Crashing Into Love (8 page)

“You know it.” Shea clinked glasses again.

“I hate that I’m nervous just because I’m working with Steve Hileberg. I rarely get nervous anymore,” Trish admitted. “I have all my lines memorized and everything, but the production assistant is super stressed. When I arrived yesterday, he was running around like there was a fire in his pants, and that makes it harder to remain calm, especially when Hileberg has a reputation for being a hothead perfectionist.”

“Why is the production assistant so stressed?” Fiona knew it was probably a naive question, but she assumed the actors would be more nervous than the assistants. Of course, she had no idea what a production assistant really did.

“They pretty much have to be running at full speed all the time. The main PA gets all sorts of hell if anything goes wrong. Let me check my calendar and see what’s on tap for this week to make sure we’re on the same page.” Shea pulled out a day planner and studied their upcoming schedule. “You have a preproduction cast dinner a week from Friday night.”

“You must have that date wrong. Production starts tomorrow, so that wouldn’t be
pre
production.” Trish flagged the waitress over and asked for the check.

“I know. They should just call it the
cast dinner
. Apparently, Zane Walker wasn’t free until then, and you know the world revolves around Zane.” Shea reached for her wallet. “I’d like to revolve around Zane. He’s totally yummy.”

“You can have Zane. I only want Jake, and I have a feeling he might freak when he realizes I’m here.” Fiona reached for her purse. “I’ve got it, sis.”

Trish slapped her credit card on the table, stopping them both. “My treat. You’re my PR rep, and you’re my personal assistant. This one’s on me.” She waved her credit card at the waitress.

“Thanks, Trish,” Shea and Fiona said in unison.

“You also have a meeting with the set director tomorrow morning, and you need to be on set at least an hour early for your scene tomorrow afternoon in case they’re ready early,” Shea said to Trish. “But you know this already.”

“Old hat to me. Get there early or they freak out.” She rolled her eyes. “Fi’s got all this in her calendar, and she’s already given me hell about making all the meetings and scenes on time. Fi, even if you and Jake become an item, you’ll still help me keep my schedule, right?” Trish tapped her finger nervously on the table, but Fiona knew Trish would do just fine without her. She’d been acting for years and didn’t even need an assistant. She was just trying to give Fiona a sense of feeling needed, and she appreciated her efforts.

“Of course. You do know I might suck as an assistant, right? I’ll do my best to nag you and make sure you don’t miss anything. But if by some miracle Jake and I do end up together, all bets are off. I’ll try to do a good job, but my brain may end up in the clouds.”

“I’m sure it will. I’ll send you texts, Fi, so you don’t forget.” Shea put her purse in her lap. “I won’t be on the set, but, Trish, you don’t even need us. I think we all know that.”

“What? Yes, I do! I need you like I need chocolate. You comfort me.” She fluttered her eyelashes with the tease. “So, Fi. You didn’t tell Jake you were coming?” Trish shifted her eyes to Shea in a way that translated to,
I’m not sure that was such a great idea
.

“It’s not like we had a chance to catch up and talk about work. It was all I could do to remember to breathe when we were together.” Fiona had been worried about the same thing ever since she’d seen Jake at the fair. “Besides, this was
your
idea.”

Trish held her hands up. “Agreed. It was totally my idea for you to come and try to work things out with him. It’s what you’ve wanted the whole time I’ve known you. But given that you saw him and didn’t warn him you’d be here…” She scrunched her face and sucked in air between her teeth. “I just worry. I mean, what if he’s got a girlfriend on set—or six, given his reputation?”

Trish’s words hit too close to home. Fiona tried to ignore the pain ripping through her chest at the truth behind them. “That wouldn’t change if he knew I was coming, so…”

“Fiona can handle it. Right, Fi?” Shea patted her on the back, then turned her attention to Trish. “And if not, then we’re here to get her so drunk she won’t remember why she was here in the first place, and I’ll hire you a personal assistant, so Fiona can go out to the desert and dig up rocks until she feels better.”

“God, I love you.” Fiona hugged Shea. “I’ll be fine. I know all about his reputation. Although he claims he didn’t sleep with Sarah Chelsum.”

