by Glynn, Anne
The Southern accent teased at her. His face and his body remained the living embodiment of Raymond Service.
“You’re trouble,” she reminded him.
“I’ll behave,” he said. “Promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
No matter what she said this evening, she knew there was no guarantee he’d get the role. As a fledgling producer, her casting choices were suspect. Besides, if her company found a powerful director willing to shepherd the film, he or she would make the final decision in regards to the star.
She’d already learned that very few screenplays actually went into production. When they did, they only featured a cable star in the lead when they were low budget films.
Not this time, Leah thought. To do things right, this picture has to cost tens of millions. Which means, the financiers will want a major name to star in the picture.
Considering his career to date, Danny didn’t come close to fitting the criteria. Uncomfortably, she realized why she’d actually wanted to meet him. Despite her own internal protests, she hadn’t done any of this for career reasons. Danny’s face and body had aroused her and she’d wanted to get laid.
The promise of a job was her bait to get through his trailer door. A few glasses of wine had brought them both into his hot tub.
Really, she was no better than he was.
Chapter Seven
A few months later, King and Country was officially canceled. The announcement garnered a small headline and a few inches of print in the trade magazines, barely catching Leah’s attention. She was too busy to give it much thought, trying to steer her first project through the shoals of preproduction.
Everything had come into place once Gil sent the project to Clinton LeForte. At least three different studios wanted a piece of the cinema’s hottest director and each had offered him their top projects. Not even Gil expected the mercurial genius to respond so favorably to a bare knuckle thriller set in the swamps.
Budget considerations vanished once he signed on. No one objected when LeForte agreed with Leah that Danny Kucera would be perfect for the lead role. There was some hesitation when the director insisted on using his superstar model girlfriend as the tale’s love interest but even those objections disappeared when her audition tape was actually good.
Gil couldn’t believe their good fortune. “It’s not usually this easy.”
“So why aren’t you smiling?” Leah asked.
“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Despite his pessimistic outlook, Gil and Leah started spending money. Their company signed a crew that included LeForte’s favorite but pricey cinematographer. They gave a pay-or-play deal to entice an Oscar-winning actor to be the story’s villain, Sonsev. They’d extended their credit line as far as they could when LeForte sent a short, terse text:
I’m out.
It didn’t matter if all of the elements were in place. Regardless of their commitments, he was walking from the project.
He’d broken up with his girlfriend.
At the moment they could least afford it, the other shoe had dropped.
“Our deal’s ironclad,” Leah told LeForte. “We’ll bump everything back a few weeks and replace Tasha.”
“I only agreed to do the picture because of her. She’s the one who wanted it.”
“Insurance won’t cover what we’ve spent. Won’t come close.”
He rolled his eyes, not caring.
Leah said, “You’re going to cripple my company.”
“Don’t you understand?” he asked peevishly. “This whole deal was my way to keep us together. It didn’t work, okay?”
“That’s not good enough.” Leah fought to control her emotions. She’d worked so hard for this and everything was about to vanish. She felt angry and frightened.
LeForte’s thin lips curled upward in a parody of a smile. “Are you going to cry for me, Lee-Lee?”
He’d discovered that the nickname annoyed her and, as a result, used it frequently. It was another thing that pissed her off.
“Am I going to see a tear?” he mocked. On those words, her fright vanished.
“Tears?” Leah responded. “Not even close. I’m going to sue you for everything you’ve got, you pig. When my lawyers get done with you, you’ll be lucky to get a job directing a YouTube video.”
His pale face grew paler. Pinching back any further reply, he hurried from her office.
Meanly, she wondered, Are you going to cry for me, Clinton? Am I going to see a tear?
As the lawsuits started flying, LeForte reconciled with his girlfriend. Gil stepped in, soothing hurt feelings, and the production returned to life. To Protect and Service was finally underway.
The movie’s director had only one, nonnegotiable demand: Leah Preston wasn’t to be on the set. In fact, he didn’t want her on any of his sets anywhere, now or in the future, forever and ever, amen.
Leah felt she could live with that.
Chapter Eight
“I don’t know if I can go without you, Leah,” Gil told her. He leaned back in his padded desk chair. “The backwoods of Mississippi is no place for a city boy.”
“Nothing frightens you, Gil. You’re ex-Marine.”
“Sweetheart, that’s another reason I love you. Lies glide off your sweet tongue and sound almost sincere.” Lifting a big hand, he wiggled his fingers at her. “See these nails? Manicured. You know why?”
“You’re a stylish metrosexual?”
“I’m scared.”
Leah wasn’t sure how to respond to this. Gil was her rock, unflappable and never flustered.
“You’re in the office every day, sweetness, you read the trades, you think you know what’s going on.” He feigned surprise at her innocence. “That’s not how things work in this industry.”
“Tell me all, Obi-Wan Buntich.”
“If someone wants to hear the latest scoop, they get their hair done. Their nails. They get a new suit tailored or they buy an expensive lunch. The hair stylist, the manicurist, the waitress, they hear things. If someone is half-decent to them, they’ll tell you what the buzz is around your project.”
