Now a Major Motion Picture (28 page)

Brooke studied her and continued. “Yeah, he drove right past the house. I know it was him.” She paused for a few seconds. “He had a girl with him.”

“Oh,” Amelia said again. “Oh. Well, great. Good for Noah.” She sucked in a deep breath, then turned her attention down to the last dregs of cocoa swirling in her cup.

Brooke studied her for another second and then snagged the remote from the coffee table and flipped on the TV. That was clearly the end of the conversation.

Anticipation

Amelia took one last sweeping glance around her living room. She’d been cleaning for two straight days, but no amount of scrubbing or straightening could turn her tiny house into anything resembling Colin’s palatial estate. She hadn’t seen it, but she’d seen pictures of it. In
Architectural Digest
.

She paused mid-step and shook her head incredulously.

Well, it is what it is.
He could take it or leave it—this house was her. And the thing about Colin was, she knew he’d take it. Even though he lived his life surrounded by luxury, he didn’t seem affected by it. It was one of the reasons she was crazy about him.

She paced into her entry hall and peeked through the shutters. Colin had texted ten minutes earlier to say he was on his way. He’d flown into the private airport north of downtown, stepped from the tarmac into a waiting car, and was now headed straight to her house. She sent up another silent prayer that he’d arrive unnoticed. The whole point of this trip was to be alone together, to get to know each other outside the reach of managers, publicists, agents, fans. If word started to spread that he was in Memphis, it’d throw a major wrench into their plans.

Since the story had gone public, they hadn’t been together so they obviously hadn’t been
seen
together. She’d hoped that would cause the story to die down, but so far it hadn’t—somehow it had added fuel to the flame. One of the tabloids had even launched a “Col ‘n’ Mel” watch, and the nickname had stuck.
Colinmel
. She couldn’t even think the word without an involuntary eye roll.

They had to, had to,
had to
keep his visit on the DL.

She widened the shutter opening and glanced down the street. Nothing unusual. Well, nothing out of the ordinary anyway. Mr. Belgrover, who lived across the street, was bending over his flowerbeds in an ensemble that looked like—Amelia squinted—flowered Bermuda shorts, socks with flip-flops, and…a blue plastic raincoat?

“Oh, my.” She pressed a finger to her lips, stifling a giggle.
Oh, sweet Mr. Belgrover.
She wouldn’t trade her quirky little neighborhood for anything.

She scoured the street again and then sighed. Three weeks of this, and already she was exhausted. She didn’t get how Colin could stand living under a constant microscope. She hadn’t had any trouble so far in Memphis, but the couple of signings and publicity events she’d had since the photos had hit newsstands had been mayhem, utter madness. And the calls had been so relentless she’d changed her cell number.

She was trying to take Colin’s advice and ignore it all, but she couldn’t help herself—she peeked. A lot. She had to know what was being written about her, what the people she knew were seeing.

What Noah was seeing.

She shuddered—this was hardly a time to be thinking about Noah. She jumped at the sound of tires on pavement.
He’s here.
She stuck her face back up to the window and watched as a dark-green SUV drove slowly past.
Oh. False alarm.
She paced back into the living room, picked up a pillow from the sofa, fluffed it, and put it back down. She reached for the magazines on the coffee table and straightened them…again. Her stomach in knots, she wandered down the hallway to her room, studied her reflection in the vintage mirror that hung above her dresser. Should she put on the teal sweater instead of this camel one? Or maybe her charcoal tunic? She grabbed a lip gloss from her makeup tray and applied a new layer.

Get a grip, Mel. He doesn’t care what you’re wearing. He loves you.

He loved her. She staggered back a step, perched on the rail of her bed. She still hadn’t wrapped her mind around the words. Love. Is that what she’d been feeling? It had been so long since she’d been loved by someone, since she’d felt anything close to love herself. She had no idea whether she loved Colin. She was still so scared of being hurt…

When the doorbell rang, her heart leaped into her throat. She ran to the entry hall, flung open the front door—and there he was.

