This coffee shop was less adorable than the one in the middle of town, but Paris assured her the coffee here was top-notch. It was true that sometimes you couldn’t judge a restaurant by its décor. This place was bright but dated, and not in an intentional way, the way some places will try to look as if they’re straight out of some old era. This was a place that just hadn’t been remodeled since the early aughts.
Anna got herself a blueberry muffin and a decaf latte, and then she let her two companions order their drinks. “Get yourself a snack, too, if you’d like. It’s all covered by the studio.”
“Well, thanks,” Sam said, which was a rare moment of assertiveness from him. He stepped forward to order while Anna found a little table for them.
When the coffee came, Anna tasted it and realized they’d been right. It was delicious, better made than at the place in town. Her two companions came to sit with her for a moment, and they enjoyed some small talk before getting down to business.
The business itself was easy as pie. The council would be happy to approve reshoots. Of course, it was in their interest that the movie be as good as it could be. The better the film, the more fans the town could host. This was the easy part.
The hard part was going to be convincing Charlie. Anna shuddered to even think about how that would go down. They truly hadn’t parted on good terms, and now she was coming back with some undeniably explosive news and the request for a favor. No chance it was going to be half as easy as dealing with the town council.
That night, Anna could barely sleep. Even after she drifted off, she had stress dreams about Charlie, about how he would react to the news. She wasn’t as worried about the reshoot as she was about telling him he was a father. If he said no to the shoot, which he very possibly could, then the director would just have to make do with the scenes he already had. He’d figure something out. This sort of thing happened all the time.
Whatdidn’thappen all the time, she assumed, was a location scout getting knocked up by a grumpy property owner who was deeply unhappy the film had anything to do with his ranch. If he said no, would she be blamed? Would it be her fault? She couldn’t begin to predict tomorrow, and she couldn’t begin to plan what to do if it all fell apart.
CHAPTER 21
ANNA
Anna woke up long before her alarm went off and decided to get up anyway because there was no chance she was going to be able to get back to sleep. She’d been tossing and turning all night in anticipation of seeing Charlie again. Now that she knew she was carrying his child, everything was different. She would almost prefer to be dealing with that grumpy version of him she’d first met. Whatever this version of him was going to be was a complete unknown.
She wandered around town, grabbed breakfast at a local diner—anything to put off going up to the ranch. But, try as she might, the trip was inevitable, and she had to get in her car and go. The drive was pleasant, and the weather was mild. She didn’t need to use air conditioning today; the cool breeze coming in from her open window was enough.
The further out of town she got, the less stressed she became. Her anxiety simply couldn’t compete with the beautiful landscape and the picturesque horizon. It felt like she was driving to the ranch in the old days, before she’d screwedeverything up, back when she was just going there to film a romantic comedy.
She lost herself to the past for a moment, and oddly, the past in Denson Oaks felt too familiar to her. No place had ever really felt like home, but coming back here really was as close as she could imagine to coming home. It was comforting, safe. Even though she was terrified of what she had to do, what she had to confess to, she knew she would be safe in the end.
She realized that feeling of safety came directly from Charlie. Just his presence was comforting. Why that was, she couldn’t have said. It was something deeper than she could point to on the surface. She would have called it a gut feeling if anyone had asked, but she recalled reading that gut feelings were usually the result of instincts. It must have been a million different little things that she instinctively and subconsciously noticed—signs that Charlie was the embodiment of safety and that his home was like a sanctuary to her.
By the time she pulled up his drive, her heart rate had slowed. Amazing what the countryside could do for one’s nerves. But when Charlie stepped out of his little house, she tensed up again.
As soon as she opened her car door, before she even had the chance to step out, he posed his first question. “What areyoudoing here?” And his second. “What do you want?”
She was thrown off by his bluntness for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure. “The crew and I are revisiting some scenes fromTexas Sunrise,” she told him.
“And that means?”
She shrugged. “We need permission to reshoot on your property. We’ll be operating under the same rules as before, as well as any you’d like to add now, obviously.”
She expected him to refuse immediately. She expected to have to convince him. This was going to be a long day, she had told herself. But to her shock, he just nodded and said, “Okay.”
“Wait, what?” She blinked at him.
“I said it’s fine.” He turned and started to walk away from her. “You can reshoot here. Just don’t mess with anything.”
Anna jogged after him. “I’m sorry—could you repeat that?”
He was heading to the barn, likely to take care of his horses. She knew his schedule like the back of her hand, which was how she’d been able to guess that he would be home today at this hour, that he would be at the house, having his second cup of coffee. She already knew him so well. She wondered whether he had as good a read on her.
“I said you can film here,” he repeated. “Just don’t mess with anything. You know the rules, and I trust you to follow them.”
That threw her off more than she would have expected. “You… trust me?”
“Yeah, why shouldn’t I?”
Now, she reallydidhave no idea what to say. Should she remind him of the way she had betrayed him before? Sure, it had been an accidental betrayal, but it definitely hadn’t seemed like he’d seen it that way. She began, “I… well, you said… I mean, I thought you told me I shouldn’t have…” She only stopped stumbling over her own words when he started laughing.
“You always take things too hard,” he said. “I was angry, sure. But things make me angry from time to time. My dad always said, ‘Charlie, you’re good at gettin’ angry, but you’re good at gettin’ over it, too.’ I speak my mind. But that doesn’t make me a tyrant.”
