Triple Threat (2 page)

“You can’t be serious.” It was Nick’s turn to push the script back across the desk. “I wouldn’t play opposite that goddamn lightweight to save my career. Even if he was the asshole ex-husband and I got to beat on his pretty-boy face every night.”

“Get over it, Nick. You’re Trent Savage. He’s not, even if he claims he’d have been the better choice. His fans’ bitching and moaning on those stupid message boards is just sour grapes.”

“What about the fact that people will see me as a wife beater? Stop me in Starbucks to berate me...” The most important of those people being his mom. If she managed to sneak away from his father long enough to catch the show, she’d probably watch the whole thing from between her fingers, experiencing every blow. Stage an intervention to curb his violent tendencies. Definitely cry. A lot.

“That’s the price of being an artist.” Garrett poured another drink, handed it to Nick and stared out at his fortieth-floor glass-plated view.

“Some artist.” Nick took a sip. He’d wondered when Garrett would get around to sharing the Maker’s Mark. “I’ve spent the past six years playing a globe-trotting, womanizing fortune hunter. Not exactly Shakespeare.”

Hell, he wasn’t even sure if what he did could be considered acting anymore. And now his own agent wanted to serve him up as fodder for critics like that jerk at the
Times,
the one who made no secret of his disgust for what he called Broadway’s “star worship.”

As much as Nick hated to admit it, this whole thing scared him. It had been years since he’d been onstage. He figured he’d pick up where he left off before heading west, at some obscure way-off-Broadway theater where he could flop without risking career suicide.

Nick took another sip of bourbon. It scorched a warm trail down his throat, but not even that familiar, normally reassuring sensation could help him shake the feeling that he was in way over his head. Broadway? Who the fuck was he kidding?

“What’s that motto you’re always repeating?” Garrett’s tone was mocking. “‘Be beautiful, be brilliant’?”

“Be bold. Be brave.” The words jolted him back almost fifteen years to a lakeside dock and the girl who’d first said them and changed his life.

Holly Nelson.
He wondered if she remembered that night at the cast party as vividly as he did. The breeze ruffling her wavy brown hair. Her hand, warm and insistent on his arm, urging him to dream big. Her wide, bottle-green eyes seeing him completely, as weird as that sounded. Not just who he was but who he could become.

No, she probably didn’t remember any of that. Probably didn’t remember their kiss, either, although it was imprinted in his brain. He’d known she was inexperienced, and he’d meant it to be innocent, a thank-you for telling him what he needed to hear. But the second his lips met hers, all thoughts of innocence had disintegrated. She’d melted in his arms like butter, soft and pliant. He’d closed his eyes against the rush of pleasure as her mouth opened to him and her hands fluttered up to stroke his chest through his T-shirt. He’d been so far gone he hadn’t seen Jessie Pagano sauntering across the lawn to interrupt them until it was too late. Lost camera, his ass.

While he’d thought about Holly over the years more than he cared to admit, Nick hadn’t kept track of her. He owed her for kick-starting his acting career, but it would be presumptuous to track her down. He imagined her back home in suburban Stockton, married to a high school gym teacher, with kids she kissed and praised all day.
What would she think of this whole Broadway thing?

“You okay, buddy?”

Garrett’s voice brought Nick back to the present. He downed the rest of his bourbon and wiped his mouth, nodding. “Fine.”

“So you’ll meet with the production team?”

Shit.
“Where and when?”

“New York.” Garrett paused to finish off his drink, and once again Nick knew what followed was going to be bad news. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

“No way. I just got off a goddamn plane. Can’t it wait a few days?”

“No can do. Casting was supposed to be finished last week but they held off, waiting for you to return stateside. Seems someone over there’s got a real hard-on for you in this part.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“You said it, brother. That’s why I booked both of us on the red-eye.”

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Sure this part will catapult you to the next level, if that’s what you mean. Rumor has it Spielberg’s shopping a Joe DiMaggio biopic. You’d be a great fit for the title role, and this play is just the thing to put you on his radar.”

Damn.
Nick would give his left nut to work with Spielberg. And Joltin’ Joe was a national hero.

He slumped over and ran a hand through his hair. It was a foregone conclusion Garrett would win this battle, but he felt compelled to take one last stand. “I’m starving, exhausted and in serious need of a shower.”