Colin stood facing her on the porch with one small suitcase beside him. The nondescript, gray car that had dropped him off was already driving away.

“Hey.”

He grinned at her from underneath the brim of the same Mets cap he’d worn at the Manhattan pub. “Hey.”

She darted her eyes left and right, checking the street again for signs they were being watched. He laughed and reached back to grab his bag before moving past her through the open door. She walked backward into the entry hall, shut the door behind him, and locked it.

As soon as she turned to face him, he lunged at her. He stroked her face with both his hands, buried his face in her hair.

“Oh, it’s so good to feel you. I’ve hardly been able to work—I’ve missed you so much.”

Her heart sped under his touch as her arms wound up and around his neck. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t lose control the way she had the last time they’d reunited, but the second he moved his lips to hers, she felt her head pulling underwater. She knew she’d be drowning in him within seconds.

She put both hands against his chest and pushed him gently away, her heart racing at the desperate way he looked at her.

“Come on,” she said, her voice low. “I’ll show you around.”

She kept her eyes on him as he followed her from room to room. The grand tour took all of three minutes.

“I love it,” he said, pulling her to him again in the hallway outside her room. “Your house is
so you
.”

She smiled and kissed him.
Right answer.

“Are you sure you don’t mind staying here? We could get a hotel.”

“Are you kidding me? I want to be alone with you. At a hotel, people will find us.”

Another right answer. As his lips moved from her ear, across her jaw, down her neck, she shivered from head to toe and pushed away from him again. She wasn’t ready for this, not yet.

He groaned, and she smiled. This weekend would happen on her terms.

* * *

Shading her eyes from the sun, Amelia leaned into Colin’s side.

Tingles traveled through her body as his fingers brushed against the bare skin of her arm—up, then down…up, then down. She concentrated on the quivery sensation of it, her eyes fixed on the low, dark form of the barge that moved slowly past them on the river’s dappled surface. This was the one place she’d known she could bring him to show him what Memphis had to offer without risking their exposure. She followed his gaze to the lazy curves of the M-shaped bridge that spanned the Mississippi, the rocky bluff that guarded the river from the city and vice-versa, the crumbling cobblestones that dipped their pebbled toes into the water’s edge. This was the picture Otis Redding and Johnny Cash and so many others had sung about—the slow, Southern scene that had fueled so much culture, so much art, so much vibrancy in this bluesy, gritty place.

The day was peaceful as the heart and life of Memphis pulsed at a safe distance, beyond the water’s reach. She’d packed a blanket and a bottle of wine before cajoling and pushing and pulling Colin out the door. She’d promised to show him her city, and she was determined to do it—from the shelter of her car. Neither of them was willing to risk stepping into the spotlight that hung above them like an axe.

Amelia was vaguely aware of people milling around behind them, but to them—walkers, joggers, a few moms with toddlers in tow—she and Colin were just two people, two people wrapped up in each other with their backs to the rest of the world. No one could reach them here. Colin lifted a plastic wine glass.

“I propose a toast.”

She giggled and raised her cup to meet his. “What are we toasting?”

He smiled. “Time. Time to breathe, time to talk, time to be here, alone.” His eyes pierced into hers on the last word, and her breath caught in her throat. “It’s all I’ve wanted since we met.”

He tapped his glass to hers, but neither of them drank—their cups sank to the blanket as their lips searched each other out. Amelia lingered with her mouth on his. As her breathing sped up, his hands clutched at the back of her shirt. One hand moved up and into her hair.

A few seconds later, Amelia slowly, wordlessly disentangled herself. She pulled back to meet his eyes with hers.

They stood at the same time. She gathered up their meager picnic and slid her fingers into his as they all but ran to reach her car.

* * *

As the final traces of sunlight played themselves out—the ribbons of warm light that had snaked a trail down her hallway slowly fading to a dull glow—Amelia reluctantly detached herself from Colin’s warm, bare chest.

It had been a very good afternoon.

