Griffin returned to the carpooling spreadsheet. “According to this, she got a ride home with…” He pointed at a woman’s name. “I know her—she’s a sound mixer. There’s a number here.” He pulled out his phone, then hesitated.
“Use mine,” Lana said, offering it. “I’m not so bothered if someone sells my number.”
“Thanks.”
Griffin made the call, on speakerphone. After a minute of confusion, in which the sound mixer assumed it was a prank, he managed to confirm that she’d dropped Vivien home without incident. “She was unusually quiet,” the woman said. “Jumpy, you know? That was Friday, and it was her turn to drive on the next Monday, but she never showed, and we couldn’t reach her. I heard later she quit. Hey, listen, I’ve got some friends over—they will flat-out spin if you say hello.”
Griffin grimaced. “Just quickly, okay?” As he was passed around the group, he became more curt—retracting audibly as well as physically. Eventually, he made his excuses and ended the call. “How about we get some sleep?” he said to Lana. “We can catch the guards in the morning, then I can rent us a car to get back to L.A.”
“My car is parked in Fitch.” She imagined Griffin Hart in her little hatchback and snorted. He looked at her curiously. “It might not be what you’re accustomed to.”
“I’ll cope.” He pushed his chair away and stood, scooping their trash into the shopping bag. “Coming?” He held up his trailer key. Her throat dried. “You can take Estelle’s trailer, next to mine,” he said—a hasty clarification. “I’ve already messed it up today, so she can blame me.”
“You have?”
“Not like that. I crashed in the wrong trailer. She’d already left. They’re identical, and I was … anyway…”
He grabbed Lana’s backpack, and she followed him to the row of lead-actor trailers. Estelle’s trailer was unlocked, and he showed Lana in. It was a cross between a first-class cabin in a plane and a fancy walk-in closet. Her flashlight beam caught a row of framed photos on a vanity. She paused on one of Estelle and Griffin, in tux and shimmering gown. His arm was around her, his palm resting on her hip. Clearly together. “Wow, where was this taken?”
“Emmys? Globes?” He stepped in beside her. “No, Oscars.”
“You two dated?”
“We were together for an awards season. November to February. That’s a lot of photos in black tie per day actually spent together. But if you read the gossip, you’d think we were on the brink of marriage and I dumped her and broke her heart.”
“She’s still into you.”
“And you know that how?”
“From the way she reacted after you filmed the kissing scene. She looked…”
“You’re blushing again.” He touched Lana under the chin with a single finger, coaxing her to face him. She fought to steady her breath. The lightest of touches and he might as wellbe stripping her naked and ravishing her, for the effect it was having.
“You’re teasing me,” she managed to say.
“Am I?” He seemed genuinely uncertain. “How did Estelle look?”
“Turned on,” Lana declared, defiantly. “She looked turned on.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I could tell.” He shrugged, removing his finger but not stepping away. “It worked for the scene. She told me not to feel like I had to hold back.”
“So,didyou dump her?”
“Only after she gave me an ultimatum—all or nothing. Does that make it her choice or mine or both?”
“You weren’t into her?”
“Oh, I was into her—she’s an incredible woman—but not in the way she wanted.”
“What did she want?” Why was Lana even going there, teasing him out as she might do with some guy she thought she had a chance with? As if Lana could fill a void that Estelle Duman couldn’t.
“I don’t really open up. Girlfriends generally want you to open up.”
“We’re annoying like that—women, I mean, in general. Why don’t you open up?”
“Because then my secrets are no longer secrets. If I tell people things, next I know, I see them in headlines.”
“I would have thought another celebrity would be good at keeping secrets.”
