Chapter 22
Chapter 22
Scarlett couldn’t remember learning the rules of chess. They had always been there, as surely as she’d always known that if she dropped a glass, it’d hit the floor. She and Jaime might be having an affair, but there hadn’t been a moment with a burning bush and stone tablets on top of a mountain. They’d never negotiated what was allowed, but Scarlett had figured out this affair’s commandments all the same.
They weren’t going to have a meal together in a restaurant, but sharing room service was fine. They could enjoy every sex act known to humanity together, but they didn’t fall asleep in the same bed. Any talk about deeper feelings was forbidden, but when they were naked, neither of them managed to hide how overwhelmed they were.
Wasn’t a whispered Fuck, baby in the throes tantamount to a declaration of love? Scarlett was too worried to ask. The rules of the game didn’t account for feelings, you see, and acknowledging them might wreck things.
Even still, a week into it, she was already gnawing through the bit ... which was hilariously two-faced. Scarlett had spent months in Jaime’s cabin trying not to talk about anything that mattered. Then, she would’ve emptied her bank account if it had meant she could have sex and jokes with him without any discussion about their hearts, pasts, or traumas.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Scarlett.
She’d briefly had everything with Jaime, and it turned out she liked everything a hell of a lot. She wanted to be seen by him in all her flaws and imperfections and dirty underwear—literal and otherwise. She wanted everyone on set to know that she was the reason he was smiling more and that he was the reason she had started blushing—actually blushing.
She wanted all of it, an entire real-ass relationship, with him.
I’m finally ready, she wanted to scream.
Except she hadn’t so much as whispered it, because if she did, Jaime might take back the tiny morsel of their lives they were sharing. Sometimes, Scarlett would walk past him in a hallway at the studio, and he would catch and hold her attention. And just like that, she would know to expect his knock.
But the hard crumb he offered wasn’t satisfying ... or it wasn’t wholly satisfying. They could have it all if she could just find the right way to say it.
Or she could keep being a coward. Like tonight, when they’d finished, and Scarlett had flipped on the TV. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade : bingo. Jaime couldn’t resist Indy. According to him, the series had two entries: film one and film three, and absolutely nothing else.
Trying not to smile smugly, she waved at the TV. “That’s the most beautiful speedboat in movie history.” The water taxi in question was all gleaming burled wood and chrome, and wow, they just didn’t make things like they used to. “Probably in history .”
“I can think of motorboats I like better.” Jaime heaved himself up onto his shoulder and pried down the sheet Scarlett had draped over her chest. He gave a lasciviously appreciative sigh as he took in her cleavage.
Which was kind of silly. The man had spent plenty of time appreciating it earlier.
“You’re so crass.” He wasn’t really, but Scarlett knew he thought she had the best figure in history.
Jaime pressed a kiss to her shoulder and flopped back down onto his back. “Doesn’t your motorboat crush get chewed up in a second here?”
“No, that’s the bad guys’ boat.”
He scoffed in pretend scorn. “They’re the Grail protectors. The Nazis are the bad guys.”
“Shh.” She pressed her hand over Jaime’s mouth. His lips against her skin immediately had her pulse clicking up a notch or two. “I’m having a moment with this boat.”
When the scene had finished and an ad for sports betting came on, she took her hand back.
“I thought you got seasick,” he immediately said, which was promising.
That at least acknowledged they knew each other outside the context of these four walls. You know me so well. We should really be together forever, huh?
But wanting to keep things light, not wanting to upset the applecart, she said instead, “That’s why it’s a fantasy.”
“I can’t believe Harrison Ford is right there and you’re salivating over a boat.”
As if she could see Harrison Ford—or anyone—with Jaime in the room. “Varnished wood does it for me. What can I say?”
She wanted Jaime to make a joke about wood. She wanted him to roll her underneath him and show her which wood really did it for her. She wanted him to stay all night.
Most of all, she wanted this inane conversation to melt into something real. Something like So are you over my confession yet? And are we together now or what?
All the words Scarlett wanted to say crowded out the air in the room until it was almost hard to breathe. But the fact that Jaime was even in her bed at all ... for the moment, it was enough. Because at the end of the day, Scarlett worried she would pop this bubble if she so much as blew on it. And much like all bubbles, it was too pretty to risk.
So instead of jeopardizing what they had over a dose of truth or rehashing the past, she launched into a tirade about how hats could make a movie scene funny and hoped that was enough to show Jaime that they were more than just friends with benefits. That she was finally ready for everything he’d ever offered her. Way more than ready.
Production meetings absolutely—and Scarlett was pretty sure this was a technical assessment—sucked. They stood out because most of what Scarlett did on the set of Queen’s Kiss was pure pleasure. She relished getting to know the crew, whose passion for making movies and shooting the breeze and trying to beat her at chess was infectious.
Her coaching sessions with Clara had also become much more than instruction about endgame strategy. Those hours had become an endless conversation about the character they were creating together, with digressions about acting and life and fashion. Those exchanges didn’t feel like work; they were a chance for Scarlett to pretend she’d finally gotten the little sister she’d always wanted.
And she enjoyed watching Jaime film. The focused way he attacked the tedious work of setting up a shot, and the patience with which he would capture this moment and then that one so he could eventually sandwich them together, like layers of cake, into a glorious whole. That was fun ... and it was hot.
