Now a Major Motion Picture (31 page)

Her brow furrowed as she absorbed his words, a fluttering, sinking sensation overtaking her stomach. “No, I haven’t heard anything. What is it? What are they saying?”

He paused for a beat. “That I’m cheating on you.” He exhaled loudly. “With Jessica.”

“Jessica.” Amelia repeated the name unwittingly, unsure for a second who he meant. “Oh, Jessica.” Jessica Mayer, Colin’s co-star and the lead actress in
her
movie. Ooh, no wonder that was getting press. If it was true, it’d be one hell of a juicy story.

She chuckled.

“Well, geez, Colin, no. I’d never have believed that.” Colin didn’t know everything about her past—for instance, he wasn’t aware he was playing a character inspired by it—but he knew enough. Enough to know how destroyed she’d be if he cheated on her. No wonder he’d been worried.

But she knew Colin wouldn’t cheat on her. Definitely not.

Surely not.

He wouldn’t, would he?

No!
She really didn’t think he would. It was annoying that people were saying he was, though. A new wave of disgust for the tabloid media pulsed through her. Hadn’t they done enough damage to the two of them already? Why did they have to make all of this so much more complicated than it already was?

As these thoughts twisted around in her mind, she realized Colin wasn’t saying anything.

“Don’t worry. Seriously. I trust you.”

He blew out a long breath.

“I know. Good.” He paused again, and when he spoke, his voice was rough. “Because I love you. And I don’t want to hurt you.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Every time he said those words, it took her by surprise and made her feel slightly off-balance. She took a deep breath. “I love you, too.”

She could almost feel him relax on the other end of the phone line. Neither of them brought up the news-slash-rumors up again, and she resisted the urge to grab her iPad to check them out for herself. Instead, she held the phone to her ear as she walked through the house flipping off lights and then back to her room to change into PJs. She kept it to her ear as she went through her entire bedtime routine, setting it on the bathroom counter just long enough to brush her teeth, wash her face, and smooth moisturizer into her skin. She padded to her bed and slid between the sheets, the phone still tight against her ear.

She was afraid to hang up, because she knew when she wasn’t talking to him anymore, she’d start to think. About the rumors. About Colin and Jessica. And thinking wasn’t good for her.

She wished he was there with her, because things between them were always better—more certain, more clear—when they were together. As their quiet conversation lulled her into a dreamlike state, she pretended he was there beside her.

But of course, he wasn’t. It was only a phone.

And it was hard to snuggle up against a phone.

OMG!!!

The next day passed much as the one before it, with two major differences.

One, she was forced to deal with more Colin questions today, thanks to the rumors that had surfaced and streaked across the Internet the night before. She did her best to ignore the comments and steer the conversation back to the books, and for the most part it worked.

Two, the day ended earlier. The conference wrapped at six, which meant that even after Nick and Teddy had broken down the conference setup and she’d helped them reconstruct her living room, there was time for the four of them to go out to dinner to celebrate.

It was a Saturday night, so finding a good spot to compare notes wouldn’t be easy. Amelia directed the group to Felicia Suzanne’s, a chic, relatively quiet downtown restaurant, and she called ahead to request a table. Once they were seated in a secluded corner, Nina spread her notes out over the white tablecloth, and she and Nick hunched over them as the foursome began discussing the high and low points of the event.

They paused long enough to order, and then again when the food arrived, all of them attacking their plates—they hadn’t taken much time today for food breaks. By the time they finished, the restaurant floor had mostly cleared from the dinner rush, the din moving away from them toward the violet light of the bar. Nina took the lead in ordering dessert and drinks, and they settled in for a new round of discussion.

“Here, Amelia, do you want to look through these?” Nina handed her a thick stack of papers she’d pulled from a folder.

“What is it?” Amelia asked, taking hold of the stack and glancing over the top page.

“Teddy printed out the comments fans posted after the sessions. There’ll probably be suggestions in there we can use, and you can find out what people liked or didn’t like.”

She flipped through the papers, intrigued.
She’d
had a better time than she’d expected in the past two days. She hoped her readers felt the same way.

While Amelia read, she tuned out Nick and Teddy, who were discussing the technical aspects of the forums—what glitches had arisen, what they needed to change for future conferences. Because Nina and Nick had already decided there would be future conferences.

The comments were largely positive. Amelia flushed with embarrassment and pleasure as she read:

1523HeatherB: OMG this was sooooo cool. Learned a lot and luv’d the 1 on 1 contact. Ur awesome, mel!

UrNo1Fan: Didn’t think I could get more obsessed with your books than I already am…but I have! Thx for answering all my questions. I can’t wait for the next book—and the movie!!

ReaderGrl26: Loved every second. I heart Mel Henry!!!!! And I’m so so so so so sorry Colin did u wrong. U deserve better than him!

Okay, she could do without that one.

She continued flipping. A few of the comments were longer, containing more of the insight and story knowledge that had impressed her so much in the last two days. She focused on these as she skimmed through the stack. She was about halfway through it when her eyes landed on an entry that made her heart leap into her throat—it jumped out at her because the reader had used her real name, not Mel Henry. One hand flew to her lips, and she found it suddenly impossible to catch her breath as she began to read…

ashley_howell: hi amelia. guess u didn’t expect to hear from me again, huh? hoped is probably more like it…i love your books. i’m glad to see ur happy and doing well. i’m here because i just wanted to say i’m sorry. i know it’s way late, but i’ve wished i could do it 4 yrs and now i guess i get my chance…if u ever even see this. i want u 2 know if u don’t already that nothing happened that night with noah. i couldn’t go thru with it. i assumed he figured out what i did based on how messed up he was—he was so out of it. drinking couldn’t have messed him up that bad. i tried to tell him but he slammed the door on me, can’t say i blamed him. i figured u’d stay with him once u knew—i’m sorry it didn’t work out 4 u 2, but colin marks, wow. anyway, i know there’s no excuse 4 what i did and i’m so sorry. i was so messed up back then…so immature and jealous. i hope u can forgive me.

