But there was no one around. It was as quiet as it had been when she came back in from outside.
She headed out of the door, palms slick on the keys, hoping that Sibyl hadn’t been going in this direction, then hurried down the back staircase, pulling her coat on and looping her bag over her shoulder.
As soon as this bit was done, she was out of here. She’d unlock Rowan, run upstairs, throw the keys back onto the table and hightail it out of there. Would she be invited out to Sicily for the long haul? Unlikely. Did she care by this point? Debatable.
In some ways this whole debacle had at least proven to her that the actors she’d be working with were not that scary. It was conceivable that she could converse with them one to one and not freeze up.
Shame that the same event that had brought her that realisation was also responsible for making her seem completely incompetent in the eyes of her boss. Life: constantly giving with one hand and flushing her self-respect down the pan with the other.
Rowan
It turned out that being in the dark storeroom was really not as pleasant when he was on his own – just like he’d suggested to Lila earlier. In fact, it bordered on claustrophobic.
There was literally nothing left he could do to get himself out now. His phone had finally blinked out of battery, he couldn’t fit through the window, and no one could hear him. All he could do was rely on the kindness of a stranger whom he’d caused a whole bunch of inconvenience to. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she did leave him down here to go catch her bus.
She wasn’t going to though. He was pretty certain of that.
But that didn’t mean she was going to have the means to liberate him quickly. It depended on whether she could hunt down the keys – by stealth or other means – and if she couldn’t it was basically down to how long a security guard, or the fire brigade took to bail him out. Madness. All because he hadn’t been looking where he was going.
To keep himself busy, he attempted to tidy up the boxes they’d had to move in order to access the window. He had no idea what he was doing though. It felt a bit like he was entombing himself, as he piled them back in front of the window and extinguished the last of the weak light.
Once he was done, he sat down on the steps. Or he tried to. He’d never been very good at keeping still. Especially when uncomfortable thoughts were pressing in on him. Now that the worry about how Siobhan was doing and whether the baby was okay had been alleviated, he was left with worrying about how they would all take it when he announced he wasn’t going to be around next week. And whether or not he’d be able to pull off this image makeover. What on earth was he going to have to put up with in Italy, with Cassandra and this media training?
He’d been looking forward to at least one week where he could chill out and go back over his notes on his character for the film shoot. Set in the Second World War, it was definitely an action film, but there were also plenty of opportunities for him to show more range than the brave, cocky, smart-arse superhero he’d been playing for the past few years.
Gerrard hadn’t really wanted him to take on the role. Said that it wasn’t going to appeal to his target audience, but with the other franchise getting delayed, they’d ended up agreeing it was better for him to keep in the public eye than take a break between longer-term roles – especially when there was no guarantee he was going to get that role. What with Rowan being such easy pickings in the eyes of the media…
Pacing didn’t stop the thoughts from swirling around his head, but at least it dealt with some of the tension, even if he was probably pumping out more blood from his hand this way.
The scrape of metal on metal came to him and then the door creaked open.Hallelujah!
He squinted in the flood of yellow light from the hallway outside the door, his eyes struggling to get used to the contrast. Then his focus came back and there she was, leaning against the heavy door to keep it open.
Lila.
She was petite – he could tell that of course when he was lifting her to help her out the window – but now he could see her face properly, instead of just glimpses of it, he saw that she had the same delicacy in her features. A narrow nose with the slightest snub at the tip, fine eyebrows, a heart-shaped face to go with that heart-shaped mouth and gleaming come-to-bed eyes. His mouth went dry at the thought that they’d been trapped together for all that time, and he hadn’t realised how utterly gorgeous she was.
‘Hey.’ She studied him from across the small space and her cheeks grew rosy. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ he lied. He was woozy all of a sudden, but he didn’t think it was anything to do with his hand.
‘Wanna get out of here then, or has it grown on you?’ The corner of her mouth kicked up.
Yeah, frankly, the idea of being somewhere confined and private, no one knowing where they were,didappeal to him a lot more now. But he wasn’t going to suggest that, like a total creep. ‘I’m ready to go.’
‘Great, ’cause I have to return these keys to Sibyl’s desk before she comes back and realises they’re gone.’
He nodded. Of course. She’d liberated him and here he was dragging his heels like he’d never seen a pretty girl before. Although, to be fair to himself, it wasn’t just because she was pretty. It was also because she’d been sweet and funny and clever, and he’d been attracted to her before he even saw her properly.
But he was going to be in a no-dating zone for the summer.
‘Right. Sorry.’ He moved past her into the hall and she followed. ‘Thanks for doing that.’
She shrugged and headed for the stairwell, keeping her voice low. ‘It wasn’t too hard. She was on her way to a meeting or something anyway.’
‘D’you want me to drop them off, so you can split?’
‘No. Probably best if it’s me, just to stop her from getting suspicious if she is there. I could just say I forgot something and had to come back down.’
