Glitter Baby (Wynette, Texas #3)(48)

“She’s my friend, Jake, and despite the fact that she doesn’t slobber all over you, she really cares about you.” Lynn rubbed her fake belly. “Fleur also loves her mother, and you’re setting her up for something nasty if she figures out what you and Belinda have been up to. I don’t want to see her hurt.”

Neither did he, and once again he cussed himself out for letting things with Belinda go as far as they had. “Nothing happened with Belinda and me.” Not exactly true. “And even if you’re right about Fleur, you know she’ll forget all about me as soon as the picture is over.”

“Are you sure? She’s a beautiful, intelligent young woman who’s attracted to you, and I don’t think she gives her heart away easily.”

“You’re making too much of it.” He poked her padded stomach. “This pregnancy has whacked your hormones.”

“You could do a lot worse than Fleur Savagar.”

“What are you saying? I’m supposed to keep my hands off Belinda, who damned well knows what she’s doing, but stick it to the kid with the big eyes. I don’t get you, Lynn.”

“A problem you seem to have with most women.”



They finished their location work in Iowa and returned to L.A. As August unfolded and they entered the final weeks of shooting, Fleur grew increasingly miserable. Jake had been acting strangely ever since they’d gotten back. He’d stopped ordering her around, and he never teased her anymore. Instead he treated her with professional courtesy. He’d even stopped calling her “Flower.” She hated it. She also felt a growing resentment toward Belinda, who acted as though their confrontation in Iowa had never happened and continued making plans for their future while she waved off any doubts Fleur expressed. Fleur was trapped.

She and Jake had just finished shooting a scene when Johnny Guy pulled them aside. “I want to talk about the love scene. We start shooting it on Friday morning, and you both need to be thinking about it.”

Fleur didn’t want to think about it.

“I’m not going to over-rehearse the scene,” Johnny Guy said. “I don’t want any damned choreographed ballet dance. I want sex, dirty and raw.” He curled his hand over Fleur’s shoulder. “I’ll clear the set to keep you as comfortable as I can, honey. Just me, the AD, boom, and camera. That’s about as stripped down as we can get.”

“Maybe you could put Jenny on boom instead of Frank,” Jake said. “And, Fleur, if you want somebody from SAG standing by, we can do that, too.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Check my contract. I don’t need a closed set. We’re using a body double, remember?”

“Shit.” Jake shoved his hand through his hair.

Johnny Guy shook his head. “Your agent talked about a body double, but we wouldn’t sign you under those conditions. Not with the way we’re filming the scene. Your people knew that.”

Alarm shot through her. “There’s a mistake. I’m calling my agent.”

“You do that, honey.” The kindness in Johnny Guy’s eyes added to her anxiety. “Go into Dick’s office where you can have some privacy.”

Fleur rushed to the producer’s office and phoned Parker Dayton, her film agent. By the time she hung up, she was nauseous. She dashed out of the studio and rushed for her car.

She found Belinda at one of Beverly Hills’s most fashionable watering holes, lunching with the wife of a television producer she wanted to impress. Belinda took one look at her face and stood up. “Darling, whatever are you doing—”

“I need to talk to you.” The Porsche keys cut into Fleur’s palm.

Belinda took Fleur’s arm and smiled down at her luncheon partner. “Excuse us for a moment, will you?” She pulled Fleur into the restroom and locked the door. “What’s this all about?” she said coldly.

Fleur gripped the keys tighter. The pain of their sharp edges digging into her skin almost felt good, maybe because she knew she could make it stop. “I just talked to Parker Dayton. He said there was nothing about a body double in my contract. He said you told him I’d changed my mind.”

Belinda shrugged. “They wouldn’t agree to it, baby. Parker pushed them, but they said it was nonnegotiable. They wouldn’t film the scene with a double.”

“So you lied to me? Even though you know how I feel about working nude?”

Belinda pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse. “You wouldn’t have signed if you’d known you couldn’t use a double. I had to protect you. Surely you can see that now.”

“I’m not doing it.”

“Of course you are.” Belinda looked faintly alarmed. “My God, a breach-of-contract suit would finish you in Hollywood. You’re not ruining your career because of some silly bourgeois prudery.”

The keys cut deeper, and Fleur asked the question she’d held back for so long. “Is it my career, Belinda, or is it yours?”

“What a wicked, ungrateful thing to say!” Belinda pitched the cigarette she’d just lit to the floor and stubbed it out with the toe of her shoe. “You listen to me, Fleur, and pay attention to exactly what I’m telling you. If you do anything to jeopardize this film, things will never be the same between us.”