Page 51 of His Girl Hollywood
“It’s none of my business,” she murmured. She didn’t knowwhat his life had been then. If he had been lonely. How he’d managed to get by. All she knew was she hadn’t been there. Hadn’t been privy to any of it. Because he hadn’t wanted her to be. That was what she needed to remember. But she found herself overwhelmed with questions. Had he ever been in love? He claimed to have no true fondness for Eleanor, but surely, there had been someone? Ten years was a long time to be lonely.
“Sure, but I figure you have a right to know these things now.”
“Why?” While they were talking, they’d grown ever closer to each other without noticing. Arlene was near enough to Don to kiss him now, if she leaned forward a little. She rocked forward, putting her weight on her toes, as if there was a thread between them pulling her to him.
Eddie coughed quietly behind them, and it broke the spell. She sprang back from Don, and ran her fingers through her hair. Nuts, that was close. “So, how does the number end?” She needed to get back on track, finish the choreography, and chart how they’d film it.
He gave her a look that saidWe’ll finish this conversation later,and then he spoke. “Well, it’s about him wrestling with his alter ego, right? Trying to banish those negative thoughts about himself, about not being enough for Lee. Somehow he needs to eliminate the second version of himself.”
Arlene threw her head back and mulled, looking up into the morass of metal and lighting equipment that hovered over the soundstage. “Hmm, okay, I like that. Keep talking.”
They both looked around the stage, searching for something that would help them accomplish that. Don crossed to one of the storefront windows that lined the fake New York street. “He could see his reflection in the window again and then smash the glass?”
Arlene twisted her lips into a moue, considering the idea. Something about it wasn’t right. It was too showy. Too violent. Shethought back to that charmed night at home, the carefree moves Don had executed in the yard with the puddle left by her mother’s water hose. “What if it has just rained?”
Don’s eyes lit up. He knew where she was going. He scuffed his heels against the studio street, jumping into a series of moves that looked like stomps that turned into kicks. “That’s it, yeah.”
She clapped her hands together in one quick burst of excitement and pointed to the street corner where a lamppost was perched. “You could splash through some puddles together, you and your alter ego, down the street, and then you’ll leap up onto the lamppost.” He did as she said. “And you’ll look down and see your reflection in the puddle, no longer free to dance alongside you.”
He twirled himself around the lamppost, his arm gracefully outstretched, before springing down to the sidewalk with his knees pulled up until he landed, scrunching himself up to make a huge splash in a puddle. He then executed a tap sequence that would disperse the puddle everywhere. “Ta-da. And he’s gone!” he crowed, raising his arms in a finishing pose and smiling.
Arlene couldn’t help herself. She could see how special this scene was going to be. Something that had never been done in a dance number before. Something that would help them both stand apart in this business. She ran toward him and threw her arms around him, squeezing him tight and jumping up and down. “Perfect, perfect, perfect!”
He joined her in her enthusiasm, picking her up and swirling her around before kissing her. She let him, only for a moment, before breaking away, her mask of professionalism crashing down once more.
He somehow looked both pleased with himself and appropriately cowed. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I know you don’t—I got carried away by what a good team we are.”
She blushed at that. A team. That was a dream she’d tucked away a decade ago, afraid to take it out and re-examine it lest it crumble away to dust. But now Don was here. She wanted badly to give in to him, to whatever this thing was between them. But could she really risk so much for a girlish fantasy?
She looked around the soundstage, making sure no one else had crept in and witnessed their kiss. Eddie had crossed over to a far corner and was making a show of examining the grain of the wood on one of the sets. Bless him.
“We are a great team,” she told Don. “But we have to stay a professional team. Especially when we’re here. We’ve talked about this.”
A flicker of doubt crossed Don’s face for a moment, but then it was gone, replaced by a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Go out with me tonight.”
“Did you not hear a word I said? We can’t go out for a night on the town. People will talk.” Arlene couldn’t suppress a brief shudder, remembering what Joan and Dash had gone through. How the press, particularly Leda Price, had nearly cost them their happiness. Joan still wasn’t working while she waited for the furor over her secrets to die down. The only reason the fallout hadn’t been worse was because Joan and Dash had saved themselves—and Harry had protected them. But Arlene wasn’t fooling herself that she’d be offered any such leeway. First, her crew would eat her alive, and if there was anything left, the press would pick the bones clean. Not only would Harry fail to protect her, he wouldn’t give her a second chance. And every other studio in Hollywood had made it clear that the idea of hiring a woman to direct was laughable. They claimed it was against studio policy to allow women to helm a film. She knew because she’d interviewed for secretary jobs at every one of the major studios and she’d asked.
“It’s too risky.” She looked over her shoulder again, paranoid, but a flare of want licked through her as he cuffed her chin and turned her back to face him. Maybe, if they could keep it secret. “We could go back to my place again,” she whispered.
“As tempting as that sounds…” Don grinned, a slight smirk that made her knees wobble. “I want to take you on a real date. It’s what you deserve. I don’t like hiding. I’m tired of it. Tired of playing by someone else’s rules.”
“So am I, but we don’t have a choice. It doesn’t matter what I deserve. It matters how it looks.”
“What if I told you I knew a place where no one would care? Where no one would pay any attention to us. Where people know better than to squeal on what they see.”
Arlene lifted her eyebrows at him, skeptical at his suggestion. She was the one who’d spent the last ten years learning the ins and outs of this city. Strange how you could grow up somewhere and not really know it, outside of your own backyard. But then again, she’d always been something of a homebody. Her head told her to say no. To protect her position at the studio. More importantly, to protect herself. Don had explained why he hadn’t been there for her or her family when her father died, but it still hurt like a fresh wound. No matter how valid his explanations, it didn’t excuse his absence. His abandonment. But her heart urged her to tempt fate, to not walk away from this thing she’d once yearned for desperately. “Go on…”
“Meet me at the Santa Monica Municipal Pier tonight at nine p.m. and I’ll show you.”
“You realize how fishy that sounds, right? And not just in a literal sense.”
He chuckled. “You’ll have to trust me.”
Arlene wasn’t sure she could. More to the point, she wasn’t sureshe should. But something in her could not resist this man and the promise of a night on his arm. It was foolhardy in the utmost, but couldn’t she, just this once, not be the practical girl above all else? “What should I wear?”
Don smiled like a kid on Christmas morning. “Get dolled up. I’ll take care of the rest.”
Chapter 20