“Why me?” I ask softly. “I mean, this is obviously a huge budget and a once-in-a-lifetime role. I’m . . . a standby.”
“No, you’re a star who was standing by waiting for me to find her.”
I let his low-voiced encouragement sink in before replying.
“That sounds very Svengali. Are you planning to mold me into exactly what you want?” I release a breathless chuckle. “Good luck with that.”
“I don’t want to change you. I think you’re fantastic exactly as you are.”
All humor fades to dust at the certainty in his rough-smooth voice. A man like Canon, a director like him saying I’m fantastic as I am—I need to savor this. Roll it around in my mouth like candy. Suck on it for a second and swallow all the affirmation hidden at the center.
“This role will change you, though,” he continues. “Inevitably and irreversibly. The learning curve will be steep, and I won’t go easy on you. You have no film experience.”
“I know,” I say, the enormity of this undertaking flattening my high.
“But what you do have is Dessi’s spirit. There’s not much left, but I’ve seen old photos and some rare footage of her performing. She had an inextinguishable light. Trying to cast this role the last six months, I’ve seen so many actresses. Many of them were great, a lot of them already famous, but I didn’t see that light until I saw you perform a few weeks ago. I want it. I want that light. I want that heart and that vulnerability and strength. There is so much inside of you, Neevah, and I’m warning you now that I want it all.”
And in this moment, sitting on the floor of my dingy apartment, on the cusp of the greatest opportunity of my life, I want to give it to him.
13
Canon
“I feel like we’ve been driving through the set of Deliverance for two hours.”
Verity has been saying things like that for the last ten exits or so. Not that we’ve seen many exits. I’ve heard of back roads, but this route through Alabama seems to be behind the back roads, a stretch of nothing but rural landscape punctuated by the occasional house hungover from another era.
Neevah whistles Deliverance’s famous dueling banjo tune from the back seat, and Verity aims a grin over her shoulder at her. I can already tell the two of them will be trouble.
“When can we stop?” Neevah asks, catching my eyes in the rearview mirror. “I need to pee.”
“You have the bladder of a beetle.” I try to sharpen the words, but they come out half-amused. Neevah seems to have that effect on me. “We just stopped for your bathroom break.”
“Excuse me for staying hydrated.”
“Hydrated? More like waterlogged.”
“I think two hours is a perfectly reasonable time between pisses,” Verity interjects.
“Thank you.” Neevah pokes her tongue out at me and giggles.
I’m glad Verity came with us on this trip since she’ll write the script. Not to mention, it’s not a good idea to be alone with Neevah for this long. It wouldn’t look right, and after the Primal debacle no one seems prepared to let me forget, the last thing I need is anyone thinking I’m romantically involved with my actress.
Camille was an aberration. Crafty enough to figure out exactly the kind of woman who could make me break my rules. Chameleon enough to fool me into thinking she was the answer. A great actress, she could pretend to be that kind of woman, but couldn’t sustain the charade. I realized too late she wasn’t who I thought she was.
She could never be.
To be honest, I don’t know if the woman I thought she was even exists.
“Oooooh!” Neevah points frantically to a building not much better than a hut with two gas pumps. “We can stop here.”
“You want to sit on a toilet in this place?” I ask.
“I need to pee, and I won’t sit on it. Duh. I hover.”
“I don’t need that visual.” I pull into the gas station’s gravel lot. “Be quick.”
The back door flies open and Neevah dashes off, disappearing into the hovel-ish structure.
“I like her,” Verity says, smiling. “She’ll be fun to work with.”
“What about Monk? You still okay working with him?”
The amusement on her face burns to ash, a frown kindling between her thick brows. Verity is striking with the rich undertones of her smooth skin and the jet-colored hair adorning her shoulders in two fat, silky braids. She’s smart as all get out and has a dreamer’s soul. Monk was probably a goner as soon as he laid eyes on her.
“I told you the first time you asked I’ll be fine,” she mutters through tight lips, folding her arms across her chest and staring out the window. “I can’t speak for Monk. I barely know him anymore.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Golden Globes a few years ago.” Her shrug dismisses the incident or him or both.
“I don’t actually care if you two hate each other with a passion, or if you fuck the first chance you get.”
Her head snaps around, her eyes slits of outrage.
“Keep your shit out of my movie,” I tell her, my face set in stone. “I don’t need personal history messing up my project.”
“And did you have this little talk with him, or just the woman in this scenario?”
“Of course I did. I might be an asshole, but I’m not a misogynist. The most talented, capable people I’ve worked with have been women. A woman needs to write Dessi’s story, and I think that woman is you, but I also think the score of this movie is trapped in Monk’s head. Setting aside whatever beef you guys have, you know the man’s a genius.”
“He is that,” she says, her voice grudging, her gaze shifting to her lap.
“We have the chance to do something extraordinary. I don’t want to screw it up with personal complications.”
Neevah comes out running. She left her natural hair free today, and the breeze tosses the textured nimbus cloud around her face. Her body is toned and firm, not thin. There’s a ripeness to her, and she moves with a dancer’s easy grace; there’s a natural sensuality in the swing of her hips and arms. A confidence in her stride. I don’t usually allow myself to look at her much in case I look too long and my dick ever gets hard. There’s no coming back from that.
But I look now.
“Hmmm,” Verity huffs, tipping her head toward the window and giving me a knowing glance. “Speaking of making things personal.”
I shoot Verity one of my best glares.
“That doesn’t work on me, boss,” she says. “You got this reputation for being all mean and broody and artistic. I know your secret.”
“Oh, you do?” I cock a brow at her, genuinely curious. “And what’s that?”
“I saw The Magic Hour. You’re a mama’s boy, and they’re all bark, no bite.”
“Oh, I bite. Let this shit with Monk affect my movie, you’ll feel it.”
“Fair enough.” Verity glances back to Neevah who has almost reached the car. “Make sure you heed your own advice.”