19. Sierra
SIERRA
“ I don’t know why it needs to be so specific,” I said to Finn on our way out the door, headed for his car in the parking lot. “We’ve already talked about how we met in multiple interviews.”
“No,” he said. “We’ve mentioned that we met on set during preproduction. We didn’t give details of our made-up first meeting.”
“Why would we?” I frowned.
“Because according to Jillian, those details are what’s going to sell this next interview,” he explained. “We have to sprinkle a few more personal details with every bit of press in order to keep people engaged. So she wants us to come up with a story we both agree on.”
“Fine.” I sighed, my lips buzzing together. “How about we say I bought you a cup of coffee?”
“Why would you be buying me coffee?” he asked.
“Probably because you looked stressed.”
“No,” he argued. “I should be the one buying you coffee. ”
“’Cause you’re the man?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Don’t start that,” he grumbled.
“Start what?” I said, unable to resist baiting him. “Accusing you of being a sexist jerk during our first meeting? Maybe we should just tell them how we really met. That way we won’t have to make anything up.”
“Right. At In Stitches, with you being the worst sales associate ever.”
“Me?” I cried. “You were a customer from hell!”
“You charged me an asshole tax!” He held the door open for me.
“Which was well deserved,” I pointed out. “You were being an asshole, making me keep the store open late.”
“Oh please,” Finn said. “I was the highlight of your evening. Before that, you were probably carrying on a one-sided conversation with that damn mannequin.”
“Merle happens to be an excellent conversationalist.”
“Sure,” he snorted, “if you like the strong, silent type.”
“Maybe I do,” I said, arching a brow in his direction. “What more could a girl want besides a great listener and fiberglass abs?”
Finn smirked. “He loses his head a little too much for my taste.”
“You just have to know how to adjust the head,” I said, watching the muscle in his jaw twitch. “You have to be delicate. Use two hands. Squeeze just right so he doesn’t pop off. It’s not rocket science, but you do have to know what you’re doing.”
Finn’s arm shot out, stopping me from passing through the door. His gaze held mine, those hazel eyes as piercing as ever. What were we even talking about ?
A shiver trickled down my spine as he stared me down like he was thinking about hauling me close and kissing me. For real . Not one of our staged kisses, but the breathless, desperate kiss I’d been wanting for weeks.
“Maybe it should be a costume fiasco,” I said, my voice thready. “Our first meeting.”
“Like what?” he murmured, his breath ghosting across my cheek.
“You tore your pants, and I had to sew you back up?”
He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “We are not going with that story.”
“Sierra!”
I whirled around to find Paisley racing down the hall toward us.
She didn’t need to say anything as she skidded to a stop, breathing heavily, her face a mask of horror.
I knew just by her expression that disaster had struck.
I started running toward the costume shop, hearing the heavy tread of Finn’s footsteps echoing behind me as my thoughts spun through worst-case scenarios.
“What happened?” I demanded the moment we all burst through the door.
My eyes darted from Shaw, slumped down and sobbing at the base of the industrial washer, her head in her hands. Shaw lifted her head, her face caked with tears and mascara lines. But I couldn’t focus on her when I saw Trin and Carter pull shreds of material from the machine.
My heart lobbed so hard against my chest I winced.
“Oh no,” I said under my breath. “No, no, no .”
“I’m sorry!” Shaw cried.
Even in scraggly, wet pieces, I recognized the color and the fabric. This was Shaw’s party sequence dress. The one we still needed because X hadn’t finished shooting those scenes. The one that was now utterly and unfixably ruined.
The world had been yanked out from under me.
As I stumbled back, hand over my mouth to cover my shock, I collided with a sturdy chest. It was Finn.
His hand landed on my shoulder, steadying me.
The touch was grounding, making me feel just the tiniest bit more stable, despite the horror churning inside me.
“Shit,” Finn said, his voice barely above a whisper.
I trembled with spikes of adrenaline. How the hell would I fix this? “What happened?” I finally managed to croak again.
Silence echoed through the room, everyone looking awkwardly at each other.
Finally, Paisley started talking. “After the shoot today, Shaw realized she’d gotten ink on one of the sleeves.
Wanting to be helpful, she tossed the dress into the machine.
