course of the morning, and those brief glimpses had kept his body fired up and ready for her, but he hadn’t been able to speak to her. He had caught her watching him a few times while they were filming, and he felt like knowing she was watching him improved his performance no end.

Unfortunately, Valerie kept fudging her lines, and what should have been a quick and simple scene to film ended up taking almost three hours. Callin suspected it was all part of Valerie’s play to keep him and Brianne apart. He had to wonder how she planned on running interference between them long-term. She was likely to get fired if she held production up like this at every session.

Or maybe now he was overthinking the situation and she was just having one of those bad days. Every actor had them at times—those days where the simplest words got tangled up or came out wrong, and every scene became a real slog. It was like an avalanche. One tiny mistake made the person so self-conscious, they ended up making more mistakes until it was almost impossible to get a single sentence out correctly.

It could be that, but Callin suspected it was most likely to be his first theory that proved to be true.

Finally, they got the footage they needed and the director called for a break for lunch. Before Callin could react, Valerie went to speak to Brianne, who nodded and immediately hurried away from the set. Callin figured Valerie had asked Brianne to go and pick up some lunch for her, and he tried not to hate her too much in that moment—it wasn’t like it was unreasonable for Valerie to ask Brianne to do that.

Even if she wasn’t running interference between the two of them, she likely would have made the same request of her assistant at any time. He had asked Shauna to do it for him plenty of times with no ulterior motive. That was what made Valerie such a good game player. Her moves were all carefully thought out, and from the outside looking in, most of them seemed reasonable enough that if the person being played spoke up, they would end up looking like they were making something out of nothing, and Valerie would come out of the whole thing looking like the innocent victim of a paranoid mind.

Callin had grabbed himself a sandwich and eaten it in his trailer. Half an hour had passed since Valerie had spoken to Brianne and he figured she would be back from wherever she had been sent by now. He stood up, brushing a few crumbs from his jeans, and headed back toward the set to look for Brianne.

He wandered to her office, but she wasn’t there. He kept going, looking in the cafeteria and all around the set. He couldn’t find her anywhere. He asked a couple of different people if they had seen her and they all gave him the same answer: not since the morning’s filming had been wrapped up.

Callin could feel himself getting annoyed. It was one thing for Valerie to try and keep him and Brianne apart, but sending her off on a series of wild goose chases when she should have been having her own lunch was taking things a bit too far. On a whim, he turned around, left the set, and headed for Valerie’s trailer.

As he walked, he told himself to calm down. He didn’t want to go into the trailer with guns blazing when there was still a chance he was wrong about what had happened. It was a small chance, but a chance nonetheless. It was possible Brianne had an appointment or something and had asked Valerie for permission to attend it. He decided to play it subtle. His dragon stirred inside of him. His dragon didn’t really believe in being subtle, but Callin kept himself under control. There was no way he would give Valerie the satisfaction of him accusing her of something and being wrong about it.

He reached Valerie’s trailer and tapped on the door. She called for him to come in and he opened the door and stepped inside.

“Callin. What a lovely surprise,” Valerie smiled.

Her smile told him this was anything but a surprise. She was sitting at the table, eating a salad of some sort, but to Callin, it looked staged, like she had just jumped into position when he knocked on her door. He knew in that moment that he had been right; this had all been planned. His dragon stirred again, and again, Callin pushed it down. He wasn’t ready to let Valerie see she was bothering him. If she thought she was getting under his skin, she would only keep trying to keep him and Brianne apart. If he acted like he really wasn’t too bothered either way, she would hopefully get bored of the game and give it up.

“Where’s Brianne?” Callin asked.

He saw Valerie flinch slightly, her smile slipping as he said Brianne’s name. She speared a baby tomato and popped it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, watching Callin, who fought to control his anger and not slam his fist down on the table and demand an answer now.

“She’s gone,” Valerie said finally, her smile very much back in place.

“What do you mean gone?” Callin demanded. “I swear, Valerie, if you’ve fired her because of yesterday…”

“I haven’t,” Valerie interrupted him. “I’ve sold her.”

Callin sat down opposite Valerie and looked her in the eye.

“Tell me what the hell is going on here, Valerie, or I swear I will make you regret it,” he growled.

She smiled at him again and put her fork down, and then she crossed her hands on the table in front of her.

“Brianne’s great-grandmother and I came to an arrangement many years ago,” she said. “The woman came to me for protection. I don’t know how she got mixed up with shifters, but she knew about us and she knew I was a dragon. She

Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату