Blood Stone Read online

  DoveAngel had never asked to meet in person. He could have been anywhere on the planet and she liked it that way. He was the one single relationship in her life that didn’t ask a damn thing of her.

  Last night he had popped up as she had been surfing the ‘net in a sleepless daze. This time he was responding to her latest public tweet about Murad, the warrior emperor and subject of her next film.

  @Lind’stream #Warlord Biopics on Ottoman emp... derivative excuse for fantasy?

  “Ha!” Kate breathed softly. “Fantasy, my ass.” Was this guy just trying to piss her off? But she had to admire anyone who could use the word “derivative” in a tweet and not come off sounding lame.

  She fired off a public reply, working it until it was politically correct and massaged for maximum PR impact.

  @DoveAngel #Warlord. Murad’s victories, prowess, lack of magic = no fantasy. Guy was real warrior emperor.

  Let him chew over that one, along with the thousands of silent, lurking fans and followers who were reading their tweets.

  The private, direct message tweet hit her Twitter in-box almost instantly.

  You’re awake. Good. Tell me you’re not thinking of casting Greg Evershot as Murad.

  Kate sucked in an unsteady breath. Wow...now there was a leading question, in all senses of the word. How the hell could she answer that one?

  But DoveAngel didn’t wait for an answer. Another private message popped up straight away.

  You must have considered Patrick Sauvage by now. He’s perfect.

  Patrick Sauvage. She sighed. Casting him was a day’s worth of rollicking debate. DoveAngel was right. Sauvage was only perfect for the role, from a strictly character actor point of view. He had the touch of maturity, and more than the right amount of talent. Fans stripped naked in order to throw their lingerie up onto his hotel balconies or stuff bras and thongs into his pockets. He had the adoration of the public, so box office was there, too. He had the right looks for the part, and he looked physically the right shape, height and colour.

  She could see why DoveAngel had leapt on the idea. There were already public polls on Facebook, IMDB and other social sites that kept up with advanced casting, calling for Patrick Sauvage to be given the role.

  Kate bit her lip and tapped out a direct return tweet to DoveAngel.

  Millions of reasons for yes. Dozen bigs for no. Would love to, but it’s out of the question.

  She had heard nothing but silence in response. Eventually, knowing she had a marathon session of meetings and lunches today, she had forced herself to bed to try and get some sort of sleep before the sun rose, but instead she had tossed and turned over the impossible casting of her Murad.

  Kate stared at the back of Garrett’s business card again. I can help you get Sauvage.

  Her heart kept leaping at the words, but she forced herself to focus on the real issue. She looked up at Garrett. “You lied to me.”

  “It wasn’t something I could reveal easily. Think about it,” he said gently. “Would you have believed me even if I could have found a secure way to tell you who I was?”

  Would she have believed someone randomly contacting her via the Internet, if they had claimed they were Calum Garrett?

  “No,” she answered him truthfully. “I would have cut contact with you. I would have classified you as either a whack job, or someone trying to con me.”

  Garrett nodded.

  “But you could have called,” Kate insisted. “Everyone and his dog knows my number, or can get it. This is Hollywood. People want to be called, here.”

  “I would never have made it through your secretaries and P.A.s.”

  “Are you kidding? A call from Calum Garrett? They would have...” She trailed off, thinking it through. Just like everyone else in Hollywood, Kate had professional layers protecting her from the public at large randomly contacting her. There were filters and channels and buffers, and after years of abuse and some rabid fans and nut jobs, those filters were industrial strength. The humans involved in filtering her contacts had long ago developed what Ernest Hemingway called “an in-built shock-proof shit-detector.” They wouldn’t have believed little Kathrine Lindenstream, producer, would be getting a call from the great Calum Garrett any more than she would have believed it. They would have put him off. Derailed him.

  Kate sipped her drink, an answer to his question eluding her.

  “Besides, what possible pretext could I give for calling?” Garrett added.

