Page 69 of Love On and Off Set

He snagged the other two suitcases.

The hotel security chief held the door.

We exited.

And I tried not to panic at the thought of being alone in a confined space with Freddie for the next six weeks.

Then the cast and some of the crew were headed north. We had a couple of days’ shooting in the Yukon, which was standing in for Alaska.

I can do this. I can do this. I can—

Fuck it.

I’m screwed.

Chapter Six

Freddie

Iloved the townhome Aunt Trudy left me. I hadn’t expected such a generous gift. My other cousins might’ve been jealous—two even threatened to sue—but in the end everyone acknowledged I’d spent the most time with her when we were young. I’d been gutted that she died when I’d been at Stanford.

Between her passing and Andreas’s inconstancy—read, dumping me—coming home had been an easy choice. Going back to school with a slightly altered course of study had been a no-brainer as well. Switching from dead British authors to mostly alive Canadian ones had been a challenge. Pursuing a doctorate had never been on my bucket list, but I enjoyed reading and had a knack for being able to understand subtext. Or to find meaning in ordinary things. Or, on occasion, to just make shit up. Harder for a dead author to dispute an interpretation of their work. The live ones hadn’t come at me yet either.

I didn’t share that philosophy with my thesis supervisor—I didn’t figure she’d be very impressed with my way of thinking.

Andreas spun in my guest room. “You’re putting me in here?”

“Uh, yeah.”

He pointed to my desk.

I waved him off. “I can work at the kitchen bar on the island. I often prefer there. The view from here is…absorbing.” I had a view straight out to the water and then across to Vancouver. Just as stunning as his had been from the hotel—only I was much closer to the ground.

He strode to the window and pulled back the sheer. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah. So you can see why I don’t study in here often.”

“Still…” He pointed to my floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, crammed with everything from the latest thriller to a rare copy of Ulysses. I loved Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Hill, and Madeleine Thien, but James Joyce was also a favorite. “I’ve read every book in here.” Oops. Didn’t mean to boast.

His jaw dropped.

“Well, all those years of undergrad and then my Master’s degree. I had time…”

“And you were a personal trainer.” His brow furrowed.

“That was…for fun? For spending money? I needed a break from all the reading, and I figured I was good with people, so why not?”

“You didn’t come back to study that? You could’ve studied to be a physiotherapist.”

I waved him off.

He held my gaze.

“I still loved literature. Despite...” Plus, certifying to be a personal trainer had taken a fraction of the time it would’ve to become a physio. Between spending time helping people get fit and burying myself in books, I’d had a good life.

Have a good life.

Just because the man I’d once professed to love, and who had spurned that love, was now in my home, didn’t mean I wasn’t still happy. “Look, settle in. Closet’s practically empty. I’ll rustle up some grub.”