There was no reason for her to regard him with such concern, like she was worried he wouldn’t understand the alien tongue she was speaking in. He understood commitment and courtship well enough. He’d done it often before he’d decided to marry Melanie.
“I was married once, too.”
And that one marriage had been enough to convince him that he didn’t want another. After all, the greatest part of living in twenty-first century America was that sex didn’t have to come with responsibility. It came freely.
Eve was still suspicious. “That was years ago.”
“Doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what it means to be faithful.” No idea why he was doing this. Maybe to prove something to her. Or himself. “You’ll believe me once you start dating me.”
“And when did I say I was going to start dating you? Besides us being totally incompatible, there’s the fact that you’re my boss.”
“Bullshit. Star Studios has no rule against having relationships with co-workers. I never let the board go through with that one.”
Eve rolled her eyes, trying to be annoyed, but she looked thoroughly amused. “Just so you know, I’m not sleeping with you on the first date. Or the second.”
“That’s perfectly fine by me. Pick you up on Saturday at seven?”
Dazed at how swiftly he’d made up his mind, Eve nodded. “If you let me know where we’ll be going, I can get there myself.”
“I’m picking you up.” It was a command.
If she wanted to do this the old-fashioned way, they were going to do it the old-fashioned way all the way through.
“You know where I live?”
“I’ll get it from the system.” A perk of being her boss.
A click of silence passed before she squirmed. “I want you to promise me that if it doesn’t work out between us, we’ll part ways amicably and return to being just colleagues.”
Flinging back a string of gray hair, Grant pushed away her concerns. “I’ve had a lot of practice with that, so don’t worry.”
She scoffed. “I keep forgetting who you are. But I’ll warn you. I’m not easy.”
Regardless, she’d be jumping into bed with him by date three.
And if she didn’t?
Then they were talking real long-term.
*
After weighing the pros and cons of staying with the show, Bella realized that the pros column was much longer. Aside from keeping her hefty advance, she’d also be able to brag about being on TV.
And there was something she hadn’t realized until she’d come home and started mulling over the issue in earnest—the fact that she really enjoyed acting. The excitement of being up in front of a camera and having adrenaline guide her words was...magical. Uplifting. Something had shone in her when she’d been under the spotlights. It was like the little girl inside her who had always wanted to be acknowledged, admired, and noticed finally had a chance.
Plus, she couldn’t quit. Not without coughing up the contract cancellation fee, which was to the tune of fifty grand or something.
Pfft. Talk about acting in haste and repenting at leisure. She was going to be repenting this while stuffing herself with Ben & Jerry’s and watching Love Me Like You Do for the millionth time.
Wait. She’d traded Ben and Jerry’s for that organic, low-fat, sugar-free metallic-tasting ice cream, hadn’t she?
How dispiriting. Now she couldn’t even drown her sorrows in sugar.
Groaning when someone buzzed, Bella wondered who it was. Of course, her choices were narrow—it could only be Kat, Ashley, or the delivery from Amazon.com.
But it was Jamie. She let him in.
“You left the studio in a bad mood so I thought I’d bring you some ice cream and my cheerful presence.” He handed her a cup with a swirl of vanilla ice cream. Sprinkled over the ice cream were little bits that looked like cereal.
Being all alone, she didn’t mind the company. Better than boiling in rage on her couch. “Thanks.”
“Listen...I’m sorry about what happened. Daniel and I talked to Rosie. She’s promised not to do anything malicious again. Depending on her mood, she might or might not apologize to you tomorrow, so I’ll apologize on her behalf. Don’t take it personally. She’s still young.”
“I don’t care. I think I put her in her place pretty well.” Bella sauntered back to the television, leaving the door open.
Jamie made his way in. He was surprised when he absorbed the faces on her TV screen. “You were watching Love Me Like You Do?”
“Yeah. I just put it on. Wanna watch with me?”