But before they could do those good parts, they had to have meetings. So many freaking meetings. Why had she wanted a producer credit again?
To annoy Jaime.
Yeah, it hadn’t been worth it.
Across from her, a location supervisor was currently updating the key crew and the main producers for the travel schedule after they left Canada. They were filming all the interior stuff and the set stuff here in Vancouver, but then they had a whirlwind, round-the-world two weeks of location and exterior shooting. Videon certainly hadn’t skimped. They would be hitting Tokyo, Paris, Casablanca, Dortmund, and Wijk aan Zee, before wrapping up filming in Las Vegas.
Scarlett had warned them that telling her life story was never going to be cheap, but she didn’t think they would actually cough up the necessary cash to do this right. How delightful it was, just once, to learn she’d been wrong.
“We’re still going back and forth about the final match in Vegas,” Gloria, the producer, explained. “The space that we booked doesn’t have a view of the Strip, but Scarlett said—”
“Asked,” Scarlett interrupted Gloria. “I asked .”
Scarlett didn’t mind so much when Jaime teased her about being a diva because he said it with affection. Even now, when they weren’t allowing themselves to converse in public, Jaime couldn’t help but inject some flirtation into their exchanges. That warmth was basically the ghost of romantic relationships past, and it wouldn’t stop haunting them.
Someone ought to call the Ghostbusters.
But yeah, while she’d take the diva thing from Jaime, when other people on set implied she was difficult, Scarlett wouldn’t put up with it. This was her book after all, and she was a producer for the show. It was reasonable for her to have some input. Why else would she even be here?
“I asked if it made sense to go film in some generic hotel ballroom when we could film in some place that actually feels like Vegas,” Scarlett finished. “Such as the STRAT.”
One of the PAs ringing the room oohed. Because it was clearly an amazing idea. The scene was going to be great either way, but it was going to be extra great with the Strip glittering out every window.
“What’s the cost difference?” Jaime asked.
Gloria sighed. “Fifty thousand.”
“Do we have it in the budget?”
“Yes, but the actual tournament was at Bally’s.”
Gloria had loathed Scarlett from the start, and Scarlett had never been able to figure out why. Everyone else on set seemed to like her fine. Even Jaime, whose feelings about her were understandably complicated, was far more cordial to Scarlett than Gloria was. Maybe Gloria was a closet PAWN fan.
But whatever was going on here, Scarlett wasn’t going to let them make the show worse for stupid reasons. And up to this point, they hadn’t let reality constrain them.
“Sure, but in actuality, I look like this”—she gestured at her own face—“and Clara Hess looks like a movie star.”
Nate started to laugh, but he converted this to a cough when Gloria glared at him. Seriously, that woman was humorless.
But Jaime wasn’t going to be cowed. “If Scarlett says it should be the STRAT, then that’s the way it’ll be, everyone.”
Gloria started to argue with him, and Jaime just gave her a look, the kind of look that he was always trying to quiet Scarlett with. But with Gloria, it worked. She swallowed her complaint and hid behind her laptop.
Jaime said to a PA, “Get the STRAT booked. It’ll be quite the finale. Is there anything else?”
During the pause that followed, Nate was clearly trying not to laugh and Scarlett was trying not to fluff her hair. Jaime had just slayed a dragon for her. Wasn’t that basically an official declaration that they were together? She’d expect him to change his lock screen to a pic of them kissing at any moment.
She was so pathetically thirsty for the man, even the stray thought that he might made her heart double tap.
“Great,” he told everyone in the conference room. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
This meeting was coming after a long day, and normally, Scarlett would be dragging. But tonight, she snatched her stuff up and bounded after Jaime into the hallway. “Do you have a second?”
“Only just. I have to get back to my office for a Zoom call with Videon. Sorry about that.” A few months ago, he would have said it curtly, but now, she knew he was sorry to have to rush her.
Scarlett wanted to beam like a loon, but she kept the corners of her mouth pinned in a more neutral expression. There was hope here. There was. But she had to play it carefully. She couldn’t barrel into things without a plan. Some of the worst mistakes she’d ever made on a chess board had come from overconfidence.
Play the long game.
Speaking quickly, Scarlett said, “No worries, this won’t take long. I just wanted to say thank you for having my back. With Gloria.”
Jaime’s brows came together. “Of course. You’re the expert—it’s your biopic. And your instincts, they’re good. Everything you’ve gone to the mattress over, you’ve been right about.”
She couldn’t keep the smile in then. She couldn’t. It would’ve leaked out like light through a keyhole. He saw her as part of the team here, not his obnoxious ex who’d gamed her way onto the set. Which, well, she was .
“You really think that?” she asked throatily.
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
How many things had they said to each other over the years that, it turned out, they hadn’t meant? And how many things weren’t they saying to each other now that they really ought to?
“I just didn’t know you felt that way about me,” she said, lightly but not jokingly.
Jaime’s eyes shifted away from Scarlett and went unfocused. The subtext in this conversation was like smog: so thick it made her tear ducts go into overdrive.
Scarlett needed to get more comfortable with the surface level and not keep pushing them beyond it to the deeper place where they got in trouble. Not before they were ready to go there.
Eventually, Jaime’s attention snapped back to her. He shrugged, as if he wasn’t certain about what he was going to say next. But then he said, “Well, now you do.”
It was so little. But it contained everything.