Chapter Twenty
Kate’s buoyant mood lasted until they reached the shooting site the next evening. Not even the burnt bacon for breakfast managed to dislodge her upbeat attitude. She just knew they were going to nail the filming that night.
Until they reached the site and she found her chair, just behind the main camera.
There was something wrong with the set-up she had got used to. She looked around at the names stencilled on the back of the canvas fold-up chairs. Hers, with “Kate” rather than the impossible-to-fit “Lindenstream.” The DP’s chair, which he never used. The AD’s chair, which was also rarely used.
Then it clicked into place. Those two chairs were always in a line up with a third.
Garrett’s. Garrett’s chair was missing.
Kate waved her P.A. over. “Where’s Garrett?”
Brittany curled her lip over her big front teeth and clutched the clipboard to her chest. “Um…”
“He’s here? On site?”
Brittany nodded. “That’s okay, isn’t it? You only banned him for the one night?”
Kate realized she was scowling and lightened up. “It’s fine. I just wanted to know where he was so I didn’t trip over him accidentally. His chair has gone.”
“Yeah, he moved it back with the other sponsors. He said you’d prefer it that way.” Brittany smiled, relieved that her news would be received as good news, not bad.
“Thanks, Brittany,” Kate told her. “See if you can scrounge me up a really cold iced tea, would you?” Kate knew there was no such species to be found anywhere on the set, but it would keep Brittany occupied for twenty minutes, at least.
As soon as Brittany has moved beyond earshot, Kate walked around the second and third cameras, to where the sponsors got to sit for their ringside view if they chose to venture out on set to see how their money was being spent.
Garrett was sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, his arms on his knees, talking to the guy in the chair next to him, some California business entrepreneur. They were laughing and joking.
But Garrett spotted Kate heading in their direction and got to his feet and walked toward her, putting distance between him and the businessman.
“I know what you’re going to say—”
“Do you?” she said. “Then you know how to read the future because I’m not sure even I know what to say.”
“I won’t fuck up your movie, Kate.” His voice was low and deep with determination. His gaze was steady on her face, as if he was watching her to ensure she got the point. “I won’t be the one to ruin it for you.”
Anger touched her. “How dare you be…decent about this.”
“You want me to be a bastard about it?” He tilted his head. One brow lifted. Just a little.
“Yes! I wanted you to be a complete jerk! Then I could have tossed you from the set, the camp and got you the fuck out of my life! Christ, Garrett.” She gripped her elbows with her hands, fighting for calm. “I thought I had this under control until I saw you walking toward me just now.” She bit her lip and stopped herself from saying anything else. Before the truth gushed out.
She wanted him just as badly as she had last night when he’d been bent over her, his lips an inch from hers.
More.
Despite the night of outrageous sex and tenderness in Adrian’s arms, she was right back to wanting Garrett with a queer sort of ache in her belly and between her legs, as soon as she saw him. Her chest felt heavy and her limbs weak. It was a text-book case of overwhelming lust.
Garrett was studying her face as she spoke, but then he flicked his gaze away, checking around them with a guilty look, as if he had been staring for too long. His blue eyes settled back on her. How long ago had they become the familiar eyes of a friend to her? When had she stopped thinking of him as an enemy? This was DoveAngel in front of her, not the prick of a sponsor who had held her movie hostage.
“Would it help if I told you I got no sleep?” he asked. “That I spent my time imagining what might have been if Annette hadn’t arrived when she did?”
Her gut tightened and her heart seemed to squeeze all by itself. “No…Calum, why say that?” she demanded.
“It’s true.” His voice was flat. “And you look like you need the moral support of a partner in crime.”
“You mean a partner in guilt.” She grimaced, not liking the taste in her mouth. She turned to leave. “Thanks for nothing, Garrett.”
He caught her arm. “Kate.”
She pulled her arm out of his grip. “Don’t be melodramatic. It doesn’t play well, even on celluloid.”
“You know where to find me,” he said, behind her.
“Everyone does,” she agreed.
“Not after tomorrow,” he called.
She almost stumbled. Of course, the location shooting finished tomorrow, and they moved back to the studio for four weeks of interior and studio shooting, before early editing and the first round of pick-ups began.
Where would Garrett be, after tomorrow? She had no idea. Would he follow the movie to the studio? Or would he go home to Boston? Or something else?
She headed back to camera 1, her mind and body in turmoil.
* * * * *
Just after midnight, Adrian surprised her with a visit.
