In Hollywood, survival depends on sifting the real from the fake. In Will Mathis’s opinion that’s easy. Fake. All fake. Just like his con-woman ex, Tamara.
But working as a set carpenter pays the bills, so, begrudgingly, he ventures on set to solve a staircase problem for the director. Turns out the director needs more than a set carpenter, though. The lead male stand-in just got fired—and Will fits the part.
He can overcome his stage fright and get paid to stand around while they adjust lighting, right?
…Probably. But with a heart still burned by his ex’s treachery, can he do it while facing off with the leading lady’s beautiful body double?
A sweet, stand-alone Hollywood romance that proves: love never sticks to the script.
Chapter One
In Hollywood, the key to survival is remembering what’s real and what’s not. The traffic, that’s real. Everything else is fake, from the movie sets I work on, to the actresses falling in love with sweaty men in loincloths.
Los Angeles won’t see the sun for another hour yet, but the eastern sky has shifted to dark blue, and the air is preparing to make the jump from cool enough to be uncomfortable to hot enough to make everyone miserable. I fiddle with the duct-tape my brother put over the tears in the vinyl seat of the truck and shuffle the mound of fast-food bags crumpled in the passenger floorboard, thinking of Seattle and what was. How much of that was real?
“Will? Earth to Will, come in, Will Mathis.” Bradley glances my way as he turns his pickup truck into the studio parking lot. Bradley’s my little brother in age only, since he’s taller and wider than me. “You ready to represent my business?”
I am.
I’m not.
I have to be. “I’m always ready. And unlike you, I’ve never broken a security line and got thrown off the lot.”
“It was a simple misunderstanding with the guards, and as long as I stay off studio property for the next three years, no harm, no foul.” Bradley pulls at the tangles in his beard, like he does every time he’s nervous. The beard is just about the only thing we have in common, dark brown and so thick it resembles a rat’s nest attached to my face.
My ex-girlfriend (also my ex-accountant) Tamara loved me clean shaven, which is why for the last year and a half, I’ve avoided razors like I’m allergic to them. “I’m not going to panic, or break any rules. I’ll be a good little peon.”
“I’m not worried about you freaking out, I’m worried about you being Mr. Broody And Silent, when you need to be friendly. Work with the stage manager, figure out why he’s sent back the last four staircase posts and what it’s going to take to satisfy him.”
Four staircase posts I carved myself in different styles, two of them completely by hand. Set carpentry isn’t my first love, but art doesn’t pay the bills. And if I could pay my bills, I wouldn’t be crashing on my little brother’s couch. I wouldn’t be working for his company, carving pieces by the hour.
We wait in the studio drop-off line, which stretches around the parking lot and back out onto the street. You need a permit and an appointment and a vehicle of your own to park on set, so I’ll be hoofing it.
Bradley taps his fingers on the steering wheel to pass the time, and before he turns it into a full-on drum concert, I turn on him. “Spill it, bro. What’s eating you?”
“Word to my investment group is that everyone is on set today. You’re going to be on the same soundstage as her.”
Bradley’s been looking to move from watching movies to making them for years, by way of financing people who actually understand how movies are made. The way he says it, I should know who he’s talking about. Then again, Hollywood has always been his obsession. “Who is ‘her’?”
“Kantina.” He almost whispers her name, saying it the same way everyone says that name, like Kan and Tina are two separate words, or she’s so gorgeous you forgot to finish what you were saying halfway through. “She’s the reason we signed on to this project.”
“Kantina’s still making movies? She hasn’t had an album in two years, and her clothing line—”
“She’s making a sequel to The Bride Becomes Her.”
Bradley’s tried to show it to me five times in the last month. I like my films with more explosions of blood than outbursts of feeling. “You really think I’ll just bump into her?”
“It’s Kantina’s movie. She’ll be on set, and her autograph would be the pinnacle of my collection. God, I wish I could go with you, but if I get in trouble again, Tia says she’ll have to post two bails. One to get me out, and one to get her out after she kills me.”
There’s only one thing Bradley prizes nearly as much as his wife of four years, and that’s a celebrity autograph collection he’s built up since we were sleeping in bunk-beds in the same room. “If I see her, and if I recognize her, I’ll ask.”
Bradley gives me the biggest grin as we pull to the front of the drop-off line. “Will, look for the hair. Brilliant red hair down past her waist, green eyes, tan skin. She might not be in makeup, and when you meet a star in real life, they look so different. But the hair’s a dead giveaway.”
