Now a Major Motion Picture (20 page)

“What’s wrong, then?”

He pulled into his parents’ dark driveway. They were the first ones to arrive. He cut the engine and turned to her, reaching up to run the edge of his thumb along her cheek. The air in the car felt thick, like it had wedged itself between them.

“If you love me, what’s wrong with that?” His head swirled with an inexplicable mix of guilt and confusion. “I love you, too, Erin.”

She lifted one hand and covered his, holding it where it still rested against her cheek.

“That’s all I need to know.”

She smiled slightly and moved his hand to kiss his palm. At that moment, a beam of light swung across them—it shined through the car and then straight ahead, the garage door rumbling to life as it began to rise. He sighed and pulled his hand away, and they both moved wordlessly to exit the car.

* * *

He didn’t get a chance to dwell on the puzzling exchange because that night the wedding’s festive atmosphere carried over to the Bradley household. The whole group—minus Jonas, who was out before Andy even carried him upstairs—piled into the living room to talk and laugh their way through one last night together. When the party broke up it was well after 2:00 a.m., and Noah’s only moment alone with Erin consisted of a peck on the lips before she walked into the guest room and closed the door.

After closing his own door, he realized their talk in the car had shifted his thoughts from the other thing that was bothering him—the conversation he’d overheard at the reception. He’d meant to corner Sam once they got home to find out what was going on. She was way more likely to be straight with him than Nicki was.

His mind raced as he tried to fit some sort of meaning to his youngest sister’s words, and even though he was exhausted, he had trouble falling asleep. When he did, the sleep was fitful, and he woke up several times in the night. Still, he got up Sunday morning and followed the rest of the crew to the small, white clapboard church he’d grown up attending—another airtight family tradition.

After church, the Bradley house was once again a blur of activity. He and Erin were flying out at 2:45, which didn’t leave time for a sit-down lunch. Melanie made sandwiches and passed them out as Noah, Erin, and Nicki dragged suitcases downstairs and hugged their good-byes. Nicki’s flight didn’t leave till 4:20, but she was catching a ride with them to Springfield.

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.”

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 she’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.