“No problem.” Garrett crossed the room and grabbed his jacket off a coatrack. “We’ve got just enough time to get to your place for you to clean up and pack. You can sleep and eat on the plane.”

“What about you?”

Garrett picked up an overnight bag from behind the coatrack. “All set.”

“Cocky son of a bitch.” Nick grinned in spite of himself.

“That’s why I make the big bucks.” Garrett swung open his office door and strode out.

Nick grabbed the script and followed him. There was no way he’d be sleeping on the plane. If he was auditioning for the powers that be, he intended to be prepared. He needed to reread the play at least twice, break down specific scenes, write a character bio... Not easy tasks given his dyslexia.

“This better be worth it.” He slipped on a pair of Oakley sunglasses. “Or I’ll be in the market for a new agent. And a new best friend.”

2

H
OLLY
R
YAN TURNED
her head, trying to catch a glimpse of her backside in the black linen dress pants, and scowled. “They’re too tight. I don’t know what was wrong with what I had on.”

“These old things?” Her sister Noelle nudged the pale pink button-down and khakis lying in a heap on the floor with her foot. “Please. They made you look like a hausfrau. Now you’ve got a waist. And an ass. And how about those boobs? I feel like I’ve just unearthed Atlantis.”

“Which brings us to our next problem.” Holly toyed with the plunging neckline of the silk blouse, another loaner from her baby sister, who, at twenty-six, was a full-blown fashionista. “Isn’t this a little...”

“Flattering? Attractive? Eye-catching?”

“I was thinking more like revealing. Inappropriate. Slutty.”

Noelle put a hand to her heart and staggered as if she’d been shot. “You wound me, sis. That’s my lucky Marc Jacobs chemise. I wore it to my first opening night party.
Giselle.
”

Holly trudged to her bed and collapsed. All this primping was exhausting. First, Noelle had insisted on styling Holly’s notoriously stick-straight hair. Then she’d spent an hour applying just the right amount of makeup. And now she was forcing Holly to play dress-up. It was like senior prom all over again, when twelve-year-old Noelle had schooled Holly on all the “girlie girl” things that were still so foreign to her.

“It’s not that I’m not grateful for all your effort, Noe.” Holly flopped onto her back, bouncing a bit on the too-firm mattress. “I just don’t understand why it’s necessary.”

“First of all,” Noelle began, sitting on the bed next to her and holding up one finger in a gesture that said a list of reasons was forthcoming, “you deserve a little pampering after the past couple of years you’ve had. Consider it your reward for dumping that bottom-feeder, Clark.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Holly pushed up onto her elbows. Her sister didn’t know the half of it. No one did except the police and a handful of medical professionals.

“And second—” Noelle held up another finger “—you’re a big-time playwright now. You’ve got to look the part.”

Holly rolled her eyes. “I’m nowhere near big-time.”

Noelle gave her a playful smack upside the head. “Wake up and smell the success, girl! Your play’s headed for Broadway. With at least one, maybe even two major movie stars. I’d call that big-time.”

She had a point. But Holly had a hard time thinking of herself as anything other than the perennial screw-up in a family of overachievers. Her three younger siblings had each climbed their career mountains and planted their flags on top, wisely ignoring the example of their hopeless older sister. Holly had had more jobs than hairstyles, from substitute teaching to bartending to dog walking. It had become something of a family joke, guessing what she’d “explore” next. “Holly’s follies,” they called them.

The “follies” stopped a couple of years into her five-year marriage, when Clark had decided he wanted her at home, happy to greet him at the door each evening with a gin and tonic in her hand and dinner on the table. Always game, Holly had tried the new role.

Massive mistake.

Domestic goddesshood evaded her, at least in Clark’s estimation. Dinner was always overdone or underdone, the toilets never sufficiently shiny, his shirts never starched enough. Her saving grace—what made the debacle bearable—was an article in a women’s magazine about the benefits of journaling.

And thus H. N. Ryan, author, was born.

“I’ll believe it when I see the marquee go up.” A healthy chunk of her still doubted that would ever happen. There were too many ways things could crash and burn in high def. “Until then...”

