Page 33 of How To Plot a Payback

“The point is, Lance,” I say, touching his arm and settling him back onto his stool. “I’m giving you . . . an ultimatum.”

A whoosh of wind blows through the room as 250 windpipes inhale in unison.

Silence.

Silence so complete you could hear a pin drop.

I worry at my bottom lip as the seconds tick by—partly because I’m actually quite terrible at improv and genuinely in a little distress, and partly because it’s at the very least a good action for the cameras.

Kye just sits there. Frozen.

I’m starting to worry he’s going to give up with a laugh, or that Mark, the director, will call it, or both.

It’s all so tense and heavy, in fact, that I’m about to call it myself with a laugh. Toss my head back. Throw it off as a funny little prank on the audience. Who knows? Perhaps this’ll get used for a snappy little blooper during credits.

And just as I begin to put the phone down and throw in the towel, a worrying creak sounds from the seat beneath me. I’m about to set my feet on the floor when a flash crosses Kye’s eyes that is definitely not scripted, and before I know it his arms lift me off my seat and right into his lap.

His biceps have me entirely engulfed (something the producers have suggested he tone down over the years, given he’s supposed to be an engineer, not Thor the Undercover Engineer), barely leaving room for the cameras and audience to see my eyes, let alone anything else.

“What the heck was that?” I hiss in this cocoon built for two.

“What am I doing?” he replies loudly, with a lilt in his voice. “Saving you from disaster, Ashley Krane.”

We both look over at the barstool, which is clearly not causing a disaster but sitting rather innocently on its three legs.

He pauses. Kicks the bottom rung with his shoe, and with a crash it falls onstage.

A laugh ripples around the room.

He smiles back at me.

He’s so intense, his expression laser focused as he holds me inches away from him. He adds softly, “And giving you an ultimatum right back.”

“Me?” I say. “You can’t do that. I’m ultimatuming you.”

“That’s not a word, but fine,” Kye/Lance says with a soft smile. “But first let me tell you my demands, Ashley Krane. Either you marry me and we live happily ever after in my apartment with the creaky door and the neighbor who rolls bowling balls across the ceiling at 2:00 a.m. . . .”

There it is again. A typhoon-level gust of swoony wind caused by the audience’s collective gasp.

I pause. Fight a grin, because I know where this is going and, wouldn’t you know, it feels right. We’ve never actually gotten to this point before. To a real proposal. The writers have always tried to string our relationship out as far as possible, fearing even introducing the concept of a wedding, as if marriage would be the show’s doom. I can actually feel a zing of cheer rising in my chest for the imaginary character inside me. Like I’ve been reading a book about someone who wants that one big thing for ten years and then suddenly, there it is. At last.

I swing the briefest look over to Mark. His eyes are narrow. The writers are huddled in my periphery. One has his hands over his head like he’s watching the final four seconds of a football game. Two of the younger, fresher staff are flipping pages frantically like they’ve missed something. Even Mr. Goodwin is standing beside the director’s chair, stoic as he holds on to the back of it.

My voice is soft. “Or?”

“Or I marry you and we live happily ever after in yours.”

To say the room erupts with as much gusto as in season 2, when we kissed for the first time, is an understatement.

And then he kisses me, just as people jump to standing, screaming and cheering, and Mark throws the script in the air.

Papers flutter down around him as I’m enveloped in this embrace, this totally unscripted, out-of-the-woodwork embrace. And out-of-the-woodwork proposal. And out-of-the-woodwork scene.

Kye has gone straight for the Airport Farewell kiss here—a passionate, no-holds-barred style. A logical choice, if a little too real.

I take a moment to slam my heel into his foot.

For the record, we have a dozen snogging styles on set. There’s the Will That Other Guy Text Me? tentative kiss, where you’re in for it at the end of the date but at the back of your mind you’re thinking, But what if this other guy calls? The Tick Check kiss, where hands are flying, crawling over every (highly appropriate) part of you like hikers after a ten-mile trek. Then of course a least favorite around these parts, the Sloth, where the director reeeeeally wants a slow, romantic kiss and you’re stuck to each other’s faces playing Scrabble in your head while cameras crawl around you. Let me just say, the cameras pull magic out of those shots.