Page 40 of Blood Stone
He saw her draw in long, steady breaths. Calming herself. She had received the message, then.
She sipped at her drink, and then laced her fingers together, staring at Sauvage. “It’s not just the money, Patrick. You know that.”
A fine furrow appeared between his brows. “Calum told me. I’ve been clean for six months. Clean ofeverything. Even booze.”
“You’ve gone longer than that before. And you have a tendency to fall off in the middle of filming, when the stress gets to you.” She shrugged. “Sorry, but that’s the facts, Patrick. And again, I don’t have the budget to have the set stand around idle while you go off on a binge, then spend forty days drying out, before you wander back to work.”
“Calum told me about this babysitting thing. You’re not serious, are you?”
“I am,” Kate replied serenely.
Sauvage pushed back in his seat. “That’s insulting.”
“You’ve proved you can’t be trusted, Patrick. And I can’t afford to take you at your word. You want the part, you say.” She shrugged. “That’s the price.”
He put his hands on the edge of the table, and Roman realized he was going to push himself up, and walk away.
But Garrett’s hand curled over his shoulder. “Suck it up, Pat. Just one movie. Prove you’re really clean. Then you’ll have roles coming in from all directions, and no more nervous insurance clauses and a revolving door of agents.”
Sauvage sat motionless in his chair. Considering.
“One movie and this is all over,” Garrett added softly.
Now, what did that mean? Roman wondered.
Sauvage breathed heavily through his nose. Then he nodded shortly. “Okay,” he said. He dropped his hands away from the table edge.
“It’s the role of the century,” Garrett added. “You know that.”
Sauvage grimaced. “Yeah.”
Roman glanced at Kate. She was absorbing every inch of this by-play with a writer’s and director’s keen sense of observation of character and interaction. Good. He wanted to talk to her about it later, when they were alone. He wanted to know if she was picking up the same wild and unexpected layers of sub-text that he was.
Garrett wasn’t hiding anything. What game was he playing here? What was the ace in his pocket if he was playing his cards face up?
