“Not that kiss,” Terry commented drily. “You link the deal and that kiss and you’ll be in court for sexual harassment.”
Callie gritted her teeth. “Forget the kiss. I am not the new star of anything. Why can’t you get that through your head?”
“Because I know what I’m doing,” Jason responded. “You’ll be spectacular.” He glanced toward Terry for support.
“You do have the kind of face the camera loves,” Terry concurred. He grabbed a paper someone had left behind on a neighboring chair. “Just look at this. You’re beautiful, darling.”
Despite herself, Callie found herself transfixed. It wasn’t so much that she looked glamorous and sophisticated that stunned her. It was the luminous expression on her face as Jason’s lips claimed hers. The photographer must have caught her before fascination had been transformed into irritation. She practically glowed. Jason appeared no less enchanted. No wonder the copywriters had jumped to all sorts of wild conclusions about their relationship.
“I don’t know,” she said, her certainty wavering for the first time. Would it be so terrible to take the job, especially considering what the amount of money mentioned in that contract would allow her to do to make her mother’s life easier?
“Trust me, darling. Would I lie to you?” Terry asked.
“In a heartbeat,” she asserted as her common sense reasserted itself. She could not allow herself to be manipulated into doing something that was totally alien to her talents and her personality. Not that closing huge stock deals didn’t occasionally require a bit of acting, but the audience was very limited.
“His motives are especially suspect when you might be the only thing between him and the unemployment line,” Neil contributed darkly.
Callie looked from Neil to Terry to Jason. “What does he mean? You aren’t holding his job hostage to make sure I take this role, are you? Not even you would stoop that low.”
“No, it’s not like that,” Jason said, though he didn’t look particularly wounded by the charge, which meant she probably had some part of it right.
“The show is in serious trouble, though,” he added. “The ratings are down.”
“They’re in the toilet,” Terry confirmed.
“The sponsors are threatening to bail on us. No sponsors, no show. That’s the nature of the business,” Jason said. “But the minute I saw you on-screen, I knew we had a chance to turn things around.”
“Could you dump a little more pressure on her?” Neil asked with disgust. “Talk about a couple of manipulating bastards.”
Callie reached over and patted his hand. “It’s okay. They’re not going to pressure me into doing anything,” she assured him. Then she looked at Jason. “Is the show really in that much trouble? Are you seriously considering canceling it?”
“It may be the only option,” Jason confirmed.
He said it so bluntly that she knew at once he wasn’t playing mind games with her. Cancellation had been discussed at very high levels at the network.
“What about new writers? A hot new story line?” she suggested.
“That’s where you come in,” he explained.
“Wouldn’t you be better off hiring some recognized actress who knows what the heck she’s doing?”
“Too expensive,” he insisted. “Besides, this will make a terrific sort of Cinderella story. The media will be all over it.”
“Like vultures,” Neil commented.
Callie sighed. She looked at Terry and thought of those vicious notes he’d wanted her to investigate, the mysterious falling cabinet. Then she considered the all-too-real threat of cancellation. Guilt weighed heavily on her.
Even so, she knew she was going to have to let him down. As silly as it seemed given her lack of alternatives, she couldn’t walk away from the profession she’d chosen to play at acting.
She gazed at Terry with regret. “I’m sorry. I really am. I can’t do it. I’m a stockbroker,” she insisted one last time, “not an actress.”
“That’s okay, dollface,” he reassured her. “If you can’t, you can’t. I’ll survive.”
Jason scowled at him. “Walker, you’re not the only one whose career is at stake,” he reminded him.
“Oh?” Neil said nastily. “Yours, too?”
“I was referring to the rest of the cast.” He fixed his gaze on Callie. “Please, it’s not as if I’m asking you to work the coal mines or to dig ditches. It’s an acting job, a very lucrative acting job. You might have fun.”
“And I might be publicly humiliated.” She met his gaze evenly. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”
She looked around the table. Terry appeared resigned. Jason seemed to be gearing up for another battle. Only Neil shot her a look of understanding, even as he tried to cheer up Terry.
“I have to go,” she said suddenly, tossing her napkin onto the table and taking off. To her relief, no one followed. She wasn’t sure she could have said no a second time, knowing how much depended on her relenting.
Miserable over having to let Terry down twice when he’d asked for her help and furious with Jason for putting her in that position in the first place, she detoured to Central Park West and walked along the edge of the park to get a grip on her mixed emotions before finally venturing home again.
When she eventually trudged up the stairs, she fully expected Terry’s door to be thrown open and at least two people to accost her for another round of badgering. When the door remained tightly shut, she sighed and continued to climb. She couldn’t help wondering if her friendship with Terry would weather her letting him down.
Not until she turned on the third-floor landing and started up the last flight of steps did she realize that someone was waiting in the shadows.
“Jason?”
When no one replied, her steps became slower and more cautious. “Who’s there?”
“Callie?” a frail, tentative voice called out.
Callie stopped in her tracks as the voice registered. “Mother? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
She took