She slid from the twisted jumble of sheets and blankets and pushed toward the edge of her black four-poster bed, shivering as the cool air of the room made contact with her overheated skin. Before her feet could hit the floor, Colin reached for her and pulled her back against him. She twisted her body to look up into his eyes—they were liquid sky as he gazed down at her.

She breathed in deeply, smiled.

“Hungry?”

“You better believe it.” His voice was low, his lips at her throat. She moaned and relaxed her body against the soft pressure of his. A few seconds later, though, her stomach gave her away, gurgling in famished protest. He dipped his head and pressed his cheek against it.

“Shhh.”

She giggled and pulled his head up to rest beside hers. “What do you want?” He shot her a lascivious grin and she realized her mistake, rolled her eyes. “For dinner.”

He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Whatever you want.”

Amelia smiled lazily. “Mmm, you know? I could get used to that answer.”

She rolled over, grabbed her iPhone from the bedside table, and tapped at the screen. As she dialed the number of the sushi place around the corner, Colin slid past her from the bed. She placed the order, leaned back into her pillows, and listened as the spray of water bounced off the walls of the shower in the bathroom she’d painstakingly restored the summer after she bought the house.

She still had trouble believing he was here, sharing her shower, her room, her bed.

She hadn’t been as nervous, as fearful as she thought she’d be when they fumbled through the back door of her house and made their way down the hall toward her room. Being with Colin was easy, natural.

The simplicity of the relationship made the contrast of the chaos that surrounded it even more jarring.
Why can’t things just be normal?
She wanted him to herself. She wanted to take him to her favorite restaurant, to show him the bookstore that had hosted her first signing and sold her first book. But none of that was possible. They were stuck here, in her house—which, she granted, was better than being stuck in separate states with nothing but the unlikely hope of an uninterrupted call to cling to.

After about ten minutes the doorbell rang, ripping her from her thoughts. She leapt from the bed and shimmied into the jeans that lay in a crumpled heap beside the door. She heard the noise of the shower cut off as she finished dressing and rushed out to the front entry. As she handed the delivery girl a twenty and reached toward her to take the large, brown paper takeout sack from her hands, Colin’s voice rang out from the living room.

“Mel? You in here?”

She started, seized the bag from the girl’s hands.

“Thank you.”

As she pushed the door closed, the girl mumbled, “Thanks,” her expression confused. Amelia rushed to get the door latched before her confusion could turn to recognition.
No, no, no!

She leaned her back against the door, her heart racing.
That was close.
Colin peeked around the corner.

“There you are. Oh, food’s here already? Hey, what’s wrong?”

Amelia smiled and held the bag out toward him. “Nothing. Let’s eat.”

* * *

By the next afternoon, she’d lost almost all sense of time and place. She had the vague impression, based on the smatterings of light bouncing off various objects inside her house, that there was a bright, beautiful day going on outside her door, but she wasn’t too concerned about that. The world could have stopped turning and she wouldn’t have noticed.

She and Colin had spent the last twenty-four hours curled up together, suspended in a dreamlike state. They hadn’t left the house since they’d returned from the park the afternoon before. She’d made him breakfast, and for lunch they’d called for Thai takeout, which they ate straight out of the boxes.

The relief of finally being alone together was overpowering.

Alone.

Amelia flushed, pressed her body even closer into Colin’s side. If only that were true. If only they were completely alone—but her subconscious kept intruding on their privacy. A rush of guilt passed through her as Noah’s face, the one dark spot in her cloudless sky, appeared again behind her half-closed lids.

Would he never leave her alone? Now that she’d finally granted herself permission to be with someone else, now that she was happy, weren’t these memories supposed to quit attacking her? Or at least fade? If anything, they were becoming more persistent, more clear.

Stop, Noah. Stop doing this to me. Please.

“What are you thinking about?” Colin’s low murmur broke into her thoughts, and she relaxed her tense limbs.

“Oh. Nothing, really. Nothing important.” She tilted her chin up and brushed his cheek with her lips. He tightened his arms around her, moved his lips to her ear.