His nod was short. “It’s been ages since I watched this.” His sneakers, with the laces untied, clucked over hardwood.
Bella squeezed herself into the loveseat, leaving the couch wide open for him. She didn’t want to get too close to him.
“Here it goes.”
The screen faded to black. Gradually, pictures started to move.
Jamie folded his hands over his chest. “Um... Frankly, I’m a bit worried. I wrote this so long ago. I have a hunch that I’ll be cringing at every dialogue.”
Jamie was dampened by a voiceover. Damien’s voice, sexy British accent and all, rolled in to narrate the opening lines.
What is love? There is no answer to that question. But what I do know for sure is that once you find love, there are no longer any questions.
“Fuck. I didn’t really write that. I couldn’t have written something that bad.” Jamie’s face shriveled as the voiceover proceeded. “I swear I’m having doubts about my talent as a writer.”
“And you called me insecure.” Bella crunched a handful of chips, waiting for the first scene. As a few dialogues went by, she remembered something she’d always wondered about. “Why did you decide to call her Maddie? Damien’s a cool and romantic name. But Maddie is so ordinary.”
“You don’t wanna listen to that story.” Jamie stole a nacho from her, and she slapped his hand. While not a germ-o-phobe like Kat, she didn’t want him putting his dirty fingers in her packet of Doritos.
“Now I really want to hear it.” Bella pulled her back straight.
“Sorry, no.” He didn’t let up, though he couldn’t focus on the movie.
“How bad can it be?”
“You have no idea.”
Huffing, she realized that he was starting to color red. Must be really embarrassing, then.
“So, this part. Why does Damien take pills for no reason? It’s not tied into any other scene in the story. It’s a loose hanging thread in the plot.”
“You haven’t watched the movie carefully.” Jamie stretched his legs. ‘Do you remember the first time they made love? Why do you think he fell asleep halfway?”
Bella clapped her hands, like she’d struck a vein of inspiration. “So that’s why. Wow. I never correlated this to that. You’re brilliant.”
“You might be the only one who thinks so after watching this movie.” Jamie’s lips took another dip as another sappy, romantic line played.
“Bad, bad, bad,” he muttered under his breath, and she saw something she’d never seen on him before—worry.
“Do I need to call the ambulance or can your ego hang in there for another hour?” Bella teased, reaching for the powdered crumbs of Doritos at the bottom of the packet.
“You’d know if you ever wrote a script...” he mumbled.
Bella continued providing running commentary throughout the movie, picking out her favorite lines and asking him to explain his inspiration behind certain scenes.
“I love this part...this one’s my favorite scene. Did you hear what he said? He told her that she was—”
“I wrote the movie. I know.” He studied the ticking of the clock impatiently.
Splaying her toes, Bella brushed them over her rug. “There was a similar line in The Fall.”
Jamie quoted the line, slack jawed. “Sometimes, I run out of creative juice, too.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Bella patt
ed him. “Everybody’s gotta start somewhere. You started in a better place than most. Think about the millions of writers who’re still struggling to get their debut movie made.”
Jamie’s tongue swept over the ice cream in his hand. “You give a good pep talk.”
When the scene between Maddie and her brother came on, she sniffled. “I cry every time I watch this.”
He moved closer and rested a finger on her hips. It was a feather-light touch, with his face turned away like he didn’t want her to notice, but he couldn’t stop himself from doing it. Heat sizzled between her legs.
She wasn’t supposed to feel anything for Jamie. He was all the wrong things rolled into one person. Plus, she’d just done the math and figured out that he was six years younger.
Soon, tears engulfed her eyes and made her go silent. She looked to Jamie, expecting him to be as touched, shattered, and emotional as her.
He was, but for a totally different reason.
Jamie’s expression wasn’t hard to read. A frown was etching itself deeper into his mouth.
“Pause the movie. I need a beer.” Jamie shot a mopey look at her.
“I don’t have any beer.” Trying to control her body’s response, Bella punched the pause button hard.
