Page 16 of Her Hollywood Master (Master Me #6)

“ S o how did you manage to get yourself hired back?” Becky, the makeup girl asked as she applied cover up to the remaining redness above her lip. “I didn’t think Antonio would bend again for you.”

The muscles under her armpits tightened, making her ribs feel too small. “I don’t really think that’s any of your business.”

Becky had the grace to look flustered. “Right. Well, I’m glad you’re back. People were pretty devastated when it looked like the whole picture was going down because of you.”

Her jaw clenched and her belly, already roiling with nerves, twisted into a hard knot. “Maybe you could just do the make up and leave the commentary at the door,” she muttered.

“What’s going on?”

She and Becky both jerked at the sound of Joel’s deep voice and the mascara wand caught her cheek, leaving a streak of black moisture. Becky stared up at him, her mouth falling open. Neither of them spoke.

He gave Becky a hard look. “What commentary?”

Becky flushed and put the mascara wand back in the container, her hands shaking.

Marissa suddenly pitied her.

“What is your name?”

The make up artist cleared her throat. “Um, Becky,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Becky, what is your job around here?”

She swallowed. “Make up?”

“Right,” he said, levelling her with a look that made Marissa shiver just to witness. She didn’t ever want to be the subject of one of those looks. “So why are you hassling the talent?”

Becky’s face had turned beet red and Marissa was blushing in sympathy for her. “No, I’m not, I mean, I’m sorry,” she threw Marissa a desperate look. “I didn’t mean to hassle her. I-I’m just glad she’s back, that’s all. I’m a fan.”

A fan. Ha. That was a laugh.

Joel continued to regard Becky with a stony look and folded his arms across his chest. “Can you finish up?”

Becky used make-up remover to clean the smudge of mascara, but her fingers trembled too much to reapply it.

The girl took a deep breath and blew it out with her lips pursed, like she was doing yoga breathing.

Marissa picked up the wand and leaned toward the mirror, putting it on herself.

She held her eyes wide so it wouldn’t smudge and turned back to the make up artist. “What else?”

“Um...lips.” Becky fumbled for her lip pencil, darting a glance up at Joel, who still glowered at her.

“Hey, I’ll be right out, okay?” Marissa said, realizing if Joel didn’t leave, her make up would take twice as long.

He nodded once, gave Becky one more look and left the room.

Becky finished the look without meeting her eye. Tension hung between them like heavy clouds. Marissa couldn’t think of anything to diffuse it. She really didn’t want to be treated like crap by her make up artist, but she also didn’t want her shaking in fear or hating her now.

“Okay, you’re good to go,” Becky said.

“Thanks,” she muttered and bolted for the door of her trailer.

Joel literally stood outside it, waiting.

Her heart leaped. For some reason, she thought things would be the same as before on the set.

She hadn’t expected Joel to let everyone see they had a relationship—whatever that relationship may be.

It turned her gooey inside to be acknowledged publicly by him—Joel Sutherland, A-list movie star.

But no—it wasn’t just the public acknowledgement that had her swooning.

It was the way he continued to dote on her.

After their night in Vegas, she’d begged him not to give her another enema, since her lip had improved. He had prescribed exercise instead and invited her to do Crossfit with him.

“Uh, Crossfit kills me. I mean, literally. I throw up from the exertion. Does a dance class count?”

He’d grinned at her. “Sure, you can take a dance class for your exercise.”

To her absolute shock, he had not only taken her to dance class—after they dropped her car off to have the roof mechanism fixed—but he had sat and watched the entire thing.

She’d been almost giddy from the attention.

Dance had always been her greatest love—she’d been a competitive dancer growing up, but her mom had pushed her into acting, since that’s where the money was to be had.

She showed off for Joel, hitting her triple pirouettes and tilts and nailing the contemporary combination at the end.

His presence had fueled an energy in the entire class—every dancer treating it like an audition, doing her best for the famous movie star in the waiting room.

Of course, she was famous, too, but she came to dance.

The students there knew that and gave her a respectful amount of space.

She remembered Naomi, a girl on her dance team growing up.

Naomi’s parents—both her mom and her dad—had sat and watched every single dance class, every rehearsal, every performance.

Marissa and the other dancers had hated her for it.

She just seemed so much more loved than the rest of them.

