Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [48]
The girl put the salad in front of him and he gave her his big smile. She thought he surely had great teeth.
“Look, Rory, they’ve upped your money once, you’re getting thirty grand an episode now. That kinda money’s not to be sniffed at.” Bill smiled at his unintended double entendre and Rory glared back at him over his salad.
“It’s not enough. I’m the star of that show, without me it’s down the tubes. All those women—women, Bill—on the other shows get more than me.”
It was true, he was the star of the show, but the show was still new. All the others—Dynasty, Dallas—they’d been running for years. “They’ve earned it, Rory, they all paid their dues in the beginning.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t intend to wait that long. You can tell ‘em from me, Bill, that I don’t show up for shooting next season unless I get fifty an episode.” He munched on the alfalfa sprouts, wishing he liked the taste more. “I mean it, Bill.”
Bill kept the benign smile on his face, but he was boiling. After all he’d done, the kid was gonna fuck it up now, just because he couldn’t wait awhile—he’d gotten greedy too early.
“Look, Rory,” he said, picking at the sandwich he’d ordered, “all you have to do is lay off for a while, get a couple of good seasons under your belt, and then the company’ll expect to be hit for more money—that’s the way it is these days. They’ll be reasonable when they know the show’s a stayer. You’ll be up there with Dynasty yet.”
“Now!” said Rory. “No waiting!”
Bill’s temper boiled over. His smile was just as gentle and he kept his voice low and even, so that nobody at the next tables would ever have an inkling that anything was wrong.
“You little prick.” He smiled. “You’ll do as I tell you. Don’t start giving orders to me and thinking you’re the star—because you and I know you ain’t, not unless I say so.”
Rory’s brown eyes, set under thick blond eyebrows, met his; his hand, holding a forkful of avocado, halted halfway to his mouth.
“Whadd’ya mean? I’m the guy up there on the screen—there’s nothing you can do about that anymore.”
“No?”
Rory laid down the fork; he knew a threat when he heard one. “It’ll be your word against mine,” he said defiantly.
“My word,” replied Bill, calling for the check, “and Stan Reubin’s. Stan’s one of our most respected lawyers, Rory, you know that, don’t you? They’d believe whatever he said about Jenny’s last night on earth.”
Rory stared at him as Bill carefully placed a three-dollar tip on the table. “So get yourself back to work, Rory. I’ll see you’re taken care of all right. Don’t you worry about that.”
Bill headed for the door and Rory watched him go. Shit, he thought uneasily, wasn’t that whole episode dead and buried along with Jenny? What had Bill meant by that?
“Can I get you anything else, Mr. Grant?” The waitress was smiling at him. She was kinda cute. “I love the Missoni,” she said, touching the sleeve of his sweater.
“Thanks,” smiled Rory. He’d known the Missoni would be a winner.
6
Morgan McBain prowled the upper level of Geneva’s immaculate air terminal, pausing now and then to stare out of the windows at the still-falling snow. It had been coming down for more than three hours now in an ever-thickening white blanket that had brought all air traffic to a halt, closing off Geneva Airport—and himself—from the rest of the world. His plane from Athens had been the last one to land before the storm really took hold and it was impossible to tell how long it might be before the snow eased off enough for plows to clear the runways and his flight to Paris to continue.
Leaning against the gallery rail he surveyed the lines at the check-in counters. Frantic couriers were trying to placate groups of irate would-be skiers who very much wanted to be in their mountain