“I’ll ask.” I give him a pat as I collect my duffle bag with five new staircase posts and hop out. Truth is, I know what Kantina looks like—at least, I’ve seen her on billboard ads for makeup and movie posters, and a commercial once for an animal shelter. But telling Bradley that would remove one of my few sources of entertainment.
At the studio gates, I pass through security, which consists of tired guards scanning the bags of tired people, all of whom probably have more interesting things in their knapsacks than carved bannisters and bits of old beef jerky. As I step through the metal detector, my phone chirps.
Another debt collector. You can tell those guys your ex-girlfriend stole your money. You can tell them she stole your heart. That doesn’t stop the phone calls.
The backlots of the studio are a maze of warehouse-sized buildings with giant numbers painted on them. The gray walls tower above me, smooth gray, with curved tops, and palm trees in planters dot the sides. All around me, smokers light up for one last drag, the bitter smell of cigarette smoke joining hot blacktop and a sour underlying trace of garbage, like someone didn’t close the lid on the dumpster.
Sleek white trailers nestle up to the concrete walls like puppies next to their mother. Already they shake from air conditioners failing to cool them down. Golf carts whizz by, carrying people too important to use their own two feet, while everyone else runs like the devil’s two steps behind them.
Speaking of the devil, I’ve passed at least two people in demon costumes before I find Soundstage 52. It’s really only different in the numbers, each of which is taller than I am. Under the sodium lights, the tan paint is purple and the letters black as the sky was when I got up. The wide double doors open into a cavern so cold the hair on my arms stands up.
I expected to see sets.
Instead, black curtains hang from the ceiling, leaving me nothing but a dimly-lit corridor and a desk where a cluster of men and women gather, most of them chatting into headphones. If you’re supposed to dress for the job you want, most of these people want to be pizza delivery people. The men wear cargo pants with stuffed pockets and faded t-shirts, while the women seem to favor sweatshirts over tank tops and high socks.
“Excuse me?” I flag down a young man whose pantsuit sets him apart from the others as he balances a tray of coffee cups. “I’m Will Mathis, from Mathis Construction. I’m here to meet with Aaron Abrams.”
He sets down the tray like his night job is waiting tables, then clicks the button on his headset. “Mr. Abrams? There’s someone from set construction here to see you.”
A moment later, an incoherent buzz has him nodding. “He’ll meet you in Central Holding. That way.” He points past the desk, like there’s only one way to go, and then scurries off, throwing aside a curtain to cut through.
Turns out, there really is only one way to go. The heavy curtains and abrupt turns guard a single path straight into the interior of the soundstage—and what a mess. The whole place smells of paint and wood and burning plastic, and it’s a nightmare of half-built walls, corners, or doorways. All the set pieces I worked on with Bradley were nearly complete rooms, but this leaves the carpenter in me baffled.
None of the sets have ceilings, which lets the lights overhead shine down, and we’re not talking small lights. These are like search and rescue spotlights, and they’d kill someone if they fell.
Near the far right corner, another clot of people mills about in a rectangle marked off with yellow tape. The way they pace the line makes it clear this is where people wait, and so I stand and watch as the minutes tick by.
For my first time on a movie set, the place where movies are actually made, it’s boring. Watching the people in Central Holding, it reminds more of a detention center, like the one I had to bail Bradley out of when he was seventeen.
“Will Mathis?”
I turn to find a slender man charging my way. He’s at least thirty pounds thinner than me, and I consider myself fit at two hundred pounds to match my six feet. The black leather jacket he’s wearing and faded jeans match his dusty work-boots. He offers me a calloused hand. “Aaron Abrams. You here to get the monkey off my back?”
“Sounds like you need animal control,” I say, giving him a firm shake. “I’m here to find out what’s wrong with the posts I carved for you. I swear, I followed the sketches you emailed perfectly. Show me what’s wrong, I’ll fix it.”
“Follow me.” His order comes with the tone of a man used to being obeyed.
Furniture lines the back side of the sets, Victorian tables and chairs stacked as high as the walls, and enough barrels for me to start a winery. The few whole sets I pass have a dusty, antique feel to them, but what looks like weathered oak flooring shows white pine, fresh metal straps and duct tape at the edges. Aaron twists past a six-foot-tall clock face without hands, and when I follow, I find something that would give me nightmares if I were in charge of safety.
