Chapter Four
“Plan Chromatic is shooting a new video and they want you.” Michael’s agent, Andrew Birch at the Full Sails Agency, sounded pretty neutral about it. “It’s a one-day gig, but they say to expect up to a fifteen-hour day. You did something like this with them before, right?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. That was where he’d met Darcy.
“They want all the same crew so the album looks like the sequel, I guess.”
All the same crew—did that mean Darcy too? It had to, didn’t it? Michael took a minute to not sound overly excited about a fifteen-hour gig. “What’s the song?”
“It’s called ‘Beautiful Downfall.’ Does that matter?”
“Nah, just curious. Who’s the choreographer?” He hadn’t been a fan of the band until shooting the video, when their catchy pop sound grabbed him like a dolphin in a tuna net.
“Oh, you’re gonna love this—Randy North.”
Michael whistled. Randy North, in spite of his porn-star name, was one hell of a choreographer. “I’m in.”
“I thought you might say that.” Andrew sounded smug on the phone.
It wasn’t Randy North that made him take the job. It was the thought that he might finally find Darcy. At the very worst, he’d get a proper rejection, closure, and move on. Not what he hoped for, but if he couldn’t have her, he’d like to be able to seriously date someone else. Anyone else, at this point.
Plan Chromatic was working with Quarter Time Production again, which was a quirky company that used their profits from commercial ventures to make short films nobody understood. Part of that quirkiness involved setups like this one—a single-day shoot, up to fifteen hours, in which everything had to be done, including the choreography.
Randy North worked with the dancers and principals separately, which meant Michael barely had a breath left to lose when she walked onto the set. It was a different dress, of course, but still designed to show off her slim, boyish figure. Her legs and shoulders had the muscle definition of a dancer and her hips swayed enticingly in the high heels she wore. Her shoulder-length hair was exactly as he remembered, thick and rich brown, curling softly at the ends. And then she turned and smiled at him, almost exactly as she had one year ago.
Those eyes, they were the same big, beautiful cinnamon-brown that had so captivated him. Warm, yet soft, framed by lashes thickened with mascara.
Taken altogether, she was by no one’s estimation a traditional beauty, but by parts, she was beyond compare, and Michael was smitten all over again.
A ribbon of velvet adorned her neck, sporting a flower in the same pink and gold tones as the halter dress. He only glanced away from her eyes to follow North’s choreography. And to see if his imagination might be right about the size of her breasts.
She would not get away from him again.
When the company broke for lunch, Michael scanned the entire makeshift lunch room for her. “Has anyone seen Darcy?”
Nobody had. Most didn’t even know who he was talking about.
Darcy took lunch in the closet generously described as a dressing room—the perk of being Darcy Mancini, a semiregular on a show like Shelter Cove—so he could kick back barefoot. He was used to long hours of shooting. What he wasn’t used to was hours of high-energy dancing in five-inch heels. The whole morning had been spent learning a complicated choreography, half of which was supposed to be a duo.
He scarfed down a sandwich, a couple of cookies, and a bottle of blue energy drink before putting on the killer shoes. Dana, his character on Shelter Cove, never wore more than three-inch heels and he didn’t dance around in them either.
Looking forward to not being yelled at by the choreographer proved disappointing, however. He had two run-throughs with the guy he was supposed to be dancing with and the afternoon was more yelling, this time from the director.
“Marcy,” he said, getting Darcy’s name wrong yet again. “You’re supposed to be flirting with Mickey here. The lyric is ‘I knew from the beginning there would be no winning.’ So smile, flirt.”
Like he could do that while balancing on one foot. Darcy knew he wasn’t much of a dancer, but he resented having his acting abilities called into question. He had an urge to say, “Do you know who I am?” For all he knew, directors like this were how divas were born.
The dancer, who probably wasn’t named Mickey, gave him an encouraging smile.
He didn’t know if he appreciated or resented it.
Finishing the dance sequences several hours later should have been a relief, but they told him to leave the shoes on so there would be no height disparity when they shot other scenes.
Darcy knew if he took the shoes off between shots, his poor feet would likely swell too much to fit back in. So he left them on and sat down as often as he could, remembering to cross his legs so he wasn’t flashing his tape tuck at everyone. Drag was a drag.