Now a Major Motion Picture

by Stacey Wiedower

  Sam and Andy had already packed up their car and left. Noah hadn’t had a single chance to pull Sam aside and ask her the questions that had driven him crazy all night.

  On the flight home, his thoughts vacillated between his conversation with Erin and the words Nicki hadn’t meant for him to hear. When the plane touched down at DFW and he’d loaded their luggage into his SUV, he hadn’t come any closer to solving the mystery of “I don’t think he even knows.”

  What didn’t he know? Obviously the “he” was him, and obviously the thing he didn’t know had to do with Amelia. He’d come up with several possibilities, but none of them seemed more likely than another. Was she getting married? Was she sick? What the hell was so big that Nicki would know—or better yet, care—about it? And how the hell would he find out? He couldn’t wait to be alone so he could call Sam…

  With that thought, he became aware of the somber silence in the car. He glanced over and found Erin staring at him the same way she had the night before.

  Aw, hell. How was it that, still, any time something reminded him of Amelia, he zoned out, lost his head? Was that why Erin had seemed so sad in the car last night? Had she sensed it? Every time he traveled to Girard, his memories oppressed him, dragged him down…but that had been so much better this trip. Erin’s presence, her near constant cheerfulness, had held him up.

  He studied her with a slight frown. She’d turned and was staring straight ahead, her expression pensive. Maybe she had noticed. Erin was pretty intuitive. Noah moved his eyes back to the road just in time to merge right onto I-35. A car with Oklahoma tags jerked over from the left, crossed the white caution lines, and veered into his lane, cutting him off. He slammed on his brakes and cussed under his breath. Once he’d merged safely in with the other traffic, he looked at her again.

  “Do you want to come to my place? Or do you need to head straight home?”

  She didn’t answer right away.

  “I could come over…or I could stay over, if you want. My tutoring sessions don’t start till Thursday, so I’m not very busy this week.”

  Teachers were so damn lucky. His mind flashed to his own schedule, which was busy as hell.

  It felt weird to re-enter the real world, dizzying and yet comforting. His mental to-do list began to fill his head, crowding out other thoughts. Being gone for four days meant tomorrow would be one long, hectic game of catch-up—and all he really wanted to do was get home and crash. And, he thought with a flash of guilt, if Erin stayed over he couldn’t call Sam tonight.

  The work excuse was on his lips, but when he glanced at Erin to deliver it, the look in her eyes—hopeful, uncertain—stopped him short. He felt like he had something to make up to her, even though he wasn’t sure why. The trip had gone well, so smooth, until that brief bit of weirdness last night. And it wasn’t like she knew what was going on inside his head. Indecision gripped him, but he masked it with a grin.

  “Yeah, stay. Make the vacation last a little longer.”

  Her eyes brightened, and he knew he’d said the right thing.

  “Okay, you’ve convinced me.”

  For the rest of the drive, she chattered in her usual, cheery way. Maybe he’d been imagining things. He participated in the conversation this time, determined not to zone out on her again.

  “Girard’s so quaint! I just can’t get over it. It’s like stepping back in time or something,” Erin said. “I mean, like, at church. Everybody knew everybody. And they were all so friendly.”

  He chortled. “Yeah, it’s a modern-day Mayberry.”

  She pretended to pout. “Well, it is.”

  “I’m glad you liked it.”

  That was true, he realized. Despite his dark thoughts in the last twenty-four hours, he felt closer to her now that she’d been where he’d come from, met the people he loved.

  When they got to his condo, he hefted their suitcases from the car and rolled them down the hall toward his bedroom. The place felt hollow without Amos there, but he couldn’t bring him home tonight—the kennel’s pick-up hours had ended.

  Erin followed him into his room and perched on the edge of his bed, watching him as he puttered around the room. He dragged his suitcase across the floor to his dresser and took his time emptying his pockets onto his nightstand. He pulled his phone from his pocket, giving it a wistful look before dropping it with a clatter beside his keys.

  “I don’t think he even knows.”

  He glanced at the clock…8:30. Sam would be home by now. He sighed.

  Erin’s eyes continued to follow him as he stepped out of his shoes and carried them to his closet. He took an extra second to slide the closet door closed and then turned to face her.

  “So, we’re all alone,” she said.

  He nodded. “At last.”

  She reached toward him and grabbed the edge of his shirt, tugging him down beside her. She slipped one hand under the fabric and slid it across the bare skin of his back. As their lips met, he stretched out, pulling her with him toward the pillows. Soon their kisses turned urgent, and their clothes started hitting the floor. He waited for her to stop him, to finish things in her usual way before they went too far.

  She didn’t stop, though.

  Confused, he pulled away from her. He looked into her eyes and saw a new longing there, a vulnerable sort of longing that reminded him of the way she’d looked at him last night. His mind flashed to the car, to the wedding, to Nicki and the words she’d used, to Amelia. He didn’t understand what was happening, why things between them felt so different. All he knew was that he wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this, not tonight.

  It had been a strange twenty-four hours.

