and make sure everything’s working after that.” He had more to say, a suggestion for monthly maintenance or at least a quick inspection, both of which could be done by anyone going swimming, but he’d save it for when the guy was sober.
“Great. Thank you,” Michael said. Then there was a stir behind him and a thin blonde appeared at his side. Sheila Lambert was older, but well maintained, and considered herself the queen of the local social scene, at least through the winter. Josh was pretty sure Michael was actually dating someone else, but Sheila seemed to feel pretty at home at his place.
“You should come have a drink with us, Josh! We heard you had some fun up here this summer. Ashley Carlsen was here? How exciting!” She raised her eyebrows and smiled salaciously.
“I have to go,” Josh said. He couldn’t stick around to make excuses or be polite about it, and there was no way he was going to get dragged into their cocktail circle to discuss his “exciting” summer with Ashley Carlsen.
He turned and stalked toward the truck, and somewhere behind him he heard Kevin chatting away, covering for Josh’s abrupt departure. Josh got behind the wheel and got the hell out of there. He had more jobs to do, more distractions to pursue.
More ways to pretend he wasn’t totally miserable.
* * *
“I’M not seeing the power, Ashley.” Lauren Hall leaned back in her rickety desk chair and took a sip of tea from her brown pottery mug. “In your auditions, there was an energy, an intensity that just burned up the screen. It made you glow with a fascinating, subdued fire.” She waited for Ashley to speak, then said, “We’ve been rehearsing for a week, and I’m not seeing it. What’s different?”
Ashley was supposed to be a professional. She was supposed to keep her personal shit at home, and if she was struggling with that she was supposed to deal with it, not go whining about it to her boss. But what other answer did she have? “I’m dealing with some stuff. Personally. I . . . I know it’s not your problem, but I had to leave a guy behind to come down for this job. It’s a choice I made. But I guess it’s kind of . . . I guess I’m using all my energy to keep myself together, and it’s not leaving enough to be intense in rehearsals.”
Lauren looked at her for longer than Ashley liked. “Man trouble,” she said with a nod. “Is this going to be something you can resolve by the time filming starts? Because I’ve got to be honest with you. As a woman, I sympathize. But I’m not at work as a woman, I’m here as a director. And as a director, I’m a little pissed off. I know you see this role as a chance. That’s one of the reasons I wanted you for the part—I wanted to you to bring that desperation for change to the role you’re playing. But this movie is a chance for me, too. Every movie is a chance. You want to be a serious actor; I want to keep directing the movies I want to direct. And that only happens if I’m successful. I need everyone on board to be giving me their best effort, and right now, I am getting something less than I expected from you.”
Ashley nodded and fought not to cry. She couldn’t argue. Lauren was right. This movie was important to a lot of people, and Ashley was letting all of them down. She needed to pull herself together or get the hell out of the way so someone else could come in and take over.
“We’ve got the weekend off,” Lauren said, her voice gentler now. “I need you to take that time to pull yourself together and sort out whatever the hell is getting in the way of you being the banshee that you were in auditions. I want that fierce woman back, and I want this movie to be the vehicle that breaks her out of the supporting female roles she’s been stuck in. I want this movie to be the first of many great performances for the adult version of Ashley Carlsen.” Lauren sat back in her chair and took another sip of her tea. “But that won’t happen if you can’t pull yourself together. And I won’t let you drag this movie down. I can’t let you.”
Ashley still
had nothing to say, so she just nodded.
Lauren nodded, too, ready to get back to business. “So I’d like a phone call on Sunday night. Not before that—I want to have this last weekend in peace before insanity descends. So on Sunday night you’ll give me a call and you’ll either tell me that you’ve got your shit together or you’ll tell me that you won’t be able to continue in the role. Better we lose a week of rehearsal than that we try to drag this out any longer. Clear?”
“Clear,” Ashley said.
She made it out of Lauren’s office and ducked into the bathroom before the tears came. She should call Adam and let him know; there were probably terms of the contract to be debated, requirements for how this sort of relationship could be severed, and the financial consequences of each choice. But Ashley didn’t want Adam to call the lawyers. She just wanted it all to be over.
