Hot Target (13 page)

Someplace where Adam wouldn’t be able to find him.

God
damn
it.

“Hey.” Robin had opened the driver’s side window several inches. He was sitting there, engine running, as he furtively motioned Jules over.

The man looked like shit. Worse even than Jules had looked this morning when he’d realized exactly what last night had been about. It was amazing, in fact, how someone as good-looking as Robin Chadwick could look so awful.

As Jules approached, Robin opened the window wider, and Jeezus. The man reeked of alcohol. But it was last night’s alcohol—partially sweated and puked out of his system, partly spilled on his clothes.

The good news about that—if there
was
good news about that—was that Jules didn’t have to call his new friends in the LAPD and have Robin arrested for driving while intoxicated.

“Is she in there?” Robin asked in a stage whisper.

“Your sister?” Jules said. “Yeah, but she’s getting ready to go to some meeting at the casting director’s office—”

“No,” Robin said. “Not Jane.” He lowered his voice even more. “Patty.”

O-kay. “Yeah,” Jules said. “Patty’s in there, too.”

“Not so loud,” Robin hissed at him, then swore.

“Don’t want her to see you like this, huh?” Jules asked, knowing full well that it was more likely that Robin was the one who didn’t want to see Patty. Period. Not right now, not ever again.

“Yeah. Yeah, um . . .” For an actor, Robin was really a dismally bad liar. Or maybe he was just too hungover to make much of an effort. “Hey, will you do me a giant favor—”

Jules shook his head. “No.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like it’s a hugely giant favor. It’s more like a small and extremely easy giant favor. Very tiny in fact. If you could just go back inside, see if she’s right by the door—”

“No,” Jules said again, but it was as if Robin hadn’t heard him.

“If she is, will you ask her to, I don’t know, make some copies for you or something? You know, to get her out of there so I can run upstairs without . . . ? No?”

About time he noticed that Jules was standing there shaking his head.

It was pathetic—doubly so, considering the entire presentation was coming at Jules in glorious Smell-O-Vision.

“What’d you do?” he asked Robin. “Wake up in some strange bed, all alone, with a note on the pillow telling you to help yourself to coffee and breakfast? Except the note wasn’t signed, was it? So you had to find a stack of mail by the front door in order to figure out who you fucked last night.”

Robin stared at him.

He wasn’t sure if the wide eyes were because he’d gotten it all correct, or if Robin was surprised by the ugly edge of rancor that Jules couldn’t keep from his voice.

“I was young and stupid once, too,” Jules told him. Well, young anyway. Last night, when he’d let Adam in, he proved that he was still plenty stupid. “You have to talk to her, Robin.”

Robin rubbed his forehead. “And say what? Hey, babe, gee, what happened last night? All I really remember is the part where I realized we didn’t use a condom, and the part where I did the Technicolor yawn for some undetermined amount of time—somewhere close to, but just short of, forever. So, hey, was it good for you, too?”

Oh, Robin, Robin, Robin . . .

“And oh, by the way, baby,” he continued with his mock speech to Patty, “remember how yesterday I was dying to get my hands on you? Well, today I can’t even
think
of you without feeling like I just might puke. Again.”

Jules could relate. Right now, just the thought of Adam . . .

God
damn
it.

“I am
such
a fucking loser,” Robin lamented.

“Yeah.” Jules had to agree. “You really are. I was in the running for a while, you know, in terms of morning-after official loser status, but wow. That no-condom thing combined with the change of heart induced by slackage of desire? God, Robin, you’re not just a fucking loser, you’re a heartless, intern-fucking loser. What is she, all of nineteen? I’m pretty sure that makes you a scum-sucking, bastard-asshole, heartless, intern-fucking loser.” He smiled at Robin. “I’m so glad I ran into you this morning. It really puts things into perspective for me. Have a nice day.”

“Wait!” Robin turned off his car and clambered out, following Jules across the driveway. He moved in that hyper-careful, cringing, the-world-is-both-too-bright-and-too-loud manner of the super-hungover. “Are you really,
really
sure you don’t want to star in a movie?”

What?

Heavens to Murgatroid, not this again. “Yes,” Jules said. “I’m really,
really
sure.”

“I mean, here we are, doing this huge casting search for the right actor to play Jack, only every time I see you, I hear this thousand-voice choir of angels, and I think, ‘Holy shit, there he is.’ ” Robin squinted at him, using one hand to shade his eyes against the sun. “What is wrong with you? How could you be the one person in the United States who doesn’t secretly want to win an Oscar?”

