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She stared at him with her big green eyes.
“You nailed it, just like you promised,” he said. “People underestimate me as an actor. It never occurred to me that I was doing the same to you. We’ve all done it.”
“I know.”
Her straightforward response unnerved him. He hadn’t known, and when he’d seen the tape, he’d felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach.
Last night he’d sat in his darkened bedroom and watched it. As he hit the play button, the blank wall in Georgie’s office had come into focus, and he heard Chaz’s voice off camera. “I’ve got things to do. I don’t have time for this crap.”
Georgie stepping into the frame. Her hair was severely parted, and she wore a minimum of makeup: light foundation, no mascara, the barest hint of eyebrow pencil, and a shockingly deep scarlet mouth that couldn’t have been more wrong for Helene. The camera caught her from the waist up: an austere black suit jacket, a white shell, and a set of intricately twisted black beads.
“I mean it,” Chaz said. “I need to start dinner.”
Georgie pierced Chaz’s bluster with Helene’s icy imperiousness instead of her normal friendly puppy-dog manner. “You’ll do as I say.”
Chaz muttered something the mike didn’t catch and stayed where she was. Georgie’s breasts rose ever so slightly under the suit jacket, and then a smile—a fucking ice-pick smile—curled over the bottom of her face and made that scarlet mouth seem absolutely right.
You think you can embarrass me, Danny? I don’t embarrass. Embarrassment is for losers. And a loser is what you are, not me. You’re a zero. A nothing. We all knew it, even when you were a kid.
Her voice was low, deathly quiet, and completely composed. Unlike the other actresses they’d auditioned, she didn’t emote. No teeth gnawing or scenery rattling. Everything underplayed.
You don’t have a friend left in this town, but you still think you’ve gotten the best of me…
The words poured out of her, cold fury prowling behind her bloodred smile, perfectly capturing Helene’s selfishness, her guile, her intelligence, and her utter conviction that she deserved whatever she could grab. He sat spellbound until finally, with that smile frozen like black ice on her lips, she came to the end.
Remember how you used to make fun of me when we were in school? How hard you laughed? Well, who’s laughing now, funny man? Who’s laughing now?
The camera stayed on her, but she didn’t move. She simply waited, every cell of her body discharging quiet rage, intractable pride, and dogged determination. The camera wobbled, and he heard Chaz’s voice. “Holy shit, Georgie, that was—”
The picture went dark.
He looked at Georgie now, standing across from him on the whitewashed patio, her hair caught up in a sweaty, unkempt knot, her face scrubbed free of makeup, a beach towel dangling at her side, and for a moment he thought he saw Helene’s calculating eyes looking back at him—resolute, cynical, astute. He’d fix that. “I woke Hank up this morning and made him look at the tape before he even had coffee.”
“Did you now?”
“He was blown away. Just like me. No other actress we’ve seen has delivered what you did—the complexity, that dark humor.”
“I’m a comedian. It’s what I do.”
“Your performance was chilling.”
“Thank you.”
Her reserve was starting to unnerve him. He expected her to crow and say she’d told him so. When she didn’t, he tried again. “You blasted Scooter Brown into oblivion.”
“That was my intention.”
She still didn’t seem to have registered his message, so he spelled it out. “The part’s yours.”
Instead of throwing herself in his arms, she turned away. “I need to take a shower. Make yourself comfortable while I get dressed.”
Chapter 25
She locked herself in the bathroom and let the water wash over her. She’d been vindicated, and it didn’t mean anything. She’d known exactly how good she was. Ironic
. The only person’s approval she’d needed was her own. How was that for personal growth?
She pulled on the same white shorts and navy baby-doll she’d worn that morning and ran a comb through her wet hair. It was time to face him with as much of the truth as she could bear to reveal, but she couldn’t do it by herself. She needed help from her most faithful companion.
