“Hey there, handsome!” Vivien exclaimed. “Long time no see. Do you want your regular?”
He nodded. “And two chocolate croissants.”
A twinkle lit in Vivien’s eyes and she spoke louder. “Do you mean the Josh Bianchi special?”
Audrey, who was a few feet away, whipped her head around toward her sister, looking mortified. Evan didn’t look over but he caught the movement in his peripheral vision.
“He’s a regular and those are his favorite,” Vivien explained matter-of-factly. “So, I figured we should name them after him.” It was obvious that she’d made the comment for her sister’s benefit, but he didn’t think that she truly wanted to embarrass her.
“Did you know that Josh is single?” Again, it was apparent that the question was not meant for him.
“No. I didn’t.” Evan answered honestly.
“What about you? Are you still single?” The redhead asked as she picked up tongs and placed a pastry in a white bag.
“Yes.” Evan responded to the same question she asked every time she saw him as he looked down at his wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.
“So, nothing’s going on with that hot brunette that was in here with you last week?”
“She’s an old friend.”
“Old friend, huh?” Vivien’s brows lifted as she handed him the bag. “That’s it?”
“She’s an ex.” He had no idea why he’d made that admission. Vivien had a way of getting him to talk about things that normally he’d keep to himself.
“You two looked pretty cute together. Pretty cozy. It looked like you guys were lost in your own world and barely noticed anyone else here.”
Evan was still getting used to how nosy everyone was in this town.
He’d grown up in the capital of California. There were hundreds of thousands of people that lived in Sacramento. Same for Southern California.
Living in Hope Falls was opening his eyes to the pros and cons of living in a small town. No traffic: pro. Everyone in your business: con.
He figured he’d head off another con, which was that gossip spread like a bad computer virus, and set the record straight.
“She was here to tell me that she’s engaged.”
“Oh.” Vivien looked surprised as she handed him his coffee. “So, you’re single-single.”
He wasn’t sure what the difference between single and single-single was, but he nodded anyway.
“I know a few ladies in town that will be very happy to hear that news.”
This conversation was like a broken record. “I told you, I’m not interested.”
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t even tell you who they—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he cut her off before reiterating, “I’m not interested.”
Her brows furrowed as she challenged, “Why would a guy like you not be interested in meeting someone?”
Because one woman I loved is pregnant and engaged to someone else, and the woman I think I might love is an unattainable movie star.
“I don’t have the best track record.”
“Haven’t you heard of getting back on the horse?”
His brows rose slightly. “You do realize in your analogy a woman is the horse?”
“See!” Vivien chuckled. “You’re hot, employed, and witty. It’s unfair of you to keep that kind of prime real estate off the market.”
“Vivien,” he spoke her name quietly, so she would lean in. It worked. She even bit her bottom lip in anticipation. “I’m single. End of story.”
She narrowed her eyes in challenge but then saluted him. “Yes, sir.”
As she handed him his coffee she leaned in, and the same twinkle that had been in her eye when she’d teased her sister was back as she whispered, “You do know that being unavailable only makes you sexier, right?” After a quick wink, she turned her attention to the next customer in line.
Vivien was another one with chutzpa. If she and Nonna ever teamed up, the world had better watch out.
He turned from the counter and came face to face with Ruby standing directly behind him. Without checking with his brain his eyes automatically searched for the actress that haunted his thoughts.
“She’s not here.”
“What?” His eyes returned to Ruby.
“Shayne.” A knowing smile crossed her face. “She’s doing phone interviews before rehearsal.”
“Oh, I was,” he began to defend himself, but thought better of it. “How are you feeling?”
“Huge.” She looked down at her protruding belly and ran her hands over it. “But good.”
“Hi, Ruby.” Audrey greeted her from behind the counter. “Your order’s not ready yet. Sorry. Give us about ten minutes.”
“No worries,” Ruby assured her. “I know it’s a big one.”
“Do you need me to stay and help?” Evan knew that pregnant women were not invalids but he didn’t like the idea of Ruby trying to carry out a big order.
“Oh, no.” Ruby waved him off and pointed to two young guys, looking down at their phones, standing in the back of the café. “That’s what PAs are for. I brought back up.”
“Will I see you over there, then?” He normally didn’t fish for information, but he wasn’t sure if Shayne was going to be at rehearsal since he’d heard yesterday that she had an interview and a photo shoot today and he wanted to know. He didn’t care if he was being slick about it or not.
Ruby’s grin told him that he wasn’t. “Yep. We’ll see you there.”
On his way out of the shop, Evan glanced once more at the iconic photo hanging on the wall. Just like his eyes always drifted to the real Shayne, like she was a homing beacon. He didn’t plan to. He had no control over it.
Having no control was something he was getting used to when it came to anything that had to do with Shayne Fox.
Chapter 12
‡
Shayne had just completed a dozen phone interviews and one quick call with Chester. As usual, he downplayed her concerns and told her that she needed to “trust him to do his job.” He even went as far as to remind her where she’d be without him.
