Now a Major Motion Picture (21 page)

She smiled at him. “Yes?”

“You’re needed in trailer three.”

She stood up so fast the headphones in her lap fell with a loud clatter to the floor. Embarrassed, she snatched them up and dropped them onto the chair, and then hurried to catch up with the kid and his official-looking clipboard. He was picking his way across the cavernous room—some sort of practice gym, though whatever had been in it before she’d arrived was completely unrecognizable now. The gray-walled, fluorescent-lit space was crowded with lights and all sorts of massive equipment, its floor snaked with chains of tangled wires. Around her, groups of crew members were clustered around various pieces of equipment, some talking in hushed voices, some shouting instructions that echoed off the high walls. Her ballet flats squeaked against the painted concrete floor as she just avoided tripping over a cord in her path.

I wonder where they need me this time.

Since her arrival, she’d been in meeting after meeting—consulting with Scott Hall, the director, answering actors’ questions about their characters, bending over story boards, and discussing everything from wardrobe to props to wall colors with crew members that stretched across the entire line of production. She’d learned more about moviemaking in the past two days than she might have expected to learn in a lifetime. She was in awe of the production team—and in awe that they’d bothered to seek her input. They didn’t have to. She didn’t own this production, just the work inspiring it.

She trailed the PA through the same double doors Colin had passed through minutes earlier and stepped into the languid, late summer Texas air.

“Have you been to Austin before?” she asked.

She sped up to walk beside him, past scattered groups of crew members and a few straggling, curious onlookers. He slowed his pace, and they ambled toward a well-guarded cluster of white trailers in the center of the community college campus the production team had invaded for its first week of shooting.

The PA laughed. “Actually, yeah. This is home. Or, my hometown, I mean.”

“But you live in L.A. now?”

“Yeah, been there about two years. This is my first big movie gig. Just a coincidence that it’s happening here.” He stuck his hand in her direction. “Rob, by the way.”

She reached out and shook it. “Amel…I mean, Mel Henry.” She laughed at herself, remembering he’d just called her by name. She still wasn’t used to going by her second name other than on paper. “But I guess you already knew that.”

“Yeah.” He glanced down at his clipboard. “It’s cool to meet you. I mean, I haven’t read your books or anything, but my girlfriend loves them.” He stammered on the last part, his face going red.

She smiled and pretended not to notice. “Thanks. This is my first big movie gig, too. You have a pretty cool job. This feels like another universe to me.”

“It kind of is.” He showed his badge to another clipboard-holding crew member and grinned at her as they passed through a makeshift gate to an area designated for cast and crew. “And get ready, because you’re about to have a close encounter.”

She shot him a puzzled look as they stopped on the sidewalk in front of one of the trailers. He gestured toward the door, and her mouth fell open as she glimpsed the nondescript black letters on a small sign mounted to it: “Colin Marks.”

Rob chuckled, misreading her shock, and winked. “You’ve been summoned.”

He gave three short knocks. The door opened within seconds, and Colin peered around it, his gaze landing on Amelia. A grin spread across his face, lighting up the crystal-blue eyes that had become a familiar feature in her thoughts.

The opening widened, and Colin reached a hand out to help her up the narrow steps. He nodded toward Rob.

“Thank you.”

Rob nodded back. “No problem, Mr. Marks.” He glanced at Amelia. “Later, Ms. Henry.”

As Colin turned toward the interior of the trailer and tugged on the hand he still held, Rob turned away. Amelia smiled dizzily and mumbled something that sort of sounded like good-bye, and then she stepped into Colin’s dressing room. Apart from the two of them, the long, narrow space was empty. Excitement and relief turned back-handsprings in the center of her stomach.

Colin dropped her hand and closed and locked the door with a flourish. He spun to face her, gazing at her for several seconds before closing the distance between them in one long stride. He pulled her into his arms.

She buried her head in his chest and slid her hands up and around his neck.

“It’s about time.”