  She looked up, feeling her eyes widen in surprise.

  Garrett gave a small smile and his shoulders lifted under the jacket. “Telling anyone I liked you and just wanted to get to know you better would have got me bounced quicker than your average stalker.”

  “You’re right, it would have,” she agreed. “But you could try the truth, instead. That always goes down better with me.”

  Garrett leaned forward, resting both forearms on the table. “Alright then. Truth. I’ve been following your work for the last eight years, since Slave Hunt. I even read that biography they did on you.” He grimaced. “Horrible, by the way.”

  “Yes,” she agreed flatly.

  “I’ve come to appreciate the way your mind works. The way you work. I wanted to get to know you better.”

  Kate found herself on her feet, although she couldn’t remember standing up. “Bullshit,” she told him.

  Garrett stayed in his seat. He didn’t stand and try to intimidate her with his height. He calmly looked up at her as she collected her notebook and cell phone and stuffed them into her satchel.

  “You asked for truth,” he reminded her.

  “I didn’t get it.” She threw the satchel strap over her shoulder. “Everyone in this town has an agenda, Garrett. Everyone. That includes you.”

  “And your lunch date?” he replied coolly.

  Her anger rose. “I don’t buy a pure, positive motive like yours for a nanosecond.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  “Then why try it?” she demanded, her anger bubbling over. “You’re not that stupid, Garrett. I watched you on Face Off last night, and you slaughtered the chair, you had the audience eating out of your hand...political strategy is hardwired into you, so why the rookie screw up?”

  He stood up and finally she got a measure of how tall he was. She stood five eight in bare feet and she wore four inch heels, which put her at six feet. Garrett still looked down into her eyes.

  “So it was Face Off that got me the two minutes, then,” he said. His voice was soft and just for a minute she thought, or maybe even imagined a touch of Scottish brogue. “You were at the SAG gala last night, so you must have watched Face Off later, when you got home. And we were on-line at three a.m., so you had a sleepless night. Were you alone, Kate? Or did you stand up your date while you and I danced electronically?”

  If it had been anyone else speaking this way, or standing this close to her, she would have yelled for security. All sorts of personal space proximity alarms were going off in her head. But they were muted and dulled.

  This was Calum Garrett. She could practically feel his power roiling off him like radiant heat.

  “You have some downsides that only show up in person.” She gasped, wishing she could tear her gaze away from his eyes.

  “I can get you Patrick Sauvage.” His voice was low, flat. Sincere.

  Kate gasped. “You can’t. No one can. He wants thirty million, that’s practically my whole budget, and he’s got problems that would suck up the rest just to deal with—”

  “I can get him for five and I’ll cover the rest of his babysitting bill,” Garrett replied.

  Was he actually standing closer to her? Moving closer? Her heart wouldn’t stop hammering. It was actually starting to hurt. Five million for a major Hollywood A-List player like Sauvage was chicken feed. It was a bargain discount price. “You’ll pay his maintenance?” Kate tacked on, while her mind whirled.

  “It’s like you said last night.” Gar
rett’s voice was soft, designed not to carry to the next table. “He’s only perfect. And I have leverage you don’t.”

  “And what do you want for that leverage?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing.”

  She laughed.

  “A percentage, of course.”

  “Oh, of course,” she replied, still smiling.

  “Given how much I would be putting into the production, that would make me a contributing producer. So I’d get credit. And I should oversee the production, as my profits would be at risk.”

  Kate stepped back from him, her mirth congealing. “Gotcha,” she told him.

  Garrett narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “Your agenda. I’ve got it now.” She resettled her satchel and glanced at her watch. Five minutes late. “You’re a movie freak.”

  Garrett shook his head. “I’m a Lindenstream freak. Big difference.”

  She took another step backward. “It just makes you a little bit more selective than the other movieland fans out there. You’re star struck, Garrett, and you have money enough to deal yourself into the game so you can play in all that glamour.” She could feel her lip trying to curl up in disgust. “You’re all the same, with or without money, though.”

