The Second Assistant (30 page)

“You really don’t have a key?” Luke said as I drummed on the door in vain.

“There was only one, and Scott took it.” I peered through the window. The night was drawing in, and my teeth were beginning to chatter, as I still had on my wet ski clothes. “But it’s fine. He’ll be back soon. Really. You just go, and I’ll wait here,” I told Luke as I zipped my ski jacket up to my nose and tucked my hands far up inside my sleeves to keep them warm.

“You’re insane if you think that I’m leaving you here alone in the
dark.” He overturned a few rocks by the door to see if a spare key was lurking there. “You’ll get eaten by an elk or something.” He looked at me as I shivered. “Or die of hypothermia. So just get back into my car, Lizzie.”

“I’m fine.”

“Get in the car.”

“He’ll be back soon. I swear.” I sat on the step obdurately.

“We’re talking about Scott Wagner here. He may not come back for days.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow evening,” I said optimistically. Luke looked at me like I’d just fallen down the stupid tree and hit not only every stupid branch but every stupid squirrel and every stupid leaf on the way.

“Oh, well, in that case I’ll leave.” He threw his hands in the air. “I’ll go back to my luxury hotel room, where there’s a bath and a hot tub and a log fire and a clean pair of sweatpants, and I’ll just let you sit here until tomorrow evening, then. Okay, Lizzie, been nice knowing you.” He walked down the path back toward the car where his driver was waiting patiently.

“Luke?” I called out.

“Yes?” He turned around.

“Do you have sulfate-free bubble bath?” I laughed and got up and ran down the path to where he was standing and looking at me with such complete incomprehension that I might as well have been speaking Chinese.

“You’re such an odd duck,” he said as he piled me into the back of his car, shaking his head. “Truly.”

We drove back to his hotel, the superwinterwonderland Stein Eriksen Lodge, in relative silence, looking out the car window at the aspens and the pines, and every so often one of us would point out a deer or the moon shadows being cast over the blue-white snow on the ground.

“The full moon means weird stuff happens.” I turned and glanced at Luke, with his arms stretched out over the back of the seat.

“Oh, well, that explains a lot.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and we both cracked up laughing. He put on
Tattoo You
by the Rolling Stones, and we both melted back onto our warm seats.

“You want first bath?” he asked. “ ’Cause if you do, I can just hang out downstairs in the bar until you’re done.”

“God, no, it’s your room! You go first.”

“Actually, it’s a suite, so I can watch TV and you can bathe. How’s that?”

“You’re a gentleman.”

“I’m from Kentucky.” He turned to me. “I can’t help it.”

“Well, I’m glad, because I think that if I did have to wait any longer for a bath, my whole body would be one giant Christmas tree.” I pulled off my damp glove and showed him the wrinkled tips of my fingers. He took my hand and looked closely at it.

“Is your whole body like that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked,” I said. “Though I did get a bunch of snow down my front. So the damage could be extensive.”

“Yuck.” He let go of my hand. “I know just the thing for it,” he said as we pulled up outside the hotel.

“You do? What?”

“Wait and see.” He got out of the car and held open the door for me. Then he spoke to the driver, and we went inside.

“Good evening, Mr. Lloyd,” the concierge said as we clattered into the lobby, looking more like washed-out dishrags rather than chichi clientele. “Will you be dining in the restaurant this evening, sir?”

“I think we’ll be having dinner in the room.” He turned to me. “If that’s okay with the lady?”

“Perfect,” I agreed, as it dawned on me for the first time that something might actually be about to happen between me and Luke. Other than dinner and separate baths and sweatpants.

“So what was your genius solution for getting rid of Christmas trees?” I scavenged desperately for something to say. We were in Luke’s suite, and he was busy turning on lights and kicking off his boots and readjusting the air-conditioning and closing curtains. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and tugged at my boots. Then I unzipped my jacket. My sweater underneath really was soaking wet, and so were my socks. But I said nothing.

“Oh, that. Sure, wait here,” he said, and vanished into another room. “I’ll go work on my miracle cure.” I heard the sound of running water.

