Stealing From The Sheikh Read online

  neither sweet nor light enough. She shook off the impression and climbed into her car, resisting the urge to peel out of her parking spot.

  She’d hoped that, early as it was, there wouldn’t be quite so much traffic on the highway. Riley’s foot pressed on the accelerator steadily and she gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, checking the time on her stereo every few moments. The freeway wasn’t quite as jam-packed as usual, but Riley knew she had to make up for lost time, and she nudged the car above the speed limit every few moments, panicking and slowing until the need to make it to the studio on time overtook all sense of caution.

  Riley had made it about halfway to the set when she saw the flashing lights in her rearview mirror. “God,” she said, her heart pounding in her chest. For just a moment, she hoped that the cop was after someone ahead of her; but as he slowed to following distance she knew that he had flagged her speeding, and there was no way around pulling over.

  Riley slowed and tapped her turn signal to let the cop behind her know that she was aware of him, and was trying to comply. She pulled onto the shoulder and groaned, her eyes stinging with the beginnings of tears as she saw that it was 5:50—she had ten minutes left before she needed to be on the set, which was another twenty minutes away.

  The police car came to a stop behind her and the siren cut out, though the lights continued to flash and spin. Riley scrubbed at her face and took a deep breath, reaching into her purse for her license and insurance card. Please, please let him just tell me that my taillight is out, or something. Riley turned the volume down on her stereo as she saw the officer emerge from his car and begin walking towards her driver’s side door.

  She rolled down the window and looked out of it as the man took the last steps to her door.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” the officer said after looking at her for a moment. “Is there some kind of emergency?”

  “I’m running late,” Riley said, making her voice as apologetic as possible. “I’m supposed to be on set in ten minutes, and the studio is twenty minutes away from here.”

  “Well, you’re going to be even later now,” the officer told her, giving her a firm look.

  “I know—I’m sorry,” Riley told the man. “I’ve never had a ticket in my life, I just—I’m so panicked I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Give me your license and insurance card, please,” the officer said, seemingly unmoved by the repentance Riley showed. She handed over the two cards and the man looked them over for a second. “I’ll be right back with you.”

  She closed her eyes and leaned forward until her forehead came into contact with the steering wheel. “I haven’t even agreed to his stupid proposal and already Alex has me breaking the law,” Riley grumbled. If he hadn’t popped up in her life Riley would have gone to sleep at a reasonable hour, gotten up when her alarm went off, and wouldn’t be in the situation she now found herself in.

  The cop seemed to take an hour doing whatever it was officers did in their patrol cars with peoples’ documentation, and every minute that passed made Riley more anxious. She fidgeted in her seat, clenching and unclenching her teeth, checking her rearview mirrors every few moments as she waited. Finally the officer emerged, clipboard in hand.

  “Since this is your first offense, I’m going to do you a favor,” the cop told her when he came to a stop at her window. “You were going fifteen over the speed limit; I’ve written you a ticket for nine over the speed limit. You have the right to contest it if you feel like it, pay the fine, or attend traffic school to avoid points on your license.” He ripped the ticket free of the pad and handed it to Riley along with a pen and her ID cards. “Sign the bottom to acknowledge I’ve informed you of your rights; I get the bottom copy, you get the top copy.”

  Riley did as she was told and stuffed the ticket, along with her cards, into her purse.

  “Thanks for giving me a break,” she said, trying to keep any trace of bitterness out of her voice.

  “For future reference, I want you to think about the fact that you’re going to be later now than you would’ve been if you’d not decided to speed,” the officer said, giving her a significant look.

  “I will definitely keep that in mind,” Riley told the man, nodding her acceptance of the lecture.

  “All right. You can use the shoulder to get up to speed. Don’t make me pull you over again, okay?” Riley gave him a sheepish smile and nodded, and the cop went back to his cruiser.

