Chapter 14 #2
Watching her perform was wonderful. She was even more vibrant in real life than on film, and the chemistry she shared with Anderson could knock somebody down at fifteen paces.
Having literally just watched her blow him off in real life, Jordan knew it was a performance, but for the life of him he couldn't imagine how she did it.
It was easier to understand with Anderson, who never seemed to turn the outrageous flirting off.
Jordan wondered suddenly whether Anderson knew about Kayla's owl, but decided he probably didn't: it was hard to imagine the man keeping a secret.
The two actors laughed, moving in to each other even more closely, starry-eyed until another absurdly good-looking man strode on set.
He was Anderson's polar opposite: dark-haired, dark-eyed, wearing a business suit and a long, expensive trench coat, as well as shining patent leather shoes that were obviously unsuitable for walking in the snow.
Kayla reacted with surprised dismay: obviously this was the City Boyfriend, who had no business being in her hometown.
She broke apart from Anderson, looking guilty, while confusion washed over Anderson's face.
Jordan bit back a laugh. He knew they were actors, but he really believed Anderson's dismay in the moment, which was pretty incredible.
The couple of times he'd been an extra, it had been for baseball films and he'd mostly been well away from the lead actors, not right up close to see their performances.
Watching them now, Jordan thought he could spend the next fifty years on sets, watching Kayla tell stories, and call it a life well-spent.
Her city boyfriend read the whole situation correctly in a heartbeat, making everybody uncomfortable.
Jordan heard a crack in his voice as he said, "Rachel?
" in confusion, and Kayla, miserable with guilt, slunk away from Anderson to say a line he couldn't hear, but which was almost certainly something like 'I can explain… '
The camera swung around, centering Kayla and the new guy.
Anderson was now in the background, expression heartbroken, angry, stricken with understanding: all the things the Country Boyfriend ought to be feeling.
As Kayla and the new guy moved closer together, Anderson glanced down, his entire posture one of sorrowful resigned acceptance, and his smile sad but suggesting he was glad somebody worthy of Kayla had stepped up.
He turned away, moving out of the frame, and Jordan's heart actually broke a little bit for the guy.
Except as soon as he stepped out of frame, his posture changed completely, throwing off the character's cares and throwing a wink toward Jordan, who muffled a laugh. The man was incorrigible.
Filming went on for several more minutes, with three cameras picking the scene up from different angles, and when they broke, Kayla came back to Jordan's side. "What'd you think?"
"I think watching you work is amazing. Who's your city boyfriend, there?"
"That's Milo Scott. I don't think he'll be working in low-budget romcoms for long. I mean, look at that face."
"Ah, but can he act?" Jordan asked wisely, and Kayla laughed.
"He's not bad, honestly. He's also ten years younger than I am, so he's got a lot of room for up-and-coming."
"Seriously?" Jordan looked back at Milo, whose cheekbones looked like they'd been carved from glass shards, and whose dark eyes seemed to flash even without any lighting to account for it.
"How do you cope with being surrounded by people this attractive all the time?
I know you're one of them, but good grief, Kayla. "
"You kind of get used to it over time," she said with a shrug. "And then you go away from a set for a while and you come back to do a reshoot and you fall over because how could you have forgotten how good-looking they are? But you do get used to it. Mostly."
"I'll take your word for it. So what's the plot of this one?"
"I'm home to sell the family's B&B and have a high-octane corporate lawyer job to go back to, only there's the small-town mindset of 'you left and now you think you're too good for us so to hell with you,' and worse, the first thing that happens when I get here is this," Kayla said, gesturing at her terrible haircut, which was still under a hat, as it had been for the whole scene they'd shot, "so nobody will take me seriously.
I run into my old high school sweetheart—that's Anderson—and he takes pity on me and helps out, because everybody around here still loves him.
When he finds out I'm only selling the family business because the building is falling apart and the family doesn't have the money to restore it.
Anderson's a carpenter, obviously, so he starts work on the place for me, but then Milo comes down from the city to woo me back. "
"You and Anderson have a fight and he walks away from it all, but then finds himself staring up at the old B&B late one night, and then we see him shaking his head and getting his toolbox?"
Kayla grinned. "You have been watching my romcoms. And of course Milo is shocked and horrified by the 'new' me—"
"A bad haircut isn't a new you!" Jordan protested.
"Which is how we know he's wrong for me," Kayla said, smiling up at him.
"But I arrange a sale and accept that the building is going to be knocked down, then go back to the city, get a chic new haircut and go back to my fancy corporate job.
But now I feel something is missing from my life, and I realize too late that I should never have sold the family business.
I race back to my hometown, knowing it's too late to save the B&B but having to try anyway… "
"And it turns out Anderson bought it and has finished restoring it. He didn't know what he was going to do with the old place, but it means everything to him because it once meant everything to you…"
"Very good. And then we make up and live happily ever after running our little B&B together in our little hometown."
"So basically I don't stand a chance," Jordan said thoughtfully. "You said you sold your family house years ago. How can I rebuild it into an up-to-code B&B if you don't even own it anymore?"
Kayla laughed. "Is 'carpenter' one of your hidden skill sets?"
"Oh, God, no," Jordan said with feeling. "But since the whole house thing is the first problem I've got to overcome, I figured I'd worry about not being a carpenter later."
"I'm sure you'll work around it somehow," Kayla said with a grin.
They called her name and she blew him a kiss before heading back to her place, leaving Jordan to smile like a fool.
There she was, in the literal spotlight, the actual star of the show…
and she'd told him, Jordan Rhodes, washed-up baseball player, that he would figure it out.
In other words, he stood a chance with the most fabulous woman he'd ever met, and he honestly couldn't ask for more.