Starstruck (26 page)

It was a beautiful morning. The last orange streaks of sunrise had retreated, and the sky over the canyon was dazzlingly blue. As they made their way down the rocky path from the paddock, Margo caught her first glimpse of the hollow. It was utterly transformed. The ground was laid with what looked like nearly an acre of sod, transforming what had been a scrubby Southern California canyon into one of England’s verdant hills. In the middle of the lawn stood two turrets, festooned with the royal standard and the Cross of St. George. Between them milled about thirty extras in plates of armor and Tudor livery, doubtless indulging in the traditional film extra activities of chain-smoking and complaining about the weather and/or the breakfast they had just been fed. At the end of the grass was the enormous modern camera, surrounded by a forest of clanking generators and cylindrical lights. It was utterly incongruous, utterly magical, utterly mad. Utterly Hollywood.

At the center of it all was the small figure of Raoul Kurtzman, bundled tightly in overcoat and scarf despite the incipient heat. Beside him was Dane, astride a giant black charger. In a dark velvet doublet and loose white shirt left open at the throat, his perfect profile finely etched in shadow by the
rapidly rising sun, he looked more handsome than Margo had ever seen him.
Damn
, she thought furiously.
Damn, damn, damn
.

“Good luck, Miss Sterling,” Owen said. “I’ll be standing by if you need me.” He let go of the reins.

Taking as deep a breath as her costume would allow, Margo trotted Sophie gingerly over to her director and costar.

“Margo,” Dane said curtly, glancing up at her. The makeup department had affixed some kind of jaunty little mustache to his upper lip, but he could make even that look good. “Nice of you to join us.” Clearly, he was itching for a fight.

“Hello, Dane.”

“Miss Sterling, there you are.” Mr. Kurtzman clapped his hands together. Most people went sort of craggy and pale over the course of a movie shoot, as though the strain of the filming and lack of sleep were slowly turning them to weathered stone. Not Raoul Kurtzman. Over the past few weeks, he had completely transformed from the tired little man she had first met on soundstage fourteen into a smiling, effusive, rosy-cheeked bundle of energy.
He needs to be making a picture
, Margo thought.
It’s like oxygen to him
. “Let me look at you.” Margo obliged, pulling Sophie back a few steps. Mr. Kurtzman surveyed them with an appraising eye. “Very good,” he said. “Very good indeed. Just a small adjustment we need in the arrangement of the skirt.… Wardrobe!” He snapped his fingers and two women in smocks came hustling forth to fussily rearrange the folds of cloth over Sophie’s hindquarters, seemingly heedless of any possible unpleasant surprises from that end.

“Now.” Kurtzman clapped again. “Today, we begin with a very simple shot. Simple for you, that is, not simple for me. It is the moment when Lady Jane Grey”—he gestured toward
Margo—“and Lord Guildford Dudley, her betrothed”—he bowed toward Dane—“meet. When I call action, Lady Jane, accompanied by her father, the Duke of Suffolk”—he nodded toward the cluster of director’s chairs in the shadow, where Sir Benjamin Cattermore, the august and elderly British actor playing the role, was poring intently over a racing form—“and her liveried men, will ride out from the castle. From the other end rides Lord Dudley with his armored men. And you meet in the middle. Understand?”

“Mr. Kurtzman!” a man called from behind the camera. “We need you to look at these lights.”

The director turned back to Margo and Dane. “You just stay here and—how do you say it in English—sit tight? Sit tight until I call places, yes?” He darted away.

Margo twisted Sophie’s mane idly between her fingers, not daring to meet Dane’s eye. She could sense that beside her, he was doing the same thing.
Well, this is comfortable
, she thought. The initial thrill of moviemaking wore off quickly, Margo had found. The acting part was exciting, but mostly you spent a lot of time sitting around doing nothing as they calibrated the lights, then recalibrated them, then moved the camera three inches to the left, then back again. It was trying enough in the best of circumstances. If she and Dane couldn’t bring themselves to talk to each other, the day was going to be excruciating.

