Wild Honey by Suzanne Forster Page A

mechanisms at her disposal. Nerves were her Achilles heel, her undoing. Given a choice at birth, she would gladly have foregone a nervous system altogether if an alternative had been available. As it was, she accepted nature’s burden, made the best of it—and wore her locket.
    Only half listening to her coach, she reached for the antique gold heart, but her fingers found only the warm, bare skin of her throat. Anxiety crested again as she remembered she’d been told not to wear any jewelry for the scene. This was to be their first day of actual filming, and though no one had said as much to her, she knew the movie sank or swam by her performance. Could she do a convincing Lisa? Could she do a convincing Leslie doing Lisa?
    “You’re risking everything ,” her young instructor was explaining fervently, “your profession, your personal ethics, even your life. You’re going against your own instincts, Lisa”—he paused to let her register the name of her character—“and you’re doing it for love.”
    “Love.” Sasha risked the makeup man’s ire to glance down at her coach. “I think I understand Lisa’s conflict. I’m just not sure I can convey it.”
    He stood and squeezed her hand as though to transfuse her with his boundless confidence. “You can. Just be there, Sasha, be in the moment. Let your feelings exist, acknowledge them, express them, and you’ll be terrific.”
    Sasha caught her own reflection in the mirror as the makeup man angled her head up and began etching a nasty-looking scratch on her cheek. Let her feelings exist? She was flirting with a full-blown panic attack!
    “Be there, Sasha!” Her coach headed for the door, flashed her a thumbs-up sign, and disappeared.
    Abandoned, Sasha mentally replayed the scene they were going to shoot. She’d arrived early to run lines with Carlos, her leading man, who had impressed her as a brooding type with artistic temperament to spare. He was always muttering about his instrument and finding his center. If he was upset about redoing the love scene with Sasha, he didn’t bother to mention it. In fact, she had the distinct feeling he thought she was Leslie. Self-absorbed, she decided, remembering not to smile, that was the word for Carlos. Furiously self-absorbed.
    Moments later, making her way through the cavernous sound stage to the set, Sasha drew in a steadying breath. Much as she wanted to deny it, the prospect of working with Marc Renaud accounted for at least ninety percent of her nerves. She hadn’t seen him since their conversation in the beach house, and despite his brief attack of sensitivity then, she had no reason to think he’d be anything but icy and autocratic on the set. No doubt she made things worse between them with her bred-in-the-bone aversion to authority. They seemed to be natural adversaries, destined to clash unless one of them could learn to defer gracefully. Don’t bet the rent it’ll be him, she thought, tugging the fraying collar of her costume into place.
    A hunk of cotton broadcloth came off in her hand. She stopped dead, stared at it, and moaned softly. The other ten percent of her nerves could be blamed directly on the tattered rag of a dress that Carlos soon would be ripping off her in a fit of passion. The flimsy breakaway shirtwaist already exposed an entire shoulder, half a breast, and three quarters of her left thigh. One careless move, and it probably would drop to her ankles of its own accord.
    That awful possibility vanished as the first object of Sasha’s concerns came into view. The set was buzzing with activity, and Marc Renaud was at the center of it. She stopped to watch and to give herself a moment to adjust to being on a bona fide movie set complete with an internationally acclaimed director. This is it, she thought, compressing her lips. Her shoulders rose and fell with a sharp, anticipatory breath. Break a leg.
    Renaud was talking to his script supervisor and his camera operator simultaneously as