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“It’s a little bit of a drive, but I’ll try to hurry.” Kandace sounded sympathetic.
“I’ll be okay until then.” I managed to make the words sound convincing, but I couldn’t hide my grunt when I tried to put my seatbelt on, and another jolt of pain spiked up my arm.
The way Kandace furrowed her brow looked concerned rather than annoyed. “I’ll help.” She leaned across me from her seat, to grab the belt.
She smelled like lilacs and fresh soap, and I wasn’t sure which was worse—that I wanted to lean in and sniff her hair, or that I was half hard from her fingers brushing my skin.
When she snapped the belt in place and straightened in her seat, her face was flushed pink.
The silence that settled back in was awkward. How was I supposed to clear up the earlier misunderstanding? I might be wittier if I had all night to come up with my half of the script… and could think more clearly.
“Oh.” The startled noise Kandace made had me concerned. “I know why I recognize you.”
No. Please no. Please let her be mistaken.
“You’re from Donovan’s Wilde Ride. You were his best friend.”
Fuck. “I’d rather not do this.” There was no reason to take my issues with my past out on her, but my politeness tended to vanish when people wanted to gush about the show or Austin.
“Do… what?” Kandace asked.
“Any number of things that are about to happen. I’d rather not talk about the show. If you loved it, if you hated it, I’m grateful-slash-sorry you had that experience. I can’t introduce you or your son to Austin, and we’re not secret lovers who have kept our life together hidden from the media for the last fifteen years.”
That should about cover it.
Kandace glanced at me, her expression… sympathetic? “Okay.”
“Like that?” The conversation never went this way.
She shrugged. “You don’t want to talk about it, and now that I know why you’re familiar, I can stop wondering.”
“And now I’m the jerk again.” I couldn’t get this right.
One corner of her mouth tugged up. “Believe it or not, I get it. The way people react when they find out who my brother is… I get it.”
I’d had people tell me that in the past—that they understood why I didn’t like talking about the show or my co-start—but that was typically followed by another question or statement about the same topic.
With Kandace, I believed she meant it. That she understood and that she’d drop the subject.
“Okay.” A chuckle slipped out when I realized I’d just parroted her.
Her laugh was light. Addictive. “You do have me at a disadvantage, though.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’ve read the screenplay you’re working on—you know a lot more about me than I do about you.”
There was that. “Are you going to try to tell me none of that is exaggerated?” I’d heard Andrew spin making an egg into an epic odyssey of trial and tribulation, and there were parts of his script that were extra-extra.
“The parts about me are pretty accurate.” Kandace navigated traffic without pause, as if this was a route she drove on a regular basis, and it was no big deal. “There are parts that are close to accurate. I did, in fact, tend to Mrs. Havisham, though I didn’t know what to make of her in her wedding dress, with her desiccated cake, the first time I made her acquaintance.“
The elements of her story whirred in my brain and clicked together in a whole picture that was not one of her. “That’s Great Expectations.”
“Is it?” A hint of playfulness slid into her voice.
I wanted to sayyou’re prettier than Gwyneth Paltrow, and so far a lot kinder too, but the compliment referencing the wrong character plus a movie adaptation might strike me out. “Almost certain of it.”
“Oh. I thought it was Andrew’s movie.” Kandace didn’t sound for a second like she’d thought that. “Well, then the part about helping an entire Soviet submarine crew defect? That’s all true.”