Amelia read the words once, twice, three times in a horrified daze. Her eyes glazed over, stuck on four words in the center of the block of text.
Nothing. Happened. That. Night
. She ran them over and over in her head until they didn’t make any sense. They didn’t make sense anyway.
Impossible. I know what I saw.

But what
hadn’t
she seen? She’d caught them red-handed, caught them in the act. Hadn’t she? No. OMG. No, she hadn’t. She’d just assumed.

Her thoughts were spinning now in a whirlwind of panic. She still hadn’t found the ability to inhale.

My life. Noah’s life.
Our
life.

For the briefest instant, Amelia was aware of Nina’s voice calling her name from somewhere on the other side of the table. But she couldn’t process it. She couldn’t make sense of the spark of alarm in her publicist’s eyes. All she could think about was the fact that she was definitely, indisputably, uncontrollably going to be sick.

She slid from the tufted red velvet seat of the booth and darted toward the ladies’ room, one hand pressed tight against her lips.

Obsessed

Noah, still September (also two weeks later)

Noah stared glumly across the broad, breathtaking expanse of Atlantic Ocean gleaming up at him from his perch seventeen stories above it, his chair angled perfectly to drink up the view of the multicolored sky as it poured out a flawless sunset on the other side of the balcony.

The beauty of the scene mocked him, its tranquility in direct contrast with his storm-battered thoughts. His eyes moved with the never-ending ebb and flow of the tide as it advanced with fury, then slowly receded again and again, each swell a painful reminder of the way time moved forward, washing over what came before and pushing it further out of reach.

As if he needed a reminder.

That was the problem—he’d had way too many reminders lately of what had come before. His view of the future was obstructed by the overwhelming presence of his past.

It was a problem that was only getting worse.

His thoughts traveled to Erin. He hadn’t seen much of her since their fight, if only because he’d been traveling nonstop. Twice he’d landed back in Dallas, gone in for a long day at the office, then scarcely dented his pillow before he was back on a plane. They’d met for dinner both times he was in town, and on the surface things seemed pretty much the same as before. But she hadn’t stayed over at his place—she hadn’t even asked—and on closer inspection it was clear that nothing was the same as it had been.

And that was bad, very bad, because Erin, right now, was the one thing holding him together. If he didn’t have her, he didn’t know how he could deal with these pictures, this evidence of Amelia’s happy life without him that was suddenly
everywhere
.

He squeezed his eyes shut at the thought, and then popped them right back open, letting the brilliant glare of the setting sun erase the abusive onslaught of images of Amelia and her movie star boyfriend. He couldn’t escape the headlines and photos even if he tried, but the worst part was, he didn’t
want
to try. As if it wasn’t enough to see her face staring out at him every time he stood in a checkout line or passed by an airport newsstand, he sought it out, poring over websites he would have made fun of a few weeks earlier, googling her name at every idle moment. Every new picture he found of her going about her daily life brought a jolt of excitement and a stab of pain.

He shook his head at the irony of it. For the first few years after their breakup, he’d typed Amelia’s name into search engines with an almost disturbing regularity, looking for…he didn’t know what. What city she lived in, where she worked—all the major details of her life it depressed him not to know. He’d finally forced himself to stop doing it, not because he’d grown tired of torturing himself, but because he’d never found much out. And here it turned out he’d just been searching the wrong name.

When he googled her now—or when he googled “Mel Henry,” at least—he got almost six million results. Unbelievable.

He wondered how many of them he’d clicked on so far.

Too many.

He didn’t have time to be obsessed. He had too much work to do.

Noah shifted his eyes from the waves and onto a stretch of beach barely visible beyond the neighboring high-rise complex. If he squinted, he could just make out the back edge of a row of storm-damaged vacation rentals, the only desolate spot along the sun-kissed strip. In a few short weeks they’d meet the wrecking ball, and the hotel he’d been working exhaustively to design would rise up in their place.

He studied the beach behind the deserted complex. From his perch, the people on it—the stragglers, the ones reluctant to give up a single ray of the hot South Florida sun—were in miniature…tiny, happy figures moving in twos and threes and fours. Watching them, he was acutely conscious of the fact that he was here alone, as usual. He’d been working so hard for so long, and his career now careened out in front of him almost faster than he could keep up. But the feeling wasn’t as exhilarating as he’d thought it would be. Now that Erin had reawakened him to his other needs, his other dreams for his life, the career successes felt shallow by comparison.

He pressed his fingers into his temples. It was the fourth and final day of his trip. His last pre-construction meeting with the developers had wrapped two hours earlier. The project was moving along fine, actually on schedule, thanks to the obsessive level of energy he’d been pouring into it. But he couldn’t keep avoiding reality. He was heading back to Dallas in the morning, back to a few weeks of normalcy, no travel, no major deadlines impending.

Back to Erin.

Noah sighed as her face flashed in his mind.
Erin
. So smart, so funny, so freaking hot. So right for him. Why wasn’t he satisfied with that? Here he was, lucky enough to have a woman like Erin
in love
with him, and he was being an idiot, pushing her away. And for what?