“No one cares, Tom. You’re known for your own success, not mine. Or lack thereof.”

He nodded, smug. No one was as sure of himself as Tom. “You’re thirty-five years old, Anna. Your best project was ten years ago.”

Anna was at a loss as to how to wipe that smug look off his face. She said the only thing that came to mind. “Joan Crawford was forty-one when she won an Oscar.”

“She wasn’t a washed-up director turning down decent offers.”

Anna’s breath caught at his vicious tone. She forced herself not to wrap her arms around herself.

“You need to take this offer.”

Even in the right dress, with the right makeup and the right hair, Anna had never fit in here. Did it matter? As much as she believed in the magic of those images up on the screen, there was a reason she was still grinding it out. She still had heights to reach. She wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “I don’t need to do anything. I can make my own way.”

“I got you the London job because I wanted you gone.”

“I’m not taking your project.”

“Take it,” Tom spat. “Or you’ll never work in this town again.”

Before she could think, she laughed, bright and clear. In all the time she had been in Hollywood, she had never heard anyone actually say it. Listening to that phrase come out of Tom’s mouth with such vehemence was as surprising as it was ridiculous.

It was the wrong thing to do.

“We’re done,” he said, voice calm. It was his this-meeting-is-over voice.

“Tom, please understand,” she said. They were friends of a kind, weren’t they? They had always been honest with each other.

“You had potential once. If you had listened to me, you would be at the top, but you didn’t. You were never worth the time, perhaps.”

Tom left her standing there like a fool, in a fake forest under the fake tree with its fake elf perched on the fake branch. It was a surreal backdrop for a surreal conversation. Anna turned around blindly. Her heart beat a slow, methodical rhythm. It sounded like a funeral march.

#

JOHN HELD THE TRAY of champagne glasses high to avoid swishing it into the face of another woman, who leered at him appraisingly.

Tom Melton is Anna’s ex? John forced himself not to stare at the former couple as they talked on the other side of the room. He had a job to do, and if he didn’t get in the kitchen soon to plate the hors d’oeuvres, Clara was going to have his head.

“So, you’ve never met Anna Kovács?” Frank took another glass of champagne, but John guessed it was just an excuse to talk about Anna again.

“How did you meet her?”