Breaking Character Read online

  Table Of Contents

  Other Books by Lee Winter

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  About Lee Winter

  Other Books from Ylva Publishing

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  www.ylva-publishing.com

  Other Books by Lee Winter

  On the Record series

  The Red Files

  Under Your Skin

  The Superheroine Collection

  Shattered

  Standalone

  The Brutal Truth

  Requiem for Immortals

  Acknowledgments

  Since my knowledge of both Hollywood and medicine could fit on the back of a paper napkin before I started writing this book, I have a lot of people to whom I owe large marble statues in their honor and merry bushels of cash and chocolate.

  A massive thanks goes to awesome LA film and television actress Kay Aston, who was one of my beta readers. She explained everything from the little stuff, such as the roles of personal vs set assistants and ins and outs of trailers vs dressing rooms, to the big concepts, such as what really motivates actors, and how they face challenging scenes. My book would be much poorer without Kay’s excellent insights.

  Thanks to my medically trained mates who helped me with the blood and gore side of things, but especially to doctor and fellow author Chris Zett. She was excellent to brainstorm with, and offered serious treatments for all of my dramatically ridiculous TV injuries.

  As always, I’d be lost without my main beta reader, Charlotte. Thank you for being an enthusiastic supporter of my books and ice queens.

  To my editors, Astrid, Alissa, and Alex—what a triple-A team! Your encouragement and advice really kept me going.

  To the love of my life, sorry for making you a writing widow yet again. I promise to introduce myself to you again really soon.

  And for my readers, thanks for all the support and kind words over the years. You make it all worthwhile.

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to all the actresses who put themselves out there, over and over, for their craft.

  I had no idea how exposing and confronting the job was until I dug beneath the superficial crust and began to research what acting really is. To be so vulnerable, and open oneself up to constant scrutiny, demands, and critique is staggering. To be expected, often, to bare one’s bodies as well as one’s emotions and souls, and somehow remain unaffected, is staggering. That takes such courage.

  If all someone sees when looking at an actress is just someone famous or pretty or rich or “perfect”, then they really aren’t looking.

  All my respect.

  Chapter 1

  Joey Carter ran with bruising pace to the main exit doors of Martina Hope Memorial Hospital and flung herself into chaos. Rain was cascading down, far colder than it had a right to be for LA. Dodging a rolling crash cart, followed by a gurney, she juggled the precious cargo in her arms.

  “Dr. Carter!” someone shouted.

  She didn’t react at first.

  “Carter!” the person tried again. “Joey Carter?”

  She spun toward the voice. “Y-yes?” Water pelted her face, splashing into her eyes as she angled toward the light, and the figure silhouetted within it. She blinked away the rain. Her blond ponytail felt like a sodden lump, and water had caught inside her collar. Her hands were too full to adjust her shirt.

  A tall, handsome man with pinched features, wearing a white coat, shouted to her over the roar of the rain, his finger pointing wildly behind him. “Get those blood packs to Dr. Mendez, ASAP. He needs at least three units.”

  “Who?” She gave him an uncertain look.

  “Ah crap, that’s right. It’s your first week, isn’t it?” Without waiting, he added, “You know the chief?”

  Her eyes widened at mention of the notorious Iris Hunt. She swallowed and gave a nervous nod.

  “Okay, she’s over there, in front of that crashed ambulance. Dr. Mendez is inside, stabilizing a trapped patient with a severed femoral artery. The man’s lost a lot of blood.” He pointed at her bundle. “So get that to him fast!”

  Joey flew off again, leaping over a puddle as she reached the impossible scene: three mangled ambulances had somehow collided.

  She spied the hospital’s chief of surgery immediately. Dr. Hunt was on her knees, under the glare of lights, compressing a wound on the man’s stomach. Her beautiful brown hair, now soaked, fell just over a starched white collar. Her features, narrow and aloof, seemed even more distant in the bleakness of night. Hunt’s intense gray eyes were fixed on her patient.

  “Stay with me,” she was saying in a commanding voice.

  Joey ran in front of the pair, clutching her precious pile of O-neg blood packs. Her left foot hit a piece of gaffer tape on the ground. She fumbled, and her cargo bounced from her hands. Plastic blood packs cartwheeled away, skidding in every direction.

  With a gasp, Joey turned, scrabbling to catch at least a few. As she twisted, her heel stomped hard on one pack. A gruesome arc of red shot up in a shower that exploded all over Hunt’s face and chest.

  Joey let out a pained moan. Oh shit! Could it get any worse? Shit, shit, shit.

  Hunt’s disbelieving gaze dropped to her own red-spattered chest, then shifted to outrage as she glared at Joey. “Just wonderful,” she growled.

  “Oh God! S-sorry… I…” She stopped, taking in the other woman’s warning look. Hunt gave her the most minute of head shakes. And she was still applying compression to her patient. Joey’s eyes flew wide at the realization of what that meant. “Chief Hunt… I’m so sorry. The blood packs were… it’s the rain… they slipped.”