It was unusual for him to come to the set. He had stuck around for the first few days of filming, but after that he had begged off, bored out of his brain. He had found more useful and helpful things to do back at the base camp. Kate found it a better arrangement to not have him around her 24-7, too. It fuelled more speculation about his role in her life, and it kept him less accessible for the power mongers on the set, who would use him as a step ladder to Kate.
Every now and again, he would arrive unannounced, though – sometimes with gifts for her: Once he had brought a picnic lunch which they had eaten in a sandy dell far enough away from everyone else on the set. Dessert had been sex on the checkered cloth, before he had returned her to the set for the afternoon’s filming while everyone wore stupid grins on their faces and tried not to smile wisely.
Tonight, he had both hands pushed deep into the leather bomber jacket he wore, and the sleeves pushed up his muscular forearms, as he stood waiting for the take to finish. When it was in the can, Kate glanced at her watch, then at the AD, who looked at his watch and lifted his megaphone. “Forty-five minutes meal-break people! And that means forty-five minutes, not fifty. See you back here at twelve fifty on the dot, thank you!”
The tension that normally held the set immediately evaporated as everyone relaxed and abruptly began talking to each other as they turned in two thousand different directions, heading away from the set, toward food, private spots, or just simply away.
Adrian drifted between people, over to where she stood.
“Hey,” she said, pleased to see him.
“Hi. Got a minute to talk?”
“I have forty-five of them. Forty-four,” she amended.
“I don’t need that long,” he told her, looking around.
“You’re not staying?”
“Is there somewhere more private?” he asked.
“Why?”
He just looked at her. Kate frowned, realizing that he hadn’t once smiled since he had arrived. He hadn’t touched her, or given any overt signs of friendliness or pleasantness.
Her heart gave out a pang. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You really want to do this here?” he replied.
“Give it another forty seconds, and the set will be more deserted than a graveyard,” she assured him. “We’ll be as private here as the trailer. Perhaps more so. You never know who is listening outside my door, and there are no doors here.”
He didn’t even attempt to try a smile at her joke.
“So what’s going on?” she pressed.
“I was going to ask you that.”
“Excuse me?”
He pulled his hands from the coat and lifted one. “You, Kate. You’re in a brutal mood. Snapping at everyone, insulting the cast, screaming at the crew. Have you snagged a single decent take since you started, tonight?”
Her momentary surprise was overtaken by a stronger sense of betrayal. Someone on the set had sent a Mayday call to Adrian. “So who was it that ratted me out, huh?” she asked him. “Who decided that little Kate needed her man to calm her down?”
His eyes were unreadable. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“No? Then how did the call go? ‘Hey, Adrian, buddy, come get your girlfriend to cool her jets, will ya? She’s giving us a tough time, and you can handle her, can’t ya?’ And what did you say? ‘Sure, I get to handle her all the time!’”
He shoved his hands back in the jacket. “You done?”
She crossed her arms. “I could give you reams on that one, but I won’t. The insult runs way too deep and far. So we’ll leave it for now. Just how do you plan on handling me, huh?”
“I’m not, Kate.”
“But yet here you are!”
His jaw rippled. “For two days you’ve been obnoxious and unreasonable, far more than you or any director has a right to be. I don’t know what’s going on, Kate, and neither does anyone else.”
She stared at him, at a complete loss for words. She had really been that bad?
Adrian’s mouth turned down. “It pains me to realize that last night, the way you greeted me, was probably connected with this, somehow. But I guess that was what I signed up for, wasn’t it?”
Fresh horror and guilt speared through her. She tried desperately to think of something to say, a saving grace that would give Adrian some self-respect back.
But it was too late. He was nodding as he looked at her face. He had seen the truth for himself.
“Okay, then,” he said heavily.
“No, Adrian—” she began, reaching for his sleeve. He didn’t quite tug it out of her grip, but he looked down at her fingers and his expression was enough for her to remove her hand hastily.
“Just fix this,” he told her. “Whatever it is, whatever the fuck is going on, you need to deal with it, Kate. Deal with it, resolve it, and get rid of it. Find help, get a guru, find a friend, for heaven’s sake. Reach out if that’s what you need to fix it, but just…fix it.” His lips pressed together, as if he was stopping himself from staying more.
Kate nodded.
He turned away, and Kate could feel herself starting to shake, and the upwell of tears. She hated crying.
Then Adrian turned back. “If you do need the help of a friend…I’m willing to volunteer. You do know that, don’t you?”
