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Four minutes? A lot could happen in four minutes. Her fingers were moving, massaging his arm, and I wanted to chuck my sandwich into the camera shot so they wouldn’t be able to immortalize this moment on film.
“Isn’t it your job to protect him from unwanted advances?” I whisper-yelled.
Chad looked unfazed. “Who said this is unwanted?”
I swallowed a scoff. Rhett looked pleasant enough, but I thought I could detect a hint of unease about him. He couldn’t be enjoying this woman’s advances, surely. She wasn’t me.
In all seriousness, though, Rhett had made it very clear on his website that these dates would not lead to anything physical. Hugging was the maximum physical contact allowed. They couldn’t even have a kiss on the cheek, according to the fine print.
“Trust me,” Chad said, popping the final bite of his hot sandwich into his mouth. “If the situation needed intervening, if Rhettwantedme to step in, I would know.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Because of your telepathy.”
His nose wrinkled. “No. Because I’ve worked for him for almost ten years.”
That shut my mouth. The next few minutes passed in excruciating sluggishness until Chad got a nod from Bridget, and they both moved to end the date and escort Heather Balinski from the building.
There was a flurry of activity as the hired crew moved to clear the mostly untouched dinner and clean the area. Rhett stood near a window away from the ledge, his hands in his pockets and his shoulder pressed against the window. Something about his concentration screamed sorrow, and I wanted to smooth my thumb along those wrinkles lining his forehead, much as I had smoothed my sponges over them earlier.
“Glad I could be here to listen to that cackle all night,” I said, slipping up to stand at the tall window beside him. “Someone needs to record her voice for a Disney villain. It has the perfect tone.”
“I didn’t notice,” he said. Oh, so the man was a gentleman now? He could call me names that implied failing school and hair he didn’t like, but the woman who was dramatically laughable was protected.
Apparently this was a button I needed to press. “You could probably help your date get a job, couldn’t you? Mr. Disney Prince himself.”
Rhett shot me a wry smile. “I am never doing that again. So no, I don’t think I can call in any favors in a special effort to insult my guest.”
My chin dropped in feigned outrage, but I felt the pang of chastisement. I didn’t mean to insult her either, but I could see how unkind my comment had been when he said it like that. I rallied. “It is a compliment to be compared to a Disney character.”
“Oh, yes, of course. Everyone wishes to be a villain.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” I lied.
His amusement proved that he didn’t believe me. “Right. That’s why you were so offended to be compared to a beauty-school dropout.”
“Frenchy is not a villain. That was umbrage at being called unqualified for my job.”
Something passed over his face then, and I wanted to unpack it, to dig deep and discover what about qualifications caused him to lose his perfect mask for a quarter of a second.
Rhett turned toward the window, his hands still slung in his pockets, the top button of his tieless shirt open in effortless magnetism. And thatsmell. I could slip into it and find myself in a GQ fragrance flap.
“Being up this high is always such a trip, isn’t it?” he said. “I can’t help but think of all the tiny people in their tiny cars and houses.”
“And wonder how many of them have seen your movies?” I asked.
“No. I wonder about how each of them is unique. Different likes, dislikes, what makes them tick, what trauma they’ve overcome or trials they face.”
I swallowed hard. That had been much deeper than I expected from Rhett.
His voice softened, and he continued. “I want to know what drives them.”
“Uber, mostly.”
“We’re in Chicago, so probably trains.”
I suppressed the need to joke further. “Is that what made you want to be an actor? Because you’re interested in what makes people tick?”
“No.” He didn’t elaborate.