“Why not?”
Stroking her upper thigh edgily, she said, “My mother’s alcoholism left scars.”
He was too observant for that unconscious touch to go unnoticed. “Physical scars?”
“Some.”
Jamie pushed his hair back, palm resting on forehead. “Jesus.”
Bella stitched her lips together so she wouldn’t say more. Trauma was best left buried.
“Ready for the rest of it?” she asked, threatening to press the resume button.
“Gimme a break.” Jamie threw himself flat on her couch. “I’ve reached the the end of my cheesy tolerance for the day.”
“Hey, it’s not that bad. I like it. There’s a fan base for cheesy romantic melodramas.” Bella massaged her thighs, which were cramping, because the loveseat wasn’t wide enough to accommodate her gigantic ass. They needed to make size sixteen loveseats. Seriously.
Coming onto his side, Jamie lay his elbow down and focused his sapphire eyes on her. “I want to hear about your mother.”
“I don’t wanna talk about that.”
“Come on. Sharing’s good.”
“Will you drop it?”
Jamie touched the side of his face. “If you tell me about it, I’ll tell you why I named that character Maddie.”
Now that was one trade she couldn’t refuse.
“Um…my mom was abusive sometimes. That’s all.”
There. She’d blurted out what she’d never shared with anybody except her friends. Her stomach scrunched. The ugly, intense emotions thinking about her childhood brought...she wanted to run away from them.
Jamie ran his thumb over his wrist. “What did she do?”
“Threw stuff around. Shouted and screamed. If I retaliated, she’d hit me. But she didn’t hit me much. My sister was always the one in her line of fire.”
“Where was child protective services through all of this?” There was way too much caring in the way he studied her. It made her uneasy.
“Nobody knew what was happening. My sister and I didn’t want anyone to find out. We tried to protect our mother. I don’t know about my sister, but I always believed I could heal her...that I could save her and make her stop doing all the destructive things she was doing. I thought that she was just like me, a little lonely and unappreciated. That if I was nice to her, she would be able to love again...”
The words dried up. Her cheek whisked over Jamie’s T-shirt. Bella felt his hand press the back of her head, then slither down.
“Stop it. I don’t want your sympathy.”
She fought to get away from his closed embrace.
Jamie’s breath caressed her scalp. “It’s not sympathy. It’s support.”
She adjusted to the planes of his shoulder. Being wrapped up in him felt like a sanctuary. But she’d never had a sanctuary to heal before, so it was a new and uncomfortable feeling.
“It wasn’t as bad as I make it sound. She didn’t hit me every day or anything. It was...maybe once or twice a month.”
“That’s still a lot.”
“It didn’t seem like a lot.” At that time, she’d considered it normal. She hadn’t known better. “And it’s okay. I survived.”
“You’re brave.” His soothing, encouraging whisper rushed over her back.
“Yeah.” Bella forced herself to get back to her usual, cheerful self. The past could swallow her if she let it. “But now I want to hear about Maddie.”
Jamie drew a breath, like he was going to protest, but dropped the idea. “Maddie was my first girlfriend. I was madly in love with her. When she broke up with me, I was crushed. I wrote her a movie so to tell her how much I loved her and to ask her to take me back.” He snorted. “Not one of my finer moments.”
She’d always just assumed he was single because he hadn’t mentioned a girlfriend before. But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was still with his first love. Maybe some love stories ended happily.
Crossing her fingers, she asked, “Did she take you back?”
Jamie exhaled, and even though it was only a harmless exhale, it had her heart kicking. “No, she didn’t, and the box office hated the movie, too. But at least I got off my lazy butt and wrote a movie. I have her to thank for it.”
Pushing her knees up to her chin and circling them with her arms, Bella said, “I’d have taken you back.”
Jamie didn’t look up at her right away. “I’m glad she was smart enough to let me go. It was better for me in the long run. And for her.”
“Do you wish things were different?”