This set piece is two stories tall, built around a staircase, or at least, parts of one.
The top floor attaches to a metal ladder, the bottom to a stage base. What gives me the shivers is the banister railing, which is only held up by three posts, two at the top and one at the bottom.
“This is the centerpiece of the whole movie,” says Aaron. “She goes up the stairs. She goes down the stairs.”
“She falls off the stairs if she so much as leans on that railing,” I say, giving it a test wobble. And shake it does. The existing posts are obviously my work, white pine carved so each casts an S-shaped shadow, but I would never have left something half-done when it could be done right. “This isn’t safe. Give me a drill and a few minutes with some stud lumber and I’ll fix it up.”
Aaron shakes his head. “Leave it to the set carpenters. They get testy when other companies cut in on their work.”
That’s not how I raised myself to do things. I taught Bradley from the very beginning to do things right or not at all. But I can fight that war later. “You need what, fifteen of these? I brought several more samples, I could screw them into place and you could run tests.”
“Leave ’em.” he says. “You hit the concept sketches fine, did exactly what we asked, but light tests are showing some problems that might be easier to show than explain. Our director, Belion, he’s all about light and shadows, and these aren’t doing what we need. We need to be able to see the shape of the shadow on her legs when she’s going downstairs. That’s a close up shot. But they can’t look awful when you can see more of the staircase. The top posts are good for long shots, but only the bottom one gives us the right shadow.”
A short woman with jet-black hair rushes by and grabs Aaron. “We need to set up. Belion wants to get one more take in before lunch.”
She’s heavily built and looks like she’s on the verge of a heart attack, gripping a tablet in her hands as she glances to me. “You here to fix the wiring?”
“Felica Slate,” Aaron says, “meet Will Mathis. Will’s going to fix the staircase banisters so we can shoot the stair shots. Will, take this woman’s pulse and you’ll find out why you never want to be the assistant director.”
I dip my chin in deference to her. “A pleasure to meet you. I won’t keep Aaron much longer.”
“Mathis. As in… the head of the investment group?” Felicia raises one eyebrow.
Head? I have to keep my jaw from dropping, since Bradley told me he was a minor investor—and I took it more to mean he was doing the set work on the cheap. “Wrong Mathis,” I say with a shrug. “Will Mathis as in ‘lowly set carpenter.’ As in staircase repair-man. I’ll fix that for free, if you’ll let me.”
“Free?” She looks to Aaron. “Nothing is free in this town.”
I look her dead in the eye and use the same words that won me clients in Seattle. “Those posts are my work. Anything associated with my work is done right.”
Felicia scrunches her nose like she’s sniffing for a lie. “If you want to do something right, figure out what we can do about the shape of the posts. Then you can install them yourself.”
Now this? This is the kind of problem that makes me smile, because I can fix this. “I’ll make two sets of banisters. One for fat shadows, one for not looking awful. And if you need anything else fixed, call the shop and ask for Will. I’m looking for all the work I can get.”
Aaron gives me a solid thump on the back. “How soon can you get them?”
“Let me get some measurements from this so I can make them taller. Both of the ones you like are custom, so you sign my work order and give me five days. Each of these—”
“Three days,” says Felicia. “Get it done in three, and there’s something extra in it for you. Now, Aaron, light #22, please. Will, I’ll sign whatever you want and have someone show you out.”
It takes six hours to cut each of these if I do it right, and that’s the only way I do things. Maybe I just won’t sleep for a few days.
While Felicia watches, I snap pictures of each style and scribble a few quick measurements, then follow her back into the maze. She pivots, one hand to her ear. “No, no, no. Tell him no. Roll up a newspaper and smack him on the nose. Oh, for the love of God—” She takes off again, and all I can do is follow and hope I don’t get more lost than I already am.
Two half-built bathrooms and what I think is a winepress later, we emerge, not at the exit, but at a scene where there are actual cameras, and actual people—and an actual fight. Felicia plunges into the mass of people arguing and anyone sane takes two steps back. “This argument is over. You, stand over there. You, back to your trailer. No one moves or says a word unless I say so.”
She drags one unfortunate actor off and then pivots to point at me. “Stay put. Second crew on standby. Aaron, get it done.”
The actors disperse—or at least change—and that’s when I see the red-head.
