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Sally stepped forward and crossed her arms, obviously enjoying herself. “The film's about a bunch of stewardesses who rent a mansion that's supposed to be haunted. One by one they get their blood sucked by the former owner—good old Fletcher, who's spent the last century or so pining for his lost love Lucinda. There's a subplot with a female vampire and a male stripper, but that's closer to the end.”
Francesca didn't wait to hear any more. Shooting a furious glance at all of them, she swept from the set. Her hoopskirt rocked from side to side and the blood boiled in her veins as she dashed out of the mansion and toward the trailers in search of Lew Steiner. They'd made a fool of her! She had sold her clothes and traveled halfway around the world to play a minor part in a vampire movie!
Quivering with rage, she found Steiner sitting at a metal table under the trees near the food truck. Her hoopskirt tilted up in the back as she came to a sudden stop, banging against the table leg. “I accepted this job because I heard Mr. Byron had a reputation as a quality director!” she declared, stabbing the air with a harsh gesture directed roughly toward the plantation house.
He looked up from a half-eaten ham on rye. “Who told you that?”
An image of Miranda Gwynwyck's face, smug and self-satisfied, swam before her eyes, and everything became blindingly clear. Miranda, who was supposed to be a feminist, had sabotaged another woman in a misguided attempt to protect her brother.
“He told me he was making a spiritual statement!” she exclaimed. “What does any of this h
ave to do with spiritual statements—or life force or Fellini, for God's sake!”
Steiner smirked. “Why do you think we call him Lord Byron? He makes crap sound like poetry. Of course, it's still crap when he's done with it, but we don't tell him that. He's cheap and he works fast.”
Francesca searched for some misunderstanding, for the small ray of hope her optimistic soul demanded. “What about the Golden Palm?” she asked stiffly.
“The Golden what?”
“Palm.” She felt like a fool. “The Cannes Film Festival.”
Lew Steiner stared at her for a moment before he released a belly laugh that brought with it a small chunk of ham. “Honey, the only ‘can’ Lord Byron's ever had anything to do with is the kind that flushes. The last picture he did for me was Co-ed Massacre, and the one before that was a little number called Arizona Prison Women. It did real good at the drive-ins.”
Francesca could barely force the words from her mouth. “And he actually expected me to appear in a vampire picture?”
“You're here, aren't you?”
She made up her mind immediately. “Not for long! I'll be back with my suitcases in exactly ten minutes, and I expect you to have a draft waiting for me to cover my expenses as well as a driver to take me to the airport. And if you use a single frame of that film you shot today, I'll bloody well sue you to within an inch of your worthless life.”
“You signed a contract, so you won't have much luck.”
“I signed a contract under false pretenses.”
“Bullshit. Nobody lied to you. And you can forget about any money until you're finished shooting.”
“I demand to be paid what you owe me!” She felt like some dreadful fishwife bargaining on a street corner. “You have to pay me for my travel. We had an agreement!”
“You're not getting a penny until you're done with your last scene tomorrow.” He raked his eyes over her unpleasantly. “That's the one Lloyd wants you to do nude. The deflowering of innocence, he calls it.”
“Lloyd will see me nude the same day he wins the Golden Palm!'” Turning on her heel, she began to storm away only to have one of the hateful pink flounces on her skirt catch on the corner of the metal table. She jerked it free, tearing it in the process.
Steiner leaped up from the table. “Hey, be careful with that costume! Those things cost me money!”
She yanked the mustard container from the table and squeezed a great glob of it down the front of the skirt. “How dreadful,” she scoffed. “It looks as if this one needs to be laundered!”
“You bitch!” he screamed after her as she stalked away. “You'll never work again! I'll see to it that no one hires you to empty out the garbage.”
“Super!” she called back. “Because I've had all the garbage I can stand!”
Grabbing two handfuls of ruffle, she hitched her skirts to her knees, cut across the lawn, and headed for the chicken coop. Never, absolutely never in her entire life had she been treated so shabbily. She'd make Miranda Gwynwyck pay for this humiliation if it was the last thing she did. She'd bloody well marry Nicholas Gwynwyck the day she got home!
When she reached her room, she was pale with rage, and the sight of the unmade bed fueled her fury. Snatching up an ugly green lamp from the dresser, she hurled it across the room, where it shattered against the wall. The destruction didn't help; she still felt as if someone had hit her in the stomach. Dragging her suitcase to the bed, she wadded in the few clothes she had bothered to unpack the night before, slammed down the lid, and sat on it. By the time she had forced the latches closed, her carefully arranged curls had come loose and her chest was damp with perspiration. Then she remembered she was still wearing the awful pink costume.
She nearly wailed with frustration as she opened the suitcase again. This was all Nicky's fault! When she got back to London, she'd make him take her to the Costa del Sol, and she'd lie on the bloody beach all day and do nothing except think up ways to make him miserable! Reaching behind her, she began struggling with the hooks that held the bodice together, but they had been set in a double row, and the material fit so tightly that she couldn't get a grip to loosen them. She twisted farther around, releasing a particularly foul curse, but the hooks wouldn't budge. Just as she'd reconciled herself to looking for someone to help her, she thought of the expression on Lew Steiner's fat, smug face when she'd squirted mustard on the skirt. She nearly laughed aloud. Let's see how smug he looks when he sees his precious costume disappearing from sight, she thought with a burst of malicious glee.
No one was around to help her, so she had to carry the suitcase herself. Lugging her Vuitton bag in one hand and her cosmetic case in the other, she struggled down the path that led to the vehicles, only to discover when she got there that absolutely no one would drive her into Gulfport.
“Sorry, Miss Day, but they told us they needed all the cars,” one of the men muttered, not quite looking her in the eye.
