Falling Into You (30 page)

Sophia
tilts her head, pondering. “Five days? That’s it? And then she’l
l be back here for the last week
of her trip?”

We’re bickering over her, wheeling and dealing over a real, live person and it makes me a little bit sick, but I can’t help it—I want her
with me
.
If that means I have to barter with Sophia Pearce, then I’ll barter.

“Five days.” For now
.

She lifts her glass to mine. “I assume the two of you have discussed this? That you’re not enslaving my friend without her consent?”

“No.”

“I guess five days will have to
do. I expect her here on Friday
so that we can hit the party circuit. I’ve gotten a fe
w calls requesting her presence.
”
She laughs
at the look
of anger
on my
face. “All it takes is a little red dress. Speaking of, I should make sure she doesn’t need any help getting ready.”

Sophia
’s taking off down the hallway, and then she turns back to me. “Tell her that she really does need to call
Ben
, though. He means
the world to her.
There’s history there, you know.
They’ve got something th
at you just can’t compete with.” She winks at me
before disappearing into her room
.

I’m still thinking about
Hallie
and
Ben
and history, whatever that might be, fifteen minutes later.

“Okay. You have to work with what you’ve got,”
Hallie
calls out from
the hallway. She twirls in front of me, handing over a large canvas bag. “What?” she asks.

“Nothing. Just looking at the most beautiful girl in the world.”

And she is. She’s somehow managed to get
ready in under thirty minutes. W
ith tw
o sisters, I understand that th
is
is something of an accomplishment
. She’s wearing a low-cut black dress and her hair is loose over her shoulders.

When she smiles at me,
all thoughts of
asking her to clarify exactly what “h
istory”
means
are
forgotten.

Chapter 19

HALLIE

“It’s going to be fine.
” Chris’s hand is on my arm,
and he trying to steady me as
we’re
weaving
through white-clothed tables. We’re
following the hostess, who is at least six feet tall and is in desperate need of a sandwich
and some dye to cover up her dark roots
.
While these weren’t exactly charitable thoughts,
I wasn’t blind to the way her eyes attached themselves to Chris as we walked in, or the way in which her hands had lingered on his arm just a little too long as she too
k my bag to put it in storage.

“You know I have that verbal diarrhea thing going on.
There’s at least a 75% chance that I will completely screw
up
this movie
deal
for you
.
”

“
You absolutely will not. And the verbal diarrhea is
one of the m
ost charming things about you.”

Ugh. He really wasn’t going to let me get out of this.

I glance back up at the crystal chandelier, and giggle a little bit at the over-the-top décor. Apparently, the designer had been going for a New Orleans bordello. There are
fleur de
lis
symbols everywhere,
dark booths
are
covered in red velvet in the corners
,
and
the candlesticks
look like they came directly out of a bad vampire novel. The costumes also seem to have been designed with prostitutes in mind: fishnet stockings, short black skirt and bustiers.

I snick
er quietly as a waitress offers
a “lan-nappy” (I think she was g
oing for lagniappe) to a table.

Chris grabs my arm. “
Ce
la vie.”

I look at him curiously.

“It’s the only bad French I know. I suppose you speak it fluently, judging by your c
onversation with the Maître D.”

“
Peut-être
.” His
eyes widen. “My dad w
as French-Canadian,” I offer. 

“Alan’s a sucker for French. Use that.”

Chris had briefed me on both Alan and Marcus while
we had ridden over in the car.
I’m trying to remember the little factoids when we arrive a
t one of the red velvet booths.

“Here you are, sir,”
the hostess
says, smiling at
Chris
and dismissing me
.

T
here’s a bottle of champagne
in a bucket of ice
, and a hulking man
with thick brown hair is shaking Chris’s hand vigorously.

“So glad you’re on board,” he tells Chris, his eyes all lit up. “Just those pesky fucking details to work out and we will be all set. I wanted to get started on the character tonight, but since your agent is being a giant pain in my ass, we’ll just have to wait on that and celebrate
instead
. The rest of the cast is pretty much set up, and there will be a read-through in a few weeks to get you all comfortable with each other…”

The man is droning on and on, only stopping to speak t
o the waitress
to order more champagne. I paste a polite
stare
on my face and look at the other man across the table, who
’s staring at me suspiciously.

He smiles and holds out a deeply tanned hand t
o me. “The date, I presume.”

“Marcus, I presume.”

“Chris does manage to find himself
some
pretty ones. Let me
guess. Waitress slash actress?”

I bristle at
his presumptuous words
and smile sweetly at him instead. Chris is absorbed in talking to the direc
tor.

“
Hallie
,” I offer.

