Page 18 of Best Served Hot
He told her he’d had a terrible Tinder date. He’d thought there might be some potential there, but it turned out she’d lied about a lot of stuff. He hated liars, he said. So it was a no-go. The whole thing had put him in a funk.
‘Are there any good ones out there?’ he asked with sadness.
Alex understood now that it had all been a ruse to get her to believe that he was on the market. And that he was looking for someone who had a low tolerance for dishonesty, which implied his basic decency.
In retrospect, it had been a tipping point in the relationship, just as he’d intended. She’d felt warmth, if not attraction. So when the right moment arrived, when Jen revealed that she’d had a rotation of regular lovers behind her back, a lovelorn Alex was ripe for the plucking.
Remembering that, Alex gripped the phone tightly. That bastard. He’d made a fool out of her. And now she was an unemployed leaf in the wind, flying around with no protection, no direction, nothing.
‘You’ve got yourself an assistant,’ Alex heard herself say.
Nicole made an actual ‘Whoo!’ noise. And then she paused and collected herself. ‘Sorry. I guess I thought you were going to turn me down.’
‘I think I thought I would, too,’ Alex admitted. ‘But it took me a long time to get that job, and he took it away from me when I became inconvenient. Whichhemade me in the first place. I was a puppet. And I’m no one’s fucking Pinocchio. So let’s do this. Let’s fuck him up.’
‘You don’t know how much those words mean to me, Alex,’ Nicole said passionately.
Alex smiled. She felt good. Better than she’d felt in a while. She was taking back control.
Thirteen
Nicole was playing a waiting game. Ethan could get the call sheet any minute now. Fun and games would then officially commence.
Nicole had come home. She was sitting in the garden in a deckchair plonked in a bit of sun next to a rosebush. She’d been back a few hours. Ethan had greeted her happily, and she the same. Smile, a peck on the lips, so glad to be home. More smiling. And then out of his way. But only to wait.
Eventually, she heard quick footsteps coming her way. He was practically running out of the house. ‘Er, Nic?’
‘Yup?’ she said very casually, newspaper on her lap, putting numbers in a sudoku with total randomness. She didn’t even know how to do sudoku. It was just a prop.
‘I just, er…’ Ethan started tittering nervously. ‘I just got a call sheet for the next episode, and it’s got your name on it.’
Nicole looked up from the sudoku, confused as could be. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, hoping she wasn’t overdoing it.
‘My show. You’re on the roster.’
‘What? When? I can’t be. What?!’
‘It’s next week.’
She gaped at him. ‘No, you must have something wrong there. I’m not doing your show at all. I’m doing an episode ofScalpels. I spoke to the producer a few days ago. I was going to mention it.’
He showed her his iPad. There was her name on theFoundationsfinale. Nicole frowned like it simply wouldn’t compute. ‘I don’t understand. I spoke to Viola Thingy fromScalpels. Didn’t I?’
‘No, she’s a producer onmyshow. I thought we agreed not to… Didn’t we talk about not mixing our professional lives?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course. I wasn’t trying to… This is a mix-up, that’s all. I’ve been speaking to a lot of people recently. I guess I just… Shit, how did I miss that!? I could have sworn… I mean, we talked about the show. It sounded like she was describingScalpels.’
Ethan flushed. ‘Yes, I know. The concept is, well, notsimilar, but….’
‘Fuck. I don’t know what to do now,’ Nicole said anxiously. ‘What the hell…’ She took a pause, letting him think the cogs were whirring in her ditzy little brain. ‘You know what? I think I know what happened. It was Jack Bevers.’
‘Jack Bevers?’ Ethan repeated. ‘What about him?’
‘You know him?’
‘Not really. He was onFoundations. But he left before I got there.’
‘Well, I was talking to him recently about some stuff, and he’s kind of looking around for directors for a big US show. I don’t think I got it,’ Nicole explained, mixing in a little embarrassing failure for colour. ‘But when we were chatting, he mentioned his time onScalpels. Then he calls the next day and asks if I’ll do a medical drama for a friend, Viola. I said sure. She called and told me someone had dropped out, and I just snapped it up. Seemed like she was in a bind. I guess she thought I knew what show she was on, so she never actually saidFoundations.She just kept talking about medical storylines. And I assumed it was Jack’s other show. I didn’t even know he’d doneFoundations.’ She shook her head. ‘What a mess!’
