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“You know what I mean though, right?”
“Yes, and you’re going to have to put a lot more oomph into it tomorrow. Otherwise Lang’s going to force us to make out for like, seventeen hours until we get it right.”
“Oh, I’ll bring the oomph,” I assured him. “Just be sure to bring yours.”
“I will. Don’t you worry about that. Now come on, I need a drink.”
As we started walking toward the makeshift parking lot at the edge of the property, I said, “Thanks, Harper.”
“For what?”
“For being nice to me when you could have just sat back and watched me drown.”
“You don’t have to thank me for not being a total asshole.”
I wasn’t looking where I was going and almost ran into Riley. He was coming from the parking lot and putting on a black leather jacket, and he smiled at us and said hello.
“We’re about to go have some drinks,” Harper said. “You’re welcome to join us.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t drink.” Riley turned to me and asked, “Where’s Lorenzo?”
“Catalina, I assume. Why do you ask?”
Riley looked confused. “No, he’s here, on set. I just met him a few minutes ago. Phoenix was issuing him a visitor’s badge.”
“Lorenzo? My Lorenzo?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you see him? He was headed for your trailer when I went to grab my jacket.”
A knot formed in the pit of my stomach, and I murmured, “Oh no. What if he saw us preparing for tomorrow’s love scene and got the wrong idea?”
“That shouldn’t be a big deal. Just explain what we were doing,” Harper said.
“I have to find him first.”
I rushed back to my trailer, and Harper and Riley followed me. Lorenzo wasn’t there, so I went to the production office next, but it was dark and locked up for the night. In fact, most of the set had emptied out, aside from three crew members who were putting away some lights.
I muttered, “I guess he’s on his way back to Catalina.”
Harper asked, “Just like that, without even talking to you?”
“Cheating is a very sensitive issue with him,” I explained. “If he thought I was doing that to him, he probably wouldn’t want to hear my excuses.”
Riley exclaimed, “Well, you have to make him listen!”
“I know, so I need to catch him before he flies back home. Do either of you know if there’s an airport nearby? Not the one in Santa Rosa, but a small one for private planes?”
Harper pulled out his phone and did a quick search, then said, “There’s an airport like that about two miles south of Mendocino, in a town called Little River.”
I asked Riley, “Can you drive me? We need to get there as fast as we can.”
The three of us began running toward the parking lot, and Riley said, “I’m happy to drive you, but my rusty old VW Bug barely goes above sixty.”
“Screw that,” Harper said. “I’m driving.” When he pulled a key fob from his pocket and pressed a button, a sleek, metallic blue convertible lit up, and the roof started to retract automatically.
I asked him, “Are you sure? You barely know me, and this isn’t your problem.”
He grinned at me as he got behind the wheel and started the ignition. “I live for romantic shit like this. Get in, both of you.”
The car was a two-seater, so Riley and I crammed ourselves into the passenger seat and I stretched the seatbelt around both of us. I’d barely clicked it shut before Harper took off like a shot, kicking up a cloud of dust behind us as we left the dirt lot. Riley yelled over the rushing wind, “Just wait until I tell my friends I went on a high-speed chase with Harper Royce in his Tesla Roadster!”
The car was alarmingly fast. Fortunately, Harper slowed down when we drove through town, but then he opened it up again when we were back on the highway. It felt like we reached the airport in about two minutes.
The tiny airport was deserted. Several planes were parked in two rows under a yellowish security light, and as we walked onto the tarmac, Harper asked, “Are any of those his?”
I stared at the planes for a long moment before admitting, “I have no idea. He flies a Cessna, and they all look alike to me. If he beat us here by ten or fifteen minutes, he’d still be doing his preflight check, so I guess we got here first. I’m going to wait and see if he shows up, so you two can take off if you want.”
“No chance,” Harper said, as he sat down on a bench behind a small lobby. “I need to know what happens.”
“So do I,” Riley said, and we sat down, too. After a moment, he asked, “Do you want to try calling him?”
“No. This needs to be face-to-face.”
