by Alexis Anne
I reached up to touch him one last time. His face fit against my hand so perfectly. His freshly shaved jaw soft against my skin, sending a little sizzle of warmth into me. “I’m glad I could help you as much as you helped me. Be good to yourself.”
He leaned into my touch. “I have something for you.”
I’ll admit that made me panic a little. He pulled out an envelope, pressing it into my hand. “A promise. My reservation is already a done deal. Same week next year. I’m looking forward to it.”
He took my face in his hands and kissed me fiercely. Desperately. “See you soon,” he whispered. Then walked away without looking back.
I stared after him until he disappeared. I couldn’t move. I was too broken. I didn’t understand how it was possible, but it felt like part of my heart had just walked away. There was an empty space inside me that didn’t exist before I knew Colt.
“What do you have there, Princess?” Ted chirped as he came around the corner, his hand tucked inside Charley’s.
I quickly opened the envelope and checked. Sure enough it was a copy of a reservation for next year. Colt’s name was at the top, but his last name and credit card information had all been blackened out. In the blank space he wrote:
I promise.
-Colt
And then at the very bottom:
In case of emergency: [email protected]
I quickly tucked it into my bag, blinking back tears. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.” It’s just the sweetest fucking thing anyone has ever done for me.
Colt didn’t know it, but he’d just knocked me off my feet with one little gesture.
CHAPTER 8
“Call him back!” I screamed into my phone. Ted had finally given it back to me because Lonnie was calling with news about the movie.
“Darling, we don’t audition,” Lonnie said.
“Like hell we don’t. If they want me to audition, I’ll audition.” And Lonnie was getting his ass fired as soon as I could surgically remove him. Asshat.
I finally made progress with Holt Pictures and he told them to fuck off because “Lily Lawrence doesn’t do auditions.” As if I were too good for them. Sure it was kind of a jab that they wouldn’t even talk until I read for them, but hell. This was a huge part with a very specific casting call. If they wanted me to read, I was reading!
And how dare he brush them off without even speaking to me?
“All right, all right. I’ll call them back and set it up. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” I tried really hard not scream.
“I’ll have you a day and time when you land in LA.”
“Thank you Lonnie.” I hung up and spun around to find Ted.
He waited with his hands out and eyebrows raised. “Well?”
“I’ve got an audition.”
He clapped twice, then rubbed his hands together. “You’re going to nail it. Then they’re going to beg to sign you.”
“And you and I will get to spend six months shooting together.”
He closed one eye and shook his opposite hand. “Well, sort of. I’ll be there on and off. Right now we’re negotiating with a ranch in Montana to shoot the movie and I can’t manage the company and be on-set for the entire shoot if we’re that far from LA. I just can’t.”
Because of Charley. I’d learned on the way to the airport that she was the head of marketing for a firm for a studio in LA. Meaning she and Ted not only lived in the same city, they also worked in the same industry.
Meaning his head-over-heels status had only gotten worse.
That deflated my bubble a little. But only a little. “That’s okay. I’ll be busy and at least we’ll get some time together. When is shooting scheduled to start?”
“Right now we’re slated for an early April start.”
Four and half months from now. It was perfect. It would give me enough time to clean up what I could at home, visit my sister, and finish the screenplay I’d started brainstorming, all before shooting started. It was like this was meant to be.
“You’re really not going to even talk to him?” Ted asked, his expression carefully blank.
I thought about the email address he’d left me. What constituted an emergency? “No. Neither of us is ready for anything more than what we had. I don’t want to play with fire.”
“Flirting over email doesn’t have to be fire.”
Except with us, I think any contact was the equivalent of fire. “It’s better this way.”
“You mean easier.”
Why was he being such a nosy prick? “Look, I gave him a fake name and if I show up in a year to explain . . . that makes sense. But if we have this other relationship and I don’t tell him who I am, then it makes this a thousand times worse.”
“So tell him.”
He made it sound so simple. “I want to do it in person. This isn’t the kind of thing you can do over email.”
“Princess. It’s just a fake name. One little white lie.”
“No . . . it was so much more than that.” I held up my hand, ticking off each little lie with my fingers. “My name, my occupation, where I live, the color of my hair, who my family is, the fact that I’m up to my eyeballs in legal issues, and, you’re really going to love this one, I even told him I was fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I know that!” I yelled back. “But he needed to hear it. He cares. For some insane reason he cares and if I told him I was on the verge of losing it all, that I hang on every day by a thread, that if one more thing goes wrong I will throw in the towel and find a new career, he’d care more and want to help.”
“I don’t see how that’s a problem.”
Ted was really getting on my nerves now. “Because it’s not his problem. I barely know him and I solve my own damn problems, Ted.”
“But you’re not fine.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “No. I’m better than I was before I got here but I’m a long way from fine.”
“He’ll forgive you for all your little fibs.” Then he pulled me into a crushing hug.
“Uh, Ted . . . ” I pointed behind him to where Charley had just emerged from the bathrooms. “I’ll give you two a minute.”
