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Meg went horseback riding instead, and Georgie endured a difficult lunch with her father at L.A.’s newest luncheon hot spot, where they sat in a leather booth beneath a sheet metal chandelier.
“Revenge of the Bimbo Vampire is brilliantly written and really funny,” he said, digging into his grilled steak salad. “You know how rare that is.”
He pushed the bread basket at her, but she didn’t have much appetite. For the past two weeks, Chaz had been feeding her mountains of mac and cheese, slabs of lasagna. True, the edges of her bones had begun to lose their sharpness, and her cheeks had stopped looking like fatal cave-ins, but she was fairly certain that wasn’t Chaz’s intent.
“I’m sure it’ll do amazingly well. But…” She poked at a bowl of lemon risotto and fought to hold on to her resolve. It was her life, her career, and she had to carve her own path. “I need a break from playing emotional lightweights. I’ve paid my dues, Dad, and I don’t want to sign on for another comedy. I want something that’ll challenge me, something I can get excited about.”
She didn’t bother bringing up the six-month vacation she’d fought for so fiercely. She needed to get back to work as soon as possible just to avoid spending so much time around Bram.
He leaned back in the booth. “Don’t be a cliché, Georgie—another comic actress who wants to play Lady Macbeth. Do what you’re good at.”
She couldn’t let herself cave. “How do I know I won’t be good at other kinds of parts when I’ve never had a chance?”
“Do you have any idea how hard Laura is working to get you a meeting with Greenberg?”
“She should have talked to me first.” As if Laura would even think about consulting her.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired, which made her feel guilty. It hadn’t been easy for him, widowed at twenty-five with a four-year-old to raise. He’d dedicated his life to her, and all she had to give him in return these days was resentment. He slipped his glasses back on and picked up his fork only to set it back down. “I’m guessing this laziness of yours—”
“That’s not fair.”
“This lack of focus, then, is Bram’s influence, and frankly, it scares me that he’s passing his unprofessional attitude on to you.”
“Bram doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
As she pushed around her risotto, she waited for him to point out how much more cooperative she’d been during her marriage to Lance. Her father and Lance had seen eye to eye about everything, so much so that she’d often thought Lance should have been his kid instead of her.
But Paul was picking his battles. “They’re planning to release Bimbo Vampire over the Fourth of July weekend next year. A perfect summer movie. It has blockbuster written all over it.”
“Not if I’m in it.”
“Don’t do that, Georgie. Negative thoughts bring negative results.”
“Cake Walk is going to tank. We both know it.”
“I agree they made some bad decisions, and that’s why you need to have your name linked with Bimbo Vampire as soon as possible. All this publicity has given you a window of opportunity that won’t come again. If you pass on this, you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”
She suppressed her anger by reminding herself that her father always looked out for her best interests. From the beginning, he’d been her staunchest champion. If she lost out on a part, he’d tell her the casting agents were the losers. That was the thing about him. He’d always done his best to protect her. He’d even refused to let her take the starring role of a child prostitute when she was twelve. If only his protectiveness had been rooted in love instead of ambition.
Once again, she considered how things might have been different if she hadn’t lost her mother. “Dad…If Mom hadn’t died, do you think you’d have gone on with your own acting career?”
“Who knows? It’s useless to speculate.”
“I know, but…” The risotto was too salty, and she pushed it aside. “Tell me again how you met.”
He sighed. “We met in college our senior year. I was playing Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, and she interviewed me for the college newspaper. Attraction of opposites. She was a complete scatterbrain.”
“Did you love her?”
“Georgie, it was a long time ago. We need to focus on now.”
“Did you?”
“Very much.” The impatient way he bit out the words told Georgie he was only saying what he knew she wanted to hear.
As she gazed down at her uneaten risotto, she found it ironic that she’d grown more comfortable with her disreputable husband than with her own father. But then she didn’t care about Bram’s opinion.
Maybe one of these days she’d stop caring about her father’s.