“Are you sure you’re not in love with me?” Jules countered. “A hundred-voice choir—now, that says be in my movie. But a thousand angels . . .” He shook his head. “Gee, I’m sorry, sweetie, but I don’t date actors. Not anymore. Too bad you didn’t tell me this yesterday.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Robin said. “Ha-ha. You gay guys are so witty. Can’t you just—as a giant favor—come to the casting session and—”

“We’re back to giant favors, are we? No.”

“I mean, just read a few lines, do a quick screen test . . .”

Jules unlocked his car door. “How can I say this to make you understand?” he asked. “Hmmm, how about: No.”

“What if you—”

“Robin, sweetheart, you know how you made a whole fuckload of mistakes last night?” Jules told him. “Well, I did, too—only I didn’t find out the particular bargelike size of my personal fuckload until about twenty minutes before I was scheduled to show up here for a very important meeting. So listen close when I tell you that I would rather stick a needle in my eye than go to your casting session.”

“Shit,” Robin sympathized. “What happened?”

“Someone like you happened,” Jules told him. “Someone who knew that I hadn’t given up on my goddamn idealist dream of—” He stopped himself. What was he doing? This man was a stranger, and an obvious asshole to boot. Not to mention the fact that Jules was here in his official capacity. “Nice seeing you, Robin.” He got into the rental car.

Robin got in the way of the door. “Is there anything I can do to, you know, help? I mean, if you want to talk or—”

Jules looked at him. “Like I’m going to take romantic advice from a man with vomit breath?”

“Sorry.” Robin pulled the neck of his T-shirt up over his mouth. “Better?”

Jules rolled his eyes. “Go talk to Patty,” he said. “Don’t leave her hanging, thinking that it’s real when it’s not. She’s a sweet kid and—”

“Robin! Hi!” There she was, as if on cue.

For a moment, with his back toward her, Robin closed his eyes, scrunching up his face in pain. Then he braced himself, plastering a weak smile on his face before he straightened up and turned around. “Hey, babe.”

She was all aglow at the sight of him, poor little thing.

“You better hurry and get showered,” she told him. She waved to Jules. “Mr. Cassidy, I called your friend—Adam. He’s free so he’s coming to the casting session. We haven’t seen him before, so that’s good, but . . . You might want to warn him not to get his hopes up too high. His résumé’s a little sparse. We usually wouldn’t even consider such a total unknown.”

“Yeah,” Jules said. “Thanks for giving him a chance. I, um, appreciate it.”

Robin was looking at him, realization dawning. “You were on the news last night,” he said. “With my sister. Weren’t you?”

Yes, he was. And Adam had seen him on the news. Adam had seen that Jules was connected to the controversial movie
American Hero.
He’d recognized that this connection could quite possibly result in something he’d wanted for a long time—a chance to audition for rising-star producer J. Mercedes Chadwick.

Adam, being Adam, hadn’t just called Jules up and point-blank asked for a favor. For old times’ sake.

Possibly because the old times had been filled with lies and deception and relentless betrayals.

But most likely Adam hadn’t just called and asked because he loved to play games. And here was a challenge. Win Jules back. Convince him to take yet one more chance on something he’d always wanted.

On the other hand, that really hadn’t been that much of a challenge, had it?

It never had.

The sun had come up, and the new day had been so bright and filled with hope.

But then, after Jules got out of the shower, already late but too happy to give a good goddamn, Adam had said, “I’ve heard this rumor that Mercedes Chadwick is still looking for someone to play one of the leads in her movie.”

It was a casual comment, but Jules had turned to look at him. Adam. Wonderful, amazing, gorgeously vibrant Adam—still in bed, hair rumpled, glint of beard on his perfect chin. And he knew. He suddenly knew.

For several seconds, time stopped as he replayed all the times last night that Adam had brought up Jules’ current assignment. Even during dinner, he’d asked, “What’s Mercedes really like?”

“Yes,” Jules had finally answered Adam. “Yes, she is. There’s a casting session this afternoon. Too bad you don’t have a copy of your headshot and résumé with you.”

Adam sat up. “Yeah, no—I do have one. Would you really do that?”

“You brought your résumé.” Any doubt that remained was gone. Adam hated carrying a bag or a briefcase. He never walked around with more than his wallet in his pocket. If he’d brought his résumé, it was because . . .

Because his goal last night had not been to reconcile with Jules. His goal had been to snag an audition with Mercedes Chadwick.

“Well, yeah.” Adam had surely noted the look on Jules’ face, and he tried to make excuses. “I brought it to show you. I thought you might want to see it.”

“But you didn’t show it to me.”

“It didn’t come up.” Adam smiled. “And since a lot of other things did—”

“Where is it?” Adam hadn’t been carrying anything—an envelope, a folder—when he’d appeared in the hotel garage.