Dane finally cracked. “So,” he said. “How’s it going for you?”

“How’s
what
going for me?” Margo replied. Grateful as she was to him for initiating the conversation, she had no intention of making this any easier for him than it had to be. After all, he was the one who’d agreed to shut her out first.

“The picture.” He offered a wan smile. “At least, let’s start with that.”

“Fine,” she said. “Although you’d know that already if you’d stopped by the set.”

“It’s not a school play, Margo,” Dane said testily. “I come when I’m called. Otherwise my time is my own. And besides,” he added, giving his charger’s reins a little tug, “I may be listed as a costar, but this is your show. My role is actually pretty small. Most of my scenes were shot before you even started.”

“Oh?” Margo raised her eyebrows loftily. “I didn’t realize that.”

“Margo, please. Don’t pull that high-and-mighty duchess bit on me. You know very well what a rush job this was. They’re massively over budget as it is. Karp has to please New York, and New York likes things cheap.”

“Like me, I suppose,” Margo said. She twisted Sophie’s reins tightly around her hand. “Nice and cheap.”

“Margo—”

“Just a nice,
cheap
replacement for Diana.”

“I didn’t say it,” Dane replied coldly. “But if that’s your aim, I have to say you’re doing a pretty good job.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

Dane’s charger let out a whinny, rearing back on his hind legs as a desert lizard scuttled across the path. Pulling back on the reins, Dane patted his neck soothingly. “Nothing,” he said when the horse was calm. “Forget it.”

“No,” Margo insisted. “Say what you mean, Dane.”

Dane kept patting his horse. “How
is
Jimmy, Margo?”

There. There it was at last
. The all-singing, all-dancing, ten-ton elephant in the room—or rather, on the hillside. Margo
glanced over at the liveried extras standing in a cluster as they received direction from an assistant director. The smoke from their cigarettes formed a small cloud above their heads. “Marvelous, thank you.”

“From what I read, the two of you have certainly been painting the town red.”

“Since when do you read the gossip columns?”

“Oh, I pick up the odd rag here and there. Doctor’s office, barbershop, that sort of thing. I saw quite a precious little photo spread of the two of you the other day. Jimmy prancing around dressed as an elf, I think it was?” He paused. “Or perhaps was it a fairy?”

There was a cruelty to his tone that Margo didn’t care for. She and Jimmy knew how foolish they both looked, but that didn’t give Dane any right to mock them. “It was Santa Claus, as it happens,” she said coolly.

“Santa!” Dane snapped his fingers. “How could I forget? Curious, though, that they should run it in the summer instead of waiting for the holidays—unless they don’t expect the two of you to make it that long. But I suppose they’ll let you know when you’ve served your time. And I suppose we’ll see if I’ve got any appetite for Jimmy Molloy’s sloppy seconds.”

“Flattering a thought as that may be, Mr. Forrest, I hardly think we’ll get to find out.” Her tone was icy, hard, bemused.
Vintage Mildred Frobisher
, she thought with a surprising burst of gratitude.
At least Mother taught me something
. “Things are going very well between Jimmy and me. So well, in fact, that he’s escorting me to Pasadena tonight. We’ll be attending the coming-out party of a
very
dear friend at the club there.”

“Bringing him home to the folks, huh?” Dane gave a hard
laugh. “Well, that’s just swell, Margo. Really swell. It does my cynic’s heart good to hear it. I suppose we’ll be reading all about the engagement ring in
Picture Palace
any day now.
America’s Princess, A Fairy-Tale Bride
. I can see the pictures now. Of course, they’ll recast your father if he’s too bald and your mother if she can’t cry on cue, but what does that matter? It’s a small price to pay for being the envy of every girl in the world.” He looked her straight in the eye. “Just as long as you know that deep down, they all hate you.”

“Dane!”

“It’s true, you know. They hate us. They say they love us, but deep down, they hate us. Because we remind them that life is unfair.”

