A hanging wooden sign out in front of the restaurant announced the name CORE in engraved tavern scrawl. The interior was as warm and cozy as a cabin at Christmas, with knotty-wood floors and tables arranged around a cobblestone fireplace, where flames crackled behind the iron grate. The dining room was half filled with patrons. It was the busiest Stone’s Throw establishment I’d encountered thus far.
The hostess led us to a table near the fireplace and divided the dinner, drink, and specials menus between us. When our server arrived, Porter ordered a bottle of wine. “I hope that’s okay,” he said when the server had gone. “I should have asked if you prefer red or white. Or if you even like wine. I’m a bit nervous. I don’t know if you can tell. I don’t do this often. Dating, I mean. Not dating celebrities.”
I reached across the table and put my hand over his. “You don’t need to be nervous. And I’m really not much of a celebrity.”
He ran a thumb lightly over the back of my hand, and I shivered with involuntary pleasure. “Did I take advantage of you?” he asked softly.
I had to laugh at that. “Did I take advantage of you?”
“Of course not.”
“Just because you’re a man doesn’t mean I can’t take advantage of you.”
He glanced left and right to make sure no one at the nearby tables was listening. “I feel like what I did was…disrespectful.”
What he’d done was get me off in the most satisfying way I could remember. He hadn’t been rough with me, but he’d taken control. At one point he’d held my wrists above my head and wouldn’t let go when I tried to move them. He’d kept them trapped there as he moved on top of me, only releasing me once he came.
And then…he’d gone back to being the man sitting across from me. Sweet. Considerate. Just the right amount of nerdy.
I smiled, but felt something grow heavy in my chest. “Sometimes women like to be disrespected.” Sometimes we needed it. Or I needed it. I wasn’t sure what other women wanted. I didn’t have female friends to talk to about this sort of thing to find out if I was normal.
Our server appeared and listed the specials. We ordered, and then fell into an easy, conversational rhythm, which consisted of me gently probing him with benign questions while avoiding talking about myself. As far as first dates went, it was nice, especially considering that we’d rutted like animals a few hours earlier. What I realized by the time we’d finished our appetizers was that Porter hadn’t done much actual living. Most of his experience of the world had been through a screen.
“Do you think you’ll ever move away from Stone’s Throw?” I asked as I ate the last of our fried calamari (800 calories).
Porter picked up a piece of bread and tore it in half, but didn’t take a bite. “Do I need to?”
The question confused me. “Need to?”
“Am I missing something? I’ve lived thousands of lives, all over the world, in every period of history. Why should I leave my comfortable existence?”
“Ohhh. I see. You think watching life on TV and in movies is the same as experiencing it.”
He smiled. “Not at all. I just prefer it that way.” He set his bread aside and leaned toward me. “I went on this amazing vacation once, traveled all over Europe for a month. I saw all the things people said I should see. Ate all the local foods. Bought a bunch of souvenirs…”
“And?”
“And I was bored out of my mind. There was no story to follow. No narrative. I’m addicted to plot. I kept waiting for something exciting to happen, and it never did. That being said, if something exciting had happened I probably would have run the other way.”
I laughed, but Porter’s attitude made me sad, because millions of people shared it. Real life rarely measured up to a great story, and a great story could never hurt you the way real life did. I had no room to judge Porter, though. I’d lived most of my life as other people, taking their stories on and off from one job to the next. And the truth was that I had, for the most part, stopped living after Miranda disappeared. I couldn’t deal with real life, and I couldn’t hide in characters anymore. I was stuck in limbo.
“Let’s talk about you,” Porter said after our dinner plates had been cleared away, probably realizing that I’d told him next to nothing about myself.
“Maybe you could just read my Wikipedia page,” I said, polishing off my third glass of wine. Porter wasn’t even finished with his first. I’d better slow down.
“I don’t believe half of what I read online.”
“Which half do you believe?”
“The good half.”
“That is either sweet or very naive. Oh, I forgot to mention, I ran into a friend of yours today,” I said, deflecting the topic away from me. “Soren Kron? You didn’t tell me you were in with the Stone’s Throw elite.”
Porter took a sip of wine, pausing before answering. “I guess I don’t think of him that way. We’ve been friends since we were kids.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That explains a lot.”
“What do you mean?” His easy tone had gone stiff.
“I don’t know. You two just seem like very different types of people.”
Porter’s eyes shifted past my shoulder and he smiled. “Speak of the devil.”
I twisted around, already knowing who I would see. But I wasn’t nearly as interested in Soren Kron at that moment as I was in the man who accompanied him. Soren’s companion was in his late sixties, with thinning, white-blond hair and marionette grooves around his mouth. He was so tall I had to tip my head back to look at his face. He wore a dapper herringbone suit and had the look of a mad concert pianist, his hair combed back from his high forehead, while Soren reminded me of the alpha-male villains in John Hughes’s movies, all blond arrogance and icy eyes and smirking mouth.
Porter stood and hugged the two men warmly, then stepped back. “Liv, I’d like to introduce you to—”
“Jonas Kron,” I finished for him, rising from my chair. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“The pleasure is mine.” Jonas clasped my hand in both of his, held it rather than actually shaking it.
The hostess hovered behind the Krons, cradling their menus.
“Can we switch to a table for four?” Soren asked her.
“Porter is on a date,” Jonas reminded his son. His voice was musical and clipped at the same time, with only a hint of an accent.
“Come on,” Soren said, slapping Porter on the back. “I never get to see you anymore. Spend some quality time with me. Besides, I want to tell Liv embarrassing stories about what you were like as a kid.”