She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded.
“I…good.” He took a breath. “I don’t know what it is we have, Kate, but I don’t want to lose it. Not yet. Fix this. Please.”
He did walk away this time. She watched his back moving in the dark as long as she could, before her tears blurred her vision.
* * * * *
“Uh-oh,” Sebastian breathed, looking up from his bowl of chilli.
Everyone else in their small group looked up, too. They had taken shelter from the tiny breeze that had set up, behind the bank of light generators. The generators were muffled, so it wasn’t as noisy as it might have been and they sat a dozen paces away, on the soft sand, the moonlight and peripheral light from the set letting them see what they were eating. Only Patrick needed much light, anyway.
Now they paused to glance in the direction Sebastian was looking.
Vicent was walking toward them. And he wasn’t alone. A woman with shoulder-length, ebony black hair and flawless skin was with him. She seemed to glow in the pale light.
“Wow,” Patrick breathed, his plate lowering. “I think I’m in love.”
“If she’s who I think she is, you don’t want to touch her with a barge pole,” Sebastian advised him. “These guys are scary fuckers.”
“Who are they?”
“Winter’s people. The Curandero.”
Patrick leaned forward to look around Nial to her. “I thought you didn’t know what you were?”
“Not anymore,” Sebastian answered.
Garrett stretched out his long legs. “I believe Winter is still figuring out if the answer has made her any happier or not.”
Winter shot him a glance. Garrett had seen a lot for a man who had been so wrapped up in his own miseries, lately.
She pressed her bowl into the sand so it was stable, and walked around the group to meet the pair walking toward them. “Vicent, you’ve returned. And with a friend. I thought you had no friends.”
He blinked. “I do not.”
Winter looked at the woman. “Then this is a relative of yours?” She smiled at the woman. “Hi. I’m Winter.”
The woman’s smile was warm and friendly. “I am Iona, Winter. Vicent thought you might find your lessons easier to absorb if they came from one such as myself. I am considered to be more flexible-minded than some Curandero. Vicent…is very old. He has trouble adjusting, at times. He was disturbed by what your husband told him, even though he faithfully reported it all back to us.” Iona’s smile grew. “I, on the other hand, found it very interesting indeed. I can see the…possibilities.”
“I’m sure Nial will be pleased to hear that.”
“Vicent wishes to speak with your husbands and the other vampires, if you will permit it.”
“Of course. But you are not to harm them, or wipe their memories.”
“You are very kind,” Vicent said. He moved past her, heading for the group ranged on the sand.
Iona’s eyes twinkled with good cheer. “He means you are too kind. Removing memories of us is as automatic as breathing. We’ve been doing it for as long as we remember.”
Winter side-stepped that. “When do you want to start these lessons you mentioned?”
“We just started,” Iona replied. “You have much to learn about the ways of the Curandero.”
“So do you,” Winter said. “It’s about to be a brave new world. I’ve got as much to teach you about living in it as you have to teach me.”
* * * * *
Garrett appeared barely three minutes after Kate sent the tweet, a silent tall shape moving through the dark that had fallen over the set.
“You said you needed me?” His tone was neutral, even wary.
She stood up. The chair was incredibly uncomfortable, but after a hundred years of tradition, no one was about to change the design now. “Adrian is totally pissed at me.”
“I’m sorry.” He sounded like he meant it, too.
“That just puts him in agreement with everyone on the set,” she added.
Garrett cleared his throat.
“Everyone but you.”
Silence. Far away, she could hear people talking. Laughing softly among themselves.
“It took me a few minutes to clear my head and really start thinking,” she said. “Adrian being angry and him being pissed at me were two novel concepts that blurred my focus. And I did the female thing and stamped my foot right back at him, so I had to take time out to calm down, too.”
“Kate, this has nothing to do—”
“You phoned him.”
Garrett sighed.
“You’re the one man on the set who knew what was bugging me and you’re the one man who could make that call for completely selfless reasons. You pulled Adrian here because you genuinely wanted him to try and help me.”
“I’d like to wring his bloody neck,” Garrett muttered. “Adrian blowing his fuse is not what I had in mind. There’s been enough of that tonight.”
“I pushed him into it. It’s not his fault.”
“Adrian is a master of self-control. You could skewer him with hot pokers and he wouldn’t give up a smile if he didn’t want to.”
The image made her grin, because it was so absolutely correct. Garrett had nailed Adrian’s character completely.
“He got angry with you because he wanted to, Kate,” Garrett finished.