By the time we realized what was happening… It was too late.”
I stepped forward, taking a shred of fabric from Trin, stretching it out against my palm. I had the ridiculous urge to apologize to it—the poor dress that I was supposed to keep safe.
“I’m so sorry,” Shaw blubbered again. I stared down at her. Lord, she was even beautiful when she cried.
“Can it be fixed?” Finn asked from behind me.
I wanted to say it was fine. No big deal. Easily resolved. But there wasn’t a scrap of salvageable fabric left. We were so, so screwed.
“Sierra?” Finn said sharply, his voice cutting through the din of panic in my mind. “Can it be fixed?”
I shook my head, turning to him. “To redo it correctly would take days of work, and we’re shooting the rest of these scenes tomorrow !” X had already shot half the footage. So the replacement dress would have to be exactly the same because reshoots would be timely and costly.
“We need the exact same fabric to make an identical dress, and I don’t have an inch left!” That one bolt had been all we’d been able to find. I pressed my hand to my belly, feeling sick.
Then Finn’s hand was on my shoulder again, squeezing gently, pulling my attention. “Breathe,” he said.
I did, sucking in a shaky breath.
“Can we buy more?”
“We were only able to find one bolt of it,” I explained. “Even if we could locate more, there’s no way it’d get here in time.” Shit, shit, double shit! And then I said the words no producer ever wanted to hear. “We’re going to have to push back the schedule.”
“We’re not pushing anything,” Finn said, whipping out his phone. “Can you give me the fabric specifics?”
Carter ran off to get him the information.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, distraught.
“Track down that fabric.”
That felt impossible. “Finn?—”
“Leave it to me,” he insisted. “You get to work on prepping whatever else you can for tomorrow.”
Was he actually going to be able to find more of the fabric and get it here in time?
Part of me didn’t think it would happen, but my feet carried me toward the cutting table, pulling out a durable, lightweight cotton, my mind already crafting some sort of time-period-inappropriate but invisible underlayer to build the bare bones of the dress on top of.
For this plan to work, I was putting all my trust in Finn to deliver.
“Where do you want us?” Paisley asked at the same time Trin said, “What can I do?”
I stopped unraveling the cotton, shoving aside all my panic long enough to give directions. My instinct was to try to do everything myself, but the whole point of having a team was so I could delegate—which was exactly what I needed to do if we were going to have any hope of pulling this off.
“Okay, Carter,” I said, glancing down at Shaw, our leading lady, in complete shambles on the floor. “I need you to deal with that.”
“Got it,” he said, passing off the fabric information to Finn, who disappeared into my office.
“Trin, I need you to find our original references for the dress and start cutting out a pattern. Paisley, can you start working on the embellishments?” They nodded.
“We’re not going to have time to fuss around with all the layers, so my thought is to build an underlayer to give the new dress the same shape while using less fabric and therefore requiring?—”
“—less time to construct,” Paisley finished.
“Exactly.”
“Good plan.”
“I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s the best I’ve got right now.
” Would the dress be completely twenties accurate?
No. Were we cheating the design? Absolutely.
But it was the only way we were going to get this dress done before tomorrow…
if Finn magically conjured up a supplier that could get the material to us .
I took out my favorite pair of fabric scissors and started cutting while Carter scooped Shaw off the floor and got her seated in a chair with a cup of tea to help calm her nerves. She apologized over and over, her eyes red-rimmed and blotchy.
Thank the Lord she was done filming for today because there wasn’t a makeup artist on earth that could have done anything about those puffy, reddened eyes.
Once Carter had Shaw settled, Brenna turned up and spirited her away for some much-needed rest. My head turned toward my office where Finn was staring intently at a laptop, phone pressed to his ear.
I tried not to listen too hard as he called in every favor he had.
Judging by the number of calls, there were a lot, but my stomach dropped each time he hung up, scowling down at the computer screen.
Just focus , I told myself. Focus and let Finn do his thing .
“Here,” Carter said, dropping a case of RevX on the cutting table next to me. “Craft services just dropped these off.”
“Thanks,” I said, cracking one open. I passed the rest around, knowing it was about to be a very long evening. Even Finn couldn’t hassle me about my energy drink addiction right now.