Leah wasn’t as green as Gil pretended. She knew this stuff but she also knew he needed to talk.
Gil loved to talk.
He said, “You want to know what the town is saying about our flick?”
“Rising star, great screenplay, interesting location?”
“They say the title sounds like a porn film.”
“There’s a whole series of novels about Raymond Service. Every book has ‘Service’ in the title. There’s Service, Please, and Service Without a Smile, and –”
“To Protect and Service,” Gil said. “I know, I’ve read ‘em. Read the coverage, anyway. Those are just the books. We have to sell tickets to everybody, not just the Ray Service fans.”
“So it’s a working title.”
“People are saying that filming on location is a huge gamble. Do you know Mississippi has hurricanes and cyclones? Sure, you do, you grew up there.”
“This isn’t the season.”
“It remains a concern. Filming in and around water is always a risk. Some say this is going to be Jaws in a swamp, complete with its own malfunctioning mechanical creature.”
“That’s not fair,” Leah protested.
“Neither of our leads has ever carried a movie. A real flick, not one of those direct-to-DVD things. Our Oscar-winner plays a villain and our second biggest name, the only other true movie star we have, gets killed off before the thirty minute mark.”
“Nobody will expect it. People love surprises.”
Gil chewed on a manicured nail. “The Groundhog State is a long way from here but you convinced me to send our crew into the wilderness. It’s not cheap, sending a union crew that far from home. Even with foreign sales, our business is on the line. We can’t afford any new problems.”
“My mentor told me, it takes money to make money.”
> “Your mentor is an ass,” her mentor said. “I’m all in, honey. I’ve got your back. I just wish you could be there with me.”
“The director hates me.”
“You insulted him.”
“I never did. I said he was a useless sack of steaming cow manure.” Leah would never forget how Clinton LeForte had tried to abandon the picture, nearly killing it. “I was under oath, Gil. I had to tell the truth.”
“Well, the lawsuit worked. He’s ours now.” There was absolutely no joy in his statement. “This was supposed to be your production. Your material, your home turf, your handpicked star. Your everything.”
“Not my director.”
“No, the useless sack of steaming cow manure was my call,” Gil admitted. “I’m paying for it now.” His big frame sagged in the large chair.
“The picture is going to be great,” Leah said brightly. She hoped it was true. “Danny is going to be a big star.”
“Funny how nobody else has picked up on that,” he said. “Kucera played a bad boy on his cable series. Some say, there were times he forgot he was acting.”
“A lot of girls like bad boys.”
“I’ll bet you did, too, once upon a time. I know he’s got charisma. I know he dazzles on screen. I just wonder what’s going to happen once we start shooting.”
“Danny will behave,” Leah said.
“How do you know?”
“He promised.”
“Well, then. An actor’s promise to a producer, you know that’s rock solid.” Gil rubbed at the temples of his head. “Filming starts in three weeks. We’re at Mach Five and building. Some sweet day, you’ll have to remind me how this whole thing started.”
Chapter Nine
From somewhere inside the blackness, Me and Bobby McGee sang out from her bedside stand. Immediately worried – What’s wrong? Did something happen to Mom? – Leah fumbled for her cell phone.
She rubbed at her eyes, blinking blurrily at the caller ID: CLINTON LEFORTE.
She tried to make sense of the name she was seeing. Had the director somehow misdialed?
“Hello?”
“Lee-Lee? It’s me. Clinton.”
Leah pulled the phone from ear. 2:14 AM. All she could think to say was, “Yes?”
“Gil didn’t want me to call you. He thinks he can fix this but he can’t. It’s not working.”
“Clinton, can I speak to Gil, please?”
“No,” he said, as maddeningly full of himself as ever. “Hollywood has its unwritten rules and your partner knows them by heart. He lives by them. You don’t.”
Leah ended the call. If LeForte was calling to insult her, he could at least wait until she’d had her morning coffee.
Immediately, her phone rang.
Answering the call, she said, “During your deposition, you told the lawyers I was a stone cold bitch. You thought you’d seen a bitch before? Dial this number before the sun is up and you’ll live to regret it.”
LeForte said, “I need you.”
Which was so surprising, she fell silent.
“Gil knows the town’s golden rule,” he continued. “Never piss off the talent. If a big name wants to walk from a picture, you let him, even if it costs your company a few bucks. The big name will owe you and you’ll get something in return someday. Probably.”
Leah remembered Gil saying something along the same lines. When she’d pursued the lawsuit despite his objections, LeForte’s agency had called, spouting a version of the same nonsense. So had two different studio heads.
“Our movie’s in trouble,” LeForte told her.
“Now it’s our movie?”
“Danny’s decided he’s a big star. We’ve got more than half of the thing in the can and he’s demanding rewrites. More personal drama, more opportunities for goddamn emoting.”
Leah couldn’t believe LeForte hadn’t faced a similar situation in the past. “Have the writer pound something out, give our lead a few pages to chew. You’ll cut it in editing.”
“What about the alligator?”
