ANNA
She had insisted that she be present for the filming, to protect the location.
She knew it was important to Charlie, and she was determined to keep it in one piece, even if he had turned out to be somewhat of a jerk.
She made sure the actors and the cameramen trod lightly in the grasses around the place.
It was easy enough to claim it was all about keeping the shot consistent by keeping the grasses upright and blowing in the breeze.
That made sense to everyone there, probably more sense than it would have made had she insisted she cared deeply enough about their host to fight for every blade of grass on his property.
On the contrary, he was furious.
She noted, with a scowl, that he wasn’t nearly as careful with the grasses as she had been.
He left a trail of rage behind him, flattened tall grasses and badly abused nature.
In anticipation of his anger, every muscle in her body tensed.
Whether she was in fight or flight was never in question. She was all fight, all the time.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Charlie shouted when he’d come close enough that they could all hear him. “What do any of you think you’re doing?”
Anna answered him so no one else had to.
“Filming, obviously.” She didn’t feel dealing with him was something anyone other than she should have to do.
She was the reason they were filming on his property at all.
She started toward him, hoping to minimize the trail he was leaving around the filming site.
They could probably edit it out in post, but getting it right in the first place was always the best policy.
When she had come close, she asked him, “What are you doing here?”
“That’s my line,” he growled. “I live here. This is my land, my home. You’re the one who’s trespassing.”
“We have agreements signed by you. We haven’t violated any of them.”
“I never agreed to this!” He gestured to the tree and the film crew around it.
“I never would have shown it to you if I’d known!
I showed it to you—” He cut himself off and lowered his voice after taking a deep breath that was clearly meant to calm his temper.
“I showed you this place in confidence. I trusted you.”
“You never told me it was a secret spot,” Anna countered. “How was I supposed to know that, if you never bothered to tell me?”
Now he spoke through his teeth, presumably to keep himself from shouting at her again. “You’re ruining everything.”
She didn’t entirely understand what he meant, but she did her best to respond. “Nothing’s ruined. That’s why I’m around. I’m here to make sure the film crew leaves no trace. They’ve been so careful. If you hadn’t come out here today, you wouldn’t have even known they were here.”
“That’s not the point,” he said. “They’re not the ones I’m worried about.”
“Then what are you worried about exactly?”
Charlie sputtered for a minute. His cheeks were bright red and his eyes were sharp as diamonds.
He had clearly reached a point where he couldn’t even find the words anymore.
After several minutes of clenching his fists and unclenching them again, he finally just gave up.
“Finish what you’re doing, and get out. Don’t come back around.
I will never agree to anything like this again. What a monumental mistake.”
He walked away without another word, and Anna felt like the worst person in the world.
She had been so excited to find the right location for the film, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that Charlie would be unhappy with it.
She felt terrible at first. But the more she thought about it, the more she shifted her anger from being directed at herself to being directed at Charlie.
He just didn’t trust her enough to protect his property, apparently.
He hadn’t told her this place was off-limits.
But, of course, that was before she’d slept with him.
He had every reason in the world to pretend to be vulnerable with her and tell her all the things she wanted to hear and none of the things she didn’t want to hear.
All of it had been in the interest of getting what he wanted out of her, which was just sex, apparently.
She felt stupid for having fallen for it at all.
In her youth, she had judged women who fell for jerks, believing they should have seen the signs. But she had missed them. Boy, had she ever missed them. And now she just wanted this job to be over so she could go back to her old life and forget all about both Denson Oaks and Charlie Greene.
On the last day of filming, Anna didn’t see Charlie at all, and she was grateful for it.
She didn’t think she would be able to bear the sight of him, at least not without screaming at him for a good twenty minutes just to get the feeling of having been wronged out of her system.
It was far better to end things on a professional note.
Anna was beyond ready to let go of this job and move on to a new one.
She was on set during the last shoot but only to say goodbye to everyone she’d been working with for the last several weeks.
The thing about filming a movie was that everyone got to be like one big family.