They already had plans to see each other tonight when they got in—Ted wasn’t taking any chances on vacation remorse. I had to talk him out of buying a ring.
When he said he’d let the universe know when he was ready, I thought he meant he’d put it out there and start dating.
This was a whole other level.
I wandered into the gift shop and looked over the same titles I’d attempted to read at the beginning of our trip, which of course reminded me of my first conversation with Colt.
Poetry.
That ache I’d been trying really hard to ignore came roaring back. I missed him.
How was it possible to miss someone I just met?
Maybe it was because he helped me find what I was looking for. I’d tried. Tried and failed before Colt brought me a shrimp cocktail. From there it became natural. I found old hints of myself until I no longer felt like I’d been snatched by aliens and placed in a new body.
I was me again.
I had Colt to thank for that. He’d given me one the best presents in my life and I couldn’t even say thank you. At least not for a year.
CHAPTER 9
Shooting did not start in four months. More like six and half. And instead of Montana, shooting was moved to the much more appropriate ranch near Cambria, California. Considering the movie was set in California, not Montana, it made a lot of sense. Plus it meant Ted could bring Charley.
Yep. Ted and Charley were still together.
A whole lot of together. Turns out for all that lecturing I got about safe sex and being irresponsible, it wasn’t me that came home with a souvenir. Charley was damn near full term now with their daughter who they named Evangeline.
Now that was a story. Believe me. When Charley found out she was pr
egnant, she was pissed. I didn’t blame her one little bit. An unplanned pregnancy with a man she’d just met? A man who was over-the-top in every sense of the word?
Except that she was absolutely nuts about Ted. Just as much as he was about her. It was a rocky few weeks while they figured it out. They both had tempers and major personalities, but I couldn’t imagine any two people more perfect for each other.
“We’ll be in here,” he said as he opened the door to a bungalow just off the main house. He waited with a smile as his very pregnant wife drifted inside with her bag. To say Ted was happy was probably an understatement. He was over the moon ecstatic. Besotted. On Cloud Nine. “Would you like to lay down or come on the tour?”
Charley tossed the bag onto the four-poster bed with a sigh. “Tour. I want to know this place before I pop.”
The ranch had come to us through a friend of one of the Holt Pictures executives. Apparently they were childhood friends. He’d been trying to get the owner to allow us to film here and when the ranch in Montana fell through, he caved. It sounded to me like we weren’t exactly welcomed guests, but if it got the picture made on time and on budget, then I didn’t really care what the owner thought.
I watched as Ted darted around the room making sure everything was as expected, before he took Charley’s hand and guided her back out into the warm afternoon sun.
Summer was here.
“The director, Joley, is staying here beside us. The cast has the main house, including you, Princess.”
My assistant, Tabitha, had already taken my bags to my room.
“This place is enormous, Ted.”
“Exactly. It fits our needs perfectly. There will be minimal shooting at the main house. Sets have been built in the south pasture for principal shooting. And then we have all the cattle, horses, and land we need for setting and background.”
Ted had been acting weird for weeks. I put it up to his impending fatherhood, but now that we were here, his weirdness was growing by leaps and bounds.
Bounds being the operative word.
He bounded everywhere. It was like he was nervous or something.
I tried to ignore it as we moved from the bungalows to the gardens, the main house looming above like an adobe-castle hybrid. It wasn’t strictly adobe, even though it was clearly influenced by that southwest desert style. But it wasn’t traditional in structure either. Large fountains dominated the gardens that were filled with colorful flowers. Beyond the house was a massive swimming pool, dividing the home from the pastures. It was the kind of estate you imagined royalty living at.
“How is possible for one person to own all this?” I was thinking more to myself than trying to start a conversation, but Ted decided to answer me anyway.
The Landry estate owns the winery, hotel, fields and pastures. The current Mr. Landry is the owner of the house and the connecting farmland.” He gestured to the crops on the opposite side of the house. “We won’t be filming there. Those are working fields and it’s a busy time of year for them.”
“The current Mr. Landry?” I asked. “How many are there?”
He shot me a knowing smile. “Says the current Miss Lawrence.”
I stuck out my tongue, which only made him smile more.
“The Landry family has owned this land since 1865. It passed to the current Mr. Landry fourteen years ago when his father died from cancer.”
That was sad. “And how do you know all this, Mr. Tour Guide?” Ted knew a lot of things and he loved to be prepared, but this was pretty specific and extensive knowledge.
He missed a step but I didn’t think anything of it. He had most of his attention on Charley. “Once I started doing the research for the contracts I found that I was fascinated by the history of the ranch and how closely it resembled the script. Turns out the writers are also friends of the owner.”
“Wait, so they used this ranch as the inspiration?”
Ted shrugged. “It does explain why the Holt people were so dead set on filming here.”
“Talk about a serious group of friends.” Mega ranch owner, Hollywood executives, and writers? And here all I had was Ted.
“I can hear you,” Ted called over his shoulder.
“No you can’t!”