She was miserable. She wasn’t doing her job. She’d given up true love to chase her dream, and now she was letting her dream slip through her fingers. “Fuck!” she roared, the obscenity echoing off the hard tiles of the room. There was the passion Lauren was looking for, but Ashley could only produce it in that one short burst, and only for her real life, not for the fictional trauma of the script.
She needed to do something. But she had no idea what that something might be.
* * *
“YOU need to keep the sling on for at least six weeks,” Dr. Myles said with a frown and a firm shake of her head. “Six weeks, Josh. You can come back then and we’ll take another set of X-rays to see if the bone’s healed, but six weeks is the absolute minimum.”
Josh didn’t bother getting insulted about the doctor’s clear suspicions. She’d known him since he was a kid, and they both knew he was going to take the sling off as soon as he could handle the pain. “Okay,” he muttered, and he slid down off the exam table and looked around for his shirt.
The doctor handed it to him with a disapproving sniff and Josh wished he’d figured out some way to avoid coming to the hospital at all. The fuss, the attention—it made him want to crawl into a cave somewhere. He’d fallen off a roof. That was all. Kevin had acted like it was the end of the world, swearing up a blue streak as he drove Josh to the hospital, but Kevin was prone to dramatics.
“You need to be more careful, Josh,” Dr. Myles was saying. “Those bruises on your torso haven’t faded yet, and now you’ve fallen from a three-story roof? You could have died from that fall. You’re lucky to be walking away with only a broken collarbone and few scratches.”
“I landed on a shrub,” Josh said. He’d already explained that, but maybe she hadn’t been paying attention.
“But why did you fall off the roof in the first place? There are safety procedures in place to keep workers from falling—were you using those procedures?”
“Not in the strictest sense,” he admitted. Then he headed for the door. “Okay, thanks for the sling and the drugs and everything. I feel much better now.”
“You have someone to drive you home?” the doctor asked from too close behind him.
“I expect so,” Josh said. “He’s generally pretty hard to get rid of.”
But when he got to the waiting room it wasn’t just Kevin sitting in the hard plastic chairs. Aunt Carol was there, too, and she didn’t look impressed.
“What the hell were you doing up on a roof, Joshua?” she demanded, storming across the room toward him. She stopped a couple feet away and added, “And what did you do to yourself? How badly hurt are you? Bad enough that I have to be nice to you? Because if you aren’t, I have got quite a few strong words for your stupidity!”
“I’m fine,” Josh said. “But I’m not really interested in hearing the strong words. Can we get out of here?”
“What the hell were you doing up on a roof?” Aunt Carol trailed after Josh as he headed for the exit.
“Well, he had to be on the roof,” Kevin said from somewhere behind them all. “That’s where loose shingles are.” But before Josh could believe he’d found a champion, Kevin added, “The question to ask is why he fell off! Why weren’t you tied off, Josh? Three stories? You should have had a rope and a harness. If I’d been up there, you would have yelled at me if I wasn’t tied off.”
“I was just checking something,” Josh said sullenly. “I wasn’t having a damn picnic. It was wet, I slipped, I fell. It’s not a big deal.” His whole body was sore and he had a broken collarbone and a bunch of scratches and he could have died, but . . .
“No,” Aunt Carol said. They were in the parking lot now and Josh just wanted to go to the truck and go home, but Aunt Carol held onto his un-slinged hand. “It is a big deal, Joshy. You’re working too hard. You’re not paying attention. You’re making stupid mistakes. And it’s all because you’re unhappy.”
Josh scowled at her, then at Kevin. “It’s a transition,” he said. “It’ll be okay. I just need to adjust, or something.”
Aunt Carol’s face softened and she peered up into his eyes. “Really, Joshy? If that’s true, if you can look me in the eyes and tell me that, then I’ll believe you, and I’ll be happy. Can you do that, Josh? Can you look me in the eyes and tell me you’re going to be getting better soon?”
He stared somewhere over her shoulder. Ashley was gone. That was all there was to say. She was down in Hollywood working on her dream job, and he was back in Vermont trying to pick up the pieces. Was he going to be getting better soon? Ever? “I’m doing the best I can, Aunt Carol.”
