Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
T he week following the Scorched premiere had to go down in the record books for the longest week in history. Blake had spent every day in interview after interview with Piper. She’d laughed, chatted happily about the movie, and had acted for the rest of the world like nothing was wrong. But the looks she’d given him were so cold and distant he’d felt like he was in a different country.
Every time he’d tried to talk to her, she said not now.
He was going to go insane if he heard those words one more time.
On the one hand, it sounded promising. Not now wasn’t not ever. But when would it be yes, now? He waited with anxious anticipation for that moment like a drowning man waiting for a life raft.
He joined Marshall at the desert house late Friday night, after the week-long press tour was over. Marshall had managed to shoot several background scenes while he was waiting for Blake to return, and they spent Saturday going over the dailies.
Piper’s scenes were everything he’d hoped they would be .
“She’s really good,” Marshall commented. “Glad we signed her before everyone else finds out. Her price will skyrocket.”
“Yeah. Mom’s already got a project in mind.” Blake took a beer out of the fridge.
“She call back yet?”
“Piper? No.”
Marshall drained his own beer and set the bottle down. “Think she’ll show?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say she wouldn’t.”
He held on to that glimmer of hope like the lifeline it was.
If Piper pulled out of this movie, they were screwed.
If she pulled out of the movie, their relationship was over before it had even gotten a good chance to start.
He’d be able to tell his mother he’d been right about never dating a costar.
He’d never wanted to be wrong so badly.
Marshall grunted and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m grabbing a shower.”
After Marshall disappeared down the hall, Blake sat for a while, staring at nothing, until his email dinged the arrival of a revised studio budget for Conned .
He might as well bury himself in hopeless numbers. It fit his mood.
He opened the spreadsheet and started comparing figures with his own while he finished his beer.
Several minutes later, one of the items caught his attention. He stared at it in disbelief. Double-checked both the names and the numbers beside them on the sheet marked “Producers and Investors,” then read them out loud to himself just to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
Executive Producers: Blake Ryan (30m), Marshall Weston (30m), Carlton Rogers (25m), Piper Bellamy (20m) .
The spreadsheet was wrong. It had to be. There was no way it could be right.
“Marshall,” he shouted. The sound echoed off the tile floors. “Get in here.”
Marshall walked into the living room wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a towel over his wet hair. “What?”
“Look at this.” Blake put the laptop on the coffee table and spun it around for Marshall to see.
Marshall peered at it. “It’s the budget. So?”
“Further down.” Blake stood up and started to pace.
Irritation and something else a lot softer, like gratitude, mixed around in his chest and came out as nervous energy. He had to move, or he might lose his mind.
“You, me, the studio bastard, and…oh.” Marshall looked up. “Huh. You change your mind at some point and not tell me?”
“No.” He paced the length of the living room. “That can’t be right, can it? She couldn’t just go behind my back like that, could she?”
Marshall shrugged and started rubbing his hair with the towel. “Don’t see why not. The studio holds right of refusal for producers, not us.”
“I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want to take money from her. Not for this. Especially after the other night.” He picked up his phone and tapped out a quick text to John.
Piper Bellamy…Exec Prod?
The answer came immediately. Yes .
Blake swore. “She did. She went to the damn studio. I can’t believe this.”
“What’s the big deal?” Marshall draped the towel around his shoulders. “So she invested in the movie she’s starring in. What’s wrong with that?”
“You know what’s wrong that. I told you both why I couldn’t take her money. ”
He tapped out another message to John. When?
John returned with a date two days after the day he’d demanded twenty million from Blake. Two days after he’d told Piper he wouldn’t take her money.
“You told us some bullshit about how money could get in the way of a relationship.” Marshall’s scorn was obvious. “I didn’t buy it. She didn’t either, apparently. She’s smart, resourceful, and just as stubborn as you. Seems like a good match to me.”
“Jesus, this makes everything a hell of a lot worse.” Blake flicked the sheet closed.
“How’s it going to do that?” Marshall looked confused.
“This is exactly what I was worried about. How am I supposed to make things up to her when she’s a major investor? Now business is in the way.”