“Yeah?”
“Danny refuses to enter the water tank. Refuses to help with pick-up shots near the swamp. He wants the alligator out of the picture.”
“We spent seven million dollars on that robo-beast,” Leah said. “You wouldn’t let us go with a green screen.”
“Raymond Service fighting a CGI gator? It won’t look right, it never does. You swore you’d let me do it my way.”
“Yes, I know.” He was such a pain in the ass. “The alligator is the picture’s final Big Bad. The climax doesn’t work without Raymond Service going into the swamp and facing the monster. Facing his fears.”
“That’s what I said to Danny. He won’t listen. Not to me, not to Gil, not to anyone. I can shoot around him for a week or so but we’re dead after that.”
We’re so screwed, Leah thought.
Their insurance covered a personal tragedy or an Act of God but it wouldn’t pay a penny to reward a star’s bad behavior. Leah could threaten Danny with the courts but the process was time-consuming. By the time all of the appeals were completed, their production company would be history.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Fix this. Fix Danny, like you fixed me.”
“How?”
“Come to Mississippi and do what you do best. Be a stone cold bitch.”
“Words aren’t going to matter to Danny. He knows when a threat is empty.” Then a new idea fluttered to mind.
She reflected on it. Yes. Absolutely.
“There’s maybe one thing I can do,” Leah said. “Not right away, though. I’ll have to drive to Mississippi.”
“Drive?”
“Don’t ask me why, I just do. It’ll take a couple of days.”
“You need to hurry,” LeForte said.
Chapter Ten
The Mustang convertible growled as it topped the hill, its powerful engine taking the climb with satisfying ease. Leah’s hands-free mobile phone sat beneath the car’s console, waiting for her next command.
What she wanted to do was to call Tanner Boyd but his home telephone number was unlisted. Because of local police protocol, it was buried under such a deep cover that even her best researcher hadn’t found it.
Leah had no better luck when she tried to get the information. The Tilton County Sheriff Department’s dispatcher had been friendly-sounding at first, indicating a star struck interest in helping someone from a Hollywood production company. The moment Leah gave her name, the dispatcher’s tone grew cold. She refused to even take a message for Tanner.
Leah didn’t understand why but, now, she had no choice. Unable to think of any other option, she told the mobile phone, “Call Marlene Preston.”
“Calling Marlene Preston,” a mechanical voice confirmed inside her ear.
Her mother picked up on the first ring. After chatting about her next door neighbor, her arthritis, her latest quilting project, and some delightfully cute male singer on one of the countless television talent competitions she watched, Marlene finally asked Leah why she’d called. “Are you coming to visit?”
“Not this time. I have to find Tanner, Mom.”
For the first time since she’d answered the phone, Marlene was speechless. Recovering, she said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I don’t have a choice. He’s the sheriff –”
“Not for much longer. Elections are coming up and he isn’t on the ticket.”
“Really?” Leah took a moment to process this new information. “What’s he going to do?”
“I’ve heard he’s moving to Nashville. Vanna has family there.”
Vanna. Leah still couldn’t understand why Tanner had married that black-haired shrew. Except for her big-breasted, perfect body and her beautiful, unlined face, she was a complete and total bitch.
Of course, Leah’s opinion wasn’t exactly unbiased. Ever since high school, she’d disliked Vanna Janssen and Vanna had h
ated her.
“She doesn’t deserve him.”
“Pardon?” Marlene asked.
“Nothing,” Leah said. “Tanner’s the sheriff until the end of his term, anyway, and that’s a start. Can you ask around, see if you can get his phone number? I’m headed his way.”
“Now?” She sounded surprised. “You don’t want to return to the Grove. It’s only going to create problems.”
“I’ll be good, I promise. But I need his help. I’m in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Leah wanted to choose her words carefully. Marlene was inordinately proud of her daughter’s success in California, as small as it was, and Leah didn’t intend to worry her. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, as long as Tanner is willing to help.”
“There must be someone else you can contact.”
“If there was, I wouldn’t be calling.” When her response went without answer, Leah said, “Hello?”
Slowly, Marlene said. “Leah, dear.”
“You never call me ‘dear’.”
“I do, too. Just a few weeks ago, I remember.”
“You remember because you use the word so rarely,” Leah said. “You only use endearments when you’ve done something wrong.”
“Darling.”
Darling? “Mother, what did you do?”
“Tanner isn’t exactly married.”
Leah heard her speak but the words didn’t make any sense. Four months after she’d left Mississippi, Marlene had emailed her, telling her of Tanner’s sudden engagement and almost immediate betrothal to Vanna Janssen.
Staggered by the news, Leah had wept for days. “You sent me his wedding invitation.”
“Psssh. You can get those made on the internet. They cost less than ten dollars.”
Leah started to shake. She hit the car’s brake sharply, sending the Mustang across the road’s center divider. Yanking at the steering wheel, she brought the vehicle under control. The wheels bumped off of the asphalt, kicking dirt as she pulled to a stop on the side of the road. Putting the car in Park, she turned off the engine.
