She cracked a yawn as she pulled her coat off her chair. “I’m glad to hear that Reed is treating you right,” she said. “He knows that otherwise he’d have to deal with me, and he’s not that stupid.”
“I’m so lucky,” Kate sighed. “Oh, I’ve seen Sam around a few times too since I’ve been back.”
Millie instantly tensed. “Oh?”
“He looks hot. You didn’t tell me that boy has been working out,” Kate giggled. “Up close he’s downright yummy. Don’t tell Reed I said that!”
“Yeah, it’s part of his job,” Millie said, refusing to comment on Sam’s appearance at all. She didn’t need to reminisce about his rock hard abs or how she still dreamed about his strong arms holding her up against the wall during their last tryst.
“I’ve heard the crew gossiping that there’s something going on between him and Delaney Rose. Sounds like a fairy tale if it’s true,” Kate said.
Millie felt nauseous. Unbidden, an image of Sam making love to Delaney on the beach behind the Willoughby rose in her mind. Although she knew it was just an image that she conjured up from the pages of Where My Heart Breaks, it still felt real now that she could add faces to it.
“I gotta go,” she said. She threw the phone down and scrambled down the hall. Her skin suddenly felt cold and clammy. She was thankful that it was late and so there was no one in the ladies room when she burst through the door. She barely made it to the toilet in the first stall before the heaves started.
When it was over, she leaned back against the cool tile and wondered what the hell was wrong with her. She figured that she must have eaten something for lunch that didn’t agree with her. She definitely didn’t have time to get sick. She peeled herself up off the floor and made her way to the sink.
Splashing cool water on her face, she finally felt her stomach returning to a semblance of normal. She looked at herself in the mirror. It would be just her luck if right before Kate’s engagement party and the big meeting in DC that she came down with the flu. She wiped the water off of her face and started to throw the towel in the trashcan when a horrifying thought blossomed in her mind.
Josh said the meeting was on the twenty-eighth. She looked at her watch. The ivory face told her that it was the twenty-first.
“No, no, no, no,” she whispered as she shot out of the bathroom and back down the hallway to her office. She grabbed her phone and pulled the calendar back up. She swiped back to the month before.
“Shit,” she said to the empty office.
She was late. Her hand moved to her mouth as she thought about that last time with Sam in her bedroom at her parent’s apartment. They hadn’t used any protection, and she hadn’t worried about it because she was on the pill. She forced herself to be calm. Then she picked up her briefcase and coat. There was only one way to know for sure.
Two hours later, Millie stared forlornly at the glass of wine that she poured herself but couldn’t bring to her lips. The wine was supposed to be the liquid courage she needed to face the results of the three different pregnancy tests that she bought at the corner drug store. The test strips were laid out in front of her on the coffee table.
One had a non-threatening pink plus sign in the window.
One had a smiley face in the window.
The third seemed cheerily to announce “Pregnant”.
Her mind alternated between being completely blank, and then panicking about what she was going to do. She had always known that this was a possibility, especially with her track record, but that’s why she was always so careful to use protection. Until Sam.
She was pregnant with Sam’s baby. Millie felt the waves of nausea roll over her again, and she ran to the bathroom. On the bathroom floor, cradling her middle, she began to cry.
That was the way that Millie faced everything in her life that seemed impossible. One good cry. She allowed herself one, good, self-pitying cry and then she didn’t cry about it again. Crying got her nowhere. But in those moments while the fat, hot tears slid down her face, she felt an ache deep inside of her.
She could try to bury her feelings for Sam, but they were there. She didn’t believe in things like fate or destiny, but couldn’t deny that there was something out there that seemed to think that she and Sam were supposed to be part of each other’s lives. If she kept the baby.
That was a sobering thought, and one she almost immediately dismissed. It hadn’t happened with some random guy. It was Sam. Sam, who was embarking on what was likely the start of a huge career. Sam, the movie star. How would he react to the news? He had made it abundantly clear that his career was the most important thing to him. She didn’t think that he would react well to this kind of news at all.
Millie pushed herself off the floor and went back out into the living room. She took the glass of wine, considered it again, and then took it into the kitchen and poured it down the drain. Until she decided what she wanted to do, she wasn’t going to do anything risky. She needed time to think. Sudden movements at such critical junctures in a person’s life were a bad idea.
Feeling slightly better, she kicked off her shoes, changed into her pajamas and curled up on the bed with the television turned toward her. She hadn’t had time to watch anything since starting her new job, and she was woefully behind on her favorite shows. She thought that sounded like just the ticket to take her mind off of her present situation.
As she flipped through the channels, she heard his name. She knew she should change the channel, but her finger was frozen on the remote.
“Filming continues in western North Carolina on the set of Where My Heart Breaks. Fans were delighted to see the two stars of the film, Carter Samuel Groveson and Delaney Rose, attending the premiere of Silverstine Studios latest film release over the weekend. The two young stars looked quite happy, and their reps confirmed that Groveson and Rose are romantically involved.”