Marissa’s mother, despite offering every bit of criticism of her performances, never stayed to watch classes or rehearsals.

She had always been too busy getting her hair done, dating the next prospective stepfather or shopping with Bev.

And she’d considered dance a necessary skill, but nothing worth pursuing seriously.

After the dance class, she’d rushed, like a child, into Joel’s arms and he had picked her up, pulling her legs around his waist.

“Great job, Marissa,” he had exclaimed. In her ear, so no one else could hear, he said, “I could tell you did your very best for Daddy. I’m so proud of my little angel.”

She’d turned giddy with the attention, giggling and warm as he lowered her down and offered to take her out for a treat.

Having Joel there yesterday made up for every single one of her mom’s absences. And now here he was, protecting her from her make-up artist and standing protectively outside her trailer, like he wasn’t the biggest name on the set.

He took her hand. “Are you okay?”

She looked back over her shoulder toward her trailer, where Becky was coming out. “Yeah. Totally. Thanks.”

“Okay, so we’re going back to the same scene we stopped on. I know you know the lines this time, so just relax and shine, all right, baby?”

He knew she knew her lines because he’d made her rehearse them all afternoon the previous day. Not that she’d minded one bit. She loved acting with him.

“Do I seem nervous?” she asked.

“I can tell you’re edgy, but that’s my job,” he said, giving her a wink.

“It’s your job to know or to make me edgy?” she teased.

His expression grew wolfish. “Both. In the appropriate times.”

He led her to the set and into the elevator, where he wrapped both arms around her from behind. She leaned into his strength.

“More light on the left side,” Antonio called out. “Let’s see the close-up of Marissa’s face.”

She held still while they made the adjustments.

“We are ready to roll.” A cameraman’s assistant hit the slates with the digitized scene and take number. “Cameras...and…” Antonio pointed at them, “Action.”

They ran the scene. Joel brought his arm around her waist, the knife at her throat. They wrestled in the choreographed fight scene they had rehearsed the night before. The one that had ended with him on top of her, tickling until she squealed “mercy.”

Electricity ran between them. Every touch made her want more, every line he spoke in his deep, resonant voice made her quiver. They finished the scene too soon for her taste and a silence fell over the set after Antonio yelled, “cut.”

“Nice work,” Joel murmured, helping her up.

Antonio was walking over with a strange glint in his eye.

She resisted the urge to shrink back against Joel.

“Very interesting,” he said.

“What?”

“The chemistry here.” He waved a finger back and forth between her and Joel.

“That was totally different. I want more of it. I want…” he looked into space.

“We’re going to re-shoot the warehouse scene.

I want that energy, that—” he grasped air in both his fists, shaking them, “connection. In fact,” he said, thrusting one finger in the air, “we should add a scene. Get me the screenwriter—no, nevermind, I will write it.” He stared into space.

“An evening scene. In the hotel lobby. He is having a drink, and she enters in a tight, red dress and sits down across from him. He orders her a drink. She won’t take it, but she drinks his instead.

Cut scene.” He closes his fist. “Next scene, in the hotel room, they are fucking like cats—you know what I mean? Wrestling, pinning each other down, biting. Can you do that?”

She tipped her head back to look at Joel, and found him focused on her, as usual. He winked. “I’m pretty sure we can.”

Antonio went straight to the new scene. When he got excited about an idea in his head, there was no slowing him down. He barked at the costume department until they produced the red cocktail dress and altered it on the spot to hug Marissa’s tight little body like a glove.

She played the hotel bar encounter perfectly: sultry glances, pouty lips. He wanted to screw her for real. Filming sex scenes was notoriously awkward. Even if he did feel like getting naked with a co-star, they had twenty-five other people standing around watching.

The next scene happened in a hotel room, which Antonio found on another movie’s set. There were all kinds of phone calls and red tape, but when he insisted, he got his way.

“Okay, now give it all to me,” he said, looking at Marissa. “Walk in, take your clothes off, piece by piece, and attack your man. Or vice versa. I don’t care. You two figure it out while we get set up.”

He turned to Marissa, thinking she might need coaxing or cheerleading, but she grinned at him with a sparkle in her eye. His heart did a double-beat. This was the Marissa from New Mexico. The one who loved what she did. The Marissa he had wanted on his movie.