  “Obviously,” she snarled. “Get it together. There’s no room for clumsiness in this job.” Hunt pressed a bit harder on the man’s wound, causing him to groan. “What are you standing around for? Get that blood to Dr. Mendez immediately.”

  “Yeah…of-of course.” Joey scooped up the remaining blood packs as fast as she could. It seemed to take far too long.

  Red goop was dripping from Hunt’s coat and hair and onto her patient. The condescension was dripping along with it when she added, “Sometime before Mendez’s patient dies?”

  Joey bolted off, around the rear of the crumpled ambulance, disappearing from camera view.

  “CUT!”

  The fire hoses raining on them stopped and the set broke into laughs. The Steadicam operator who’d been tracking her was almost on his knees, wheezing with laughter.

  Geez. Had everyone been holding that back?

  Summer Hayes was pretty sure she was feeling about the same degree of humiliation as her character, Joey Carter, a plucky second-year resident on the TV medical drama Choosing Hope. She was only supposed to
drop the fake blood packs, not coat the imposing hospital chief in them. Stepping nervously back into view of the set, Summer was glad for the darkness that covered the blush creeping up her face.

  The booming laugh of director Bob Ravitz filled the air—and normally, a surlier man had never existed.

  “Christ,” Elizabeth Thornton, aka Chief Hunt, muttered as she made to rise from her bloodied puddle. She darted a cold look at Summer. “Was there any part of my skin you missed?” She glanced around and lifted her voice. “Can I have a towel please?” Her tone turned dry. “Or a fire hose?”

  The extra sat up. “Um, hey, me too?” He waved at his gory shirt.

  “I’m so sorry—” Summer inched forward.

  An assistant ran toward them, holding a thick towel, but before Elizabeth could grab it, the director waved her back down. “Don’t move!” That earned him a dark glower. “Sorry, Ms. Thornton, but continuity on blood spatters is a bitch. We’ll need to do close-ups right now or nothing will match. So let’s all get it right the first time.” He looked at his director of photography. “Steve, set up. Let’s get this blocked now.”

  “But—” Elizabeth waved at herself. “We’re keeping this? It wasn’t scripted. I look ridiculous.”

  Summer was firmly of the view there was no way Elizabeth Thornton could ever look anything less than perfectly put together.

  The comment earned her a long look from Ravitz. “Yes, we’re keeping it. It gives Iris Hunt more reason to hate the new girl, which was in the script anyway.” He glanced at Summer and smiled. “And the new girl will want Attila the Hunt all up in her face. Nothing makes fans love someone more than when a villain turns on them. Win-win. Right?” He snapped his fingers at his second assistant and muttered some technical notes.

  Elizabeth looked murderous, and Summer wondered what that was about. Maybe she hated the nickname?

  “What about me?” the extra asked. “Do I just lie here?”

  Ravitz ignored him.

  Summer glanced at the man. He was soaked to the skin, his shirt ripped open. His chest was red from where Chief Hunt had been applying compression. He shivered.

  Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. “If I have to bleed all over you, you have to lie there and take it. Sorry.” The tiniest edges of her lips quirked up before she hissed to a lurking assistant director, “How about a hot water bottle for our drowned rat, hmm?”

  The AD shrugged and disappeared. Summer wasn’t sure if that meant yes or fat chance.

  The extra’s gaze was entirely on Summer. He gave her a sheepish grin. “I guess this is showbiz, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Summer murmured as the lighting techs moved in closer to surround them. But her focus remained on the austere star of Choosing Hope.

  This was the woman dubbed as “difficult” by the industry? Elizabeth Thornton was positively sedate compared with some of the asshole personalities Summer had worked with. And the woman actually seemed to care about the wellbeing of an extra, even if the man himself hadn’t noticed.

  She glanced around. They were at the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center, using its glass and steel exterior to double as Martina Hope Memorial’s facade. Interior shots were done in the studio five miles away. It was a little weird out here at this time of night, devoid of the usual traffic and filled with an acre of cast and crew trailers.

  The wind picked up, knocking over a lighting stand. Ravitz cursed. “Would someone secure that before it fuckin’ costs us an insurance claim?”

  The continuity woman … Jill? Jan? … began taking photos of Elizabeth’s spattered face and shirt, before moving to the extra.

  Then the first few drops of rain hit. The real stuff, not the hoses.

  “Fuck!” one of the lighting techs grumbled. “D’ya think we’ll be stuck here till midnight again?”

  Elizabeth slid her gaze to Summer, saying absolutely nothing as she stared.

  “It was an accident,” Summer pleaded.

  “It was just what the scene needed to really pop.” Ravitz turned and gave her an approving smile that bordered on something else. “You can’t script something like this. We got real lucky.”

  “Oh yes,” Elizabeth murmured, “that’s the word I was searching for.” She smiled blandly and Ravitz nodded, grunted, and turned away.

  Summer wondered at the man’s missing sarcasm detector.

  The extra sneezed. “Shit. I’m frozen.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Summer whispered to him and, by extension, the woman still kneeling over him in the dirt. Elizabeth’s knees had to be killing her.