  Garrett thrust his hand into his pocket. “You’re wrong.”

  “I’ve had nearly a decade of learning how to recognize one of you coming at me. I don’t think so. Find yourself another patsy, Garrett. I’m not playing your game for you. I don’t care how many millions you have, or what you can do for my movie. It would make me sick to use your leverage. The price is too high for my tastes.” She turned away from him, strode across the foyer and into the restaurant, deeply relieved to be away from Garrett, his radiate heat and power and flawed agenda.

  Everyone has an agenda. Even your lunch date.

  She gripped the strap of her satchel harder, making the edges curl inward and bite into her palm. She was going into the game with Adrian with her eyes open. That was the difference. Garrett had tried to blind-side her. Not the same animal at all.

  She saw Adrian sitting at one of the ghastly yellow semi-circular buffets, his arms spread along the back of the rounded cushions, and waved as she made her way toward him.

  At least he was on time.

  Chapter Two

  “I like a girl that is on time,” Adrian murmured.

  Kate slid onto the seat and moved further around the semi-circle so they were sitting a little closer together than a politically correct ten and two, but not quite snuggled together. It wasn’t that sort of relationship.

  Yet.

  “I’m three minutes late,” Kate observed. “How was New York?”

  “Cold and wet. But you’re not ten minutes late or fifteen or twenty-five. Three is barely noticeable, in this town.” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin, his blue eyes twinkling.

  Garrett had blue eyes, but not like Adrian`s. Garrett`s blue was softer, milder, offsetting the dramatic colouring of his hair. Adrian`s was almost an electric blue, which was odd for a man of clear Greek descent, but it made him stand out in any crowd.

  He looked damned good for someone who had just caught the early flight from New York. The stubble was an almost permanent part of him that she only ever saw disappear for high formal occasions. He was wearing his usual designer jeans and dark sleeveless tee-shirt and a leather jacket lay over the back of the buffet, which must have been in concession to the cold rainy weather in New York. He did things to jeans and sleeveless tee-shirts that would turn an entire apparel industry on its skinny behind if they saw him coming, especially with the black leather belts and plain, square silver buckles he preferred, that sat down low on his hips...and drew the eye.

  Kate quite often found her current train of thought utterly derailed whenever Adrian was walking toward her.

  He gave her a small smile. “I appreciate the honour of you turning up on time for me, though. I know what it means around here.”

  She couldn’t help smiling back. “It means, I’m hungry,” she teased, reaching for the menu.

  The restaurant was already getting busy, but it was a Tuesday, so it was unlikely to be too jammed, today. No one was sitting right behind them, where they could listen to every word they said — another reason Kate didn’t like The Standard.

  “I’ve been thinking about you.” Adrian’s deep rumble was enhanced by the back seat cushion they shared. It ran through her body and brought it awake and alert in a way that Greg Evershot, bless his adorable A-List ass, just hadn’t managed last night. Kate stared at the first page of the menu without really seeing it.

  This was new, for Adrian. This was romantic, almost. To this point, he’d been great company, undemanding, even distant, except that she knew from the look in his eyes and his body language that he wanted her.

  And she wanted him. No question. Her body quivered at the idea of Adrian Xerus. But she had always figured she would get to set the pace because so far, she had.

  Now this.

  “You’ve been thinking about me?” Kate repeated inanely, still unable to focus on the menu. And the stupid thing was, she was girlishly pleased he had spared her a single thought at all, while she apparently couldn’t string a single coherent, adult sentence together in response. Damn it.

  “I think you need the next page,” Adrian said, and flipped the page of her menu for her. “That’s just the intro crap.”

  She looked at him and rolled her eyes. He was grinning as he leaned back, enjoying her discomposure.

  “Asshole,” she muttered. “You did that deliberately.”

