Martin said, “When you’re ready, guys.” They took their places to run the sequence again.
While the camera operator was making an equipment adjustment, Rielle saw Harry clue Jake in. Hah, no! He dropped his head in his hands, but then took himself out of her sightline. She spun around to follow him, turning sideways to the camera, only to have Martin say, “Rielle, something wrong?”
She said, “No, Martin.” Except she could no longer see the object of her prey. “Everything is wonderful.”
So wonderful she mucked up that take. She went left instead of right and smacked into Stu. Stu went, “Whoa!”
She said, “Argh. Sorry.”
Martin said, “Take it again.”
She looked over her shoulder to see Jake laughing at her. He was leaning his back against a rough brick wall, one booted foot crossed over the other, his arms folded. He was so casual, so unaffected, so utterly unaware of what his nice boy-next-door shtick did to her. Made her want to get him good and dirty, sweaty and messy. But he wasn’t that wily, he’d needed Harry to tell him which way was up. Harry who was sitting there, looking smug, enjoying every minute of this.
The band repositioned themselves for another take and this time Rielle turned the right way. But the movement brought her around to face Jake for a split second, and when she caught the look on his face—smug, arrogantly teasing—she stumbled.
“Shit! Sorry!”
“Don’t worry, go again,” called Martin.
They re-grouped, and crossing past her to take his place, Rand smirked. “Something got you rattled?” She flicked his nose making him flinch but his laugher was loud and infectious, some of the crew catching and echoing it.
On the third attempt, she turned the correct way, completed the movement without stumbling and then promptly sang the wrong words. The set exploded into laughter. “Aw, fuck!” she yelled, stamping her feet. She swung around to Jake and glared at him, hands thrust on her hips. She tried to look annoyed but he was on to her game now and had her in check, making her unaccountably nervous with his cool, detached appraisal.
Martin said, “Is something distracting you?”
“Yeah. He is. I was fine when he was sitting over there,” she pointed to the abandoned milk crate, “but now that he’s there,” she pointed directly at Jake and pouted, “he’s putting me off.”
“You go back to where she wants you right now,” Martin said, waving a hand at Jake as though shooing an annoying insect.
The band and the crew shuffled about while Jake, head down, went back to his milk crate seat beside Harry.
Crossing past Rielle to take his place again, Rand elbowed her. “You break him, you pay.”
She said, “What if he breaks me?”
Rand said, “I’d pay,” and earned himself a stinging smack on the arm.
Now Rielle was back in control. She had Jake where she wanted him again and she was determined to make him squirm. She blocked out the screams of the fans barricaded at the end of the alley and the traffic noises behind them. She closed off her vision of crew moving around and band members beside her. She narrowed her focus to seducing him. She looked past the camera and into Jake. This man she’d once come close to despising for being weak and out of control, who’d stood up to her, shown his strength and capability—his inner Godzilla—so many times. Who didn’t apologise for who he was, and wanted to know all of her.
He’d worked a little hole though the steel plating she kept between herself and the world. He’d touched her like no one else ever had. He’d battled with her intellect and tangled with her heart, and there was this indefinable thing they had: an itch that couldn’t be scratched out, a flare that burned her skin, a rolling in her stomach, a pinch in her brain.
Rielle Mainline had long ago taught herself to go after what she wanted and now what she wanted was Jake Reed.
Jake wondered whether it might be possible for a grown man to simply combust, burn up on the spot like a Phoenix, crumble to ash, and then rise up and do the whole thing again. Because as long as Rielle was standing there looking at him like that, he was kindling put to the match.
According to Harry they were one-all in this battle of senses. One-all and he was already all in. But there was no backing away from whatever this was now. Bring on the ash.
When Martin called a stop to re-align lighting and the band members moved about, Rand and Stu strolled over to the fans at the barricade, making the screaming lift a few decibels as they approached. Ceedee sat to have her makeup touched up, and Roley and How sculled water. Jake strode out from behind the camera to confront Rielle.
“What are you trying to do?”
“It’s called making a music video, Jake.”
He stood toe to toe with her, crowding her, predatory. “You’re doing more than that.”
Rielle held her ground, shifted her weight to her hip, brushing his chest with her shoulder. “If you know what I’m doing, why are you asking me?”
“I just want to be sure I’m reading you right.”