1

      “ARE YOU OUT of your goddamn mind?” Nick Damone threw the script down on his agent’s desk. To his credit, Garrett Chandler didn’t flinch, most likely because he’d dealt with more than his fair share of temperamental clients. Not that Nick was temperamental. He had every right to be pissed. “Even if I wanted to play an adulterous, wife-beating scumbag—which I don’t—there’s absolutely no way the studio’s going to go for it.”

      “Leave Eclipse to me. You’ve made them a midsize mint playing Trent Savage.” Garrett sank into his butter-leather chair. “Besides, you said you wanted to get out of L.A. for a few months. So do it. Get back to your theater roots. Break free from your on-screen persona and try something edgy.”

      “Yeah.” Nick was tired of the backstabbers and bootlickers who were the bedrock of Hollywood society. Spent from the acrobatics of embracing fame but avoiding scandal. And at thirty-three, his days as action hero Trent Savage were numbered, and with it his livelihood unless he expanded. Denzel starred in action, drama, comedy. Won an Oscar in his thirties, another in his forties, and kept getting nominated every year or two. Robert Downey Jr. was buried in awards and prime projects, with first refusal on scripts that would make Nick weep on cue. If he wanted his career to have legs like that, he needed to be more than Trent Savage.

      But there was edgy and there was diving off cliffs. Onto jagged rocks, at low tide, in front of a live audience. Eight times a week.

      “Trust me, Nick. I didn’t get you this far by pulling advice out of my ass. This role is gold. I’m talking Tony-worthy.” Garrett motioned for Nick to sit in one of the webbed chairs opposite the wide mahogany desk and pushed the script toward him. “Dig into this again. I think you’ll see it’s everything you’re looking for.”

      Nick sat, stretching his long legs and crossing them at the ankles. The flight from Hong Kong, where his latest picture just wrapped, had been long and damn uncomfortable. Even first class was no place for a guy of six foot four. All he wanted now was a thick steak, a hot shower and a good night’s sleep. All of which he’d get after he won this argument with his worthless agent, who, unfortunately, also happened to be the closest he had to a best friend. He tended to keep people at arm’s length, where they couldn’t mess with his head. Or his heart.

      “What do we know about this playwright?” He traced the words on the script cover, his brain taking a moment to decipher the jumbled letters. The Lesser Vessel by H. N. Ryan.

      “Not much,” Garrett admitted. “She’s new. Her bio’s pretty sketchy—went to Wesleyan, a few plays off-off-Broadway that closed early. But Ted and Judith say her talent is once a generation. They optioned this play before it was even finished. Coming from two of the hottest producers on Broadway, that’s a pretty big endorsement.”

      “She?” Nick leaned forward in his chair. Spousal abuse was a hot-button topic after a spate of recent celebrity arrests, but the writing hadn’t felt like an “issue” play, which—shoot him for saying so—made him assume it was written by a man.

      He wouldn’t admit it to Garrett, but he’d read the whole gut-wrenching story on the plane—instead of sleeping. The author had gotten into his head, and to find out the guy who spoke to him was a woman was...disconcerting.

      What Garrett didn’t know—what almost no one knew—was that domestic violence had been a part of Nick’s daily existence for years. It still reared its ugly head every time his mom visited him, or when he talked to her on the phone. Affected him most on those rare occasions when he contemplated going home to confront his father.

      He’d kept his distance, though, because he didn’t trust either of them to control their rage. His mother suffered enough already. She didn’t need the two of them beating each other to a pulp.

      “A woman,” he said again.

      “Down, boy. She’s not your type.”

      Nick didn’t bother correcting Garrett’s perception of him as a skirt-chasing man whore. He’d given up fighting that image. In reality, he was more of a serial monogamist, but he’d learned the hard way that it wasn’t worth bucking the Hollywood machine. The press, the studio—hell, even Garrett—were happy to exploit his image as a ladies’ man, truth be damned. Nothing he could do or say was going to change that. “How do you know she’s not my type?”

      “According to Ted, she’s short, smart and sweet. That’s three strikes against her in your book.”

      “Hey,” Nick protested with a wry smile. “The women I date are sweet.” Tall, leggy and vapid, sure. But sweet. He wasn’t looking for a lifetime commitment. If watching his parents hadn’t been enough to sour him on marriage, then dealing with the liars and cheaters in Hollywood for the past ten years had put the nail in that coffin.

      Love would have to wait a very long time to catch Nick.

      “I’m not kidding.” Unlike Nick, Garrett wasn’t smiling. “This one’s off-limits. She’s a serious author, not one of your blonde bimbos.”

      “Whatever.” Garrett’s threat was meaningless for one simple reason: Nick wasn’t doing this play. Final answer. Game over.

      Exhaustion invading like crystalline Ambien, he closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the chair. He needed to come up with a new plan of attack or he’d find himself in a rehearsal room in Chelsea. “So the writer’s legit and the play’s the real deal. But why the bastard ex-husband? What about the cop?”

      Garrett shook his head. “Pussy part. Besides, it’s already been offered and accepted.”

      Nick snapped to attention. “Who?”

      Garrett shuffled through some papers, doing a shit job of stalling. They both spoke fluent body language, and Nick could tell he wasn’t going to like Garrett’s answer. “Malcolm Justice.”

      “You can’t be serious.” It was Nick’s turn to push the script back across the desk. “I wouldn’t play opposite that goddamn lightweight to save my career. Even if he was the asshole ex-husband and I got to beat on his pretty-boy face every night.”

      “Get over it, Nick. You’re Trent Savage. He’s not, even if he claims he’d have been the better choice. His fans’ bitching and moaning on those stupid message boards is just sour grapes.”

      “What about the fact that people will see me as a wife beater? Stop me in Starbucks to berate me...” The most important of those people being his mom. If she managed to sneak away from his father long enough to catch the show, she’d probably watch the whole thing from between her fingers, experiencing every blow. Stage an intervention to curb his violent tendencies. Definitely cry. A lot.

      “That’s the price of being an artist.” Garrett poured another drink, handed it to Nick and stared out at his fortieth-floor glass-plated view.

      “Some artist.” Nick took a sip. He’d wondered when Garrett would get around to sharing the Maker’s Mark. “I’ve spent the past six years playing a globe-trotting, womanizing fortune hunter. Not exactly Shakespeare.”

      Hell, he wasn’t even sure if what he did could be considered acting anymore. And now his own agent wanted to serve him up as fodder for critics like that jerk at the Times, the one who made no secret of his disgust for what he called Broadway’s “star worship.”

      As much as Nick hated to admit it, this whole thing scared him.