Her grin faded. “He told me to fix this mess I’ve made, in whatever way it needs to be fixed.”
She heard him catch his breath. In the dark, she couldn’t tell the fine details about his expression, but he was watching her very closely.
Kate stepped toward him. Garrett stood maybe three feet away from her, but it was like crossing the Pacific. It was a journey that took forever. Garrett remained still, not helping her.
She reached out and rested her hand on his chest and he let out his breath. It was shaky.
The memory of his bare chest and the lean muscles drove her to tug at his shirt, pulling it from his jeans and slip the buttons undone. His exposed flesh gleamed softly in the moonlight and she pushed the shirt edges aside then spread her hands over his flesh.
His muscles rippled under her touch and his breath shuddered. His hands came to life and he lifted her face up to his. “If we do this,” he said, “Then it won’t be just the once, Kate. I know I won’t be able to take my fill of ye in just one sip. So if ye looking for the equivalent of a cold shower, then ye best look for the shower truck, over yonder.”
DoveAngel. She sighed. His voice, his demeanour, his accent… “If you promise you’ll always talk this way to me, you can take me as often as you can, Calum Micheil.”
His mouth pressed against her, in a kiss that began gentle and grew languid and heavy and more frantic as the seconds ticked by. He held her up against him, half lifting her to meet his lips. Her hands were trapped against his chest and she could feel his heart slamming against his ribs, just beneath them.
She pressed against his chest, separating them, breaking the kiss. Putting just enough room between them so she could breathe. And recover. Her body was pounding with need. Yes, this was the solution.
His belt buckle slipped undone easily, despite her fingers feeling like swollen, clumsy parodies of themselves.
“Here?” he asked, sounding more startled than alarmed.
She looked around. The set was deserted and after her tirades and temper of the first half of the night’s filming, the chances of anyone coming near the command centre and risking running into her during their meal break were close to zero.
“Here is perfect.” It was perfect. This was her set. Her movie.
She tucked her hand into the band of his jeans and walked backwards, pulling him with her. He followed without resistance. When they reached her chair, he smiled. “I see,” he said. “You’re a great one for symbols, aren’t ye, Kate?”
She turned her back on the chair, facing him, and unzipped his jeans. “It’s my profession,” she said. “Everything on the screen is a symbol of the real thing. Now hush, Calum Micheil. I want to savour this.”
She pushed his jeans open and leaned forward to taste his flesh, over the well-defined six pack, licking and sucking her way down to the denim outlined ‘vee’ of flesh. Long before she reached it, she felt his cock stir and rise up against his abdomen, protruding from his jeans.
She pushed the denim further down his hips, letting his cock jut out into the night air and curled her hand around the base of the shaft.
Garret was well built. His cock was both thick and long and deeply veined. She bent and slid her tongue from the base to the tip.
His long fingers thrust into her hair and clenched. Hard. “Ah…gods,” he muttered, his voice thick with the power of his arousal. Kate could feel the strength of it in the rigidness of his cock and the way it pulsed in her hand.
With a smile, she plunged him into her mouth, letting the head ride to the back of her throat, as her tongue slid along the underside. She reached for and cupped the swollen sacs of his testicles, more evidence of how truly aroused he was.
His hips shifted. He gave a tiny thrust and she knew he was ready to explode. “Kate,” he groaned as she supped on the pulsing head of his cock. It was a warning.
His cum shot to the back of her mouth in convulsive streams, giving her no choice but to accept the fluid even if she had not intended to. Kate licked him clean and released him from her mouth.
She would have got to her feet, but Garrett was faster. His hands swooped down to her waist, picked her up off her feet, turned her around and put her back on them, facing the chair.
He pushed up behind her, his hands snaking around to grab at her belt buckle. He was breathing hard. “Two can play this game, you know.” His lips were against her ear, his voice a deep, dark promise. He yanked her belt undone and jerked the fly down.
Kate leaned back against him, surges of heated lust washing through her. She tried to reach back to touch him, but he pushed her hand away. Instead he grabbed both her wrists and guided them to the wooden arms of the director’s chair and placed them on each arm. It bent her over from the hips.
Garrett’s hand snaked inside her jeans, sliding down between her thighs. “Mmm...such heat,” he murmured. His fingers slipped into her cleft, finding the sopping entrance of her vagina. “So wet.”