Porter started to shake his head, but I cut in. “I’m game. Bring on the stories.”
“Excellent,” Soren crowed, clapping his hands fast and silent. There was something slightly manic, even flamboyant about Soren. He oozed charm and vitality, but seemed like the kind of person who could drain the energy of those around him if they spent too many consecutive hours in his company. And at the same time there was an emptiness about him. I’d worked with hundreds of actors of all different calibers over the course of my career, and I’d learned to recognize the ones I privately thought of as “gloves” within seconds of meeting them. They were the vacant ones who almost seemed like inanimate objects when they were at rest. They had little personality of their own. They required a writer and a script and a director to bring them to life.
Soren wasn’t an actor as far as I knew, but he had a quality about him that made me think his personality was more constructed than innate.
The hostess moved us to a larger table, and Jonas ordered a bottle of French wine. I could tell by the way the server’s eyes widened that it was likely the most expensive they offered.
“And four shots of aquavit,” Soren added, then rubbed his hands together. “Now for those stories.”
“He’s got nothing,” Porter said, smiling across the table at his friend. “He just said that to lure you in.”
“That’s true,” Soren said. “Porter was and still is a perfectly boring human being. It’s maddening, really. I spent years trying to get the stick out of his ass, but it remains there to this day. Do you know I took him to Europe once for an entire month, and he couldn’t wait to get home to Stone’s Throw?”
I smiled at Porter. “You don’t say.”
“I do say!” Soren almost shouted. It was possible he’d arrived at the restaurant drunk.
Jonas was silent throughout this conversation, busy perusing the menu. I wasn’t sure he was even listening.
Soren turned to me. “Porter could be my wingman, traveling the world with me, meeting exotic women, getting kicked out of the best bars and hotels. Instead he stays here in Stone’s Throw acting like the mayor of Whoville.” Soren shook his head in good-humored disgust. “Boring.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Stone’s Throw,” Jonas said, setting his menu down as our server arrived with the wine and aquavit shots.
“You and my father always see eye-to-eye,” Soren said to Porter. “That’s why he prefers you to me. Then again, he prefers most people to me.”
“Soren…” Jonas said in warning.
“What? It’s true. Just the other day I overheard you telling someone on the festival committee that I have no work ethic.”
“That is not what I said,” Jonas replied in an even tone, staring with those cool blue eyes at his son. “I said I blame myself for your lack of work ethic.”
“Same thing,” he said, and winked at me. He was acting like the subject didn’t bother him, but I detected a raw edge to his jaunty attitude. “It isn’t easy living in the shadow of a great man like my daddy. I’m sure you understand.” He raised his shot glass. “Skoal.”
I was the last to drink, too busy mulling over the implications of what he’d said. Was he referring to Gemma and me, and if so, who was casting the shadow—her or me?
I knocked back the aquavit, which tasted like licorice-flavored paint thinner. I chased it with the wine Jonas ordered and almost fell over backward in my chair. It was that good.
“So what brings you to town?” Jonas asked me. His facade was perfect. I could almost believe he didn’t know why I was there.
“The Dark Road,” I said. “I’m investigating the disappearances.”
Jonas feigned confusion. “But aren’t you an actor like your sister?”
“I’m trying something new,” I said, playing along with the ruse that he knew nothing about me. “Speaking of my sister, she mentioned you might work together on your next film.”
He shook his head. “We had a meeting set for tomorrow, but she canceled it, said she had to return to Los Angeles. The next time you do see her, tell her I don’t have time to waste on unreliable actors. If she can’t keep her appointments, I have no interest in working with her. This is the second time she’s canceled on me, and she is hardly the commodity she used to be.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, feeling a twinge of defensiveness on Gemma’s behalf.
“She’s overpaid and uninspiring,” Jonas said with cruel bluntness. “The last three movies she starred in lost money. There is nothing particularly interesting about her look, nor does she bring any true sense of gravitas or nuance to her performances. The only reason I considered working with her is because your mother called and begged me to give her a chance. Apparently I am not the only director who holds this view of your sister.”
I blinked at this revelation. Desiree had begged Jonas to cast Gemma in a Kron film? Desiree didn’t beg anyone for anything. She demanded. At least she used to. I didn’t realize Gemma had fallen so far out of favor in the studio system. Desiree must be desperate, which did not bode well for Gemma’s career. A desperate actor was an out-of-work actor.
Jonas leveled his rain-colored gaze on me. “I’m sorry if my honesty offends you. At my age, you realize you have no time left to waste mincing words.”
“It’s fine,” I said smoothly, though his tirade rankled. “Gemma and I aren’t close.”
“We had a ticket reserved in her name for a private screening,” Soren said. “You’ll have to take her place. And you must come to the opening gala tomorrow. You could be Porter’s plus one. Or mine if Porter already has a date.” Soren winked, and Porter rolled his eyes before turning to me.
“Would you like to be my date for the gala?” he asked, touching my leg under the table, sending a little jolt of electricity up my thigh.
I opened my mouth to answer yes, but was distracted by the sound of wailing sirens as two sheriff’s cruisers with flashing red and blue lights sped past the restaurant.
I stood abruptly, slinging my bag over my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, but I need to go.”
Porter didn’t argue, just nodded and stood, opening his wallet, but Jonas waved for him to put his money away. “I will take care of it.”
The director met my eyes and flashed a brief, grim smile. “I’ll see you both at the gala. Don’t forget your mask.”