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“You’re the one who decided I couldn’t read.”
“What else was I supposed to think? No one in his right mind would sign a movie contract without reading the script first. Even I read the script, and I’m not even in it.”
“It’s an action adventure movie, right? I’m supposed to be the good guy, which means there’ll also be a bad guy, a beautiful woman, and a tot of car chases. Now that we don’t have the Russians to kick around, the bad guy’ll either be a terrorist or a drug runner.”
“A Mexican drug lord.”
He gave her an I-told-you-so nod. “There’ll be a bunch of fights, all kinds of blood, gore, and cussing, most of it gratuitous, but still protected by the First Amendment. I’ll be running around looking manly, and the heroine, movies being what they are, will prob’ly be running around naked and screaming. Am I pretty much on target so far?”
He was right on target, but she didn’t want to encourage his slipshod study habits by saying so. “You’re missing the point. You should have read the script so you could understand the character you’re playing.”
“Gracie, sweetheart, I’m not an actor. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to be anybody but myself.”
“Well, in this case, you’re going to be a drunken ex-football player named Jed Slade.”
“Nobody’s named Jed Slade.”
“You are, and you’re living on a run down Texas horse ranch you bought from the brother of the heroine, who’s a woman named Samantha Murdock. I presume you know that Natalie Brooks is playing the part of Samantha. The people at Windmill feel quite lucky to have signed her.” As Bobby Tom nodded, she went on. “You don’t know who Samantha is, though, when she picks you up in a bar and seduces you.”
“She seduces me?”
“Just like in real life, Bobby Tom, so that part shouldn’t give you any trouble.”
“Sarcasm just doesn’t suit you, sweetheart.”
“Unbeknownst to you, Samantha drugs you when she gets you back to your house.”
“Before or after we do the wild thing?”
Once again, she ignored him. “You pass out, but you have the constitution of an ox, and you wake up in time to see her tearing up the floorboards in your house. The two of you have a big fight. Normally, you could easily overpower her, but she has a gun and you’re groggy from the drugs. There’s a struggle. Eventually, you start strangling her so you can take the gun away and force the truth out of her.”
“I am not strangling a woman!”
He looked so outraged that she laughed. “In the process, you discover that she’s the sister of the man you bought the ranch from, and that he was running drugs for a wealthy Mexican kingpin.”
“Let me guess. Samantha’s brother decided to hold out on the kingpin, who had him iced, but not before the brother hid a wad of cash from one of his drug runs under the floorboards of the house.”
“That’s where the heroine thinks it’s hidden, but it’s not there.”
“The kingpin, in the meantime, decides to kidnap the heroine because he thinks she knows where the money is st
ashed. Old Jake Slade—”
“Jed Slade.” She corrected him.
“Old Jed, being a gentleman in addition to being a drunk, naturally has to protect her.”
“He’s falling in love with her,” she explained.
“Which makes for lots of excuses to keep her naked.”
“I believe you also have a nude scene.”
“Not in a million years.”
5
The Lanier ranch had known better days. A cluster of wooden buildings with peeling paint sat on a flat section of land that stretched back from the banks of the South Llano River. Chickens scratched in the dirt beneath an old oak in the front yard. Next to the barn, a windmill with a broken blade turned listlessly in the July heat. Only the well-fed horses in the corral looked prosperous.
