They made the too-short drive in silence. Only when the limo had pulled to a stop in front of the studio did she turn to face him.
“Morning and night, huh?” she inquired.
“That’s right.”
A smile suddenly tilted the corners of her mouth. “Maybe I could get used to this, after all.”
Jason grinned. “I can assure you it’s habit-forming,” he said, his gaze fixed on her mouth again.
She blushed furiously and rushed from the car the instant Henry opened the door.
“Break a leg,” Jason called after her.
She turned back and regarded him soberly. “If you knew what a klutz I am onstage, you’d never in a million years say something like that.”
“It’s a theater expression,” he reassured her. “It’s for luck. You’re not supposed to take it literally.”
“I’ll try to remember that when I start tripping over a cable.”
Jason started to slide toward her, but she held up her hand in a warning gesture.
“In the shadows,” she reminded him.
“I just wanted to tell you that you’re going to be fantastic.”
“Is that a promise?”
“A guarantee.”
She grinned. “I don’t believe you, but thanks.”
Only after she’d walked away did Jason allow himself to murmur a little prayer for both their sakes that this wouldn’t be the one time that renowned golden gut of his had failed him.
9
This was such a mistake, Callie thought desperately as she prepared to tape her first real scene for Within Our Reach. Every time she glanced across the soundstage and saw the little red light on the camera blink on, her throat clogged up as if it had been stuffed with cotton. Her palms were so slippery she couldn’t have grasped anything smoother than industrial-grade sandpaper.
She hated Jason for his so-called discovery of “tomorrow’s greatest daytime star,” as he’d been describing her to the media for the past fourteen days. She hated Terry for heaping guilt on her and waving the existence of threatening little notes under her nose. But most of all she despised Eunice for pushing her over the edge by delivering her mother to her doorstep.
It wasn’t that the visit was going all that badly. Callie had been so caught up in preparing for her soap opera debut that she’d spent very little time at home. Her mother seemed content enough to be left alone. She hadn’t even wanted to come to the set today for the taping.
Callie had no idea how her mother spent her time. They were almost like roommates with very little in common and very separate lives. When she had time to think about it, that struck her as awfully sad. She became irritated with Eunice all over again, because it was easier than trying to bridge the huge gulf between herself and her mother. That one afternoon they’d spent together had apparently been only an interlude, not the genuine new beginning she’d hoped for.
As if the tension between Callie and her sister hadn’t been thick enough, Eunice was now in a snit because Callie had landed what her sister considered the dream job of a lifetime. At this precise instant, Callie would gladly have turned over the role of Kelly Piper to her sister. Maybe Eunice would have been able to remember the lines. She was certainly able to recall in vivid detail every slight by Callie, going all the way back to kindergarten, it seemed.
“Quiet on the set!” shouted Paul Locklear, a veteran soap director who’d been hired specifically to coach Callie through her first nerve-racking scenes. Tall, with thinning hair and a slight paunch, he was the most unprepossessing man Callie had ever met, yet he could command the most difficult actor with a mild suggestion. He was so calm and unflappable that a tank could roll through the set and he’d never bat an eye. Given the odd little accidents that had been occurring on the set the past few days, his focus had been critical. Everyone’s nerves were on edge.
“Callie, are you ready?” he asked quietly.
She swallowed hard and nodded.
Terry leaned down and whispered, “You’re going to knock ’em dead, dollface.”
It was an interesting turn of phrase given the fact that they were standing over a body, the corpse of Terry’s most recent leading lady. Cop Kelly had been called in to solve the murder and—if subsequent, hastily revised scripts were to be believed—console the grieving fiancé.
Callie wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere down the line he also turned out to be the prime suspect—probably right after he made her pregnant. Terry’s character had developed a dangerous edge the writers seemed all too eager to explore.
Try as she might to take the taping in stride, Callie felt as if she were in the middle of some otherworldly experience. If she looked anywhere except in the direction of the cameras, she was surrounded by luxury.
Lauren Fox’s penthouse apartment, where the body had been discovered, was filled with incredible artwork, on loan from a Madison Avenue gallery. She had been the show’s resident fashion queen, with a wardrobe more elegant than two or three designer showrooms combined and a lifestyle to match. A good many of those clothes had been tossed from one end of the set to another in a ransacking apparently meant to make the murder appear to be a robbery.
That wardrobe was probably one reason why she’d been killed, Callie decided cynically. The show’s tightening budget hadn’t been able to afford another selection of outrageously expensive clothes.
To top it off, the character had already had more weddings than Zsa Zsa Gabor or Elizabeth Taylor. Terry had been her latest conquest and he’d been only days away from walking down the aisle, which would have meant another lavish wedding episode, followed by a blissful honeymoon on location. That bullet wound in Lauren’s temple had been far cheaper than a new gown, a trousseau, buckets of flowers and a trip to some Caribbean island for the location shoot.
“Let’s do it,” Paul said, snapping Callie back to the present. “In five, four, three, two, one... Action!” He