“The girl from the bar that you texted me about?” Trish asked.

“Uh-huh. He said he just took her home.”

“That’s true,” Shea agreed. “After you told me what he said, I asked Jeanette, who asked Lisa, who asked Cara, who is Sarah’s very best friend. She confirmed it. Not that Sarah didn’t try to get all up in his junk, but he turned her down and left her at the front door, and apparently she tried to play it off like he didn’t until I started nosing around.”

Fiona couldn’t repress the smile spreading across her lips. “So…I guess I did have an effect on
Mr. I’m Not the Same Guy I Was
, after all.”

She tucked that little confidence booster away. She needed every bit of confidence she could muster after the way Jake had left her standing there behind the snack building at the fair.

IT FELT DAMN good to be home. Jake stretched out on the leather sofa in the expansive living room of his Mediterranean-style home, closed his eyes, and reveled in the comfort of being back in his world, where he was king and no one passed judgment on him. He’d arrived home and found a group of friends already celebrating his return. This was a common occurrence, as his friends knew that his backyard was there to be enjoyed, and when he was in LA, he often left his doors unlocked for his buddies to come and go as they pleased. It had driven Pierce mad the last time he’d visited, because the house was never quiet. Jake liked it that way. The less time spent alone and in his own head, the better. And since running into Fiona, he needed chaos to silence the echoes of her voice. His thoughts had taken all sorts of reverse sprints, revisiting their encounters and dredging up memories that sent him into a tailspin he had yet to recover from.

He felt the feathery touch of delicate fingers trail up his abs and grinned as the woman leaned in close. Even with his eyes closed, he knew it was Jerria. Her perfume gave her away.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d get back,” she said in a throaty voice.

Jerria had acted in one of the flicks where Jake had been a stuntman a few months ago. He couldn’t remember which one, and as she pressed her breasts against his chest, he wondered why he felt claustrophobic instead of hot and bothered in a good way. She kissed his neck and made a sweet little noise in her throat that should have turned him on, but it had the reverse effect. He pressed himself in to the couch and gently pushed her back.

“Hey, Jer.” He pushed up to a seated position, trying to hide the annoyance in his voice. Why the hell did he go from being relaxed and happy to be surrounded by friends to wishing he were alone? He glanced out the back doors, remembering when Pierce had come to visit when he and Rebecca had first begun dating. His brother’s voice came slamming back to him.
There’s a hell of a lot more than tits and ass out there waiting for you.
Jake had laughed him off, thought he was being punked. But as his mind reverted back to Fiona’s hopeful eyes, the feel of her close to him, the way his body reacted to her with something much more profound than merely a desire for sex, he realized his brother wasn’t joking.

Jerria had blond hair down to her ass and wore a skimpy yellow bikini. Pert nipples gave away her aroused state. A week ago she’d have been the perfect welcome-home gift. A no-strings-attached romp all wrapped up in a teeny-weeny bikini. Now he was bothered by the assumption that he’d fall into bed with her—even if the assumption would have been true a week ago.

This was totally messed up.

“I’ve missed you.” She ran her fingers through his hair.

Jake gripped her wrist and pulled it from his hair; then he slid her other hand off his thigh, where she’d taken purchase like a cat clawing its prey. He pushed to his feet and paced, leaving her to stare, jaw agape, from where she was kneeling beside the couch.

He was just as confused as she was.

“I’m too tired for this,” he mumbled. Maybe that was it. Like hell that was it. Fiona had gotten under his skin.

“Jake Braden too tired for sex?” She moved to his side, and he shrugged away from her pawing fingers. “I’m sure I can wake you up.”

Everything felt wrong and grated on his nerves. The music was suddenly too loud. Jerria standing in his living room in a bikini with lust in her eyes made him feel dirty. The din of his friends out back felt like an intrusion. All combined, it riled him like fingernails scratching a blackboard.

He needed to escape. He snagged his keys and headed out the front door.

It was dark, and the cool night air woke him up. What was he doing? His eyes swept over the four-car garage, his Harley and Ducati sitting out front, and past that, the seven-acre estate. He debated climbing on one of his bikes and driving fast and far, but something told him that when he returned home, the demons would still be haunting him.