  Raif Benson, who played the rakishly handsome Dr. Mendez, sauntered over with a charming smile, looking clean, warm, and very dry under a large black umbrella.

  Lucky bastard.

  He sized up the scene with a smirk, then rocked on his heels, barely containing a laugh as he looked at Summer. “Welcome to TV, kid.”

  Summer gritted her teeth into something approaching a smile, not bothering to correct him. It was no use. At twenty-eight she was only a few years his junior, but she’d always looked much younger than her age. It had kept her in teenage roles for far too long, and led to frequent condescension from colleagues. At least Joey Carter, aged twenty-three, was an adult role for once.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Elizabeth staring at her, and Summer tried very hard not to look at the only person she really wanted to like her on this whole damned show.

  Elizabeth Thornton’s twisted parody of a smile was not friendly in the least.

  “I mean it!” Elizabeth hissed down the phone. She stalked around her trailer, feeling better for the warm shower, a thin blue robe clinging to her body. “Four hours under hoses, not to mention fake blood running into my eyes thanks to some empty-headed newbie screwing up her scene. If I have to do one more season of this mind-numbing drivel, I’ll implode.”

  Despite representing some of the leading lights in Tinseltown, Rachel Cho wasn’t particularly good at diplomacy, but she was usually good at saying what Elizabeth needed to hear.

  Elizabeth waited impatiently.

  “Darling, I’m sure you weren’t hating on your show quite so much when they turned you into one of the highest-paid women on TV last season. And that ‘drivel’ got you the pretty mansion you adore so much. Plus, you went from an unemployed, anonymous Brit to a star whose name is on everyone’s lips.”

  Elizabeth glowered. “As the most-hated villain in America. And we both know how that came about. So now they’ve turned me into the star of Carrie so Ravitz and that ego-stunted showrunner can get their kicks at seeing me humiliated. That’s not okay, Rachel.”

  “I thought you said it was an accident?”

  “Yes, but they kept it! As if they’d miss the chance of cutting me down to size, making me look like a bedraggled stray. The worst thing is, they’re still spreading those rumors that I’m the difficult one.”

  “You know why. That’s how this place works. You don’t play ball, they remind you who’s boss.”

  “Oh, I know. So I’ve had it. Find me something else. Something serious. Find something to stretch me in hiatus or I’ll walk off this putrid petri dish right now and I don’t care how much we have to pay to get me out of my contract.”

  There was a soft sigh. “You can’t walk, Bess, or they’ll spin it as proof that you really are the British Bitch, and then see how much work you get around here. Look, just keep reminding yourself there’s only one season left. Now I’ve been talking to Delvine about some offers that have come up and we agree there’s one that seems right for you. And it fits with your schedule.”

  That sparked Elizabeth’s interest. Her manager, Delvine Rothery, was one of the best at taking careers from middling to spectacular. “I’m listening.” She grabbed a towel off the back of the chair and ran it through her hair again, as if it might wipe from her brai
n that creepy sensation of blood trickling down her face.

  “Ever heard of Jean-Claude Badour?”

  “That weird French director?”

  “Not weird, darling, creative. Artsy. After his last Palme d’Or he decided he’s done Europe now and wants to dip his toe into Hollywood. He apparently has a remarkable script, according to the buzz. It’s the hottest property in town; everyone wants in.”

  “He won a Palme d’Or? Wait, more than one?” Elizabeth couldn’t picture it. But then, she’d only seen one of his shorts—something oddball about butterflies.

  “He won Cannes’ top prize for Quand Pleurent les Clowns—When Clowns Cry.” Cho paused. “I highly recommend you take this one. It’s going to elevate you far beyond TV. And, look, you should know he’s asked for you specifically to star. He must want you very badly since he’s lined up filming for your hiatus.”

  A sliver of distaste shot through Elizabeth. “Me? Please tell me he’s not a fan of Choosing Hope? Is that why he wants me?”

  “Don’t be so cynical. He’s French, not American. Of course he hates Hope. His actual quote was that you need ‘freeing from rancid dribble’.”

  Elizabeth smiled. Well, he had some taste then.

  “He followed your theater days in London. He adored Shakespeare’s Women as well as Lucifer’s Curse and The Righteous Miss Hamilton.”

  Elizabeth stared at her phone.

  “Still there? Or are you in shock that someone appreciates you for your acting instead of your sizzling chemistry with Raif?”

  Sizzling? More like manufactured. It was still a sore point what had happened with her character—more petty revenge from the showrunner.

  “Hilarious,” she growled. “Fine. I’ll watch his sad little clown flick and let you know. When can I see the script?”

  “Soon. I’ve asked; it’s not quite ready yet. Filming starts in two months. It’s about a reclusive writer in a mountain shack in the middle of nowhere who gets eight visitors. Eight Little Pieces, it’s called. I’m sure there’s some beautiful, artistic metaphor involved. Anyway he wants to do lunch with you and Delvine soon to hammer out the details.”