What I Did for Love (Wynette, Texas #5)(50)

He made his way to the kitchen. “I’ve matured since our Skip and Scooter days.”

“In your opinion.”

“I hardly had to look up any of the big words.” She didn’t expect him to say more and was surprised when he went on. “Unfortunately, I’m having a little trouble getting it financed.”

She stopped. “You’re actually trying to get the project made?”

“Nothing better to do.”

That explained all the mysterious phone calls, but it didn’t explain why Bram had kept this such a big secret. He tossed his car keys on the kitchen counter. “The bad news is that my option runs out in less than three weeks, and if I can’t get a package put together by then, Caitlin will have her rights back.”

“And be considerably richer.”

“She doesn’t give a damn about anything except the money. She hated her mother. She’d sell Tree House to a cartoon factory if they made the best offer.”

Georgie had never optioned a book or screenplay, but she knew how the process worked. The option holder—in this case Bram—had only a specific amount of time to get solid backing for his project before his option expired and the rights reverted to the original owner. Since all he’d have left when that happened would be a hole in his bank account, his suck-up attitude toward Rory Keene finally made sense.

“How close are you to getting someone to green-light Tree House?” she asked, even though she already had an inkling of the answer.

He grabbed a water bottle from the refrigerator. “Pretty close. Hank Peters loves the screenplay, and he’s interested in directing, so that’s caught a lot of attention. With the right casting, we can make the movie on a shoestring, another plus.”

Peters was a great director, but Georgie couldn’t imagine him being willing to work with unreliable Bram Shepard. “Is Hank interested or committed?”

“Interested in committing. And I have a leading man to play Danny Grimes. That’s part of the deal.”

Grimes was a fabulously multidimensional character, and it didn’t surprise her that lots of actors would be interested. “Who did you get?”

He twisted off the bottle cap. “Who do you think?”

She stared at him, then groaned. “Oh, no…You’re not.”

“A couple of acting lessons…I’ll be able to handle it.”

“You can’t play a part like that. Grimes is a complex character. He’s conflicted, tortured…You’d be laughed out of town. No wonder you can’t get financing.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He took a slug of water.

“Have you really thought this through? Successful producers need a reputation for something other than gross unreliability. And the way you’re insisting on playing the lead…Not smart.”

“I can do it.”

His intensity unsettled her. The Bram she knew only cared about pleasure. She considered the possibility that she didn’t understand him as well as she thought, and not just because of his interest in Tree House…She hadn’t seen any signs of drug abuse, and he spent hours every day in his office. He’d even gotten rid of his old, disreputable friends, which was odd for a guy who’d hated being alone. Alcohol and pathological arrogance seemed to be his last vices.

“I’m going for a swim.” He disappeared toward the pool.

She went to her room to change into shorts and a tank. If the screenplay was as good as he said, everyone in town had to be waiting for his option to expire so they could pounce on the project themselves. The leading role would go to the male Flavor of the Month instead of the actor best equipped to handle the part, which in any case wouldn’t be Bram. He’d handled Skip Scofield brilliantly, but he didn’t have the skills or the depth to tackle anything more emotionally intricate, witness the lightweight roles he’d taken on since then.

As she was slipping into her most comfortable pair of sandals, her head shot up. “Bastard!”

She charged downstairs and across the veranda to the pool, where he was swimming laps. “You jerk! There isn’t any Skip and Scooter reunion movie! That was a smoke screen you threw up to hide what you were really doing.”

“I told you there was no reunion movie.” He dove under.

“But you made me think there was,” she said the instant he resurfaced. “This stupid fake marriage…My money was just a bonus, wasn’t it? Tree House is the real reason you agreed to cooperate. You couldn’t afford to be the second man in recent history to break sweet Georgie York’s heart. Not when you need the honchos to believe you’ve turned into a solid citizen so they’ll take you seriously.”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“I have a problem being misled,” she said.

“It’s me you’re dealing with. What did you expect?”

She stalked across the pool deck as he swam toward the waterfall. “If people believe my respectability has rubbed off on you, you’ve gone a long way toward improving your chances of getting your movie made, now haven’t you?”

“You shouldn’t call the sacred bonds of holy matrimony ‘stupid.’”

“What sacred bonds? The only reason you’re finally telling me the truth is because you want to get in my panties.”