“No it’s not.” Marshall jabbed a finger at him. “Your head is in the way. Apologize. Go big with it. She’s a reasonable, down-to-earth woman. She just needs to hear you grovel, that’s all.”
“She’s ghosting me.” Blake scowled at his friend. “She’s not answering texts or emails or the damn phone. She hasn’t even posted online.”
“Ouch.” Marshall winced. “Yeah, man, that sucks. It really does. Maybe she’s embarrassed because her sister slugged you?”
“Doubt it.” Blake touched his tender nose reflexively. Luckily, it hadn’t left him with a black eye, just slight swelling they could hide with makeup. “She’s probably glad Della hit me. She probably wanted to do it herself. Shit. I didn’t need to worry about money screwing up our relationship. I did that all by myself.”
“With a lot of help from Rachel Morris,” Marshall pointed out.
“Dammit, I knew Rachel was baiting me that first day at read-throughs, and I fell for it like an idiot because I was irritated about the deal I had to make to get this project off the ground. It wasn’t Piper’s fault, she just happened to be there. How can I explain that if she won’t talk to me?”
He’d been chewing on that problem for days and hadn’t been able to come up with anything. Piper’s house was too well guarded to try the Say Anything approach. None of her sisters were going to help him out. The only number he had was Della’s, and when he tried texting her, she’d flipped him off with an emoji.
The only way to get a message through to Piper right now was to post on Twitter, and there was no way in hell he was doing that.
“You could try skywriting,” Marshall suggested. “Or maybe wait outside her gate until she comes out and then throw yourself on the ground in front of her like they used to do in medieval times…except no you can’t because we have a movie to shoot and you’re in most of the scenes.”
“Scenes.” A glimmer of an idea sparked in his mind. There was one place Piper couldn’t avoid him. On set, they would be standing face to face with nothing to do but talk. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” Marshall asked.
Blake picked up the laptop and carried it to the dining room table. “We need to change the script.”
“No.” Marshall looked horrified. “No, we don’t. We really don’t.”
“Yes, we really do.” Blake pulled up the master file and scrolled to the love scene. “You said go big. This is big. I’ll rework the bar fight scene. It’s on the schedule for today. She’s in it, she has to listen.”
“We don’t have time for a rewrite,” Marshall whined. “We don’t have time to even think about a rewrite. We’re over halfway done.”
“We’ll make time.” He shifted a section down in the manuscript to make room for the change he wanted to make. “Stop complaining. This is going to make the movie even better.”
“Next time we do this kind of project, we have to make a deal that no women are allowed anywhere near either one of us, on penalty of death,” Marshall grumbled. “I’m going to get dressed. Try not to screw up the buddy scenes, okay?”
Blake started typing. He wasn’t worried about the buddy scenes. He wanted to put the kiss back where it belonged.
Monday morning, Blake arrived two hours early, hopped up on coffee he couldn’t stand and no sleep. The only people on set were the two catering trucks Piper had lined up for him and the staffers who were setting up the lights in preparation for the day’s shoot.
They were hitting three different locations today, and everyone was spread pretty thin, but that wasn’t why he was all keyed up.
Piper hadn’t been back to the house they were renting. The clothes she left there hadn’t been touched.
His last text to Piper, I miss you , had prompted Della to text Marshall with a message that said take his phone away and for Blake to back off.
He sat on the hood of his rental car, a small generic sedan, and watched the parking lot. It was getting hard to ignore the growing sense of hopelessness that gnawed at his gut.
She’d told his assistant she’d be here, but he had no idea if she’d said that before or after the viral video.
He’d brought two venti pumpkin spice lattes to the set, but since he was so early and there was a chill in the air, they weren’t hot anymore. He watched as the early crew arrived, jumping every time a car pulled into the lot. The camera jockeys started setting up equipment, the set crew shifted things into position for the first scene, and the makeup trailers opened for business. The set came awake and alive as the sun came up, but Piper, the perpetual early bird, still wasn’t there.
It was almost eight when Marshall rolled up. He eyed the two coffees on the hood, now stone cold, and shook his head in disapproval. “How long have you been here?”
