Читать книгу Hot Moves - Kristin Hardy - Страница 7

Los Angeles, 1996

“I KNEW YOU GUYS WERE up to something.” Eyes alight with fun, Thea Mitchell glanced at her friends clustered around the restaurant table. They’d met the year before on the drama department’s production of Henry VI. The friendships formed had stuck.

“It’s your birthday,” said Cilla Danforth, wardrobe mistress, leaning out of the way to allow the waiter to take her plate. “Anyway, the costumes are almost done and the dress rehearsal isn’t until next week, so no reason we shouldn’t sneak out of the workshop early to celebrate.”

“The backdrops and props are ready to go,” added set designer Paige Favreau, who’d rather predictably gotten her work finished weeks before.

Trish Dawson stirred. “Everyone’s got their copies of the final script.” And as script doctor, it was her business to know. “If the choreography’s set, then we’re ready.”

“Done last week.” Thea stroked her fingers along the magenta feather boa Cilla had given her to wear along with a rhinestone tiara that crowned her thick tumble of dark hair. “I’m on top of my moves.”

“So’s the guy over at the bar. He’s been watching you all night,” said the play’s publicity manager Delaney Phillips. The man in question was dark-haired and intense, handsome if you liked the GQ type.

Thea didn’t, much. “I’ll pass. Now him,” she added, glancing over at a tousled blonde drinking a beer. “He’s definitely my kind of guy.” He glanced over and caught her looking and she blushed a little but held his gaze.

“So what’s your birthday resolution?” Trish asked, invoking what had become a group ritual.

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know. To have fun.”

Delaney imitated a buzzer on a game show. “Too vague, Mitchell. Try again.”

Thea grinned. “Okay, how about this? To take more chances.” Then her attention was drawn by candles flickering on a cake being carried to her by the waiter. “Like on this chocolate cake for example. I’ll take a chance on it any day.”

Sabrina Pantolini, from the film department, got up with her camera. Whether she was armed with her camcorder or her Nikon, if Sabrina didn’t capture it in pictures, she never quite felt like it had happened. “Okay, everybody lean in and say ‘sex,” ’ she ordered.

“Can’t we just have sex, instead?” Thea pouted.

“You can do that, too, birthday girl,” Kelly, the group’s journalist told her. “Just make a wish and blow out the candles.”

Thea winked. “Make a wish? How about me and Blondie?”

“Better blow hard,” Delaney suggested.

“I blow just right,” Thea told her. She took a breath and turned to the cake.

“Excuse me.”

And the breath whooshed out of her lungs as she looked up, snuffing out only part of the candles.

The man from the bar stood over her. He was taller than she’d estimated when he was sitting. Up close, he was clearly older, forties, maybe, with a look of command in his pale eyes. Eyes that focused solely on Thea.

“I see congratulations are in order.” His gaze zeroed in on her lips, skimmed the neckline of her low-cut red T-shirt. “What’s your name?”

“Thea,” she replied.

“Happy birthday, Thea. My name’s Derek.” Cilla’s eyes widened. He didn’t notice, nor did Thea. “You’ve got ten candles on the cake. Is that how old you are, ten?”

“Nineteen,” she responded without thinking.

“It could still work,” he murmured, almost to himself. “That skin’s perfect.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, sorry to interrupt your party but I’ve got something to talk with you about. Alone,” he added, glancing over the group clustered around the table, avidly watching them. “Come over to the bar with me.”

“Much as I’d like to talk about my perfect skin, I’ll pass, thanks.” Thea gestured to the cake. “I’m kind of busy right now.”

“Trust me, you’re not too busy for this. I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”

She eyed him. “If you want to hit on me, here’s as good a place as any.”

“I’m not hitting on you,” he said with a trace of impatience. “This is business, and I don’t have all night. Now, you can keep sucking down Shirley Temples with your girlfriends or you can come talk to me about what just might be your future.” He tossed a business card down on the table. “I’ll be over at the bar.”

Turning on his heel, he strode away.

Thea stared at him, watching as he slid onto a stool and gestured for a drink. On the cake before her, a lone candle still sputtered.

“What was that all about?” Trish asked, mystified.

“Ignore him,” Paige advised. “He’s selling something.”

Delaney lifted her club soda. “Nope. Pickup line, no matter what he says.”

“No,” Cilla and Kelly said simultaneously. “That’s Derek Edes,” Cilla added.

Sabrina frowned. “I know that name.”

“You should. He’s only one of the biggest fashion photographers in the business, outside of maybe Richard Avedon.”

“Avedon?” Now Thea looked as mystified as Trish. “What does he want with me?”

“Your perfect skin?” Cilla shrugged. “Don’t ask me, ask him. He’s staring at you again, by the way.”

Thea shifted.

“Don’t look,” Paige ordered. “If he wanted to talk to you badly enough to come over here, he can wait. It’s your birthday.”

Cilla reached out for the business card, tapping it thoughtfully on the tabletop. “I say wait and call him Monday.”

“Or call his room,” Kelly added. “I think I read somewhere that he always stays at the Chateau Marmont when he comes to L. A.”

Thea rose. “No. I’m going to go find out what he wants.”

Delaney snorted. “That’s not hard, sweetie. You’re gorgeous and he’s male.”

Thea shook her head. “This isn’t sex. It’s something else,” she said. “I just don’t know what.”

And so they watched as she crossed the room with a feline grace that was partly the result of fifteen years of dance training, partly innate. They watched as she sat next to him, as he rested a casual, proprietary hand on the back of her stool. They stared as her mouth dropped open in shock, as the five minutes stretched into twenty.

And they watched as she crossed the room, finally, walking as though her feet weren’t touching the ground.

“So? What’s it all about?” Delaney demanded.

“A job,” Thea said, bemused. “He wants me to come to New York and model for a new cosmetics campaign he’s shooting.”

“What did you say?”

“Remember my birthday resolution?”

“To take more chances?”

She nodded, her eyes on Derek Edes, the blonde completely forgotten. “I said yes. I leave Monday.”