“No. It was just a silly, shallow love. I can’t even remember what I liked about her. At eighteen, everything seems ten times more important than it is.”
Throwing themselves into watching Love Me Like You Do again, time sped by and it was almost another half hour before it ended. Jamie had laughed throughout and she’d cried. Still, watching the movie with him was an experience in itself.
“So those doctors we talked about setting you up with when I was here last time...are you still game for that?” He pulled that one out of the blue.
Temptation yanked her tongue to say yes, but Bella swallowed, breathed, and controlled herself. “Only if he’s a family practitioner and wants to get married in the next year or so.” While she was doing this, might as well tell him her whole list. “Oh, and he must come from a whole, happy family, have blue eyes, because that’s sexy, a gorgeous face, be over six feet tall, have a retirement account, an emergency fund, a master’s degree, good credit score, no criminal record, a big house, and all the time in the world to spend with me. And...and it’d help if he was a good cook, read Socrates, and liked watching romantic comedies.”
“Blue eyes?” His expression sharpened. “I mean, I have blue eyes, too. Do you find me sexy?”
There was no hint of flirtation in Jamie’s tone, but heat wrapped over Bella’s body. Staring at him, the uncomfortable knowledge that she did find him sexy seeped into her.
He was...well, pretty handsome. And over six feet. Plus, he must have a lot of money. Not that she cared.
“No!” she denied, vehemently, lying to herself, hoping that the sudden buzz, sudden realization that she’d found a man who matched most of her requirements would vanish if she denied it.
“Then lose that from your list. Same with gorgeous face. And why does he have to have a big house?”
“Because I want my kids to grow up in a secure and loving home.” She held a cushion in front of her chest like a mail plate, to protect her heart.
It didn’t help. The thoughts were too fast for her to stop.
He’s the one. He’s the one.
No, he couldn’t be. He was just like Bryan. She was going to marry a doctor, lawyer, or a psychologi
st. Not a TV producer.
“Fair enough.” Jamie sandwiched the remote between his palms.
“I’m not going to lower my standards. I know there’s someone out there who fulfills every wish on my list. My soulmate. My other half. Someone I can watch romantic comedies with. Someone I can grow old with.”
Someone sitting right under my nose.
Jamie balked. “Good luck finding this guy.”
“Don’t you worry, I’ll find him. And when I do, I’ll invite you to my wedding, so you can see this perfect man with your own eyes.” Caught up in her dreamy fantasies of her perfect wedding, Bella kept going. “I’m going to look so beautiful in my Vera Wang wedding dress. And my reception’s going to be perfect since I already reserved a place at Wave Hill for next fall.”
Clasping her hands over her breasts, Bella closed her eyes, still floating in her buoyant bubble of optimism. Whenever she thought of her wedding, her heart was pervaded by a great sense of love and hope...followed by fear and anxiety the instant her mind turned to the guy she would be marrying.
Jamie kept an empty face. “I have no words.”
“Do you want to see my wedding gown?”
His jaw hit the floor. “You already bought the gown?”
“It was so perfect; I couldn’t not buy it,” Bella said, self-consciousness creeping up on her. “You’ll understand when you see it.”
Enthusiastically, Bella pulled open her closet, and hauled out her wedding gown.
“Ta-da.” She swished it in front of his eyes, where all the lights hit the little sequins on the bodice. Loosening the bunched up train so it fell loosely, Bella brought out the tiara that she’d purchased with the dress.
A sigh wrenched itself from her chest. This gown was so, so gorgeous.
Jamie regarded it with skepticism. “I don’t want to sound judgmental, but there’s no way you’re fitting into that. That dress is for a woman half your size.”
Bella stuck her nose in the air with a supercilious smirk. “I’ll be fifty pounds lighter when I get married.”
“Okay...” Expression drained from Jamie’s face. “How?”
“I’m dieting.”
Burying his face between his palms, Jamie mumbled something to himself.
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