Leah liked Nina. She was mid-twenties, Leah guessed, petite with jet-black hair and luminous gray eyes. This was her first real break, and she was as excited as any young actress would be by the prospect.
When the series wrapped for the season, the director, Ted, and the producer planned a party at Ted’s big rambling ranch house in Sherman Oaks.
Leah made Brad go with her so she didn’t have to go alone. Brad was happy to oblige her—his last gig had been as a giant chicken (Leah thought he was a rooster, but Brad insisted he was a chicken) on a kid’s show, and he was really getting desperate for some good roles. He even dressed in his best going out clothes—a tie-dyed tee and some baggy jeans.
Ted had a great place in Sherman Oaks, near Dixie Canyon, and had hired a valet to handle parking for the night. Leah wasn’t crazy about that idea, because she’d just bought a slightly used T-bird like she’d wanted for so long. It wasn’t blue, it was white, and it wasn’t a convertible, it was a hardtop. But it was a T-bird, and it ran, and she didn’t trust the pimply-faced kid who asked for her keys to treat it right.
But when she balked at valet parking, Brad had groaned. “You can be such an old lady sometimes,” he said, and popped out.
Leah frowned at his back, but with a sigh, she got out, too, and gave the kid her keys. “You scratch it, and I will rip your head off,” she warned him. Leah straightened the pale pink dress she’d found in the back of her closet, checked out the sparkly sandals Trudy had loaned her, and deciding that she looked okay, marched forward, into Partyville.
Partyville was in full swing, too—there were tons of people Leah had seen around the set and then some. There was a smell of pot in the air, and dance music was pumped into every room of the house. Tables of finger food were spread out through the cavernous living and dining areas, and then again on the flagstone patio that surrounded the in-ground pool. There were three bars, one of the cast members pointed out to her, tended by bartenders wearing pilgrim hats. Funny.
Brad abandoned her the moment they stepped in together. So Leah got a glass of wine and started working her way through the front room, speaking to everyone she knew, grabbing a couple of finger wraps to munch on. She found a couple of women who also played wives on the series, and they amused themselves for a while by making hilariously snarky comments about their characters.
When they had exhausted that series of gossip, Leah moved on, talked to a guy who was making independent films and thought she’d be perfect in his next one. It took Leah some doing to get away from him.
She had no idea how much time had passed when Brad, looking a little stoned, found Leah. “Great party!” he shouted over the noise.
“Yeah!” Leah shouted back.
“Hey, guess who I saw? That guy you like.”
As she hadn’t mentioned any guy she liked, Leah blinked.
“You know, the one with the flowers and perfume and shit.”
Her heart twisted. Really, she could feel it twisting in her chest, knocking the breath from her lungs. “Here?” she shouted.
“Yeah, in there,” Brad said, and pointed with a smoke and a full beer bottle toward the French doors that led into the living area. But when Leah looked in that direction, all she saw was Nina, who had obviously just come in. She actually felt relieved. She didn’t know what she’d say to Michael after a couple of glasses of wine, and waved at Nina, who instantly glided over.
“Hey,” Nina said, happy to see her. “Have you been here long?”
“Long enough for a couple of these,” Leah said, holding up her wineglass.
“Oooh, I’d love one of those. Where’d you get it?”
Leah turned and pointed behind her. “Pilgrim hat. You can’t miss it.”
“Okay, I’m going to get one. But listen, don’t go anywhere. I want to introduce you to someone.”
“I’m planted,” Leah said, and smiled as Nina glided off to get her drink.
“Leah?”
Her heart seized at the sound of his voice, just stopped beating altogether, and her tongue suddenly felt very thick and unusable in her mouth.
“Leah?”
He was closer. She squeezed her eyes shut, then turned awkwardly, gripping her wineglass like a gavel, and looked into those glimmering penny-brown eyes and smiled.
God, but he looked good. His black hair had grown a little, and he was wearing it in a ponytail at his nape. His jaw was covered with the start of a dark beard. He was wearing a black, collared cotton shirt tucked into white jeans and had a pair of really cool black sandals. “Oh. Hi, Michael,” she said as cheerfully as she possibly could, given the circumstance. “How are you?”
“Good,” he responded as his gaze flicked the length of her. He smiled, dimples creasing his cheeks. “You look great, as usual.”
But I’m not shiny. “Thanks. So do you.”
“How do you know Ted?” he asked, and his smile suddenly widened. “Hey, are you working on the HBO series?”