“It’s a great suite.”

“Yeah, it’s nice.” He came back into the room. If he’d been Jake Hudson, he would have come back in his boxers. Or nothing. But, thankfully, he wasn’t. He was wearing the same T-shirt he’d had on all day, and he’d changed into a pair of sweats. “I’m going to put you out of your misery in a minute,” he said, and handed me a cold glass of champagne.

“Good.” I took the glass. “Thanks. I think.”

“Cheers.” He sat down on the chair opposite me and raised his glass. I moved forward and clinked his.

“My savior.” I grinned.

“Well, I happen to think you’re worth saving, so it works both ways, I guess.” He took a sip of his champagne, and I took a mouthful. He sat back in his armchair and looked at me.

Fortunately, he’d dimmed the lights enough for me to be able to pretend that he wasn’t giving me meaningful eyes, so I got up and walked toward the picture window. “You have a great view of the mountains.”

“I do.”

“And the moon,” I added, swallowing half my glass in one go. I was terrible at this kind of thing. I wanted to kiss him, but this dance-of-seduction thing was too stressful. I could feel my ulcer beginning to burn in my stomach. He didn’t respond. And then I realized that he was behind me.

“What about it?” he asked quietly.

“It’s . . . well, it’s pretty. Isn’t it?” I didn’t dare turn around.

“Guess it is.” Luke put a hand on my waist, and I did eventually turn to face him. I mean, I had to, right?

And that was that. Va-va-voom. He kissed me.

And then there was the hot tub. Somehow we made our way incredibly slowly from the kiss to the point where we were standing beside the steaming water on his outdoor deck.

“Was this your miracle cure?” I asked.

“I can always get you a bathing suit,” he said nervously as the water gurgled at our feet.

“It’s fine.” I smiled and lifted my sweater over my head. Luke looked relieved and began to take off my wet clothes piece by piece, dropping first my T-shirt, then my extra T-shirt, then my ugly ski pants, and finally my undies onto the wooden floor beside us.

“I didn’t have this planned.” He looked at me earnestly.

“You could have fooled me.” I laughed and kissed him on the mouth. I didn’t really care if he had stalked me up the mountain and planned every last detail. I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming.

“Lizzie, are you sure?” He was looking into my face. His uncertainty was almost touching.

“Can we just get in the water and then discuss it?” I said, and dipped my toe into the molten bubbles.

“Of course.” He kicked off his sweatpants and climbed in behind me. The water was steaming up around our faces, and we sat back and shared another glass of champagne. He’d left his in the sitting room. I hadn’t let go of mine, and he’d filled it up for me as we kissed our way across the room and out here onto the moonlit deck.

“I remember you from Daniel’s party. You know that, don’t you?” he said as he stroked a wet strand of hair back from my temple.

“No.” I was surprised. Really surprised. “Are you sure? I mean, there were a ton of girls there. You probably just saw someone else and thought that it was me.”

“I think you were the only girl drunk enough to kiss B-O-B.” He curled one corner of his mouth up into a not-quite-amused smile.

“Oh, God. You did see me at Daniel’s party.”

“You were the only person there who looked like she was really having fun. I liked that.”

“I saw you, too,” I confessed as I let my toes float to the surface of the tub. “I thought you were cute, and I asked my friend who you were.”

“Well, I never.” He seemed immeasurably satisfied with this news.

“Oh, not never. I bet that happens to you
all
the time.”

“Listen, Lizzie, you think you’ve got Hollywood sewn up. You assume every guy is a lying, cheating, sleazy asshole.”

“In my experience a lot of them are.”

“Which makes you narrow-minded.” He frowned.

“Which is preferable to being brokenhearted.”

“In your book.”

“Well, who else’s book is there?” God, what had happened to the fun stuff? Where’d the kissing go? Obviously my perfume had worn off.

“Well, in my book I’d prefer it if you gave someone like me a chance. I think you’re great. I’ll admit I hardly know you, but I like your . . . vibe.” Even he had to smile at this point.