  She remained cautious the rest of the way to the set, checking her mirrors every few moments as she went, dreading the possibility of another officer pulling her over. The speeding ticket rankled; Riley knew that she’d earned it, but she thought bitterly that of course the one day she’d really needed to be on time, she found herself later than usual—and all because she happened to speed in front of the wrong cop.

  SEVEN

  Riley finally made it to the studio, but even after parking as close to the sound stage as possible, by the time she clocked in it was 6:30—half an hour after call. Sighing, she checked the roster to see where she was supposed to report. Hair and makeup, trailer six was scribbled in next to her name. Riley steeled herself against the recriminations she’d get from the makeup crew for being late and started in that direction.

  “Hey you—you there, carrot top!”

  Riley wheeled around at the sound of the calling voice and saw a guy she assumed must be the floor manager striding across the set towards her.

  “Me?” She felt her cheeks starting to warm up.

  “What’s your name? Where are you supposed to be? This is a private set—if you’re some snooping journalist…”

  “Riley Townsend,” Riley said quickly. She noticed that everyone else moving about the sound stage seemed to have slowed down—if not stopped—their work to glance in her direction. “I—I’m heading to makeup and hair, like the roster said.”

  “Townsend…” The man looked down at his clipboard and when his gaze came to a stop he frowned. “It says here you had a six o’clock call. Did you just get here or have you been hanging out at craft services for the last thirty minutes?”

  He looked up from the clipboard to scowl at her and Riley couldn’t tell which of the two options would make him angrier. She decided to go with the truth.

  “I got pulled over trying to get here on time, and I just signed in a few minutes ago,” she admitted.

  “Look, I know this is probably your first big movie set,” the floor manager said, settling his weight and planting himself firmly in front of her. “But you can’t pull this kind of shit and expect to ever get another part in your life. This isn’t the college drama club; this isn’t even your acting class in Santa Monica. Time is money here.”

  “I know,” Riley said, her cheeks heating up even more.

  “Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to you,” the man told her sharply. “I know—I know. You figured that since there are so many people on set no one would notice you showing up late. Or because it’s not a starring role it doesn’t matter.” Riley glanced around furtively and saw that everyone was watching even more intently now, not even pretending to continue their work. “I don’t care if you’ve got scenes already shot— if you’re late again, I’m going to kick you right off this set myself. You’ll have your contract voided and be on your ass looking for infomercial work the next day. Got it, carrot top?”

  “Yes,” Riley said, her eyes beginning to sting. She took a quick breath and struggled to keep her composure. “I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “It better not,” the floor manager said. He turned away and Riley felt certain that for the moment at least, he had completely dismissed her from consideration. She turned back in the direction of the hair and makeup trailers and clenched her teeth, breathing in and out slowly to push down the urge to cry.

  “Get back to work!” the floor manager shouted behind her.

  Riley’s whole body twitched and she hurried her steps, hoping against hope
that her day would improve from there.

  The lead makeup artist gave her a significant look when she came into the trailer, but to Riley’s relief the crew seemed more interested in making up for lost time than in further humiliating her.

  “This is the look we’re going for,” the makeup artist at her chair said, showing Riley the concept picture. It was impressive; Riley thought she wouldn’t even be recognizable after they were done, which was exciting. When she sat down in the chair and the artists converged on her, Riley told herself that it would take time, and she would have to be patient.

  Within an hour of sitting down, however, her headache began to set in. Riley kept her face carefully neutral, opening and closing her eyes on command, tilting her head one way and then the other, remaining as still as possible as one stylist pulled her hair tightly back and then began to weave it into a complicated style. Riley’s legs went numb from sitting as one hour became two; she got a brief five-minute break as the artists gathered up more supplies, but then she had to sit still for another hour for them to finish.

  Three hours after first sitting down, Riley emerged in costume, unrecognizable. Her head felt heavier than she would have imagined possible, weighted down with strands of extensions, and pieces of latex. Her face had been reshaped until the sight of herself in the mirror had startled her—she was almost unrecognizable.

