I set my phone down on the stand and began to read. “Nestled against the northern slope of the Petit Luberon sits an old hilltop village, Maubec, surrounded by a sea of vineyards with long and slim cypresses stretching up to the sky. Beautiful stone houses with blue shutters line the small, steep cobblestone lanes. Nearby sits a small Baroque church, Saint Orens, built with the noble materials from the immediate vicinity. And then, there is Château Mirabelle. Once upon a time a thirteenth-century fortress, a fifteenth-century castle, and then an eighteenth-century palatial estate, Château Mirabelle was left abandoned and in ruins . . . until now.” I looked up from the page. “How was that?”
“Très bien. Perhaps when you say it again you can put just a little more feeling into the descriptions. Also, just a touch slower.” Cédric circled his finger in an again gesture. “Encore, s’il vous plait . . .”
As I recited the lines again, a warmth radiated through me. I loved the vibe they were going for, the audience instantly transported away to Provence—the sights, smells, and colors practically soaring off the page. The show was going to be everything I hoped it would. Everything Kate promised.
Cédric gave a big thumbs-up. “Parfait!”
Jess put her hand over the mic while she and Cédric huddled closely to discuss the take. Finally, she said, “You nailed it, so I think we are ready to move on. You can go ahead and flip to the next page.”
I turned the page over and picked up the next sheet from the pile. The heading said, first impressions.
“Whenever you’re ready, Plum,” Jess said.
I took a sip of tea and started to read. “The château, with its lack of indoor heating, may have been freezing, but the contractor, Bastien Munier, was HOT HOT HOT.” I blinked, waiting for my thoughts to catch up to my mouth. I looked up from the paper. “Excuse me, is this right?”
Jess glanced down at her script. “Spot on, but when you say, ‘HOT HOT HOT,’ I need you to really punctuate each HOT.”
I paused for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. “Okaaaay?” I moistened my lips and repeated the take, this time focusing on the script and its implications. “The château, with its lack of indoor heating, may have been freezing, but the contractor, Bastien Munier, was HOT HOT HOT. Bastien showed me around the house, but I was distracted by his eyes, his lips, and the faint outline of stomach muscles I could just make out under his tight shirt.” The hairs on the back of my neck started to rise, but in spite of myself, I continued reading. “Rhys Braun didn’t hold a candle to this incredibly sexy . . .” I threw the paper down on the ground. “What the hell is this? Are you kidding me! Who wrote this copy?”
Jess’s expression grew uneasy at my outburst. “Um . . . it came from the network,” she answered as she eyed Cédric for backup.
“Has Kate seen it?” I pressed.
“Of course, she greenlit it this morning,” Cédric confirmed.
My stomach dropped as my legs practically gave way. I threw off my headphones and picked up the stack of sides, reading through them as quickly as my eyes would let me. Scattered across almost every page, every scene intro, was narration about a budding passionate relationship with Bastien. My feelings about him. His feelings about me. Our feelings about each other. There was hardly anything I could find about Maubec, Château Mirabelle, or even the renovation itself.
Kate greenlit this? No way. Not possible.
Without another word, I snatched the rest of the papers off the stand and stormed out of the trailer to find her. I didn’t have to look far; she and Bastien were cozied up by the coffee machine at craft services.
Kate spotted me and glanced down at her watch. “You can’t be finished already? Although you’re such a pro, I guess anything’s possible.”
I eyed Bastien, fighting to keep my face expressionless. I’d deal with him later. This was more important. I stared straight at Kate and pulled myself up to full height. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Bastien stood to join us, but I put up my hand to stop him. “No. Just Kate.”
Kate looked between the two of us and nodded sympathetically. She set her frothy cappuccino down on the picnic table. “Sure, let’s step over there. Bastien, be a dear and go let Jess and Cédric know that Plum just needs a moment and we’ll be back on schedule in ten? Thank you so much,” she instructed, not waiting for him to respond, and then motioned me over to a more remote spot where we could speak away from the rest of the crew. “What’s going on, Plum? What’s the matter?”