He stopped and turned just enough that he could see me without letting go of Charley’s hand. “I know what you’re thinking. And I resent it.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at Charley. “Thank you for taking him off my hands.”
She laughed. “Like I change anything. You two are twins separated at birth.”
“For the kid,” I corrected. “The kid will change things. He’ll be sleep deprived and focused on Evangeline instead of me.”
“You do have a point,” she nodded. “Based on his baby obsession levels I’d say you have at least three months of peace and quiet headed your way.”
Ted laid his hand on the side of Charley’s belly. “Don’t listen to them, Angie. They’re just jealous of what we have.”
Our laughter was quickly overtaken by a very loud booming male voice echoing down the sweeping staircase. “My bedroom is off limits. Get those bags out now.” Two terrified assistants scattered away, allowing me to see the source of the voice.
Familiarity tingled. The baritone, the exasperated way he yanked on his hair, the eyes . . . oh god.
It was Colt.
I froze where I stood and had the brief fantasy of diving into the nearest room before he saw me, as if it would change the fact we were both standing in the same house.
What was my Caribbean Cowboy doing here?
“Mr. Landry I apologize for the mix-up,” Tabitha apologized profusely. “Miss Lawrence’s belongings were supposed to be placed in the O’Hara room. It was my fault. My sheet was mislabeled. We’re moving everything now.”
Colt Landry? Colt was a Landry? Was he the Landry? And why were my things in his room?
“I don’t care how famous your movie star is, I just want her crap where it belongs.” He tugged on his hair again, swearing. “I can’t believe it’s going to be like this all summer.”
“I assure you Miss Lawrence would be mortified if she knew about this. She won’t be bothering you, I promise.”
Ten points to Tabitha.
“Right . . . because movie stars are so well known for their boundaries and caring hearts.” He spun around and started down the stairs.
Towards us.
I ducked behind Ted.
Ted didn’t move. For some peculiar reason he was standing there as if he weren’t just as stunned as I was to see Colt. I listened as Colt’s footsteps echoed off the stairs, turning our way.
Click, clack. Click, clack. Pause.
“Ted?”
“Colt! Good to see you. Beautiful house.”
Another long pause in which I could hear every beat of my heart.
“What are you doing here?” he asked casually. “And wait . . . is that Charley?”
“Good to see you again, Colt. A lot’s happened since the Westerly.”
“I can see that.” His laugh was a thing of pure delight. “You look radiant. I take it vacation was good for the two of you.”
“Well, I’m Charlotte Burgandy-Lowe now and in about a month we’ll have an Evangeline screaming around your house.”
“Here? You’re staying . . . here?”
“I’m one of the executive producers of the film and Charley has agreed to leave her job as an executive of another Hollywood marketing firm to come run the public relations arm of our company.”
Before they even said, “I do” Ted had made Charley a full business partner in his production company. He was that sure of everything.
“Well that’s pretty incredible. Congratulations to you both.”
Unfortunately while this impromptu conversation was taking place, Tabitha was leading the men to my room with my bags. And even more unfortunately, she saw me hiding behind Ted.
“Your room will be ready in just a minute, Lily.
I’m so sorry about the delay.” Her cheeks turned bright red as she glanced back at Colt. “Again, I am so, so sorry we intruded in your space like that. It was unforgiveable.”
“Go on, Tabs. Lily will be right in.” Ted shooed her off, but not before Colt craned around Ted.
“Annie?”
There probably wasn’t much point in hiding behind Ted any longer, but it didn’t stop me from trying. “Nope. No Annie here.”
I tried to make a run for the room but Ted grabbed my arm. “Oh no you don’t. Time to face the music, Princess.” He pulled me against him. “Meet your movie star, Miss Lily Lawrence, better known to you as Annie.”
Colt’s gorgeous eyes went wide as they washed over me. I blushed crimson from head to toe. “I’m . . . confused.”
That made two of us.
“Hi,” I said weakly. “Surprise. I’m not a redhead.”
That . . . was not the answer he was looking for. And while it was true the red was gone and my natural color was back in bleached form, it was a sad little shadow compared the mountain of information I owed him.
“Why don’t Charley and I take Tabs over to our bungalow to help us unpack first? Yes?”
“Yes!” Charley agreed so enthusiastically she had to have known exactly what I was walking into today.
Traitor. So much for sisters.
They were gone so fast, leaving me standing alone in front of a very different Colt. This man was dressed in a three-piece suit, for one. And for two? He didn’t seem to be capable of smiling.
My Colt smiled.
Of course, my Colt also thought my name was Annie.
“So, it’s been a while,” I said weakly.
“Six months, three weeks, and two days.”
I . . . did not expect that. “I’ve missed you.” Now that was the god’s honest truth.
“I missed you too. Or at least I thought I did.”
I winced at the hurt in his voice. “I didn’t lie to hurt you.”
“No, you just lied because you could.”
“That’s not fair!” I took a step towards him. “It’s not like you were full of information. You blacked out your last name.”
