Blurred Boundaries Page 11

  “I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time coming here. Fighting to get things back on track. This train has left the station and season three is good as dead.”

  Tam fought to keep her anger under control. She only managed because she could tell that he really thought he was looking out for his friend. “What about all the people you’re putting out of work with this scheme of yours? Don’t you care at all about them?

  Gavin waved his hand. So that’s a no. “They will all find other jobs and be just fine. That’s the way this town works.” He shrugged. “Heck. I might even hire some of these folks for my new series. The ones that I like, anyway.” He leveled an annoyed gaze on her leaving her no doubt that she was not included in that small group of people.

  “And if your series isn’t picked up? All of you, even Schenecki will be out for the season. How is that a good thing?”

  “Won’t happen. I got Stephan his first job at Sony. He owes me.”

  And just like that, the wind went out of Tam’s sails, but there was no way she was about to let him know it. She put the bed farthest from the door between her and Gavin and tried not to think about exactly how over her career now was.

  “Seems like you’ve got everything all worked out. Kudos to you.” A memory tickled her sub-conscious. It was a conversation she’d happened to have with Schenecki when they were working on the rewrite of her episode. He’d commented that he enjoyed working with her because she really got the show. She didn’t try to make it something it wasn’t. It was about witches and werewolves and Amazonian women. It was campy fun, but quality. He loved that. She could not for the life of her reconcile him working on a more serious, literary… anything. She didn’t know Schenecki as well as Gavin claimed to, but she couldn’t imagine he’d be happy with the change.

  “Yes. I do. All you’re doing here is postponing the inevitable. Why you would go to all this trouble is beyond me.”

  “I’m going to all this trouble because that’s what Schenecki hired me to do.” Tam glared at Gavin. “It’s also what he hired you to do, but you decided to work against him, instead. Did your little plan take that into account? He’s going to hate you for taking his show away. You betrayed him. And you think he’s just going to get over that and work with you on some other show he doesn’t even like?”

  Gavin’s face turned bright red with anger. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He straightened his spine and glared at her over the top of his glasses. “I have half a mind to send you and your little smart mouth back to L.A. tonight, but you’re not worth the extra expense.” He pulled the door open and stabbed her with one last glare. “You know you’re finished in television, don’t you? I will see to it.”

  Tam’s chest tightened with anxiety. Yeah. She knew she was done. The saying that you were no one in Hollywood until somebody hated you sprang to mind. If that were true, she had just arrived in spades.

  She raced to the door to flip the dead bolt before she sat on the bed and put her head between her knees. She would not pass out. All the work she’d put in over the years had just been sucked down the drain. Not enough people knew her so she could combat Gavin’s threat. She had no doubt he would make good on it.

  Tam sat up and stared at the door. No one knew her because she didn’t have any credits, yet. Well, she still had the opportunity to remedy that. She needed to take full advantage of it. It came down to how bad she wanted to be a writer/producer. She sucked in a fortifying breath and stood. Pretty damn bad, was the answer. And she’d just thought of a heck of a way to put out the fire surrounding their money problems.

  chapter ten

  Tam kept her face neutrally pleasant while facing off with the hotel manager in his nicely appointed office. She’d noted the time on the giant digital clock hanging on the wall to her right without breaking eye contact with the man. They’d been going round and round for the past thirty minutes and getting nowhere fast. It had been a mistake for her to come right down here so soon on the heels of dealing with Gavin. Her emotions were raw. Still, here she was and she wasn’t leaving until she got what she wanted.

  “Your carelessness endangered my life.”

  The manager gave her a patronizing smile. “I’m sure that is overstating things a bit. Mr. Rudnitzki is a member of your staff. I’m sure he posed no threat to your well-being.”

  “It does not matter what you are sure of, you had no business unlocking my private room for him to enter. That is a severe violation of hotel policy, I would imagine.”

  “Normally, yes, but since you are both with the same group—”

  “The bottom line is, you gave a man access to the room of a woman who is traveling alone. You did not ask my permission. You did not warn me that he was there.”

  “There was no reason to believe that he meant you any harm.”

  “Had he murdered me, would that excuse really get you off the hook with the police? It sounds like accessory to murder to me.”

  The manager snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Now you’re just blowing things all out of proportion. He wasn’t going to murder you.”

  “And you know that how? Do you have any idea what he’s been up to this week? How he has attacked every single one of us for the past few days? Do you understand that he blames me for some very bad things that are happening in his life right now?”

  The manager was starting to look a little nervous. Good. “Of course not. How would we…?”

  “Exactly. And yet you thought it was appropriate to allow him unrestricted access to my room.”

  “Please accept my apologies. It will not happen again.”

  “Pardon me if I cannot quite take you at your word.”

  The man nodded. “What can we do to make this right?”

  Finally. The question she wanted. “Comp our stay.”

  He gave her a condescending look. “I’m terribly sorry, but we simply cannot do that.” He checked his computer. “I see that you are here through tomorrow. Why don’t we comp room service for the remainder of your stay?”

  “So you’re saying that my life is only worth a few meals?”