“Tell me about it.” His voice was soft, his lips on her hair. “I’ve been going crazy, having you here and not getting to talk to you.”

When she’d arrived on set two days earlier, Colin was already there with the rest of the cast. But she’d barely had a chance to say five words to him, in person at least. Every time she’d been anywhere near him, they’d been engulfed by other people—people who didn’t know they already knew each other. Both nights she’d been hustled away by Nina, who was anxious to find out how things were going on set. They’d had late dinners, joined the first night by the screenwriter and the second night by Scott and a couple more studio people, and shared a cab back to their hotel. Once safely alone in her room, she’d texted Colin and he’d called back, but their conversations had been brief. They’d both been exhausted. Neither of them had had much downtime or privacy, even off the set.

Her frustration had reached the point where she was wondering if she’d done the right thing by insisting they keep their relationship private. Colin hadn’t wanted to at first—but then, he was accustomed to having his every move splashed across tabloid pages. It didn’t mean that much to him anymore.

She, on the other hand, went rigid with fear at the thought of the two of them going public. She’d come to grips with the idea that Noah was going to find out about her books—he probably had already—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t freaked out by it. And if the media picked up on the fact that she was involved with the star of her own movie…
oh, God
. She couldn’t even think about it.

Colin didn’t understand why she was so freaked out, but at least he was supporting her decision. He was doing a great job of keeping the secret, too. Not even his own manager knew what was going on between them.

As for what that was, Amelia wasn’t entirely sure.

After they’d left the park in June, he’d shared her cab back to her hotel—but she hadn’t invited him up. She’d flown out early the next day without seeing him again, and they hadn’t seen each other since. They’d talked, though. A lot. And lately a lot of that talk had centered on the fact that they were about to be together.

And suddenly, here they were.

She tilted her face toward Colin’s. His lips brushed across her forehead, grazed her nose, and then his mouth covered hers.

She moaned at the sheer relief of it. She’d been fantasizing about kissing Colin for what felt like a very long eleven weeks. The few hours they’d spent together in New York had begun to feel like a dream—like he was a mere invention of her mind, another of the written characters whose lives had become so interwoven with her own.

But the man in front of her was no dream, and his mouth moving on hers was the realest thing she’d felt in months. A tingling heat traveled through her body as Colin took a step back and leaned into the built-in desk that filled an entire wall of the room they were in. He pushed a chair out of the way, and it rolled back a few feet. Amelia listened as the casters rumbled over the laminate flooring and then gasped as Colin perched on the edge of the desk and pulled her tight against him.

She forgot the chair, forgot where they were, forgot everything.

His hands were everywhere. He yanked his shirt over his head and her fingers moved across the bare skin of his back. Somewhere deep, buried under the frenzy that had overtaken her senses, she wasn’t sure about this. What was about to happen? Was this what she wanted? Would he remember her name tomorrow?

She didn’t know. She didn’t care. Her breath was hot against his as she lived—for once—gloriously in the moment.

“Amelia.”

He whispered it against her lips as his fingers undid her blouse, her bra, and brushed over her neck, her shoulders. His mouth followed his fingertips, and she pressed her face into his hair, unconscious of anything other than the searing sensation of his tongue against her skin.

A loud tap at the door suddenly ripped her back into awareness. She pulled away from him with a jerk, and his eyes were as wide as hers.

They softened a second later, crinkling at the corners as he chuckled.

“Oops.” He grinned.

She felt the blush spread from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes. But her embarrassment was replaced instantly by panic as her eyes swung toward the doorway.

He tipped her chin toward him, still smiling. “Breathe.” He pointed to a door at the center of the short hallway that separated the room they were in from the private dressing area. “Go in there.”

He leaned down and snagged his light-gray pullover from its disheveled heap on the floor and pulled it on in one swift movement. His face was composed, but his eyes still shone with excitement.