“A few hours.” He checked his phone. In the past five minutes, he’d had two phone calls and three texts from people who weren’t Piper.
Marshall took one of the coffees and sipped. “Ugh. Nasty.”
“So don’t drink it.”
“You know you’re insane, right? Certifiable.”
“Don’t care.”
Marshall eyed him. “You’re still going through with this? You’re really using our movie to fix your love life?”
“It’s all I could think of. You have a better idea?”
Marshall held up his hands. “No, no. This is your grave. I’m looking forward to watching you dig your way out.”
“Thanks,” Blake said with heavy sarcasm.
The sound of car tires crunching asphalt caught his attention, and he looked up, his heart pounding with anticipation.
It was exactly eight a.m., and Piper was right on time.
Relief made his heart do a little flip-flop.
Blake slid off the hood of his car. “Round them up.”
Marshall patted his shoulder, then turned toward the rapidly assembling crew. “Okay, party people, time to wake up. We need everyone who’s supposed to be in the casino through hair and makeup and on their marks in thirty. Let’s move.”
Piper emerged from her car wearing black leggings, a cropped black T-shirt, and boots. She looked ready to take the stage, or take over the world, and she walked toward him with determination .
She stopped a few feet away from the car. Close enough to be polite, not close enough to touch. “Hey.”
“Morning.” He kept his tone cool and professional. He couldn’t bring himself to add the good to the morning. He couldn’t tell if she was still mad at him or not, but she was here and that meant everything. “Thanks for coming.”
“I said I’d be here. I meant it.” She frowned slightly. “Didn’t you get the message I sent to your assistant?”
“I’ve been getting a lot of messages.” Nothing sent a message like not answering a man’s calls. “Like the updated budget sheets. Congratulations on the executive producer credit.”
She raised her chin a little in defiance. “Thanks. It’s a good investment.”
He took in a steadying breath. “Piper—”
“Is that for me?” She pointed at the cup waiting for her on the hood.
She’d done the Southern maneuver of politely cutting him off before he could say anything she didn’t want to hear. Maybe she just wanted to let the money subject drop, or maybe she wasn’t interested in an apology about all the things he’d said.
He could play the polite game too, at least until he made her a captive audience on set. “Yeah, but you probably don’t want it. It’s been sitting there for two hours.”
She picked it up and sniffed. “Thanks. We’re doing the dance scene this morning?”
All the things they weren’t saying to each other bubbled underneath the surface, but at least they were talking. It was a start.
He gestured at the row of trailers. “Hair and makeup is waiting for you.”
She saluted him with the cup and made her way to the trailers, saying hello to everyone she passed.
After she left, Marshall parted from the extras clustered around him and made a beeline for Blake. “Have you checked social media this morning?”
“No. I hate social media. I’m never looking at anything on the internet ever again.” He studied Marshall’s face with suspicion. “Why? What happened now?”
“A new video dropped an hour ago.” Marshall pulled it up on his phone and handed it to Blake. “You might want to watch this one.”
Piper’s face filled the screen. “She probably just recorded her coffee chat early.”
“Just watch.” Marshall sauntered off toward the food truck.
Blake listened as Piper poured her heart out. The way she’d formed this intimate connection with people she would never meet face to face filled him with a sense of awe and wonder. How did she do it? How did she reach through the screen and touch hearts so completely?
When she mentioned his name, he realized with a start that he was one of those people. She had his heart, and no matter how hard she tried to return it, he didn’t want it back.
Those little voices in your head that tell you you’re not good enough…
He paused the video. The look on her face broke something in him. Her eyes were locked on the screen as if she were desperate to be heard. Her struggle with inner demons was real, and she wasn’t afraid to share it with the world.
That look of honest pain would be etched in his memory forever.
She had over a thousand comments already, and she’d only posted it an hour ago, according to the time stamp.
He’d spent two days rewriting the scene they were about to shoot, and now he knew the words weren’t anywhere near good enough. She’d been honest and open, and he had to be too.
The idea of doing that tied his stomach into nervous knots. It was so much easier to say a carefully crafted line than to speak from the heart.
Blake carried the phone back to Marshall with grim determination. He didn’t care how hard it was going to be. All he cared about now was making sure Piper knew how wrong her inner demons were.