“Well, I, uh, I left it at the front desk for you,” Adam said.

“You wanted to show it to me, so you left it at the front desk.”

“J., I came here because I wanted to get back together. And I naturally thought if we
could
get back together, you might want to help me out by—”

“We’re not back together,” Jules told him. He picked up the phone, called the front desk for an overnight guest pack—toothbrush, razor, Visine, aspirin, replacement condoms. “Yeah, hi. Will you send a trick kit up to room 312?” He purposely called it by its less flattering name, which made Adam bristle.

“Oh,
that’s
nice,” he said. “Now I’m just a trick?”

That was all he’d ever been—a cheap one-night stand. Jules had just been too stupid to realize it. “Make sure you’re gone before I get back.” He put on his jacket and adjusted his tie in the mirror before he grabbed his briefcase and went out the door.

“So you go ahead and actually give this guy’s headshot to Jane?” Robin asked him now.

“Yeah,” Jules said. “You know. For old times’ sake.”

He closed the door, put the car in gear. Opened the window. “Talk to Patty,” he said again.

But as he pulled out of the driveway, he saw Patty and Mercedes—Jane, as Robin called her—being hustled into a waiting car by two members of Tom Paoletti’s security team, leaving Robin standing in the driveway, alone.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Who was this guy? Jane skimmed the acting résumé that was on the table in front of her. Adam Wyndham was his name. According to this, he’d done next to nothing.

The casting director was out in the middle of the small studio, reading lines with the young actor—because Robin was still AWOL, damn it.

Patty was moving in and out of the waiting room, organizing the next group of auditioners, getting them ready to come in and read. When the intern slipped back through the door and into the studio, Jane flagged her down. “Patty, where’s Robin?” First things first.

“I thought he was coming right over, but . . . he seems to be running a little late today.” She blushed. “I’m sorry—”

“It’s not your fault,” Jane told her, but she had to wonder. Was it Patty’s fault? This morning when she’d caught a glimpse of Robin out in the driveway, he’d looked as if he were just coming home, as if he’d spent the night somewhere else.

“Can I get you more coffee?” Patty asked, definitely not meeting Jane’s eyes, definitely still blushing.

Oh, God. If her brother and Patty had . . . Last night . . .

Then it was entirely possible Robin had now gone into hide mode. Son of a bitch.

“I’m good,” Jane told her, resisting the urge both to grab the girl by the shoulders and scold her for her stupidity, and to pull her into her arms and apologize for the tsunami of heartache that she didn’t even realize was racing toward her. “Just tell me—where on earth did we find Adam Wyndham?”

“I’m sorry, is he awful?” Patty asked anxiously.

“No,” Jane said, and it came out a little louder than she’d intended.

The actor—Adam—stopped reading and looked over at them. “Do you want me to try something different?”

Physically, he was Jack Shelton. His brown hair was too long, but that could easily be cut. Hazel eyes, boyishly handsome face, trim physique—he wasn’t as slight as Jack, but he was close enough. He was certainly smaller than Robin, which was really all that mattered.

His résumé listed his age as twenty-four—which in Hollywood didn’t necessarily mean anything other than the fact that he was over eighteen and under thirty. He could certainly play a twenty-two-year-old—Jane didn’t doubt that. He was both adorable and charismatic. Even just standing there, waiting for someone to answer his question, he commanded attention.

For the first time since this casting session started—for the first time in months—Jane had real hope that she wasn’t going to have to settle for either a talented actor who looked nothing like Jack Shelton or an untalented lookalike. Still, the idea of hiring someone with virtually no experience was frightening.

“Haven’t you done anything that I’ve heard of?” Jane asked him as Patty hovered nearby.

He laughed, at ease with all eyes on him, revealing a dimple that was just too cute for words. “Not unless you count my high school drama club’s production of
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I played Puck.”

“Of course you did.” Jane frowned down at his résumé. She wasn’t familiar with his representation. How had he gotten in here?

Patty leaned close to say, “He’s that FBI agent’s friend.”

Aha.

Amazing.

This sort of thing happened all the time. Whenever Jane met people who lived outside of the Hollywood world, it didn’t take long before the requests for favors started. “Hey, my brother/cousin/friend/uncle/sister-in-law/niece is an actor . . .”

This was serendipitous. It was payoff for all the times she’d patiently sat through “favor” auditions with dreadfully awful actors whose friends and family had convinced them they were the next Kate Hudson or Jude Law.

Patty had agreed to see Adam Wyndham as a favor, and it turned out that instead the favor had been given to them. God bless Jules Cassidy.