“Honestly, Holls.” Noelle pushed a strand of long blond hair, so different from Holly’s, behind one ear. “You worry too much. You said the producers signed Malcolm Justice to play the cop, right?”

Holly nodded and sat up fully.

“And this new guy? The one who’s reading for you today?” Noelle turned away from Holly to the selection of shoes she had lined up at the foot of the bed. Holly groaned inwardly. Not one of them had a heel less than four inches.

“No clue. All Ethan would say is that he’s a grade-A film star and major heartthrob.”

Which was strange, Holly thought. They never kept secrets. Ethan Phelps had been her best friend since their freshman year at Wesleyan when she’d helped him conquer Chaucer and Dickens. He’d rewarded her with the irritating nickname “Hollypop,” a name he unfortunately still insisted on using.

When her agent told her that
The Lesser Vessel
had been optioned for Broadway, her second thought—after
Are you drunk?
—was whether they’d consider Ethan to direct. Fortunately, the producers loved his regional-theater work.

“What if it’s George Clooney?” Noelle froze, her ballerina’s feet in a pensive third position. “Or Tom Cruise?”

Holly shook her head. “Too old. And too...Tom Cruise.”

“Ooh, how about Nick Damone?” Holly almost choked on her tongue, but Noelle, who had moved on to a collection of jewelry spread across the dresser, didn’t seem to notice. “You could finally do something about that crush you had on him in high school.”

“What do you mean?”

“Please, Holls. Give me some credit.”

“But you were
ten.
” And all this time she thought Ethan was the only one who knew. She’d confessed her long-ago crush on the now-famous movie star one night shortly after her divorce was final, an aftereffect of too many rum and Cokes.

But she’d never told anyone—not even Ethan—that she was the one who’d convinced Nick to ditch his football scholarship and go to New York, or that he’d kissed her that night at the cast party. Her first kiss, and no other boy had come close to making her heart race and her insides quiver the way Nick had. Of course, that magic moment had ended all too soon when Jessie Pagano came looking for her camera.
Right.
With one crook of her perfectly manicured finger she’d lured Nick away like a pied piper in do-me heels.

Ethan and Noelle would have never let her live that down. So Holly resorted to the safest tactic she knew: deny, deny, deny. “What did you know about crushes? I do not,
did not,
have a thing for Nick Damone.”

“Then why are you blushing like a virgin at a strip club?”

“I am not blushing!” Holly covered her face with her hands.
Crap.
Her sister was right. Her cheeks felt as hot as the pottery kiln she’d bought during what her family referred to as her “terra-cotta phase.”

“It’s no big deal. I’ve got a thing for Ryan Gosling. Seven minutes alone with that man in a closet and I’d definitely be in heaven.”

“Thing or no thing, it doesn’t matter. According to
Variety,
Nick’s still in Hong Kong shooting the new Trent Savage flick.”

“Well, whoever your mystery movie star is, you need these to close the deal.” Noelle picked up a pair of silver peep-toe sling backs and dangled them from her fingertips. “Christian Louboutin.”

As if that meant anything to Holly. “No way.”

Noelle smiled with far more wicked intent than any woman wanted to see in her baby sister. “You have to. Guys think they’re sexy.”

“I’m shooting for professional, not sexy.” Holly went to her closet and pulled out a pair of simple, low black pumps, the only pair of heels she owned. Practically new, since she barely wore them. She shoved them on. “These are more my speed.”

“Oh, well. Can’t blame a girl for trying.” Noelle tossed the Louboutins aside, bent down and rummaged around in her Gucci carry-on, pulling out a thick black belt. “Just a couple of final touches.”

She fastened the belt around Holly’s waist, centering the large oval buckle, then handed her a pair of garnet studs and a matching necklace from the bureau. “Now you’re ready to kick ass and take names. And if it’s—please, God—Ryan Gosling, call me and don’t let him out the door before I get there.”

Half an hour later, Holly paced outside the Film Center Building on Ninth Avenue, hitting Redial on her cell phone again. And again. And again. “Come on, Ethan! Pick up, dammit! Where are you?”

“Right behind you, Hollypop.”

She jumped and spun around, teetering until Ethan grabbed her by the arms and steadied her. “Ethan, you scared me! And you’re late. And you know I hate that nickname.”