Bradley said to look for the hair, but it’s not like I could miss her as she comes sweeping onto the set, a Victorian kitchen table and window that opens onto a picturesque view of a concrete wall.
Red hair cascades down her back, not red like in the posters, but more a dark brown with golden highlights. Under the brilliant lighting, it almost glows, and it takes me far too long to stop staring and remember Bradley’s request. Pen and work-request in hand, I have to remind myself how much I love my brother.
After all, I’m about to disturb an actress turned supermodel turned singer. “Excuse me?”
She spins to look at me, and boy, was Bradley right about how different stars look in real life. Her face is narrower than I thought, but her eyes have those same deep green lines. High cheekbones and a rounded chin serve to accent the soft tan of her skin, which I’d always taken as darker, though the freckles show through.
She opens her mouth, and in a rich, melodic voice, asks, “Are you lost? Production’s heading to 22 at the moment.”
I blink—and stop my staring. “I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s just—I mean, you’re beautiful.” My cheeks burn as I stumble over words and realize that maybe I’ve got more in common with my brother than I thought. “I mean, not like when you’re on the posters, but really beautiful. They must do a lot of editing to make you look like that.” She’s not waif-thin, with an athletic build and well-toned muscles on her arms.
I cringe as my brain catches up with my mouth. “I mean, not that you need it. Oh, screw it. I just wanted your autograph for my brother.”
She covers her mouth, and I can’t tell if she’s offended or hiding a laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Please.” I don’t take one step closer. I don’t know Kantina, she doesn’t know me, and I respect her personal space. Word of this will never leak out. “My brother is such a huge fan of yours. He says you’re the most beautiful woman in the country, after his wife.”
“But you say I’m not as beautiful as I am on the posters,” she says, circling the table. “Because I haven’t been edited.”
There’s a moment where my organs do a simultaneous triple flip, and I feel like I’m falling. Insulting pop royalty/ movie mega-star-models was not on my schedule for this morning, but I’ve managed it anyway. If this conversation were a plane, every engine would be flaming as it plummeted nose first. “You really don’t need it—”
“Sonia, darling, where are you?” The female voice, with its soft Eastern European accent, sends a nightmare crawling down my spine.
The woman in front of me looks over her shoulder while I wrap my brain around the name I just heard.
Sonia.
Behind Sonia, like an angel, is the actual Kantina. Bradley was right—I couldn’t miss her. Kantina’s skin is a richer tan, her hair is more brilliantly red, her face perfectly round, with luminous green eyes that don’t have gold flecks, eyes with pupils so wide it’s almost inhuman.
I’ve been making a fool of myself with Sonia.
“K, this man here asked me for your autograph.” It was a laugh she was hiding, and she’s not hiding it anymore. “Also, he says I look different when I’m on the posters.”
“In my defense,” I say in a small voice, “I also said you were beautiful.”
Kantina glides toward me. She has a presence, like the queen and a mixed-martial arts fighter all at once. She puts one hand on each of my cheeks and looks up at me. “She won’t give you my autograph because Sonia is not me. And everything I create is a part of me. I don’t give something so personal as a part of myself to someone I don’t know.”
I drop my gaze and turn away. “I’m sorry. I—I just saw you, Bradley said to look for the most beautiful woman on set, and I thought—I think, I’m going to leave now. Do either of you know my name?”
“No,” says Kantina. “I have not had the pleasure.”
I shake my head. “Good. How about we pretend this conversation never happened?” I glance away from Kantina to Sonia. “For the record, ma’am, you’re not just beautiful. You’re stunning.”
Kantina gives me a short wave, almost pushing me away, and spins. “Help me rehearse, Sonia. There is yet another delay.”
While Sonia whispers to Kantina, I stop to appreciate just how hot it is under these lights, because I’m sweating.
I haven’t crashed and burned like that since high school.
Tamara was never that hard to talk to. Then again, look at where that got me. I owned my own wood-carving shop, I had commissions from around the world. Now I have a vinyl couch to sleep on and part-time job working for my little brother.
From a few walls over, I can hear Felica’s voice, rising in volume and pitch. She’s headed this way.
She emerges, trailed by Aaron and another man with platinum blond hair. He can’t be less than sixty, and he wears gloves with the fingers cut from them, apparently so he can wave them better. He throws his hands up like he’s being robbed and shouts, “He did not support my artistic vision.”