“What the hell are these pages?” I asked, tossing them at her feet.
She looked genuinely surprised by my harsh tone and open hostility, not to mention the flurry of paper now scattered across the ground. “What do you mean?”
“‘The château, with its lack of indoor heating, may have been freezing, but the contractor, Bastien Munier, was HOT HOT HOT,’” I said, parroting back the lines from the script. “This is not what I signed up for.”
A pouty smile appeared to warm Kate’s face, but her expression was more indignant than sympathetic. “Sweetie, that’s exactly what you signed up for. The show’s called Heart Restoration Project, what’d you think it was going to be about?”
I threw my hands up. “The town. The house. THE RESTORATION! The things you said it would be about!”
“Sure, those are all important background components and a great parallel, but you had to know it was never the main storyline.”
My mouth turned sour, and a lump of pressure solidified in my throat. I closed my eyes and mustered the courage to ask the question I was afraid I already knew the answer to. “So then, what is the main storyline?”
Kate set her face into a mock-pitying expression. “Oh, sweetie, hasn’t it been obvious from the very beginning? You are.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
My vision turned cloudy, and my breath fell out of me in quick and ragged huffs of panic. The feeling of pins and needles pricked my hands and feet, and an overwhelming dizziness threatened to topple me right over.
I misheard her. I’m misunderstanding. This has to be a mistake.
But my internal assurances fell short as a mounting panic attack began to pull me under. My thoughts urged me to get out of there as quickly as my feet could move. But they stayed planted firmly to the ground as if I were rooted to it.
With my tongue thick and dry in my mouth, I managed a meek, “What did you just say?”
Cocking her head to the side, she wore a neutral, if not disappointed, expression. “Oh, c’mon, Plum. You really had no idea? You didn’t see that you were the real project all along? Clever, right?” she chirped, proud of herself and not exuding one fleeting moment of remorse or regret for her cunning duplicity.
My worst nightmare had come true, another betrayal even worse than the tape, and I couldn’t do anything but stand there and face it. There was nowhere to run and no one to run to, and the loneliness of it hit me almost harder than Kate’s confession. My thoughts raced, trying to put the pieces together, desperately trying to remember all of the moments that were likely played up for the show. The easy flirtations. The special moments in the house like when he showed me the cellars, spinning stories about walls having memories. My initials forever sealed in the concrete? Jesus, had I really been that naive? Blind? Stupid?
The tea and scone I’d eaten for breakfast were now fighting their way back up as waves of nausea rolled through me and the speckles that dotted my vision grew into disorienting, warbling blobs.
With tears already pooling in the corners of my eyes, another realization hit me like a punch to the gut. “Wait . . . Bastien?” I breathed. “Was Bastien a part of this? Was he hired as an actor? Oh my God. Oh my God.” I needed to sit down or else I was going to end up on my ass, in the dirt, in the middle of this hectic driveway.
Kate, noticing me unsteady on my feet, took me by the elbow and led me to sit on the edge of an open truck bed and handed me a half-full bottle of Evian from inside her tote. “Yes, of course, Bastien was in on it from the start. But if it makes you feel any better, though he came on initially to play the role of paramour, I don’t think all your interactions were fabricated. I mean, I saw the dailies. You can’t fake that kind of chemistry.” Her face registered no remorse, no guilt for blindsiding me, and no shame for setting me up. I wanted to punch her square in the nose and tell her to shove the show right up her ass.
How many of them knew? How many of them did I let in as they willingly tricked me to sell the show? With every bomb Kate dropped in my lap, the past few weeks of my life exploded into shards and debris that floated down past my eyes one piece at a time, snatching my attention with each memory.
The paparazzi who appeared out of nowhere at the club in Avignon. It was Bastien who’d alerted them! The over-the-top girls’ weekend in Paris. It was all a ploy for Kate to further gain my trust. Rhys oh-so-coincidentally showing up at George V . . . Kate orchestrated it all, down to the well-timed spa appointment to lure me back to the hotel at just the right moment. And then of course, the cherry on top, having Elliott capture it all on camera.