Hours later, we’d gotten the underlayer pinned, sewn together, and up on the mannequin. A new pattern for the top layer had been cut out, and the embellishments were prepped. What we needed now was the actual dress fabric to incorporate into the costume.
“I’ve got news,” Finn called.
“We’re changing the schedule?” I asked, turning to him .
“No.” He emerged from my office, hair disheveled.
He’d ditched his suit jacket and shoved his sleeves up, leaving the top two buttons of his shirt undone.
It was the most casual I’d seen him since that day in his sculpture studio.
He brushed his hand through his dark hair, smoothing the locks back, the muscles in his forearm tensing, and my mouth went a little dry.
There was something very, very sexy about Finn Lockhart when he wasn’t completely buttoned up. I banished that thought as he said, “I found someone who will overnight a bolt of the exact same fabric down to the dye lot.”
My jaw dropped.
“Shut up!” Paisley said. “For real?”
“Yes, for real,” Finn said. “It’ll get here sometime in the early, early morning. I can’t be sure exactly when…but they’re guessing maybe three or four a.m.”
He’d truly done the impossible, but it still wasn’t enough. “Even if I drive in as soon as I get word that the fabric’s here, I don’t think that’ll be enough time. Every minute is going to count if we want this finished before filming.”
“I figured as much,” Finn said, coming to stand next to me.
“Which is why we’re not going back to the penthouse tonight.
I’ve already got us reservations at a hotel just off the studio lot.
It’s a five-minute walk away. We can stay there and come back the moment the delivery arrives so you lose as little time as possible. ”
At that moment, all the stress and exhaustion and jittery energy-drink-fueled adrenaline caught up to me, and I almost burst into tears. Because here I was about to suggest that I just crash in my office, and Finn had already taken care of it .
“I’d suggest the rest of the team head home now and try to get some sleep. Be back first thing refreshed and ready to work.”
I nodded. It was as good a plan as any. Trin, Paisley, and Carter didn’t wait around to be told twice. They gathered their things and shuffled out together like a pack of exhausted zombies. Finn waited for me to grab my bag from my office before walking me across the street to the hotel.
While we were checking in, I fought off a yawn, resisting the urge to lean against him. As I glanced around the lobby, I spotted a familiar man working on a laptop, a camera bag on the floor by his side. Paparazzi! Ugh, of all the times.
My hand curled, my thumb automatically feeling for the engagement ring.
If I could recognize him, there were probably more of his kind milling about, which meant everything we did here could be news by morning.
I relaxed my face, trying to let the stress melt away.
I could only imagine the way I would photograph tonight, looking miserable and exhausted as I stood next to Finn.
That was not the image we needed out in the world.
I grabbed Finn’s hand, snuggling up to him and planting a kiss to his jaw so I’d have the opening to whisper, “Only one room, right?”
He turned to me, a frown dragging his eyebrows together. “No, I got you?—”
He broke off as I subtly inclined my head, pointing out the paparazzo. Finn turned back to the concierge. “Only one room.”
“Sir? We have two on the reservation.”
“Then my assistant must have made a mistake,” Finn stated coolly, adjusting the collar of his suit. “My fiancée and I only require one room. ”
The concierge nodded, handing us our keycards a moment later. “The suite is all ready for you.”
Finn nodded in thanks and slung his arm over my shoulders as the two of us made our way through the lobby. He didn’t drop it until we were safely inside the elevator. “I wasn’t even thinking?—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t expect there to be paparazzi here at this time either.
” And now we were stuck sharing a room. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t a big deal.
I already shared his condo with him, so surely we could manage to share a room for one night. It was already past midnight anyway.
At this rate, by the time we got upstairs and plugged our phones in, it would basically be time to go back to the studio. And I was too tired to overthink sharing a room with Finn.
It’s not like anything was going to happen.
My phone buzzed. I checked it, thinking it might be Ro. I’d been sending her updates for hours. But instead, another name flashed across my screen. Trey .
Oh, come on! Really? I deleted the message without even reading it. The man hadn’t even bothered to text me to properly break things off, and now he wanted to talk? Why didn’t he just go back to tagging me on Instagram? I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that. Especially tonight of all nights.
Even my fake relationship with Finn had better communication than that.