“Have you ever done a screen test, Adam?” Jane asked.

He pretended to clutch at his heart and took several staggering steps backward. “Are you asking me to?”

“I think she’s probably getting a little ahead of herself,” Robin said.

Jane turned to see her brother closing the studio door behind him. Beside her, Patty managed to get even more tense. Son of a bitch.

“Sorry I’m late.” He aimed the apology at Jane, then returned his attention to Adam. “Maybe you should read some lines with me, dude, before we go and waste any film on you.”

Robin was being so uncharacteristically rude, Jane sat there, stunned, for several long, silent seconds. But then she leapt to her feet. “Please excuse us for a minute.”

Grabbing her brother’s arm, she pulled him with her into the bathroom and shut the door. “What the hell was that about?”

“I don’t like this guy.”

“But you haven’t even seen him yet!” Jane could not believe this.

“I don’t need to see him.” Robin, one of the warmest, welcoming, friendliest people in the world, had definitely gone mad. “I know who he is and we don’t want him in our movie, Janey. He’s not very nice.”

Jane waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He just stood there, looking at her as if he’d made a winning argument.

“That’s it?” she said. “Not, he’s a kleptomaniac, or he’s got a serious drug problem, or he’s a binge drinker, child molester, insane psycho stalker, serial killer . . . ?”

“He used Jules to get here,” Robin said. Which would have been funny—those words coming out of that mouth—if this weren’t so serious. “Adam Wyndham played the promise of reconciliation card when he found out Jules was working with us. Didn’t you notice how upset he was this morning? Jules, I mean.”

Truth was, this morning Jane had been a little distracted by the fact that someone clearly psychotic had sent her an e-mail that was identical to one sent to an attorney in Idaho who had ended up extremely, unquestionably dead.

Bullet-through-his-brain dead.

So, no, she hadn’t noticed that Jules was upset—she hadn’t noticed much of anything.

But okay, yeah, that wasn’t quite true. She
had
noticed Cosmo. Steady and solid, quietly strong. She’d walked into her office, and at the sight of him standing there, part of her had been relieved. It was weird. She knew it wasn’t rational. Logically, she was completely aware that she was just as safe with PJ or Murphy or Decker.

But seeing Cosmo . . . She couldn’t deny that she was very glad he was there, very happy to see him.

Last night, Cosmo, who had every reason to hate her, had been ready to shield her from harm with his own body. He had been ready to take a bullet that was meant for her.

God.

Still, he’d managed to top that act of bravery by displaying an emotional maturity that was truly impressive, particularly among the no-neck set. Not that he didn’t have a neck. In fact, he had a very, very nice neck. But he’d been mad as hell, and despite that, he’d actually stopped shouting and listened to what she had to say.

No doubt about it, when it came to Cosmo Richter, Jane had done a complete 180. Yesterday, she’d thought him arrogant, judgmental, and narrow-minded. Today, she honestly liked the man.

Enough to go through her address book of actors and directors and make a date with someone who was both male and available. Someone who wanted his public awareness quotient to increase. Someone who would benefit from the tabloid splash.

Someone like her old friend Victor Strauss, who was in town for the premiere of his latest project.

He was throwing a party tomorrow night at his house in Bel Air, and she would attend as his date. As usual, someone from one of the tabloids would crash the party and, using their cell phone to take a picture, would get a shot of Jane and Victor together again.
Together
together.

A first-rate director with two Oscar nominations under his belt, Victor was best known for his inability to keep his pants zipped. Which would add fuel to the paparazzi fire.

Which would, in turn, take the heat off Cosmo.

Who had slept in his truck last night.

Jane had indeed noticed at that meeting this morning that Cos was still wearing last night’s clothes—that same snug T-shirt that he’d taken off while in her bedroom and . . .

Yeah. She’d noticed Cosmo.

“. . . they used to be together,” Robin was saying earnestly. “And when Adam saw Jules on the news—”

“Whoa,” Jane said. “Wait a minute. Jules Cassidy gave us Adam’s headshot and résumé. He couldn’t have been that upset by—”

“Yeah, well, he was. He was feeling pretty used. I think he really loves this guy—who’s a total shit, and I don’t want to work with him.” Robin crossed his arms. “He doesn’t deserve this movie.”

This was on the verge of bizarre. “Because he’s a total shit?” she clarified.

“That’s right.”

“Which you, personally, know a great deal about, considering you’re also a total shit—for spending the night with Patty.”

Jane was only guessing, but he confirmed it when his “I will not give in” stance crumbled.

“I’m sorry, Janey. I really screwed things up. I’m such a loser.” It was a too-familiar song.