  “Of course not. However, you are obviously fine and while we regret that the incident occurred, we will not simply hand over thousands of dollars at the drop of a hat. That’s just not good business.”

  Tam smiled at him. “Do you have twitter on there?” She nodded toward his computer.

  He looked confused by the abrupt change of subject, but nodded.

  “Do a search for Evan Josephs.”

  “I don’t understand where you are going.” But he checked Twitter anyway.

  “How many followers does he have?”

  “Uh… Two hundred and twenty some thousand.”

  “Yes. Now look up Audra Teckler.”

  “This is ridiculous and has no bearing on our discussion.”

  “It has every bearing.” Tam folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. She hated name dropping and this was the worst kind. “How many followers does she have?”

  “About the same.”

  “Yes. You can look up the rest of the cast later. But believe me when I tell you that you will not like the twitter campaign that we will rage against this establishment if I’m not satisfied when I leave this office.” She let her smile fall away. She wanted him to know she meant business. “How hard is it to make something go viral with direct access to almost half a million people in thirty seconds?” She leaned forward. “Shall we find out?”

  “So your answer is to try to blackmail your way out of a legitimate hotel bill?”

  “That bill stopped being legitimate the moment this place stopped being safe for me and my people. Paying you to put us at risk is absurd.”

  “What’s absurd is you coming in here thinking that I’ll just cave to this ridiculous demand.”

  Tam stood with a smile and nod. “Twitter it is. Oh… and I think I’m going to go ahead and report the break-in to the police as well.” S
he snagged one of his business cards from the desk and made a show of looking at it. “Mr. Remington James. You might want to update your resume. Although…” She angled a considering gaze at him. “…I’m planning to hit LinkedIn, too. And you know how us productions share info. Once this gets out, you’re done providing accommodations for the various shows that come to town.” She headed toward the door with a deceptively friendly wave.

  “Wait! I think we can work something out,” he called after her.

  With her back to him, Tam smiled. Yes, they could.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Evan was exhausted, but energized at the same time. His big scene had gone well and he couldn’t wait to tell Tam all about it. After the stress of the day, Rock decided to head to bed early so Evan got the dailies from him to share with Tam.

  Besides wanting her to check out the video, he wanted to know how the bar outing had gone with Audra. He had sensed some uneasiness between the two women and hoped that some down time would help them sort things out.

  He shifted the bag of food that Charmagne had given him before he left the set to a more secure position and tapped on Tam’s door. He frowned when an eternity passed and there was no answer. Where could she be?

  Audra had texted him when they got back to the hotel so he knew they weren’t still out on the town. He headed up to her suite. Maybe the girls had gotten on like gangbusters and they were still together.

  Tanzi opened the door when he knocked. “Hey. How’d the afternoon go?” She asked and stepped back to let him in the room. Something felt a little off about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “It was great.” He looked around. Things were too quiet for them to be having a girls’ night.

  “What’s wrong?” She must’ve picked up on his anxiety.

  Before he could answer, Audra came out of the bathroom wearing a towel and little else. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before so it didn’t even phase him.

  “I thought we weren’t doing dailies tonight.” Audra commented with a nod at the DVDs in his hand. She dried her hair with a second towel.

  “We’re not. Trying to stay low key and avoid Gavin. Rock wanted Tam to see them, though. Any idea where she is?”

  Audra and Tanzi exchanged a look then both shook their heads.

  “Have you met that Ceely person, yet?” Audra asked. He frowned at the abrupt subject change. “If she were sticking around beyond tomorrow, I’d break my contract and be out.”

  “How do you know her? She’s only been here for like a minute.” Evan put the food down and sat in one of the suite’s armchairs.

  Tanzi flopped on the pull out sofa bed. “She went to the bar with us. Big mistake. Big.”

  “She totally almost got herself ruffied and raped.” Audra rolled her eyes. “Tam had her back, though. We got her out of there. Not that she appreciated our efforts or anything.”

  “And you all came back here together?” Evan was really starting worry. Where could Tam be?

  “Yeah. We’ve been back for a couple hours.”

  “Final scene tomorrow. I can’t believe we’ve pulled this off.” Evan said.

  Tanzi grabbed her phone. “I can’t believe Tam pulled this off. Check out this email I got from her.”

  Evan took the phone when she handed it to him. “What’s this?”

  “The fucking hotel bill. I don’t know how she did it, but she got them to charge us only the tax on the rooms. We’re staying here. Free.”

  Evan sucked in a shocked breath when he got to the bottom line of the bill that contained a discount of several thousand dollars. The next page was an itemized list of the rooms they had by date. He could easily follow when they’d checked in, then consolidated and—

  He frowned at Tanzi. “According to this, Tam has checked out.”

  She took her phone back. “What? That has to be a mistake.”

  She reached for the room phone and dialed the front desk. “Hi. Can you connect me to Tamara Keller’s room, please?”

  Evan waited on pins and needles while Tanzi listened to the reply. When she hung up, she had a puzzled frown on her face. “She did check out. About fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Why would she do that?” Audra joined them in the little sitting area. “We haven’t finished the shoot, yet.”

