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He couldn’t imagine why his parents had ever thought they would be a good fit for a relationship lasting more than six months, let alone a marriage with assumptions about lifelong love and fidelity. He wasn’t sure anyone could promise that, but they sure as hell shouldn’t have.
“All right,” Darcy said to Raoul. “Remind me to call her back in a week if I haven’t already.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
Darcy didn’t know which was worse: having Elizabeth Bennet as his on-set personal assistant or having no personal assistant at all. He had muddled through the first five days of filming without an assistant, and it hadn’t been pretty. He’d been late to the set once, had arrived with the wrong pages in the script twice, and another two times he hadn’t had the right costume. There was no question that he needed an assistant.
The problem wasn’t just that he felt guilty about the concussion—although it wasn’t really his fault. The problem wasn’t even that being with her was awkward and uncomfortable. The problem was that from the minute Elizabeth Bennet entered the room on her first day of work Darcy was hyper-aware of her. As he sat in his chair in the makeup room, his eyes weren’t even turned in her direction, but instantly his skin prickled as if her presence had supercharged the air. He’d turned his head toward her and gotten an earful from Marge, the drill sergeant of the m
akeup room.
He spent the next five minutes holding his head very still and trying to make sense of his reaction. Personal assistants were supposed to be practically invisible on set; accordingly, her jeans and t-shirt did nothing to attract attention. Aside from her striking eyes there was nothing remarkable about her. Why did he notice her at all?
The movie employed dozens of PAs, the worker bees of a set. Paid a pittance, the PAs were the ones who kept the call sheets, ran for coffee, delivered messages, found props, ran extension cords, and did any number of tasks that required a Swiss Army knife, sticky notes, and duct tape. It was a miserable job for the most part; the only reason someone would take it was because they hoped it would open the door to a future career as a director, producer, cinematographer, or actor.
Darcy preferred having his own personal assistant on set, but Maria had quit abruptly to start a goat lawn-mowing company, and Roy was still seeking a permanent replacement for her. Elizabeth was just filling in temporarily and only on the set.
Elizabeth circled to the front of his makeup chair so he could see her without turning his head. “Good morning, Will. Do you need anything? Coffee? A copy of the shooting schedule?” Her face was carefully polite and her tone was neutral, but she had subtly put him on notice that she was different. Maria had been with Darcy for almost two years and, like Raoul, had always addressed him as Mr. Darcy or sir.
“No. Nothing,” he said gruffly. Could she tell how he was reacting to her?
“Okay. I’ll just sit back there.” She jerked a thumb at the back of the room. “Let me know if you need anything.”
Great. She could watch Darcy’s every move, but he couldn’t see her. He should have invented an errand. When Marge twirled Darcy’s chair so she could work on the back of his head, he observed Elizabeth typing on her tablet, frowning with great concentration. Was she pretending to ignore him? He didn’t like that.
“Which scene are we shooting first?” he asked, although he knew the answer very well.
“Seventeen,” she responded without glancing up from the tablet. “The first living-room scene.”
“Are there any changes I should be aware of?”
Her eyebrows drew together as she finally focused on him. “No, although Security sent around a notice warning everyone to be careful when entering or exiting the studio to avoid allowing any rabid Darcy fans through the gate accidentally.”
“They did not use the word rabid.” She couldn’t possibly be as unaffected by him as she appeared. No woman ever was.
She shrugged. “Okay, I embellished.”
“I don’t know how the fans always find out where I’m going to be. It’s a little creepy. They know more about me than my mother does.” It was a joke he made frequently; most people didn’t know what a low bar that was.
She didn’t laugh. “But they don’t, do they?” Elizabeth said with an abstracted expression.
“They don’t what?”
She rested her chin on her fist, staring at nothing in particular. “They don’t really know you. It must be so strange being famous like that. They might know your birthday and how tall you are and the name of your childhood dog or your prom date. And maybe they’ve seen every film you’ve ever made and watched every talk show appearance and read every interview. But they still can’t really know you, not the way a friend or colleague would know you. All those things just provide the illusion of knowing you.”
Darcy gaped at her. He couldn’t have articulated the truth that way, yet somehow this non-celebrity grasped celebrities’ symbiotic relationship with their fans. The Hollywood machine fostered the illusion that they could really get to know movie stars when in fact it wasn’t possible—or even desirable.
“What?” she asked, and he realized that his mouth was hanging open.
He hastily shut it. “Nothing. I mean, yeah, you’re right. That’s exactly the issue. And their devotion is…transitory. Today they scream my name, but tomorrow they might forget it. They can love you or hate you on a whim. Everyone’s career goes through ups and downs, sometimes with little rhyme or reason.”
She regarded him with a curiously intent expression. “Everyone thinks the stars are in control of everything, but you don’t really feel that way, do you?”
“No. It feels like the fans are in control.” Darcy swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat. She really understood. He quashed an impulse to ask her to be his therapist.
He wanted to say more, to confess how confusing his life could be. How would she respond? But he’d already revealed more than he should have, particularly in the presence of the makeup drill sergeant.