“I’m going to ad-lib,” he told Marshall in a low voice. “Just go with whatever happens.”
“Alrighty then.” Marshall shook his head but tucked his phone away. “I’ll muster the troops.”
Blake went to find his director of photography.
“Wally, I need a favor.”
The man looked like he hadn’t changed clothes since yesterday. “Sure.”
“When I get to my mark, start recording, okay? No matter what happens, keep rolling and don’t say the word action.”
“Okay,” Wally said with a shrug. “It’s your show. Going for a raw edge?”
He shook his head. “A real one.”
“No prob.” Wally gave a thumbs-up.
Blake went to find his mark. He saw Wally put on his headphones and move into position. Two camera operators quietly moved into place, and the light went on to indicate they were hot.
The bar had once been a fake saloon set up for tourists on their way to lose money in Vegas. Everything in it was over-the-top cheesy, from the spurs and saddles on the walls to sawdust on the floor.
The countertop had been renovated, but it was the original with brass accents and a stained-glass mirror behind the bar to make the space look bigger than it was.
He was dressed in the slick gray suit his character favored. This wasn’t a place his character would fit in. He was more at home in the high roller room of a casino, or on a yacht sweet-talking a lonely widow, but he was drawn here by a certain small-town girl who lived next door to the house he’d run away from as a child.
His plan was to get Piper into position and then say what he needed to say. He was using the original kiss scene as the vehicle, the one she’d originally talked him into changing.
She’d said there was no way a woman would kiss his character in this situation.
Time to find out if she’d been right.
He took his place next to the bar. His insides were a jumbled mess of anxiety and eagerness, but hopefully it didn’t show on the outside. He channeled his character’s inner calm and waited for the leading lady to arrive.
Heads turned as Piper walked in. She’d changed into jeans, a white lace crop top, and boots that made her look at home in a setting like this. Her hair billowed around her as she crossed the room like a country singer in a music video. He thought he heard one of the extras whistle, but it might have been his imagination.
She stopped exactly on her mark, which put her about a foot away from him.
“Ready, kids?” Marshall asked. He took his mark by the pool table and picked up a cue.
“Places,” Wally shouted.
Extras moved silently into place. Some went to the pool table, others sat in the booths, and a few climbed up onto barstools. They smiled and pretended to be having conversations, but no sounds emerged from their lips. Background noise would be shot separately and added later so they could be sure to catch the main dialogue.
“The girl next door to me growing up never looked this good,” Blake said as he gave her an appreciative once-over .
It wasn’t the line he was supposed to say. It wasn’t even the line he’d rewritten. But it was exactly what he thought.
Piper glanced down at the outfit. “Thanks, I guess. You picked it, right?”
“Every guy in this place wants to take you home tonight. Probably some of the girls too.” He kept his gaze locked on her. “But I’m hoping you turn them all down. I’m hoping you’ll come home with me.”
She stilled, her body tensing as she tried to figure out what was going on.
Marshall hit a pretend shot and didn’t look in their direction, though Blake knew he was listening to every word.
The extras had no clue anything was different. The scene was going exactly as it should have been, as far as they knew.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
The line could have worked for his character, but he meant it for himself.
“Yes.” She sounded a little unsure, but like their sessions in the living room, she was trying to go with the yes and format. “I…I needed time to think, and it’s hard to do that around you.”
“Why?” Blake asked.
“You know why. Are you…is this live?” Piper looked around at the cameras. “Are we recording? I didn’t hear him say action.”
Blake grimaced. “Always assume someone is recording. I learned that lesson the hard way.”
“What is this?” She crossed her arms. “Is this some kind of game?”
“This is me trying to apologize to the most beautiful, stubborn, amazingly talented woman I’ve ever met.” Blake gazed intently into her chestnut eyes and said the words he’d been trying to say ever since that awful night. “I’m sorry. I never should have said those things. I should have walked away.”
She bit her lip and nodded. “Okay. Why didn’t you? ”
“I was in a bad mood.” He winced because it sounded so lame, like a bad excuse, but pushed on. “She baited me, and I was too wound up in my own crap to notice until it was too late. But what I said…it wasn’t about you, and none of it was true. You need to know that.”
