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Page 26
"Just a minute," Mariah called, dragging herself from the bathroom and pulling on a blue silk shirt and charcoal slacks.
The guy was half an hour earlier than scheduled. He obviously wasn't closely associated with the entertainment industry, where most people awake at this ungodly hour were either those who had never gotten to bed or those on an early morning shoot.
Mariah was neither.
But she had been awake nonetheless, because she hadn't slept well. While in the shower she had been thinking about the story, about the coincidence of the voice in her head and Porter's statement to Matilda in the script.
About the strength, the appeal of the Thorn character.
He could be as memorable as Rhett Butler. As sensual and magnetic as the Sheik.
But he couldn't die at the end. That kind of a climax had irritated audiences a few years back in a post-Civil War story called Sommersby, where the charlatan protagonist turned heroic and let himself be hanged for the good of others.
That couldn't happen in Point of Destiny. Not to Thorn.
When she was dressed, Mariah opened the doorand looked down at the stooped man who leaned against the wall. Pierce didn't look dressed for walking; he wore a suit and shiny, wing-tipped shoes. The heavy odor of cigar smoke wafted from him.
"Good morning, Miss Walker," he said. "Are you ready for breakfast?"
She'd begged off dinner the night before and hadn't the heart to tell the man who'd written such a phenomenal screenplay that she usually didn't eat breakfast. "Give me a minute," she said, heading back to the bathroom.
She skipped putting on her regular makeup; she didn't need to impress Pierce with her outstanding good looks. Smiling at her pale mirror image ruefully, she combed her blond waves back behind her ears. She needed a trim, she thought; her hair hung just below her shoulders. Her green eyes looked washed out, tired. Yet they shone a bit with excitement. She was about to explore this city that had so unexpectedly intrigued her. To work on production ideas and

 
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