He pulled his hand from her jeans and tugged them down her hips. He didn’t push them far. Just enough to expose her genitals and give him access. His cock, still as hard as if he hadn’t come, drove into her, feeling larger and more overwhelming because of her closed legged stance and squeezed entrance. His fingers dug into her hips as he pushed his way in, and she smothered her gasping cry against her arm.
Garrett slid in and out of her in unhurried strokes, controlling her body with his hands, his hips and pelvis kissing her ass with each deep thrust. She could hear his approaching climax in the way his breath changed and the grip of his fingers.
But long before he reach orgasm, her own body demanded her full attention. Building from her belly, her climax swelled and grew, driven by the friction of his cock against her pussy walls, and the almost touch of her clit each time he thrust home. She tensed up, winding tighter and tighter, trembling on the very brink of explosive pleasure.
“Damn and hell’s teeth, ye’re too much, Kate,” Garrett gasped. His hips jerked hard. Once, twice, and he groaned as he came.
Barely had his fingers loosened on her hips, than he straightened her up, turned them both and sat them both in her chair. He spread her knees over his, as much as her lowered jeans would allow them. His cock was still inside her.
“How is that for symbolism?” he asked, his lips close by her ear, for he was that tall. His hand worked under the hem of her tee-shirt and up to capture her breast. “Your heart is racing. Relax. Lean back against me.”
Kate did and found her head fitting nicely against his shoulder. “You should go and get something to eat.”
“I’m not done with you yet.” His other hand slid over the curve of her hip. “I could spend days and not be done with you, but for now…” His fingers found her swollen, throbbing clit. It was more than adequately lubricated by the moisture from her vagina and the tips of his fingers moved against her flesh like satin probes, setting fire to her nerves.
He teased all around the organ, exploring it, learning her most sensitive spots, before he zeroed in on them and began to stroke in earnest. By then, her delayed climax had gathered again with more potency than before. Kate found herself gripping at Garrett’s thighs, clenching and unclenching her fists, as she neared the apex.
“Ye’re squeezing me. Ye’ve no idea how sexy and arousing it is to me, Kate,” he whispered. “Come around me. Clench around me as ye come. I want to feel it.”
His whispered words, in the subtle brogue, were enough to tip her into her climax. She sucked in her breath as it hit, then her chest locked as the pleasure held her in what felt like an endless, timeless plateau unlike anything she had ever experienced.
Then she screamed. She couldn’t stop it, despite knowing she must stay silent. But before the sound left her mouth, Garrett turned her head and kissed her, muffling the scream and taking it into him.
When the climax released her, Garrett’s kiss lingered for a moment or two more. He pulled his hand away from her clit but rested it on her belly. The other still cupped her breast. It was an intimate hug, one that she would do almost anything to repeat some other day…especially if Garrett was the one hugging her.
“How do I bottle this moment?” she asked.
“Ye can’t. The best ye can do is never forget it or let bitter times spoil the memory.” He gave a small smile.
She settled her head back on his shoulder. “Ye’re a closet romantic, Calum Micheil,” she told him, copying his brogue.
He shuddered.
“What did I say?” she asked, lifting her head again to look him in the eye.
“You sounded a little like…” He grimaced. “My mother.”
Kate pressed her lips together. “Considering how we’re sitting, the last person I want to sound like is your mother.”
He shook his head a little. “I liked it, Kate. You don’t understand. I haven’t been around anyone close enough to call family in a very long time. The echo of my mother’s voice……It was a reminder of better times. Simpler ones.” He smiled again, and this time it was more relaxed. “She used to call me ‘Calum Micheil’ – both names, like that, but usually I was in deep shit when she did. There isn’t anyone I know who calls me anything but Garrett these days.”
She wrapped her arm around his neck, twisting to do it. “No friends? No lovers?”
“My friends all call me Garrett. I gave up on love years ago. My heart couldn’t take it anymore.” His voice was even, but there was a wealth of history in that simple statement.
“No wonder you sign yourself as DoveAngel on Twitter,” she murmured.
Garrett lifted her up onto her feet with one smooth hoist of his arms, plucking her from his body. “Don’t get all Freudian on me. I’m a big boy.”
“Yes, you are,” she agreed, with a smile, pulling up her jeans and fastening them.
Garrett stood and refastened his clothing. He didn’t reply, but she could see he was smiling.
She pulled out her cellphone and checked the time. “Ten minutes to show time,” she said. “You’ll have time.”
Garrett lifted his head and looked at her.
“I want your chair back here behind the camera where it belongs, and I want your ass in it when the camera rolls.”