Glitter Baby (Wynette, Texas #3)(35)

“Cut!” Johnny Guy called out. “We’ve got a shadow by the window.”

Jake’s angry voice ripped through the set. “I thought we were going to try to do this in one take!”

Fleur couldn’t have picked a worse day to show up. She wasn’t ready to do a movie. She especially wasn’t ready to do a movie with Jake Koranda. Why couldn’t it have been with Robert Redford or Burt Reynolds? Somebody nice. At least she didn’t have any scenes where Jake beat her up. But that wasn’t any consolation when she thought about the scenes she did have with him.

Johnny Guy called for quiet. Someone from wardrobe replaced Lynn’s necklace. Fleur’s palms started to sweat.

“You can’t help being a tramp, can you?” Matt said in the same ugly voice. He bore down on DeeDee and yanked off the necklace. DeeDee screamed and struggled with him. He shook her harder, his expression so vicious that Fleur had to remind herself he was acting. God, she hoped he was acting.

He pushed DeeDee against the wall, and then he slapped her. Fleur couldn’t watch any more. She closed her eyes and wished she was anywhere but here.

“Cut!”

Lynn David’s crying didn’t stop with the end of the scene. Jake pulled Lynn into his arms and tucked her head under his chin.

Johnny Guy ambled forward. “You okay, Lynnie?”

Jake rounded on him. “Leave us alone!”

Johnny Guy nodded and moved away. A moment later he spotted Fleur. She stood half a head taller, but that didn’t stop him from enveloping her in a bear hug. “Aren’t you just what the doctor ordered? Pretty as a Texas sunset after a spring rain.”

Johnny Guy was one of the best directors in the business, despite his good ol’ boy manner. When they’d met in New York, he’d been sensitive to her inexperience and promised he’d do everything he could to make her comfortable. “Come on over here with me. I want you to meet everybody.”

He began introducing her to the crew, telling her something personal about each one. The names and faces flew past her too quickly to remember, but she smiled at everyone. “Where’s that pretty mother of yours?” he asked. “I thought she’d come with you today.”

“She had some business to take care of.” Fleur didn’t mention the business involved cotton swabs and calamine lotion. “She’ll be here in a week or so.”

“I remember her from the fifties,” he said. “I was working as a grip then. I saw her once at the Garden of Allah when she was with Errol Flynn.”

Fleur tripped over a cable she hadn’t noticed. Johnny Guy caught her arm. Belinda had chronicled every movie star she had ever met, but she’d never mentioned Errol Flynn. He must be mistaken.

Johnny Guy suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Come on, darlin’. Let me take you over to meet Jake.”

Exactly what she most didn’t want to do, but Johnny Guy was already steering her toward him. Her discomfort increased at the sight of a teary Lynn David still tucked against Jake’s side. Fleur whispered to Johnny Guy. “Why don’t we wait—”

“Jako, Lynnie. I’ve got somebody here I want you to meet.” He propelled her forward and introduced her.

Lynn managed a weak smile of acknowledgment. Jake looked at her with Bird Dog Caliber’s eyes and gave her a brusque nod. Fleur’s three-inch lizard strap sandals let her eye him dead on, and somehow she managed not to flinch.

An awkward silence followed, broken finally by a stubble-faced young man. “We have to do it again, Johnny Guy,” he said. “We picked up some noise.”

Koranda pushed past Fleur and stalked toward the center of the set. “What the hell is wrong with all of you?” The set grew instantly quiet. “Get your act together. How many times do we have to go through this for you?”

A long silence followed. Finally an anonymous voice filled the tense stillness. “Sorry, Jake. It couldn’t be helped.”

“The hell it couldn’t!” Fleur waited for him to pull out the pearl-handled Colts. “Get your shit together! We’re only doing it once more.”

“Easy, boy,” Johnny Guy said. “Last time I checked, I was the director around here.”

“Then do your job,” Koranda shot back.

Johnny Guy scratched his head. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that, Jako, and chalk this up to a full moon. Let’s get back to work.”

Temper tantrums weren’t new to Fleur—she’d seen some doozies in the last few years—but this one made the butterflies in her stomach do nosedives. She looked down at her fat runner’s watch and yawned. It was a technique she’d developed when she got uncomfortable—looking at her watch and yawning. It made people think they couldn’t get to her, even when they could.

She imagined what Belinda would say if she’d seen her idol’s obnoxious behavior. Celebrities are different from ordinary people, baby. They don’t have to follow the same rules.

Not in Fleur’s book. Rude was rude no matter how famous you were.

The scene began again. Fleur stole back into the shadows where she didn’t have to watch, but she couldn’t block out the sounds of violence. It seemed like forever before it was over.

A woman Johnny Guy had introduced earlier as a production assistant appeared at Fleur’s side and asked if she’d go to wardrobe. Fleur could have kissed her. By the time she returned, the crew was taking a lunch break. Lynn and Jake sat eating sandwiches off to the side by themselves, and Lynn immediately spotted her. “Come over and join us.”