  He kissed her once and then again, and then he disentangled himself from her arms and rolled to one side. As he moved to stand, he caught a glimpse of her eyes, which were filled with shock and hurt.

  With a sickening feeling, he realized what he’d done. Apparently Erin was finally ready to take their relationship to the next level—and he’d just fucked it up. Shame rolled over him in a hot wave, and he wished he could rewind the last thirty seconds. What the hell is wrong with me?

  He felt abruptly wiped, too mentally overloaded to try to figure anything out tonight, least of all the answer to that question. He glanced at Erin’s lithe form, still reclined against his pillow. He didn’t make a move toward her, even though he had a nagging feeling he’d regret it later.

  He already regretted it.

  She sat up and wrapped her arms around her bare knees. He felt her eyes on him as he grabbed his T-shirt from where it had landed on the end of the bed, shrugged it on and then scanned the floor for his cargo shorts. He moved around his room again, unzipping his suitcase, moving clothes to the laundry bin, walking his travel case to the bathroom and putting things away. When he came back into the room, she was fully dressed. She’d moved from the bed and was sliding her feet back into her sandals.

  He forced a smile and tried to extinguish the blazing sense of awkwardness that enveloped them.

  “So you’ve learned all there is to know about me, and you’re still here. That’s a good sign.” He fought to control his voice.

  She smiled weakly and pressed her lips together, staring at him.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said after a long pause. “I love you, Noah.”

  She walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Now take me home.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Action

  Amelia, September

  Amelia perched on the edge of her seat, paying rapt attention to the scene playing out before her.

  Literally.

  “Cut!”

  She removed her headphones, severing her link to the ordered chaos around her. As the director moved on set to deliver instructions to the actors in the sequence being shot, she stretched her arms above her head and looked around, bracing herself for another long intermission. She’d found this process to be nothing like sh
e’d anticipated. Where she’d expected fast-paced, nonstop action and excitement—kind of like a basketball game—she’d found something more akin to baseball: bursts of exhilarated action inside a long, slow framework of hurry-up-and-wait.

  The most frustrating part was watching Colin from a distance, but not being able to talk to him, for a multitude of reasons.

  It had been the story of her life for the past three months.

  Since she’d left Colin in New York, she’d been around the country and back again. Her most recent stop had been home, where she’d taken a hiatus after her book tour to make some headway on her fourth novel. But by then, Colin had been cast as the main character. Every time she sat down to write, she pictured him acting out the scene she was working on and became so self-conscious she could barely string words together.

  She’d talked to him almost every day since their whirlwind date in New York. When she wasn’t talking to him, she was thinking about him, and she found herself living for their phone calls.

  At night, though, Noah stalked her dreams. That fact confounded her, even if it didn’t surprise her. Her whole life, these days, seemed centered on two men—both of whom were so tangled up inside her day job it was all she could do to sort out fact from fiction. On the nights she and Colin managed to fit in talks of any length and substance, she’d fall asleep thinking about him, and though she’d still dream about Noah, his face would be Colin’s. Or she’d dream about Colin, but in the dream, he’d look like Noah. The one night she’d dreamed of Colin in bed with Ashley, she’d woken in a cold sweat.

  Her writing, meanwhile, had been crap. She’d deleted at least half of what she’d written in the past two months. It was so frustrating! This book was supposed to be the easy one. It wasn’t tied down by her past, it wasn’t about living her pain—it was about finally getting released from it.

  It was closure.

  At least it was supposed to be.

  But apparently pain had been her muse.

  She jumped as she caught sight of Colin moving in her peripheral vision. He stepped off the set and took several quick strides toward a pair of doors that led out of the athletic complex they’d been working in all afternoon. He was surrounded, as usual, by a little crowd of crew members, but just before he left the room, his eyes found hers, and he gave the tiniest wink. She turned her eyes away, felt the pink rise into her cheeks. When she looked back up, he was gone.

  She sank back onto her chair. What the hell are we doing?

  Five days ago, Nina had surprised her by calling her in Memphis. She was needed on set now, she said—not three weeks from now, which had been the plan. She’d booked a flight, and now she was here in Austin, where filming had just gotten underway. She couldn’t believe how fast it was all happening, but once casting was completed, things moved much more quickly than they had up to that point. She’d been brought into the process more than she’d expected—her opinions had been sought on everything from set locations to tweaks in the screenplay to final calls on casting.

  She’d stressed for weeks about Colin’s role in all of it, but of course, once he’d agreed to sign on it was a done deal. He was a Hollywood hot property, and with the success of his show, he’d grown even hotter in the months since they’d met. The studio was euphoric to have his name attached to the potential franchise.

  She shivered. Franchise. Geez. She felt every ounce of the pressure weighing down her shoulders.

  A tap on her right arm jerked her out of her self-conscious fog.

  “Ms. Henry?”

  She looked up to see a production assistant holding a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other. A headset held back his wavy, shoulder-length, brown hair, and his dark eyes looked far away as he listened to some stream of direction she couldn’t hear.

  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.