She knew that the end was near. The writing was on the wall and it read: Chester is an asshole. She just wasn’t sure how or when it would come but she knew it would. Once the movie wrapped, she would come up with an exit strategy. For now, she intentionally pushed all thoughts of Chester from her brain.
She paused and inhaled deeply. All of her focus needed to be on the project. She was scheduled to fly out of Hope Falls in a few hours and this was the final rehearsal before the first day of filming.
Once she felt a little more centered, she entered the room. Before she made it two steps, Ruby stepped in front of her, drink in hand.
“I have good news and bad news.” Her friend whispered as she handed Shayne a green tea. “What do you want to hear first?”
“Bad news.” It was the choice that Shayne always made. There was no way she could enjoy any good news when she knew that bad was right around the corner.
Ruby scrunched her face as she shook her head no.
Shayne’s lips tilted up in amusement. “Why do you ask if you know you’re not going to like my answer?”
“Why do you pick the wrong answer when you know I’m going to tell you the good news first?” Ruby countered.
“Fine.” Shayne conceded. “Good news.”
“Brawny Man is single.”
Shayne didn’t get her hopes up often, but that statement had just sent them skyrocketing. The more time she spent around the man, the more appealing he became. He maintained a quiet authority, a dependable steadfastness, and a commanding air that had her hormones going as wild as teenagers on Spring Break.
“He is?” her voice was thin from the strain of excitement.
Ruby nodded subtly.
Shayne snuck a peek at Evan, who was standing several feet away talking to Kyle. Her breath caught in her throat the way it always did when she looked at him.
It wasn’t just that he was good-looking. She was around good-looking people all the time. Evan was more than that. His attractiveness was so much more than physical. Although, between his thick brown hair, strong jaw, whiskey-tinted eyes, and gladiator physique he was no slouch in that department. Not to mention what had started as stubble had grown into a full beard and it was giving him quite a bad boy vibe that she was a fan of. A big fan.
She was not in his direct line of sight but she felt like he was watching her. So she linked her arm in her friend’s and they walked to the opposite side of the room to a large window that overlooked the town. She pretended to point something out to her friend as she asked, “How do you know? Did you ask him?”
Ruby had been threatening all week that if Shayne didn’t broach the subject with Evan, she would. Each time, Shayne had forbidden her to do so. Secretly she’d hoped that for once, Ruby wouldn’t listen to her.
In all honesty, Shayne had basically been biding her time until Nolan showed up. No amount of forbidding would stop her beloved, well-meaning, meddling make-up artist from getting to the bottom of whether or not Evan was dating anyone, or worse, in a serious relationship.
“I didn’t have to ask him,” Ruby enthused. “Vivien did all the work for me.”
Shayne felt a tinge of jealousy spread through her as she asked, “Vivien asked him?”
“Yes. She point blank asked if he was single. He said he was.”
“Was she flirting with him?” Shayne had no right to ask and even less of a right to care, but she did and she did.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. She also flirted with me.”
Fair point. The gorgeous redhead radiated flirtatious energy like the sun radiated heat.
Ruby’s eyes narrowed in a detective squint as she continued, “And I didn’t get the feeling that she was asking for herself.”
“Do you think she was asking for Audrey?”
Ruby shook her head discretely. “I don’t think so. She asked about a brunette that he’d been in there with last week.”
“A brunette?” The feeling grew in intensity.
Great. Now she was jealous of some anonymous woman she didn’t even know.
Ruby glanced over her shoulder in a clandestine fashion. Shayne casually turned her head as well, possibly blowing the entire covert mission. When they both saw that Evan still stood across the room deep in conversation with Kyle, Ruby continued.
“He said it was his ex.”
“His ex?” Shayne’s heart hiccupped. That was the only way to describe it. Her heart jumped into her throat.
In Shayne’s way of thinking, an ex was even more disheartening than someone new. That meant that they had shared history. A past. There was some reason that they’d been together.
Evan didn’t give away much and she still wasn’t able to read him the way she could other people, but she had picked up that he only acted deliberately. He was serious. If he was in a relationship with someone, it wouldn’t have been casual.
“An ex.” Ruby nodded. “Vivien asked about a hot brunette he was with last week. Brawny Man said that she was an old friend. Vivien basically called bullshit. He admitted she was an ex. She said they looked cute together and it seemed like they were in their own world and didn’t even notice that anyone else was there. He said that the brunette was there to tell him that she was engaged.”
“Engaged?”
“Engaged,” Ruby confirmed as she opened her mouth and sucked air in.
“You said that all in one breath.”
“I know.” Ruby exhaled as she rubbed her belly. “And with this one pushing up against my lungs that’s not as easy as it used to be.”
Her friend had grown bigger in the past week. Maybe even in the past day. For the first few months the differences in her body from the pregnancy were imperceptible. But the farther along she got it seemed like she was changing every day. As Shayne looked down at her friend’s ever-expanding baby bump, a sense of awe came over her. “You’re growing a human in there.”