  Evan gathered up the food and DVDs. “I’m going to find her and find out.”

  “Keep us posted,” Tanzi called after him.

  In the hallway, Evan paused and tried to think things through. Where would Tam go if she weren’t at the hotel? What had made her check out in the first place? The only place she’d been other than the hotel was the set.

  He frowned. Had the lights in the production trailer been on when he’d left the studio? Could that be where she was? One way to find out.

  Evan made it back to the lot in record time. Sure enough, the lights were on in the production trailer. He headed inside.

  Tam looked up, startled, at his abrupt entrance. She hastily wiped the tears from her face when she saw she was no longer alone. Her actions were futile since she was still crying.

  “Evan. What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you. What are you doing here?” He grabbed some paper towels and handed them to her when he sat on the bench beside her.

  She wiped her face and tried to look like everything was normal. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “I’d say.” He handed her another towel. “What happened? I just left Audra and she was singing your praises.”

  “It’s nothing.” Tam shook her head and blew her nose. “I think I’m just tired.”

  Evan was not going to let her get away with that excuse. He’d seen her tired and this was not it.

  “Does this have anything to do with why you checked out of the hotel?” He gestured at her luggage stuffed in a back corner of the trailer.

  She gave him a startled look. “How did you know that?”

  “What happened?”

  She stared at him for a long moment. Finally, it dawned on him. She was scared. Hoping it wouldn’t make matters worse, he put an arm around her. She leaned into him, putting to rest the irrational fear that he was who had frightened her.

  She took another moment then told him about how Gavin had been waiting in her room when she’d gotten back. The more she recounted the exchange she’d had with the man, the angrier Evan became. Both on her behalf and his own. The show they created week after week may not be Shakespearian in nature, but he was pretty damn proud of the stories they told.

  When she’d finished the recap, she sat up and blew her nose. “It’s silly. I’m just overreacting because I’m so tired. I’d handle it better if I were rested.”

  “That’s bullshit.” The combination of his tone and language must’ve startled her because her tears stopped. “There’s never a good time to deal with being frightened. Remind me to tell you about a run-in I had with a stalker sometime.”

  She looked skeptical. “You? Frightened?”

  He stood and held out a hand to help her up. “I am human, you know. I just play a werewolf on TV.” He gave her a playful smirk. It had the desired effect and she giggled through her tears. “Come on.”

  She frowned. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the hotel. You’ll bunk with me and Rock tonight. Gavin will not get near you again.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not a good idea. Our little slumber parties were one thing with just the two of us. I don’t want to Rock to know.”

  “Then think of us as your bodyguards. No one will give it a second thought. Especially when they learn about Gavin’s visit.”

  “Which they won’t because we’re not going to throw him under the bus.”

  Evan shook his head in disbelief. Even after everything, she was not willing to put the final nail in the man’s coffin. He chuckled. “You are just too nice of a person.”

  She gave him the side eye. “Not if you were to talk to one Mr. Remington James, h
otel manager. I might’ve used this incident to get us out of paying the hotel bill.”

  Evan stared at her in surprise. “That’s how you… Tanzi showed me the bill.” He shook his head and grinned. “You are one bad ass chick.”

  “I think ‘bitch’ is the word Mr. James would prefer.”

  “Compromise? Bad ass bitch does sound much better. Wear it proudly. Gavin should be scared of you.”

  She laughed and he gathered her luggage. “I don’t know about all that.”

  “Good thing I do. Let’s go.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “That’s a wrap!” Rock called. Everyone, crew and cast had gathered on the stage to watch the final scene film. They all broke into loud cheers.

  The sense of relief that coursed through Tam in that moment was indescribable. She stood there in Video Village and watched the raucous celebrations happening all around her. She was still too stunned to take part. They’d made it.

  She wasn’t sure who it was, but somebody pulled her into midst of the festivity. Things were a complete blur while she accepted and gave congratulations all around.

  Rock, uncharacteristically demonstrative, pulled her into a big hug then kissed both her cheeks. “Tanzi informs me that we are under budget.” His smile was huge. “You will produce all my episodes in future, yes?”

  Tam laughed. Before she could answer, Kyle pulled the man. She’d give a kidney to produce any other episode again. But that was not likely to happen. Gavin’s threat weighed heavily on her mind making it difficult for her to hold on to her smile.

  She cast a look around the set. Once again, Gavin had been a no show. That was fine by her. Even a night under Rock’s and Evan’s protection hadn’t completely erased the incident at the hotel from her mind.

  Her gaze found Evan across the room. He was chatting and laughing with Marc, Audra and Charmagne. Tam headed their way. She couldn’t help but smile when Evan and Marc surrounded Charmagne and planted kisses on her cheeks. Audra was all smiles when she snapped the shot with Marc’s phone.

  “I’m tweeting this right now,” he declared when Audra handed the device back to him. His thumbs flew over the keys. “Hashtag Culinary Goddess.” Charmagne hugged him.