“Belion,” says Felica, in the tone of voice I’d use with a toddler, “you cannot keep firing people. I’m trying to make a movie. You may be the director, but it’s up to me to get the movie done, and I can’t if you remove half my staff.”
“It is not up for discussion,” says Belion. His accent reminds me of Russian, but it’s like Russia by way of south Texas, since he draws out one-syllable words into two, if not three.
Felicia spins and jabs him in the chest. “You know what’s going to happen when I tell our producer? He’s going to explode on me. Then, he’s going to explode on you. Aaron, can we move to shooting 113?”
Aaron looks around wildly, catching my eye and giving me a half-hearted shrug. “Not without the staircase.”
“Right.” The word escapes Felica as a white flag. “Everyone go to lunch while I put in a call to Central Casting.”
Belion spins, sending his vest-cloak combination whirling like some sort of superhero, and stalks away.
“Ma’am?” I hold up the work order. “Could you sign this and point me in the right direction to the exit?”
Felicia spots me and sighs. “I’m so sorry. Making a movie is one set of—” She grabs Aaron by the goatee, yanking his gaze to look at me. “Do you see what I see?”
“A disaster in progress?” Aaron laughs, then goes quiet.
Felicia stares, and stalks toward me. “Will, isn’t it?”
I nod, taking one step back as she comes closer. The lights are blinding, but I have the exact same feeling a piece of ham does when it’s hanging from a hook.
“How tall are you?”
“Six feet flat in my stocking feet,” I say.
She grabs my arm. “Turn.”
I do, if only to get the light out of my eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset Kantina.”
“Good luck with that,” Felicia says, then continues like I said nothing. “Get Becton on set.”
“He was gone for lunch before you called it. But you’re onto something.” Aaron joins her, arms crossed. “Right skin tone, right height, build. Pity about the hands, or he’d make a perfect double.”
“Cut the beard, dye the hair, we could be filming again by the end of lunch,” says Felicia. “Tell me, Will. Do set carpenters get much overtime?”
That’s a joke. We’re an offsite fabrication unit. All our stuff is brought to the studios by truck, except when there’s trouble. “No, ma’am. I’m not even full time right now. I’m doing specialty work by the piece.”
She pulls out a chair and pushes me toward it. “You told Aaron you were looking for all the hours you can get. How’d you like to work twelve to fourteen hours a day, union rate?”
Union rate isn’t a definition, but I’m lucky to get four hours a day right now. Fourteen? That might kill me. But it would also get the debt collectors to stop calling. “For how long?”
“Every day we’re filming, which might be the next eight weeks, since we are behind schedule,” says Felicia. “Have you ever heard of a stand-in? They let us test the scene lighting without using the principals. Star contracts only let them work limited hours. Stand-ins have no such silly limits, and can make major money. For standing there.”
Now I get where she’s going. “Might be the next eight weeks means there’s a catch—unless I’m fired like the guy before me?”
“I give it ten days at the most. What do you say? I’m on a schedule and I need a decision.”
“But the staircase—”
“Can wait. I’ll rearrange our shooting order. I need to be filming two hours ago.” She tilts her head and glances back to her tablet every second, as if counting down.
But it’s not even a choice. “I’m in.”
Felicia turns and talks into her mic, then checks her tablet. “I’ll have your contracts drawn up while you’re getting ready. Sonia?”
“What do you need?” Sonia looks away from Kantina, then to me, like she doesn’t understand why I’m still here.
“We found a way to keep filming,” says Felicia. “Sonia Bracewell, I’d like you to meet Will Mathis. Will, this is Sonia, she’s Kantina’s stand-in.”
She studies me for a moment, and I’m certain she’s going to tell the rest of the tale. “We’ve met. He asked for Kantina’s autograph.”
Felicia shakes her head. “Like that’s going to happen. Take Will to makeup, they’ll know what to do. Will’s going to be standing in for James Becton. Will, keep your eye on Sonia, do what she does.”
Keeping my eyes on her is not the problem. Taking them off might be another thing entirely. I go to the slickest, funniest line I can think of, something to break the tension. “Hi.”
Sonia glances to Felicia, one eyebrow raised, her hands on her hips, her lips pursed like she’s trying to figure out if it’s a joke. “Really?”
“Anything to keep to the schedule.” Felicia glances at her tablet and grimaces as she studies it. “Get used to each other. You’ll be spending a lot of time together.”