  She left her bag in the trailer but took her copy of the shooting script with her onto the sound stage; she knew that she would have to wait a while—her scenes in the film weren’t prominent, and the director would want to get into the meat of the shooting as quickly as possible—but Riley told herself that they wouldn’t have put her in full costume and makeup if they didn’t intend to shoot at least some of her scenes that day.

  A few hours later, it was a belief that she’d come to regret; the costume made it difficult to sit down, so instead she spent hours standing around, watching the shooting progress. At first, it was exciting to see major celebrities at work, absorbing the way that they got into character, and watching the way the crew moved around on the set. She was too anxious to eat very much during the lunch break, but she managed to chat with a few of the other actors, comparing makeup and costume sessions in a playful competition to see who had it the worst.

  “All right—we need to get these scenes done today, people,” the director told the cast and crew as they came back after the break, everyone taking up their positions. Riley found the most comfortable position she could, but her head continued to pound throughout the rest of the shooting day, and when the director announced “Anyone not in scenes three, five, twenty-four, or eight, you’re dismissed; we won’t be needing you today,” she trudged back to the makeup trailer to have all of the work she’d submitted to that morning undone—and all without having been in a single scene.

  Walking back to her car, Riley thought about the offer that Alex had made her the night before; between the speeding ticket, the lack of sleep, the dressing-down she’d gotten from the floor manager, and everything else that had happened to her that day, she felt as if she’d wasted an entire day to get next to nothing in return. Resigning herself to an uncomfortable decision, she took her phone out of her purse and found Alex’s number as she climbed into her car.

  Closing the door behind her, she took a quick breath to steady her resolve and tapped ‘call.’

  “Hey Ri-Ri, how’s the first day of shooting going?”

  Riley scowled at the knowing sound of Alex’s voice. “I’ll take the offer,” she said quickly.

  “Whoa, that was fast,” Alex said. “Just to clarify—you’re going to take which offer?”

  “Both of them,” Riley replied. “I’ll feed you whatever information I can about the production in return for the five hundred thousand and the movie role.”

  “Excellent,” Alex said. “Good to hear it. You won’t regret this, Ri-Ri.”

  Riley finished the call as quickly as she could, feeling as if she’d been coated in grease. As she pulled out of her parking spot and turned towards the freeway to go home, she thought with chagrin that a year before, she never would have thought she was capable of breaking her first big movie contract less than a month after signing it. Maybe I’m finally getting the hang of the way they do things in Hollywood, she thought, trying to soothe her stinging conscience.

  EIGHT

  “Thank God it’s Friday,” someone said a few feet away from Riley’s elbow.

  Riley smiled briefly, turning her attention onto the food spread out in chafing dishes and on platters. She yawned, wincing at the way the movement pulled at the skin along her hairline. I have never been more aware of the muscles in my face than I have this week, Riley thought absently.

  As she browsed the table, Riley thought about how different her first week on set had been from her expectations. Having been on sets before, albeit for TV and advertising, she’d known that she would probably spend a lot of time standing around waiting, but in the entire first week, she had shown up early each morning, sat through hours of hair and makeup, and found herself spending the entire shooting day with nothing to do but wait around. She tried to tell herself that at least it was a step above the lower-budget productions she’d been on, where minor talent was expected to help out the crew; but the difference between being a star on Galaxy Wars 3 and having a minor role was no less glaring.

  Beyond the stress of grueling makeup and hair sessions every day, the early calls, and the strain of standing around in costume, waiting for the possibility of one of her scenes coming up in the schedule, Riley’s anxiety had grown daily thanks to near-constant calls from Alex. In such a small role, so early on in the production, she was in no position to gather any information that would be remotely useful for her ex-boyfriend. Still though, at least nine times a day her phone buzzed in her pocket, and during her breaks she saw not only missed calls but text messages. What have you got for me? You picking up any good gossip?