  He reached out and tucked a curl of her hair behind her ear. “Yep,” he agreed. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. Pick your lunch, Kate.”

  She went back to studying the menu.

  Adrian Xerus was a dark mystery to her. She had met him at one of the Golden Globe parties about two weeks ago. Unlike all the stars and industry people at the party, he had been dressed in jeans and a sleeveless tee-shirt that had been displaying every well-rounded muscle in his arms, and the rippling tattoo over each thick shoulder. He bristled with two days’ growth and his short, glossy black hair looked like he’d merely pushed his fingers through it upon rising. There was a heavy silver-coloured ring in one ear that glinted in a way that Kate recognised as polished white gold and titanium.

  But it was his blue, blue eyes that had caught her attention, and the way he had of looking straight into her and seeing things that no one else did.

  For two weeks he had continued to show up at the same events that Kate did. By the second week, he had been arriving at those events because Kate had contrived to let him know where she would be. But she held back from calling it ‘dating,’ even though he had coaxed her private cellphone number from her by the time the Oscars rolled around.

  Three days ago he had disappeared.

  Vanished.

  Until last night, very late, he had phoned from New York and asked her to meet him here today for lunch. A date. He hadn’t said the word “date” at all, but that was what it amounted to. In the two weeks they had been accidentally-on-purpose running into each other it had always been at public Hollywood events, surrounded by peers.

  This wouldn’t be anything like that. It would be a lunch date.

  But the off-hand, casual way Adrian had suggested the meeting had made it so easy for Kate to agree that it hadn’t been until after the call that she had realized the implications.

  The waiter arrived to take their orders, and Kate got the Cobb Salad, suddenly starving, while Adrian settled for coffee.

  “I ate on the plane,” he told her, handing the waiter the menus. “And I’m still on Eastern Time.”

  “So why the sudden trip to New York?” she asked. She was on the verge of adding “You left without a word,” but realized that he didn’t owe her that much, anyway. “Business?” she asked, keeping her tone as light and uninterested as she could manage.

  “Something like t
hat.” Adrian’s tone matched hers. He put his elbow on the table and rested his head on his hand, so that he could turn and look at her properly. “I hope you didn’t stay lonely while I’ve been gone?” His voice had shifted and become deeper. Sexier.

  Kate couldn’t help her tiny little in-drawn breath. But it was infinitesimal, and Adrian shouldn’t have been able to hear it. She couldn’t help the little snapshot images of Greg Evershot, in and out of his tuxedo, that zinged through her mind.

  “You didn’t,” he breathed, a smile starting to form. Kate could hear approval and arousal in those two words, and her body tingled in response. He sat up, studying her.

  Kate pursed her lips and stared levelly back at him.

  “Who was the lucky guy?” Adrian asked.

  “None of your business,” she shot back.

  His smile broadened. “He can’t have been very good if you were still awake at three a.m. talking to me. Ask for your money back, Kate.”

  Kate laughed a little. “You’re being figurative, I hope. Or should I just lay hundred dollar bills on the mattress when I want to have sex with you?”

  “You’d need more money than you could raise to pay for a night with me, Kate Lindenstream.” There was genuine anger in his voice, mixed up with the sexy provocation and even though Adrian’s expression didn’t change by a fraction of an inch, Kate could see something in his eyes shift.

  Her breath, her heart, even her pulse seemed to stand still. She wasn’t imagining it, she knew that. She was a director — it was her job to differentiate between nuances of an actor’s line delivery to get the perfect inflection, the perfect line. Plus, she had perfect pitch. And alarm bells were ringing.

  Fear.

  Kate managed to get her voice to work again. “Are you...you’re not...?” A prostitute?

  The deathly silence that followed could only have lasted a mere second or two in real time, but it seemed to stretch forever while her pulse thudded in her temples and her throat.

  “No one buys or sells me, Kate.” His voice was even. Controlled.