His eyes
roam over me
and they turn to ice quickly
. “The last thing Chris needs right now is any fucking distractions. What do you want? Bit part in a movie? TV show? I should be able to find your something in the lower tier, as long as you’re willing to work a little bit of your magic on the fucking cast
ing couch.” He hisses the words
under his breath, only halting to shake Chris’s hand briefly.

I burst out laughing, because this Marcus is exactly as I pictured him. All of the phone calls and Chris’s expressions while speaking to him had drawn a pretty close approximation of the man standing before me. Both Chris and Alan turn to us, and I cover my mouth. Marc
us is just
staring
at me like I’m a
crazy person.

“Sorry
.”
My earlier nervousness is lost at my amusement in finding Marcus almost exactly like the Hollywood agents in the movies. “I’m
Hallie
,” I offer to the burly man.

“
Enchante
,” he replies, kissing my hand.

“Parlez-vous Francais?”

“Oh, no, no.” He lets out a long belly laugh, and
I warm to him immediately. I’m
deciding that this dinner might be fun after all.
“But I wouldn’t say no to learning some.” He
glances over my body with the same appraising glance as Marcus and I’m strangely pleased that he nods at Chris
approvingly
.

Marcus is still looking at me like I’m crazy, and as Chris and Alan settle in the booth, he whispers in my ear. “Think about it.”

“I’m not an actress. Or a waitress. Just a college kid on vacation from real life,” I whisper back to him, smiling over my shoulder. “No worries.”

Two hours l
ater
, after endless shop talk and some discussion about the best vacation destinations in Asia, and what I think was a very successful attempt at beefing up some of the dialogue in the script so that the actors didn’
t sound like wooden toy sol
d
i
er spies,
I’m actually having a pretty good time. If anyone had tried to tell me three days earlier that I would be sitting and making jokes with the director of
Aliens and Humans in Love
(actual title, seriously), a Hollywood agent, and the new James Ross, I would have laughed in their face.
But here I am.

I’m comfortable enough to call Alan out on what’s an obvious lie about a round of gold he recently played
.

“You
did not shoot an 83 at Augusta.” I’m
completely confident in my a
ssertion.

“I did.”

He’s holding out his hands in front of me in a mock golf grip, and I’m staring at it and shaking my head.

“Maybe on the Par 3 course. For one thing, your grip is all wrong. I would estimate
your
handicap at closer to
25. That
means that the 83 was more like a 103
at Augusta
,
if you had a good day
.”

I take his fingers in mine and twist them, showing him alternate grips.

“You have to hold the club loose
ly
enough so that you can use your legs a
nd shoulders to generate power. You, on the other hand, are definitely a hang on to the club for your life kind of guy.
That
leads to either a slice or a hook. Basically, a day at Augusta for you is torture. How many balls did you lose
in the trees
? 10? 15?”

He gasps with laughter. “It was 12. How
the hell did you know that?”

“I’ve been playi
ng since I was four.” I shrug.

“Handicap?”

“
You really don’t want to know.”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t want to know. I really have been playing since I was four, and honestly, anyone who’s been playing since they were that young has to get prett
y good eventually
. It was my parent’s compromise—my mom forced the dance lessons, my dad forced the golf ones.
Twice a week for fourteen years. Endless putts and chips and driving ranges and junior championships.

A girl
who can beat the boys in golf ha
s a better resume than summa cum laude at Harvard
, he would tell my mother, who would moan and groan and say that it was
going to ruin my posture.

I stopped playing for three years after he died, because I couldn’t face the thought of a weekend round without him sitting beside me in the golf cart. One day, when I was mad at the
world, and him for leaving me, and Ben for failing to notice that I was a real, human girl, I dusted off the clubs and went out alone for a sunrise round, and I felt my father there, on the golf course, sitting beside me, offering a million suggestions about my stance and swing and club selection. I’ve played a couple of times a week since. It keeps him alive for me in a way that nothing else does.

It also looks like my dad was right about the resume, too. G
olf stories have gotten me through more than a few awkward dinners when Greenview parents have come to visit
, and Alan’s looking at me with new respect now.

“It’ll crush your ego.”
I grin at him. I’m starting to like Alan better and better.

Chris is staring at me like I
just
landed from
an alien planet.

Alan’s bellowing at the waitress, ordering more champagne.
“Tell me.
”

“4
.”

“From the girls’ tees?”

“From the
back ones
.” T
he expression on his face change
s into amusement
.

Marcus is laughing now, too. I guess my comment about being a college kid soothed his nerves, because he’s been perfectly composed all night, telling stories about his earliest days in Hollywood, slaving away as a delivery boy and getting his first clients (a pair of screenwr
iters) into a meeting with HBO.

“This I have to see,” Alan’s booming voice announces.

Apparently, everyone in Hollywood just screams at each other all day, because if anything,
Alan’s
voice is even
louder
than
Marcus’s
.