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  “I’d say that was the worst performance I’ve ever seen you give.”

  “He thinks what I really wanted was a role in one of his movies.”

  “Well, wasn’t it?”

  Diana shot him a withering look, but Tommy was watching Tony Austin and Rachel. After a moment, she said, “How can that bitch possibly prefer Tony Austin to Zack? How can she?”

  “Maybe she likes to feel needed,” Tommy replied. “Zack doesn’t need anyone, not really. Tony needs everybody.”

  “He uses everybody,” Diana corrected contemptuously. “That blond Adonis is actually a vampire—he devours people, drains them dry, then he throws them away when they aren’t useful to him anymore.”

  “You should know,” he said, but he slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders then and gave her a light squeeze.

  “He used to send me to meet his dope dealer. I got busted for possession one of those times, and when I called him from jail to come and bail me out, he was furious because I got caught and he hung up on me. I was so scared, I called the studio and they bailed me out and covered it up. Then they charged me back for all the legal costs.”

  “He obviously had redeeming qualities or you wouldn’t have fallen for him.”

  “I was twenty years old and completely starstruck when I fell for him,” she countered. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Middle-age crisis?” he said with a lame attempt at humor.

  “It’s too damned bad the hospital revived him after his last overdose.”

  The interior lights were going on in the stable, and he nodded in that direction. “Come along—it’s show time.”

  Diana slid her arm around his waist and they trooped down to the stable. “You know what they say,” she announced, “What goes around comes around.”

  “Yeah, but the trip usually takes too long.”

  In his own trailer, Zack hastily splashed cold water on his face and chest, pulled on a fresh shirt and left. He stopped when he saw Emily’s father pacing back and forth in front of hers. “Is Emily down at the stable?”

  “No, not yet, Zack. The heat has been making her sick for days,” George McDaniels complained. “She shouldn’t have had to spend so much time in the sun either. Couldn’t she stay in our trailer where it’s air-conditioned, until you’re sure you need her down there? I mean, you’re bound to want several takes with Rachel and Austin before Emily’s cue.”

  In other circumstances, the suggestion that a director should wait for a cast member because she wished to languish in comfort would have gotten McDaniels a scathing reply. Zack, however, had a soft spot for Emily, as did most of the world, and so he tempered his voice and said, “That’s out of the question, and you know it, George. Emily’s a trooper. She’ll handle the heat while she waits for her cue.”

  “But—I’ll get Emily,” he amended when Zack’s expression turned ominous.

  Normally, Zack had nothing but contempt for the pushy parents of child actors, but Emily’s father was different. His wife had run out on both of them when Emily was still a baby. A fluke coincidence brought Emily to the attention of a producer who saw the dimpled child playing in the park with her father. When that same producer offered Emily a part in a movie, her father had given up his day job to chaperon her on the movie set and started working nights instead. McDaniels had felt that she would be less likely to be “corrupted” if left alone with a sitter at night than with a paid chaperon on the set during the day. That alone wouldn’t have endeared the man to Zack, but it was also a known fact that he put every cent that Emily made into a trust fund for her. Her interests were all that mattered to him, and his vigilance had paid off: Emily was a good kid, astonishingly so for a Hollywood child star. She didn’t fool with booze or drugs, she didn’t sleep around, she was polite and decent, and all of that was due, Zack knew, to her father’s unstinting devotion to keeping her that way.

  Emily came rushing up behind him as he neared the stable, and he called over his shoulder, “Get your pretty self on that horse and let’s get this over with!”

  She passed him at a run, wearing the jodhpurs and riding jacket that were her costume. “I’m ready if you are, Zack,” she called, her eyes filled with unspoken anguish for what he was about to go through, then she disappeared around the comer where two grips were waiting with the horse she was to be riding.

  Zack knew he had little chance of getting the scene perfect on the first attempt with or without a rehearsal, but considering everything that had happened last night, he wanted to get it over with in as few tries as possible. Moreover, the charged atmosphere between his wife, her lover, and himself was only going to become worse the more times he had to direct the sexually explosive scene.

  A shadow moved out from the shrubs near the doors, and Austin’s carefully modulated, conciliatory voice stopped Zack cold. “Look, Zack, this scene is going to be hard enough to shoot without hard feelings between us over Rachel,” he said as he moved into the light. “You and I have been around, we’re sophisticated adults. Let’s act like it.” He held out his hand for a handshake.

  Zack looked contemptuously at his outstretched hand and then at him. “Go fuck yourself.”

  7

  TENSION, THICK AND HOT, HUNG like a pall over the stable as Zack walked past the onlookers and headed down the aisle toward the darkened set. Sam Hudgins was already positioned at the floor camera, and Zack stopped beside him at a pair of monitors that were connected to the camera lenses, allowing Zack to see exactly what both cameras were seeing. He nodded at Tommy and things began to move in familiar sequence:

  “Light it up!” the assistant director called out sharply.

  There was the metallic sound of switches being flipped and the giant lights came on, drenching the area in hot white light. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Zack studied the images on both monitors. No one spoke, no one coughed, no one moved, but he was only dimly aware of the unusual stillness. For years, he had compensated for whatever was lacking in his life by totally submerging himself in his work and blocking out everything else, and he did it now without conscious effort. For the moment, this scene they were about to shoot was all that mattered; it was his baby, his mistress, his future, and he scrutinized every detail on both monitors, envisioning it all on a thirty-foot-wide theater screen.

  In the rafters above, a best boy and an electrician were waiting for instructions to move a light or change the angle of a deflector if necessary. The head gaffer was positioned behind Sam’s floor camera, waiting for directions, and two more electricians were beside a crane, looking up at the second cameraman, who was seated twenty feet above so that he could shoot the scene from that angle. Grips were standing by to move anything Zack wanted rearranged; the sound man had his earphones looped around his neck, ready to put them on, and the script supervisor was holding her script in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. Beside her, a production assistant was writing on the clappers that would be used to mark the scene when Zack gave the order to roll the cameras. Tony and Rachel were standing off to the side, waiting.

  Satisfied, Zack nodded and glanced at Sam. “How does it look to you?”

  As he’d already done repeatedly during the day, the director of photography put his eye to the camera and took a final look. With his eye still pressed to it, he said hesitantly. “That table bothers me a little, Zack. Let’s move it closer to the hay bales.”

  At his words, two grips sprang into action and rushed forward, grasping the table and moving it an inch at a time, watching Sam as he continued to look through his camera, directing them with his raised hand. “That’s good, right there.”

  Eager now to get going, Zack looked up at the cameraman on the boom up above. “Les? How’s it look up there.”

  “Looks good, Zack.”

  Zack took a last look around and nodded at Tommy, who made the routine call for silence and attention, even though the set was quiet as a tomb: “Quiet please! Places, everyone. This is not a r