There it was. A video of Sam and Delaney on the red carpet waving to fans off-screen and posing together for the cameras. Delaney was dressed in a skin-tight red mini-dress with her hair falling loosely around her shoulders. Her lips were blood red. Standing beside her with their fingers interlocked, Sam looked happy, just like the announcer said. At one point, he leaned down and said something in Delaney’s ear, and she laughed.
Millie turned the television off. She felt the tears starting to gather in her eyes, but she wiped them away. “You already gave him his one cry. That’s all he gets,” she whispered. She leaned backwards and stared at the ceiling.
Her hands crept to her stomach, and she let them rest there. Forcing her mind to empty, Millie fell into a fitful sleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The days blurred together as the filming schedule condensed to become more intense than anyone planned. Sam wasn’t sure how he was able to do it all, but he felt the line between himself and Jackson fading, and soon he spent more time in character than out of it. He was losing himself, and there was a sort of exhilaration in peeling free of the persona that everyone expected and becoming someone else.
His almost constant companion was Delaney. They were partners in crime working together doggedly toward their goal now. They both heard the twitters of excitement from the producers about how they thought filming was going so far filter down to the crew. They were making magic happen. He could feel it, and he knew that Delaney felt it too.
The filming schedule had been carefully structured to build to the scenes that they were filming in a few days. It was Jackson and Camilla’s first kiss, and then their first fevered, passionate tryst on the beach. Filming would wrap with the scene where Jackson goes to tell Camilla that they can’t be together, but changes his mind at the last moment. But then Camilla falls on the rocky shore. Jackson loses her forever to a fatal blow to the head from a sharp rock.
“You nervous about the scenes next week?” Delaney asked him during their commute to the set.
“Maybe a little,” Sam admitted. “I’ve never pretended to make love t
o someone in front of a bunch of cameras before.”
“Lee’s doing it really tastefully,” she said as she skimmed her script. He wasn’t sure why she bothered. Delaney was the ultimate professional. So far, he had only seen her completely forget a line once. She seemed perfectly in control of her character and how she wanted to play her. “We’ve got the first kissing scene before that though. I am sure Lee will make us do that take a million times.”
“He wants to be sure it’s perfect,” Sam said. The legendary director was a perfectionist, and Sam was fairly certain that whatever lag there had been in the expedited schedule had to do with him shooting the same take over and over again until it was just the way that he envisioned it in his head. Sam understood that and appreciated it. He wanted Walter Moolen’s story told right as well.
“You heard anything else from Millie lately?” The question was casually thrown out there, but it still made Sam jump out of his skin.
“No,” he said tersely. “We broke up, remember? I think it was pretty clear that once I was gone, we weren’t going to try to stay in touch and that my career was taking priority.”
“Harsh,” Delaney said with a shake of her head. “So, I’ve been thinking.”
Sam cut a glance over at her. They had spent enough time together now that he knew those words meant Delaney was concocting some kind of plan or mischief. “You’ve been thinking…”
“Everyone thinks that we’re an item now.”
Sam didn’t even want to think about it. As expected, their joint appearance at the studio’s film premiere sent tongues wagging and then Victoria let it “slip” that they were a couple when asked about it.
“I know,” he said. “And we’re just not telling anyone any different.” He was sure that Millie had seen the news. “The crew watches us like hawks. They’re almost worse than the photographers. I think half the stuff up on YouTube is from stuff the crew videos on the sly, as opposed to the guests at the Willoughby.”
“Well, maybe it’s time we took the game up a notch,” Delaney said.
“Delaney, I told you that I like you, but…” Sam started.
Delaney hit him with her script. “Don’t make me swoon, Sam.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re missing my point,” Delaney said. She stabbed her finger at the script. “We’ve got some of the really good scenes coming up, the stuff that you know Lee is going to go over with a fine tooth comb. He’s going to be carefully examining every look and every movement. I don’t even know if you’re a good kisser.”
He couldn’t stop the startled laugh from escaping his lips. “You’re worried that I’m a bad kisser?”
Delaney swiveled in her seat to face him. “Look, we’re going to be lip locked in a few days. A lot. We’re supposed to be a couple already, so it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to think we’ve kissed, and done a whole lot more than that.”
Sam was starting to see where her train of thought was going. “You’re saying that if we look uncomfortable, or like we’ve never done it before that people are going to wonder if we’re actually a couple.”
“Exactly.” Delaney said with a satisfied smile. “It’s not like I’m jonesing to kiss you either, you know. There may be millions of women out there who think you are God’s gift, but I am not one of them.”
Sam couldn’t help but smile. Delaney’s sarcastic wit was one of the reasons that he liked her. It reminded him of Millie. The smile fell off this face.
“No, stop it,” Delaney said, waggling her finger under his nose. “Stop thinking about her. That’s not going to help your mojo.”
“How did you know that I was thinking about her?” Sam asked.
“You have a look,” Delaney said with a sniff. “A Millie look. It’s actually kind of disturbing.”
“I have a look?”
Delaney made a puppy dog sad face and then rubbed her fists against her eyes as if she were crying. “Kind of like this.”
He didn’t want to talk about Millie anymore. It hurt too much. But it was good to know that he apparently had a tell. It was something he’d have to watch. He saw the entrance to the Willoughby up ahead. They were almost there. “So what are you proposing, Delaney?”
