She smiled at his summation. “Want to switch jobs?”

He chuckled softly. “No, we both know this setup plays to each of our strengths. Please phone me if anything changes.”

She agreed and hung up with a wash of gratitude for his faith in her, but even with that vote of confidence and his offer to run interference on her behalf, she wasn’t at all sure she was as up to her task as he was to his.

••••

Sophia did her best not to roll her eyes at Brian Dawes as he sat on the small table inside her trailer. What was with these hipster guys’ inability to use chairs like regular people? Or was the pose something he had seen in a movie about directors at some point? She never could quite shake the feeling that he wasn’t so much a director as a little boy playing at one the way some children play soldier or house. To prove her point, he shook a few strands of golden curls from his forehead and held up his hands to mimic a camera lens.

“We could shoot from some obscure angles to make it look like we’re inside the castle walls, when really we’re outside them. Can’t be any worse than the sound stages I grew up on.”

“Yes, but not too obscure, because I was thinking I could look at the camera directly sometimes,” her co-star, Tommy Malone, said from the front of the trailer where he was checking his own reflection in a makeup mirror.

“Yeah, yeah,” Brian said dismissively, “like extreme close-ups.”

“Close-ups work for me,” Tommy said.

This time, Sophia didn’t manage to keep from rolling her eyes. Thankfully the men were too self-absorbed to notice, but she caught Talia smiling at her.

They’d all reported to talk about their current quandary, but there wasn’t much to say until they got their verdict from the lady of the house, so the last two hours had been spent trying to tame her annoyance amid the men’s grandstanding and random visits from costumers or makeup artists.

“Have either of you even been outside the castle walls?” Talia asked. “Aside from your rooms at the B&B?”

“I went to a pub last night,” Tommy said, in his authentic Scottish accent. “Good ales, better company.”

Brian smiled lecherously. “Company, eh? Maybe that’s what I’ll do tonight. I was too jet-lagged yesterday.”

Apparently, jet lag presented itself as hung over from the complimentary booze on his first-class flight the night before. Or maybe the complimentary Bloody Marys on his train down from Edinburgh, since Sophia and Talia had shared the same travel itinerary without similar effects. Then again, she’d nearly gotten into a sword fight with the owner of a castle, so perhaps she should try the jet lag excuse as well.

“Come on.” Talia extended her hand to Sophia. “Let’s get some fresh air.”