I raised my eyebrow with what I hoped was gentle sarcasm. “My vibe?”

“Your energy, your boogie, your thing, your fucking body and mind and the thing that you have going on. Whatever the fuck that might be.” He finished up: “I like you, Lizzie.”

“You do?” Now I was the one on the back foot. He liked me. “Really?”

“I’d like to take you out when we’re back in L.A.” He blinked expectantly at me.

“I’d like that.”

The next morning I woke up and found myself locked in by Luke Lloyd’s arms. Which were clamped around me in a viselike grip. I could feel him breathing on the back of my neck, and one of his knees was lodged between my legs. I didn’t move. Not only because I couldn’t but also because I didn’t want to.

“You’re not allowed to go yet,” he whispered, and kissed the back of my neck. I sighed contentedly and slipped back into a dream. I hadn’t shared a bed with a man for a very long time, and certainly not one I liked as much as this.

Thank heavens it was a gray day and there was no sunlight to make me feel like I ought to be doing anything other than lying here and looking at his fingers clasped across my chest and the carnage of last night strewn across the room—the empty champagne bottle floating in the silver bucket full of melted ice, two pairs of worn-out sweatpants and my discarded boots next to my purse on the floor, a champagne glass on the nightstand beside me. Last night had been about as perfect as it got. I felt so at ease with Luke and yet also so spun out by how great it had been to kiss him. How instant and amazing the chemistry had been between us. And in all honesty the best bit had been that this wasn’t just some opportunistic pickup. Luke swore that he had noticed me before. At the party, in the park, at Urth—he’d remembered every detail of our encounters. Which made it oddly and wonderfully real.

I slipped under his arms and writhed out of the bed. I needed the bathroom, and I needed to get to some screenings. Much as I wanted to stay until he woke up and proved himself to be more than just a figment of my fantasy, I also had work to do, and while Scott’s patience might stretch to taking me to the Miramax party or being amused at
Jake’s chatting me up, if I wasn’t there this morning to read out his schedule to him and arrange for his driver to come by, he might revoke his decision to fire me. Or yell at me. Neither of which was desirable.

So I loped—cavewoman style, with my shoulders hunched to make myself less noticeable—into the bathroom and helped myself to all the things I needed to ensure that I wasn’t arrested or ostracized when I arrived back in the outside world again.

“You’re going, honey?”

“I have to, I’m sorry.” I sat gently on the bed next to him and kissed his cheek. It felt oddly intimate and . . . well, just plain odd.

“ ’Kay, well, I’ll see you soon, right? I’ll call you. That was fun, right?”

“That was great fun,” I said, and planted another kiss on his shoulder for luck. “See you around.” And I took one last look at him. His eyes were closed shut, and his black hair was like a wild doormat on the pillow, sticking up and crazy. He had the dark, scratchy beginnings of a beard, and the creased white sheets barely covered his chest, which was a warm golden color, doubtless from Moroccan afternoons by the pool.

“Bye, angel,” he said as he opened one sleepy brown eye and looked at me. I resisted the urge to clamber back into bed with him and stood up.

Then I hit the road. I picked up my purse and made my hushed way out across the warm, plushly carpeted room, stopping to pick up a couple of faxes that had been slipped under the door in the night. God, these boys and their faxes, I thought fondly as I reached down for the shiny bits of paper. I’d almost forgotten that Luke was a producer until now. He’d so cleverly dissuaded me from my prejudices that I had begun to think of him as normal.

The header at the top sheet of paper read
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
. I glanced at the columns to see what the number-one movie was and how much it had taken in. This was as automatic for me now as scratching an itch. Then I put the pages onto the table beside the door. The
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
fax curled up and slid onto the floor. I picked it up and was about to place it back down on top of the other faxes when I noticed a huge heart scrawled on the bottom of the next page. Next to it were enough kisses to give someone lockjaw. And I do firmly believe that if you read something that wasn’t meant for your eyes and it upsets you, then you’ve only gotten what you deserve. But I read the fax anyway.