“We should rehearse it,” Delaney said. “That’s all I’m saying. We’re in character all day long, so it shouldn’t be too hard for Jackson to dredge up the urge to kiss his girlfriend. If you’re feeling it, just go for it. I’ll be ready.”
Sam groaned. “I do not want to play this game with you.”
“Buck up,” she said. “We’re already playing this game. Now we just have to make sure that we win. That’s all. When you are a famous movie star, you’ll be able to do whatever you want, Sam.”
Sam felt like the ground was disappearing beneath him. The deeper he got the less and less likely it seemed that he’d ever be able to find his way back to Millie.
Later that afternoon, Sam paced the backyard. He had a rough morning. He didn’t understand why, but he was losing his lines at every turn, and Lee had gotten more than agitated with him. Delaney could tell that something was bothering him, but she couldn’t seem to help pull him out of his funk.
“Cut!” Lee finally yelled after the twentieth take. “Break for lunch. Groveson, get your head in the game or don’t bother coming back this afternoon.”
Sam shook Delaney off and stalked down to the beach. It was almost impossible to find a place of solitude around the Willoughby’s grounds. The movie crew had effectively taken over. Kate told him that she was glad that Patrice suggested only taking short-term reservations at the inn while the movie crew were on location. There was a kind of thrill being able to get a glimpse of the movie action, but it wore thin quickly with the chaotic bustle, especially at almost five hundred dollars a night.
Finally, he decided to take a drive into town. He needed to get away. Delaney caught up with him just as he was opening the driver’s side door of his car.
“Sam, we’re supposed to start again in less than an hour,” she warned.
“Lee said if my head wasn’t in it not to come back,” Sam growled. “At this point, I’m not sure my head’s going to be in it. I need to take a drive.”
“I’ll go with you,” Delaney said.
“No!” Sam yelled. He saw the shocked expression on her face. “I just need to be alone for five minutes.” There was a part of him that wanted to apologize to her, but the anger he felt inside wasn’t going to let him stop.
He got in the car and saw Delaney slowly back away. It wasn’t until he looked in the rearview mirror that he saw that there were witnesses to his outburst. A few of the extras were sitting on the half wall that edged the driveway, and he hadn’t even noticed them. He ran a hand through his hair. He could just see the headlines now.
Trouble in Paradise?
Groveson and Rose Over?
Hearts Really Breaking on the Set of Where My Heart Breaks!
He hated it all of the sudden. The drive into town didn’t take long, and then he got out of his car and started to walk. He ignored the waves and the hellos from the people he’d known all his life. He didn’t know where he was going, other than he was just going somewhere else.
Wandering onto a side street, he saw the Java Joe’s was open. He’d spent hours of time there in high school as it was one of the locals favorite hangouts. The quaint coffee shop took up the lower level of an older Victorian style home. He hadn’t had anything to eat yet, but his stomach was tied up in knots. He thought that a coffee would do the trick. As he climbed the steps, he saw a familiar face at a table tucked away in the back corner of the porch.
“Kate?”
She looked up from a stack of textbooks and smiled at him. “Hey, stranger. I thought you’d be filming right now.”
He eased into the chair across from her. He wanted to ask her about Millie, but he couldn’t. Not right away. A part of him needed to know that Millie was okay.
; “I’m on my lunch break. I thought I’d come into town and grab a coffee just to get away from the craziness for a while. Plus that stuff that the catering crew brews could make a corpse stand up and walk,” he said.
Kate laughed. “That doesn’t sound good at all. I’m running on no sleep and a ton of caffeine. That little trip sounded like such a good idea at the time, but now I’m up to my ears in homework trying to catch up. I’ve forgotten how hard college is.”
“My classes were really different once I transferred,” Sam admitted. “It was an adjustment, but I eventually figured it out.” At least he had until he dropped out to become a movie star.
Kate pulled her backpack up into her lap and dug inside of it. She pulled out a slightly tattered envelope and looked at him sheepishly before handing it to him. He saw his name scrawled across the side.
“What’s this?”
“Patrice is throwing us an engagement party this weekend. I meant to give this to you a few weeks ago, but then Millie asked me specifically not to invite you.”
“Oh,” Sam said. His throat felt tight.
“She didn’t tell me why,” Kate said slowly. “I didn’t even try to pry. Millie doesn’t tell me a thing unless she wants to, and her tone definitely said the topic was off limits.”
“The last time we spoke, it wasn’t pleasant,” Sam said evasively. If Millie wasn’t going to fess up about what happened to her best friend, he wasn’t going to either. He could tell that Kate was dying of curiosity, but he didn’t say anything else.
“Did it have anything to do with a particularly attractive young actress?”
Delaney. Sam hated that all roads in his life suddenly led back to Delaney. He wanted to tell Kate the truth, but if it got out that their romance was all a sham, he’d be in hot water.
He struggled with what to say next. “Delaney and I have gotten close. It was inevitable with how much time we’re spending together. Millie didn’t understand.”
Grounded By You Page 14