She snatched her shirt from the desktop and dashed in the direction he’d pointed, shutting herself into a small bathroom. Once she was dressed and her breathing had returned to normal, she leaned heavily against the countertop and surveyed her reflection in a gilded, oval mirror that looked out of place against the otherwise Spartan décor.

She shook her head, shocked at the way she’d just let herself go. It wasn’t at all like her, but then again, maybe she should have expected it. She and Colin had spent hours on the phone in the past few months. It had been weird to get to know someone so intimately without a chance to
be
intimate. They were starving for it. Obviously.

Her cheeks reddened as she thought about where things had been heading out there. Would she have actually gone through with it? Would she have had sex with him on his
dressing room desk
?

Who
am
I???

Somebody who was in over her head. Somebody who was trying to act way cooler than the flushed, sweaty bundle of nerves staring back at her in the mirror. She didn’t have a cool bone in her body.
What the hell is he even doing with me?

She thought about their conversations from the past few weeks. She’d told him every detail of her small-town upbringing—her close relationship with her brother and grandma and her complicated one with Brooke, her early career and how she’d written her first book in the hours she should have spent sleeping. He’d told her about his tight-knit family, his childhood, his inadvertent path to stardom that had resulted from a joke, a fraternity ploy that had landed him at an audition for a commercial being shot on campus his sophomore year at Southern Cal. It turned out the camera loved him, and so did the would-be agents who’d started calling once the national spot had aired. He was unassuming about it all, a fact that endlessly increased his already endless appeal. He’d been majoring in business, figuring he’d land in a career somewhere in finance, like his dad. But life, it turned out, had other ideas.

She knew all too well how the best-laid plans could change. Her mind flashed over the twists and turns in her own life that had landed her in this moment, with this absurdly charismatic man whom she’d almost just given herself over to with reckless abandon.

She shook her head and then strained to hear the muffled conversation taking place on the other side of the door. She wasn’t sure whether she should walk casually out of the bathroom or hang tight until whoever was there had left. When the new voice in the trailer registered in her head, her eyes popped wide open.

“I talked to some production kid, Rob, I think? He said she was here.”

“Yeah, she is.” Colin’s voice grew louder as he continued, “She’s in the powder room.”

Flustered again, she flushed the toilet and turned on the water. She took one more look at herself in the mirror and smoothed her hands over her hair before replacing the faucet handle, opening the door, and walking out into the hall. She did her best to arrange her features into a surprised expression when she came face to face with Nina, who glanced between her and Colin with a bemused, slightly suspicious gleam in her wide, brown eyes.

“Well, hi!” Amelia avoided a glance at Colin, pretty sure one look at him would destroy her tenuous grip on composure. Her voice was serious. “What are you doing here?”

Nina’s face became businesslike, and Amelia let out the breath she’d been holding.

“I just got an interesting call, and we need to talk.” Nina looked at Colin, apologetic. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

The look that crossed his face at her unassuming comment was priceless, and Amelia bit her lip to keep from smiling.

“No problem,” he said, clearing his throat. “We can get back to this later.” He glanced down at the script Amelia now noticed in his hands and then at her, his expression innocent. He was an actor, after all.

“Great, thanks,” Nina said. She turned to exit through the door she still held open.

Amelia moved toward her and looked over her shoulder at Colin, feeling frustrated and relieved at the same time.

“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”

He pursed his lips and nodded, and she felt his eyes on her receding back as she followed Nina down the steps and rushed to keep up with her perpetually hurried pace.

Nina slowed then and looked her up and down, and Amelia had a sudden horror that she’d forgotten an important item of clothing. She gave herself a once-over. Shirt, check. Shoes, check. Everything appeared in order. When she looked back at Nina, she was still studying her suspiciously.

“What a coincidence, huh?”

“What’s a coincidence?” Amelia struggled to keep her voice even.

She hadn’t clued Nina in on the fact that she and Colin had seen each other a second time in New York. No one in the world but Reese—not even Brooke—knew about what was happening between them. She thought about what Nina had almost walked in on and how shocked she’d be if she knew…