“Oh it was true.” She looked like she was going to keep arguing, so he put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“No. It wasn’t. I was talking complete bullshit about someone I didn’t even know. I figured out by the end of that first day how amazing you are and how wrong I was. You’re the best singer I’ve ever heard. You’re an amazing performer, and you’re one hell of an actress. Then you helped me with this.” He gestured to the cameras and the room behind him. “If the movie is a success, it’s because you invested your time and money in it despite the fact that I was being a stubborn ass.”
Piper crossed her arms over her stomach in a self-hug. “I shouldn’t have gone behind your back like that. I should have told you up front.”
His lips twitched. “You did. I just wasn’t listening.”
“But now you are? Why? What changed?”
“You,” he said simply. “You saw through my act. Nobody’s ever called me on it before. I think that’s why I fell in love with you.”
Piper sucked in a breath. “Is that a line? Or—”
“It’s real.” He leaned in until his face was inches away from hers and he could see the flecks of green in her eyes. “I love you. I want you, and I don’t care if we’re working together I’m not going another day pretending I don’t. I want to get you coffee in the mornings. I want to curl up with you all night long. I want to talk to you about anything and everything because nothing is overwhelming when I’m talking about it with you.”
“Blake—”
He took her face gently in his hands. “I want you in my life. Whatever happens with all this…I’ll get through it as long as I have you. You’re the piece of the puzzle I didn’t know I was looking for. You’re my princess, and my small-town girl, and my pop star, and I’m in love with you.”
Tears welled up in her eyes and cascaded down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” Panic welled up in his chest. This was supposed to fix things. It was supposed to make her feel better.
“I’m in love with you too, you jackass. I can’t believe you’re making me cry in front of all these people with all this makeup on.”
Relief made his legs feel weak. He’d never seen her cry before, but every tear now felt precious. “I wasn’t trying to make you cry.”
“You can’t say things like that and expect a girl not to cry.” She wiped at the tears that kept coming. “You’re making it impossible for me to stay mad at you.”
He wiped a tear off her cheek and smiled gently at her. He knew the entire cast and crew were watching, and he knew they were recording this, but he didn’t care. This was the video he wouldn’t mind going viral. He was telling the absolute truth about how he felt about Piper Bellamy, no editing or rewrites required.
“I love you. You’re the best choice I’ve ever made. I know I fucked up, and I’ll probably do it again. We’ll have fights, and we’ll argue about nothing, and we’ll disagree about how to do things, but I want you to know that it’ll never mean that I don’t want to be with you or that I don’t love you.”
His lips found hers, and it was not at all a gentle, sweet kiss. It was a crushing, desperate plea for her to understand exactly how special she was, and exactly how much he believed in her and wanted her.
Her lips were just as hungry, just as determined.
He pulled her off the stool and into his arms. He wanted to hold her like this forever. He wanted to kiss her until she believed the truth.
She was all that he wanted. There was no other choice.
There never would be.
Applause startled them apart.
Piper laughed and put a hand on her forehead. “Oh God…were you recording this?”
Blake looked at her with feigned innocence. “Yes. I wanted to be able to play it back on our anniversary, or anytime I do something stupid. Pretty sure it’s still going.”
“Okay, okay…cut!” Piper made the cut sign at the camera tech.
“That was a great take,” Wally said from the director’s chair. “I have no notes. Ready to move on?”
Blake looked at Piper. “Are we?”
The glowing happiness on her face was brighter than the desert sun. “Yes. More than ready.”
He kissed her cheek, then noticed that her dimple had made an appearance. “What’s so funny?”
“You broke our deal.” Her eyes danced with amusement.
“Deal?” It took him a second to remember what she was talking about.
Right.
He was supposed to treat her just like anybody else while on set. Well, that had been shot to hell.
“Somebody’s getting naked,” she singsonged.
He leaned in for another kiss. “As long as I’m paying the penalty, might as well make it worth it.”
“Oh it’ll be worth it,” she whispered into his ear. “We’ll both be naked.”
He loved everything about that idea.