“I know, right?” Ruby looked just as amazed. “It’s crazy.”
Shayne’s moment of awe was cut short when she sensed motion behind them and had a feeling that at any second they’d be interrupted. “What’s the bad news?”
“Bad…? Oh, right.” Ruby’s eyes widened. “I forgot. I have serious baby brain. From everything I’ve read it’s not supposed to affect me until after I have the baby, but my memory has been seriously shot for the past—”
“Bad news,” Shayne prompted as an urgency rose in her chest.
“Sorry. He said that he’s not interested.”
Panic gripped her throat like a hand strangling her. “Not interested in what? In whom?”
In me? She asked silently.
“In a relationship. He said it was because of his track record. And that he was single, end of story.”
They both stopped talking when they heard footsteps come up behind them.
Kyle’s assistant, Janine, stepped to Ruby’s right. “Shayne, Kyle’s ready when you are.”
“I’m ready.” She handed her tea back to Ruby.
Shayne approached Kyle and as she did so, she let her eyes graze across Evan’s strong profile. He stood only a couple of feet from them. Every time she was this close to him she felt the tell-tale signs that the butterflies his nearness summoned had arrived and were flitting around in her stomach.
He was wearing a gray T-shirt that molded to his sculpted upper body. The material stretched taut in all the right places. His pecs, his biceps, his shoulders. If the whole hotshot thing didn’t work out, he could easily be a fitness model.
His expression was, per usual, enigmatic. Ninety percent of the time he was the epitome of the strong, silent type. But in those rare ten-percent moments, he was charming, insightful, and funny. She never knew when those ten-percent moments would come but that just made the glimpses behind the curtain of his personality that much more special.
She knew more about him than she had an hour ago. He was single. He had a bad track record. He had no interest in having a relationship. And he had an ex who was engaged to someone else. But with those questions answered, others popped up.
Why wasn’t he interested in meeting someone?
Was he upset that his ex was marrying someone else?
Did he still have feelings for the hot brunette?
Were brunettes his type?
“Shayne Fox.” Kyle announced loudly as she joined him.
“Kyle Austen Reed.” Shayne smiled as he opened his arms and she happily stepped into his waiting embrace.
Kyle was a larger-than-life person. She tried to figure out what was real about him and what was a show? But after knowing him only a short time she knew that all of it was real. He was one of the good ones. He was honest, hard-working, and genuinely cared about people. Those were descriptors that she could use for few people in her industry.
“Attention, everyone,” Kyle announced grandly to the room of approximately ten people. “We only have Miss Fox for a few hours before she’ll be leaving us for the weekend. So, let’s get right to business.”
Shayne ran through the lines and did her best to ignore the man that was distraction personified.
As she and Kyle blocked out a particularly pivotal scene with the stunt coordinator, she had to keep her thoughts from drifting toward the only man that had ever sparked passion in her. She wondered what it would be like to have all of his intensity focused solely on her. She imagined how it would feel to have his large, tanned hands run up her inner thigh. She fantasized about how his mouth would feel sucking on the particularly sensitive area just below her ear. Her efforts to contain her thoughts were like putting sunscreen on after you get home from the beach. Pointless.
She’d always prided herself on being headstrong. When she decided to do something, she was single-minded in her pursuit. Some called her stubborn, she considered herself resolutely determined. If she set her mind
to something, she accomplished it. But nothing she did, no amount of resolve had stopped her from thinking about Evan.
From the first time she saw him, he’d invaded her thoughts to the point that she would totally blank on where she was, what she was doing, or even who she was. With only three days out from the first time Kyle would call action, she didn’t have time to waste on a school-girl crush. She needed to get this, whatever this was, out of her system.
During the entire rehearsal there had been a constant tug-of-war going on in her brain. One side pulling her toward Evan, the other tugging her back to reality. She was relieved when Janine gave them the ten-minute warning. As soon as rehearsal was over she was flying to Los Angeles and then onto New York. A few days, away from Evan, was just what she needed to clear her head.
“Something still doesn’t feel right,” Kyle commented as he looked down at the script.
They’d been running and blocking the final scene for the past hour and it was clear that something wasn’t working for the first-time director. It was the tail end of an action sequence where she pulls his character to safety after finding him unconscious. In the scene she props him up against a rock. As he regains consciousness, he’s supposed to pull her toward him and kiss her.
They’d been running the scene, minus the kiss which they weren’t rehearsing. With the clock ticking until she had a hard out, determination burst in her. Kyle was seated in front of her, leaning against the wall, which was serving as a substitute rock, studying his notes.
“What if I say something,” Shayne threw out. “So, it’s not just your eyes open and then we kiss.”
He lifted his head and she could see the wheels turning in his mind. He was giving serious consideration to her suggestion. Slowly, he nodded. “I like it. That could work. Why don’t we run it and whatever comes to Joey’s mind, you say. Be the vessel to tell her story. Be her truth.”
Fire and Temptation Page 11