“Well, it’s not good enough, Joshy. So you need to let us help. You need to come over for dinner tonight and be with your family instead of moping around that house all by yourself.”
“I was going to go over and finish the roof,” he protested.
“No,” Kevin said firmly. “You go home with Mom, and I’ll take your truck to the site and finish up. You’re not going up on that roof all drugged up.” He looked at his mother and gave her a sweet smile. “And I’ll use the appropriate safety equipment,” he said smugly, and it earned him a pat of approval on his arm.
Josh was too tired to argue. He just wanted to crawl into his bed and dream of the days when he’d shared it with Ashley.
“No more of this,” Aunt Carol said firmly as she guided him toward her car. “You need to get yourself together, Josh. Enough of this drifting around.”
She was right. He knew it. He’d fallen off a damn roof and he could have died. He was miserable, and he really didn’t see how the hell he was going to get past any of it. He needed a plan. A solution. He needed to find a way to make things okay again.
Twenty-four
ASHLEY FELT BETTER. Not good, exactly, but . . . better. She turned the rental car into the rough driveway and felt the tension draining out of her, absorbed by the embrace of the surrounding forest. This would be okay.
Still, she stopped the car just before it pulled out of the trees into the clearing around the house. Was she absolutely sure about this? Once she was there, once she was wrapped in Josh’s strong arms, cradled against his broad chest, she wouldn’t be leaving. She knew that. Was she really ready to give up her career in order to commit to a man she’d only known for a few weeks? One who had never even said he loved her?
The problem was, she didn’t really have a choice. She was pretending she did, but she had no idea how to get herself back in shape the way Lauren needed her to. She’d spent all night Friday and all day Saturday thinking about this. Then she’d woken up Sunday morning, double-checked her priorities, and booked her flight. She’d call Lauren that night, as requested, and she’d step out of her dream role.
Better to quit than to be fired. For all Josh’s worrying about how he was going to recover from their fling, it had turned out to be her who’d been stung. Losing Josh was unthinkable. Losing her career? It was terrible, frustrating, disappointing. But it wasn’t unthinkable.
Better to lose the job and stil
l have Josh than to lose the job and lose Josh. She didn’t like what she was doing, but she didn’t see an alternative, not really.
So she drove on to the house, but when she pulled in to park, it wasn’t Josh’s truck in the driveway. It was Kevin’s. Josh usually spent Sunday afternoons at home, catching up on the chores of the house or hanging out with the horses. Maybe he and Kevin had just switched vehicles for some reason?
Ashley stepped out of the car and was almost knocked over by the grey and brown streak that barreled into her, yipping and whimpering with excitement. “Daisy,” Ashley crooned, bending to greet the wriggling animal. “I missed you, too, baby! It’s good to see you.” She eventually stood, over Daisy’s objections, and said, “Come on. Let’s go see who’s home.”
She turned toward the house and caught her breath at the sight of the man on the porch, then exhaled in disappointment. Similar enough to fool someone from a distance, but that was Kevin, not Josh. And after giving up so much and travelling so far, she wanted the real thing, not the substitute.
He stepped down from the porch and walked toward her, his expression almost impossible to read. “This is unexpected,” he said when he was close enough.
She nodded. She hadn’t really had the words to share with Josh, and she certainly didn’t have any to explain herself to Kevin. “I made a mistake,” she finally said. “I thought I could forget about him. Thought I could move on. But I guess I was wrong.”
Kevin’s expression was changing, slowly. She’d swear he was . . . The bastard looked amused. She’d given up so much, changed her whole life plan, and he was going to laugh at her? “So, if Josh is around, I’d like to see him. Do you know where he is?”
“Not exactly,” Kevin said. He looked down at his watch, then back up at Ashley, and he wasn’t even trying to hide his grin anymore. “I’m going to guess Nebraska, or maybe Colorado.”
“What?”
“Well, you’re right, it’s just a guess. He left here first thing yesterday morning, I know that much. But I don’t know what route he was taking, and he’s a pain in the ass about roaming charges on his cell so I haven’t called him. We won’t know where he is unless he calls in from a motel or something. Which he isn’t likely to do.”
