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Did hehaveto be so smart?
“Not until you stopped me.” She’d been too deep in her head. And that was scary. She would have realized where she was before the pier ended…right?
“You really scared me tonight.”
“I’m sorry.” She had failed again. “I promise not to do something that stupid next time.”
“Next time what? Next time you blame yourself for something out of your control?”
She examined her hands clenched around the white mug. He didn’t understand.
The room was silent for so long, she met TJ’s eyes and found him looking at her. Just…looking. Then he flipped his hand through the air as if he’d decided he was crazy. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“Rolando’s part.”
“TJ…”
He held both hands up like a shield. “You know I can learn the lines. I’m a rotten actor, but it looks like it’s me or nothing.”
Her jaw trembled. He’d do that for her? A strange feeling spread in her chest until it filled her whole being. “I’ll take you.”
His face shifted into a sideways smile. “I thought so.”
Their gazes locked, and Melody stared at his face, desperate to preserve this feeling. She didn’t know what the feeling even was. Only that it was wonderful, and she never wanted it to go away.
“Your clothes should be dry.” TJ broke the moment as he looked at the now-silent dryer in the hallway closet. “Change, and I’ll take you home. Look, I drove in a blizzard for you. Make that twice. Never doubt your worth, Melody Reed.”
After he dropped her off, she sat in bed with the covers over her legs and read Jeremy’s reply to her emotional message. He must have been busy because he’d just replied, but he said all the right things to encourage her. She replied back with appreciation and a brief recap of what had happened, leaving out anything that could be misconstrued. She didn’t want Jeremy to think she was more interested in TJ than him.
Even if she was.
She remembered TJ’s words from earlier. His voice rang in her ear.Never doubt your worth, Melody Reed.Warmth rivaling the toastiest room on this cold winter’s night flooded through her being. TJ Halverson would be an easy man to fall in love with.
She knew. Because she already had.
Chapter Six
This wasn’t working.
They were two days into practice, and TJ already knew more than half of the script. The problem wasn’t his lines. His memorization skills were the envy of the entire biology class in high school. So much so that the teacher recommended he go to med school based on his memory alone.
TJ had considered it. His dad was a cardiologist, after all. And he had many interests. But there was nothing he loved more than writing. And not much he liked less than acting.
“Cut, cut,” Melody’s voice rang out, later than he expected considering the poor job he was doing. “Start over at Act II, Scene IV.” Her tone was strained.
Since her blizzard run on Thursday, TJ had slept little, spending every spare moment with the script. Yesterday he’d gone into work at seven in the morning so he could leave early, and Melody had pushed back the usual practice time from 2:30 to 4:00. He had still been late, and their first run-through was brutal.
He spent most of last night—in between saying his lines to the mirror—wondering what had possessed him to volunteer for this gig. The only conclusion he made was that he loved Melody even more than he had previously realized.
This morning Lucy hunted him down after her brunch with Melody, claiming his best friend couldn’t stop singing his praises. He didn’t buy it. Desperation filled people with gratitude that tended to fade when the crisis passed. He shouldn’t get his hopes up.
“TJ, you look like a board of wood. Loosen up a little. Move your arms. Drop your shoulders. Anything…lifelike.”
He cringed at the exasperation in her tone, but his anxiety was sky high. When he agreed to this role, he didn’t realize a kiss was part of the deal. He’d only ever kissed once, and since the girl told him the next day they were better off remaining friends, he could only assume his kiss had been sorely lacking.
The thought of kissing with an audience made him queasy. Really, really queasy.