He headed back inside and did what he’d never done in all the years he’d lived in Los Angeles. Instead of opening his doors to stars and models, he kicked them out, reclaiming his house. He ushered his friends out the door with excuses of needing to prepare for his upcoming gig.

Unfortunately, that left him with silence.

Jake wasn’t very good with silence.

He sank into the couch and palmed his cell phone. There were any number of people he could call and shoot the breeze with, but that would negate having the house to himself. He didn’t want to shoot the shit. He wanted to understand what the hell was happening in his head. He leaned his elbows on his knees, then sat back with a frustrated sigh and stared up at the ceiling.

Jake clenched his jaw against the nagging realization that he’d been pushing so far away that he’d fooled himself into believing it didn’t exist.

Fiona hadn’t just gotten under his skin—in sixteen years, she’d never left.

TUESDAY MORNING WAS a blur of activity. Trish’s meeting with the set director went on forever and turned into a meeting with several other “set” people. Working on the set of a movie was much more chaotic than Fiona had anticipated, and she was only Trish’s assistant. It seemed everyone was always rushing, and tension simmered among the people in charge. Almost everyone had a radio or a headset, and messages were constantly coming through. Fiona made the mistake of asking someone if he needed to respond—she’d thought he hadn’t heard the message squawk through. Then he’d shot her an arctic stare, shaken his head, and walked away without responding. Luckily, Zane Walker’s personal assistant, Patch Carver, a brown-haired twentysomething guy with chiseled features and a sleeve of tattoos, had clued her in to the fact that no one answered radio calls unless they were meant for them, even though they were all relaying messages on the same channels.

Now it was midafternoon, and Fiona was watching Trish await her scene. Trish looked cute in a pair of khaki shorts and a white button-down top that was open to her naval and tied at the waist. She wore leather hiking boots and thick socks, and all Fiona could think about was how hot it was on the set with the bright lights and how hot Trish’s feet must be. They were filming on a set that had been constructed to look like the inside of a cave. Fiona was trying to remain silent, having already seen too many glares from the director aimed at two men who must have made sounds that she hadn’t heard.

Fiona knew Trish was nervous by the way her finger kept dragging against the edge of her shorts. That was her thing. She used to do it before exams. Fiona called Trish’s nervous habit
fringe-seeking therapy
. She wished she could run over and tell Trish how great she was going to be and make her laugh so she would calm down. But she didn’t dare move as Trish walked onto the cavernous set and recited her lines while Fiona silently cheered her on.

Fiona spotted Zane approaching Trish. He and Jake looked so much alike that she did a double take. Zane’s dark hair was cropped short, and his square jaw sported about five days’ worth of scruff. He was well built, though narrower through the chest and arms than Jake. While Jake walked with purpose, Zane walked with an air of knowing he was being watched. She hadn’t seen Jake since she’d arrived in LA, but she knew from Trish’s script that Zane had a scene where he climbed the side of the interior of the cave and then fell into a pool of what the script stated as
muck
. She was fairly certain that the man who kept checking his shoes for dirt wasn’t about to get his hands dirty by climbing up the wall, much less fall into a pit of muck.

“Cut!” an authoritative voice boomed through the set.

There was a flourish of activity and urgent commands as people ran onto the set. Fiona watched, totally clueless as to what she was supposed to do. Should she see if Trish needed anything? Should she offer her water? One woman primped Trish’s hair while another pressed a makeup pad to her cheeks and forehead.

“Relax. They’re just getting ready for the stuntman to come on set.” Patch stood beside Fiona with a clipboard in his hands and a headset connected to his ear.

She shouldn’t feel like her heart stopped beating or her lungs collapsed at the thought of Jake showing up. He was the reason she was there, after all. But she had no control over her emotions when it came to Jake.

“Oh,” was all she could manage. She heard Jake’s voice before she saw him approaching out of her peripheral vision as he patted Patch on the back.

“Good to see you, Pat—”

Apparently, he had about the same reaction to Fiona as she did to him. Jake’s brows sank into a confused slash. He stopped walking, which worried Fiona. He couldn’t hold up the scene, and everyone was turning, watching. Waiting.