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Fifteen

Micah ranhis hand through his hair as he waited for the hotel clerk to make him a new key card. He thought he’d made progress with Maddie that day. Their run—okay, walk—had been tough to get through, even without the physical exertion, but it had ended on a promisingnote.

The night’s shoot, the last before a much needed day off, had gone well too. Except for a minor awkward moment early in the evening when Heather had tried to resume their occasional sexual activity. Uh, no. If not for Maddie, maybe, but that was hard to even imagine because Maddie was all he could think about.

But after that the shoot had been nice. For the first time since he’d arrived in Colorado, he didn’t try to avoid or seduce Maddie. Instead, he’d stood for all his focus measurements, chatted with her between takes, exchanged glances with her when Joe got off track. It was all natural and easy andfun.

On top of that, his acting had been on fire. He’d remembered all his lines and hit all his marks. The scenes had gone so well, they’d wrapped early.

And that was when things started going downhill.

He looked around for Maddie the second they were done, to no avail. He even asked others about her whereabouts, not caring about what they thought or what rumors his inquiry started. No one had an answer. Then he walked down to video village where Adam said she’d taken the camera hard drives. He didn’t find her there either.

He decided to hit his trailer and shower, then search for her again. When he couldn’t find her after he’d cleaned up, he wondered if she was avoiding him again. He considered calling her, pulled out his phone more than once to do so, but he didn’t want to push her. She’d said she’d consider giving them a shot. He had to trusther.

Then to top off his already anxious mood, he couldn’t for the life of him find his room key and had to have a new one made at the frontdesk.

He pulled out his phone again while the night clerk fiddled with the key machine. While he didn’t want to be pushy, he wanted Maddie to know he was thinking of her. He deliberated over what to text her for an embarrassingly long length of time. In the end he went with short and simple. Sweet dreams, baby.

She didn’t return his text, and he worried. But what could hedo?

Nothing. Nothing butwait.

By the time he stood outside his room, he was tired and frustrated. And alone.

He considered knocking on Fudge’s door. The idea of entering an empty suite was almost too desolate to imagine. But Fudge had taken off while Micah was still searching for Maddie. He was most likely already asleep. And what use would Fudge be in keeping Micah’s mind off a woman?

With a heavy sigh, he stuck the new key in the card reader to open thedoor.

And there she was. Standing in his room like a vision.

He stood blinking in the threshold.

“Um, hi,” shesaid.

Lost for words, he silently stepped in the room letting the door close behind him. She’s here, he thought. She’s here. Everything but that splendid realization dissolvedaway.

He set his bag down and cocked his head, looking over the beautiful specimen beforehim.

“I, uh, don’t know if it’s okay that I’m here.” She played with the hem of her tank top. “And I’m sorry if it’snot.”

He opened his mouth to answer, to say it was more than okay, especially if she was there for the reason he hoped. But she continued talking before he had the chance.

“Actually, I’m really not sorry. I need to be here. I want to be here, too, don’t get me wrong. I mean I really, really want to be here especially after everything you said today. Earlier today. When we were running, I mean. And tonight too. Nothing specific from tonight, but just it was really great to talk to you, and youknow…”

Hmm, so she’d felt it too. Her nervousness was adorable. As if he didn’t want her completely.

“Anyway, besides wanting to be here, I need to be here because I’m going to go crazy if things continue like they have. Well, not like today—today was good—but before today. And actually, I think I may have already gone crazy, but that’s not really relevant to this conversation.”

He watched her eyes as she spoke. They were so expressive, changing as quickly as her rambling took a new direction. Beautiful and engaging.

She took a deep breath and he inhaled with her, syncing naturally toher.

“I have to be honest and tell you that it’s hard for me to trust that you’ll give us a chance. But if I don’t give us a chance either, then I’m no better than you. So I have to just throw my hat in and hope. Hope you do too, I mean. Because I have no idea where we’ll go after that. I mean, what if I totally hate you? You are an actor and I’ve always been turned off by the talent.”

He covered his mouth to keep from laughing at her delightful rambling.

Her voice dropped to a hush. “And I do want to spend time with you in and outside of bed. And since we’ve spent all our time together outside of bed, and since we can’t seem to keep our hands off each other…”