She couldn’t just walk away without at least doing that last-day photo shoot and those last-day hugs she’d done on every movie she’d worked on.
It was terrifying, though, thinking Charlie could be waiting for her around every corner, and she would have to face him and tell him what she really thought of him.
He was the worst kind of person, using her the way he had. She couldn’t believe she’d given him the benefit of so much doubt from the beginning. Okay, maybe not from the very beginning, but after several days, anyway.
“Hey,” Jasmine said after Anna had hugged her and told her she hoped they’d get to work together again sometime soon. “Most of us are going out to the Jolly Ram after to celebrate the end of the shoot. Are you gonna be there?”
Anna shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m exhausted, and I just want to get home as soon as possible so I can rest up.” She didn’t mention what she wanted to rest up from—that being the exhausting nature of her non-relationship with Charlie.
But Jasmine supplied an assumption. “Ooh, you’ve got a new job lined up, don’t you? Lucky!” She gave Anna a fist bump and walked away with a wave.
Anna had several more similar interactions with people.
Everyone invited her to the bar afterward to celebrate, and she turned every one of them down.
Though it was unlikely, there was a chance Charlie would be there, and she didn’t think she could bear the sight of him, not after everything that had happened between them.
Instead, she drove straight back to her hotel room, packed her bags, and headed to the airport alone. Luckily, her car didn’t break down this time, and she didn’t have any run-ins with any other handsome strangers who turned out to be jerks in the end.
She had left her copy of Texas Sunrise back at the hotel.
She had no desire to be reminded of that love story anymore.
She wasn’t even sure she believed in them after this.
If anything, she was walking away from this romantic-comedy shoot feeling more jaded than she ever had, and that was saying a lot.
The flight back was quiet. Anna popped a pill and slept most of the way so she wouldn’t have to entertain her neighbors this time around. No one wanted to hear what she had to say about anything anyway. Not right now. Right now, she was as grumpy as Charlie had been the day she first met him.
The whole way home, everything she did, she did alone.
It didn’t escape her that nothing changed the moment she stepped into her apartment.
There was no one for her to call, no one to let know that she had come back.
She didn’t even have an enthusiastic friend to turn down, someone who was excited she had returned and wanted to go out immediately.
No one was waiting for her, and that idea made her miserable for probably the first time in her life.
Once in her apartment, Anna called no one, texted no one. She just got ready for bed and crashed. She opened her laptop to stream an old show, just so there were voices in the background. Then she tried—and failed, repeatedly—to sleep.
What troubled her most about Charlie—that man—had been how easily he’d won her heart. How had she become so soft and unguarded? He wasn’t even nice. He’d shown her what kind of person he was on day one. So, why had she believed him? Was she that desperate for companionship? Pathetic.
She rolled over and stared at the screen of her computer, watching the story play out.
There was a familiar, quirky romance in the show, one that didn’t offer much in the way of conflict.
It was the sort of love story she liked, one with little to no friction: He liked her.
She didn’t know it. He pined away for ages before he finally got up the nerve to risk everything and ask her out.
In the end, it turned out she had liked him just as much and for just as long as he had liked her.
See? Easy.
Why couldn’t life be that easy for her? It felt like, no matter what she tried, something always had to get in her way.
On the other hand, she was working her dream job, and lots of people didn’t get to have even that.
She should be grateful, she told herself.
But she was struggling to take her own advice.
Maybe she’d be willing to trade this dream job for love, for a family.
Maybe the dream job was just a portion of her life—not a bad one, but one that had to come to an end.
Then again, giving up everything just so she could find the time to win over a man who might break her heart in the end seemed like a bad bet.
No, she’d best hold on to what she had. That made the most sense.
No matter how lonely she was feeling right now, tomorrow would be another day.
Tomorrow, she would start planning for her next job and meet a whole slew of new people, some friendly, some not so much.
Maybe she’d even meet another man to spend some time with.
Either way, by tomorrow, she was sure to have forgotten all about Charlie Greene.