Brooke came into his peripheral vision, and Keaton purposely kept his gaze riveted to Jillian.
“If you needed a stand-in, you should be using me. Brooke’s hardly a substitute.” Jillian rolled her shoulders back and added a little more attitude to her stance. Her gaze sent a clear you-stepped-out-of-bounds message to Brooke, and Keaton felt horrible for the stress he knew had to be boiling inside Brooke right now. “She can barely keep my schedule straight.”
“You’re not cleared for stunt work.” He said it with a bite to draw her focus off Brooke. “The insurance would never allow it. And you should be filming right now.”
“Hmph. At least the insurance company recognizes my value.” She crossed her arms. “And one of the cameras is down next door. They’re repairing it, so they gave us a break. I thought I’d come over and stay warm by watching you work. But you’ll have to find another substitute for my double.” She turned another one of those barely tolerable looks on Brooke that made Keaton fist his hands. “Brooke has more important things to do.”
“I confirmed all your appointments,” Brooke told her, voice level. “Answered all your mail, and completed the projects we talked about.”
A slow smile curved Jillian’s lips. A tight, you-little-bitch smile. “Great. Then why don’t you go clean my trailer?”
The order took Keaton aback. Apparently it did the same to Brooke.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Clean. My. Trailer,” Jillian repeated, enunciating the words as if Brooke were an idiot. “Jeannette and Percy left it a mess. And since you dressed like trailer trash today”—Jillian’s icy gaze roamed Brooke’s outfit—“it fits.”
Sonofabitch. Keaton’s temper raged beneath his skin.
But Brooke just offered a subdued, “Yes ma’am,” and walked back to the corner of the warehouse to collect her things. With her head down, she hurried to exit through a side door.
“Who the fuck have you become?” Keaton crossed his arms, set his feet, and stared Jillian down. “Is this what divorce does to you? Or is it the fame? Maybe the money? It has to be something that happened in the last few years, because you weren’t like this when I met you.”
“Like what? Strong, confident, straightforward? Oh, yes, I was. And you liked it.”
“I also like common decency and compassion and kindness, which you don’t have a trace of now. Now you’re just mean. You’re straight-up cruel. I hate this word, and I rarely use it, but, baby, you are a royal bitch.”
She laughed, as if his slight meant nothing. “I’m a bitch because I discipline my staff for goofing off on my dime?”
“She wasn’t goofing off. Didn’t you hear me tell you why we put her in that harness? Didn’t you hear her tell you she’d completed all the work you’d asked her to do? Then to send her on such a menial job to satisfy your own frustration—that’s just sadistic, Jillian.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So this is about Brooke.”
“There’s that hearing problem again. No, this is not about Brooke. This is about everyone here.” He held his arms wide and realized everyone was listening and watching. Which was just fucking fine with him. “You talk down to every employee here. You complain about everything, no matter how well something is done or how hard anyone tries to please you. You ignore anyone and everyone else’s needs and feelings. The truth is you don’t give a fuck about anyone but yourself, and you do your damnedest to make everyone around you feel as small as possible. And I am fucking sick of it.”
Rob, the assistant director, came up to them, alarm clear on his face. “What’s going on?”
Jillian looked at Rob, then at Keaton. “Keaton was just telling me how thoughtless, rude, and bitchy I am.”
Rob’s gaze turned on Keaton with a please-tell-me-she’s-kidding look.
“You’ve worked with me,” he told Rob. He wasn’t pulling punches now. “And you know I won’t put up with this diva shit.”
“You don’t have to work with her,” Rob said, then turned to Jillian. “You should be in the other warehouse, filming.”
“They’re fixing a broken camera.” She turned her attitude on Rob. “As the director, you should know that.”
Keaton pointed at her but spoke to Rob. “Attitudes like that kill morale. And you know as well as anyone that bad morale translates into the film.” He held his hands up in surrender. “Not my problem. I’m out of here when Dupleaux recovers. Just keep her away from me.”
He turned and stalked back toward the metal jungle, passing Cam with a grouchy “Let’s get back to work.”
9
Brooke stood at the French doors to her suite, watching the sun set over the Colorado River and wishing she could appreciate the beauty, but her nerves felt like they’d been double knotted all over her body.
“Tammy told me Justin was accepted into the program,” she said to Lydia, the liaison within the research team handling the bronchial thermoplasty trial. “I can’t tell you how grateful we are.”
“When I saw his name on the final list I was thrilled.” Lydia’s warmth and enthusiasm touched Brooke. They’d built up a friendly rapport over