Margo was silent for a minute. “Well, they’re right. Life is unfair. About Karp … I—I had no choice,” she said, her voice breaking. “You would have done the same thing.”

Dane shook his head. “I don’t know about that, Margo. Because you went into Karp’s office with more power than anyone in the business, and you came out with nothing.”

“What?” Margo blinked back astonished tears. “What do you mean?”

“You had the most powerful thing of all,” Dane said sadly. “The power of having nothing to lose. You aren’t like the rest of us—the gypsies and strivers and walking wounded. You could have walked away. Gone back to your beautiful house in Pasadena, and your canopy bed and your swimming pool and the long line of nice, solid, honest young men who would give their eyeteeth for a chance to make you happy. You could have kept your soul.”

“What do you know about my soul?” she hissed. Suddenly,
she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to slap that fake mustache right off his smug face. “What do you know about my
life
? You barely know me!” She had never spoken like this to anyone before, let alone a grown man, but she was too furious to stop. “You’re the one who got me into this mess in the first place. You
knew
the tabloids had it in for you. You knew they’d jump all over any girl you so much as smiled at, like a pack of hounds who smelled blood. God, it’s so sick, it’s like a game to you! And it’s not just me, is it, Dane? There’s that blonde you were out with at the Troc the other night, and Amanda Farraday …”

“Margo—”

“And Diana! Because it all comes back to her, doesn’t it? It all comes back to Diana. And you know where she is, don’t you? You know exactly what happened to Diana. Why won’t you tell the truth, Dane?
Why won’t you tell the truth about Diana?
”

Dane grabbed hold of Sophie’s reins, pulling Margo close, horse and all. His eyes blazed, searching hers.
He’s going to kiss me
, Margo thought wildly.
Or hit me
. Or maybe both.

“Places, boys and girls!” Raoul Kurtzman’s shout, amplified through the megaphone, echoed through the canyon like the voice of God. “Places, please! Let’s try it from the top!”

Dane kept his hand on Sophie’s reins. His face was so close to Margo’s she could feel the heat radiating off his skin. She could smell the sweat. “Because I’m afraid, Margo,” he whispered hoarsely. His hot breath tickled her neck. “Because I’m a coward.”

And then he galloped away to begin the scene.

T
wo greens, one blue
.

After all this time, Gabby Preston had finally figured out the pills. It was just like when she was little and Viola used to buy her a sack of raisins and almonds as a treat. She spent what seemed like ages trying them out in different combinations until she hit on the perfect ratio: two raisins, one almond. The perfect balance of sweet and salty, soft and crunchy.

The pills were like that.
Two greens, one blue
. Not too wired, not too sleepy. She was bursting with energy, but her thoughts weren’t all jumbled up the way they used to be. She was thinking clearly, so clearly that her thoughts were practically like the paving stones of a shining road, and all she had to do was follow it. It was like Viola used to say back in the old days, when things got a little hairy: “Don’t worry, baby, I’ve got a plan.”
Well, now Gabby had a plan. Even if she was the only person who could see it clearly.

Okay
, Gabby thought as she approached Margo Sterling’s bougainvillea-draped door—leave it to Margo to somehow wind up with the prettiest bungalow on the lot.
Step one
. She took a deep breath, smoothing down the skirt of her plaid dress. To some people it might seem the teeniest, tiniest, eensiest bit, well,
mean
, what she was about to do. But getting Jimmy back was the first part of the plan. However you sliced it, Gabby and Jimmy belonged together. They were like Mickey and Judy, Fred and Ginger, bacon and eggs. On their own, they were great, but together, well, they just made
sense
. Gabby knew it. Jimmy knew it. Even the studio knew it, or they wouldn’t keep putting them together in picture after picture. All she had to do was make Margo see, and everyone would be better off. The order of the universe would be restored. And she and Margo could go back to being friends again. Proper friends.
Best
friends.

She raised her hand to knock, but the door pushed open at her touch, revealing the darkened room.