Her brother had gotten way too good at sincere-sounding apologies. With his self-deprecating words, he seemed to take responsibility for his actions. But lately, those words were sounding a little too hollow. It was as if by granting himself loser status, he was allowing himself to go ahead and just keep on screwing up.

“Isn’t it possible that Adam screwed up and that he’s sorry, too?” Jane countered. “Read with him, Robbie. He’s really good. He’s so good he scares me. Give him a shot. If you honestly can’t work with him, or if the chemistry’s not there . . . But you know what they say about hate—it’s very close to love.”

“This is going to suck,” Robin said. “For Jules, I mean. If we cast this guy, and he’s on set, Jules is going to run into him all the time.”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you,” Jane asked her brother, “that maybe that’s exactly what Jules wants?”

Old Jack Shelton seemed to like Adam.

Robin sat with the two of them at HeartBeat Studios, waiting for the film crew to get their act together and shoot Adam’s screen test.

Adam was flipping through the script—he hadn’t even read the whole thing yet—and asking Jack questions about his experiences during the war.

“It wasn’t hideously awful,” Jack was telling him. “Well, it was a
war
—that part of it was tragic and terrible—but boot camp, joining the army . . . I was put in a barracks with dozens of other young men and I was in
heaven.
But it wasn’t about sex. Don’t misunderstand. It was . . . You see, I’d never played team sports. I’d never felt welcome either on the playing field or in the locker room. But after Pearl Harbor, suddenly I was allowed into a club I’d never had access to before. And then, when I was transferred into the Twenty-third, where quite a number of us
were
gay . . . My God. It was both thrilling and terrifying.” He laughed and leaned closer, lowering his voice slightly. “Because it meant that someone knew my secret.

“D’you know, when I first joined the Twenty-third,” Jack continued, “I was certain that Uncle Sam had transferred all of us not-quite-he-men into the same unit with the intention of wiping us out in one giant training accident.”

“Really?” Adam had stopped looking at the script. He was watching Jack and subtly mimicking the old man’s hand gestures, as well as his very manner of sitting and breathing. Except somehow Adam was translating it all into a young man’s gestures, a young man’s sitting, breathing.

Janey was right. The bastard was damn good.

When Robin had read with him back in the casting agent’s office, the very air had crackled.

Not that that meant Robin was happy about casting him.

Of course, Adam still had to get past the screen test. Hugo Pierce or Pierce Hugo or whatever his name was had seemed good at first, too.

“Yes.” Jack turned to Robin. “Which scene are you using for the screen test, Harold?”

Robin loved the fact that the old man called him Harold. It was almost enough to disappear the queasiness he’d been feeling all day. Almost.

“The one where your bunk mates are trying to figure out what everyone in the barracks has in common.” He leaned forward to look across Jack, directly into Adam’s eyes. Adam
did
have movie star eyes, hazel and luminescent. Janey was right. The bastard would light up the screen. “You only have a few lines of dialogue in this scene. We’re looking for your reaction—your realization that you’re not the only gay man in the room, not by a long shot.”

“My God,” Adam said, repeating Jack’s words. “It was both terrifying and thrilling. It meant that someone knew.”

It was scary—for a moment there, he
was
Jack. But then he dropped character and asked the old man, “You really thought they were going to, like, kill you?”

“A group of officers came into the barracks in the middle of the night,” Jack told him. “They woke us up and marched us into the woods, where we were told to take cover, be silent, no lights, stay put. And then they left. Everyone in charge was just gone. I wasn’t the only one who was alarmed, believe me. About an hour after we got there, we heard this incredible noise—engines revving, trees and brush being crushed and pushed aside, like some giant monster was approaching. It didn’t take long before we realized we were hearing tanks moving into position in front of us.

“Gay bashing didn’t have such a lovely name back then, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist,” Jack continued. “All of us there that night—that is, all of us who had come to terms with the fact that we were, indeed, friends of Dorothy, who’d gone on vacations or shared apartments with our ‘cousins’ “—he made quotation gestures in the air—“we’d all experienced some threat of violence because of who we were.” He turned then and spoke directly to Robin. “When you’ve faced the possibility of having a two-by-four connect with the back of your head simply for showing affection to someone you care about . . . ? Well, trust me, being blown out of the woods by tanks didn’t seem far-fetched.”

“So what happened?” Adam asked, as fascinated as Robin had been when he’d first heard this story. As fascinated as Janey had been when she’d first met Jack. Robin could still remember how excited she’d been at the idea of telling his story, of making a movie about his life. “You didn’t just stay there and wait to get blown up, did you?”