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“What? No!” I protest, flushing.
She laughs. “There’s no shame in looking. Mr. Moneybags is hot, even if he is the bane of all our existences with his stupid budget cuts.”
I blush deeper. “Really, it’s not like that. We, um, go way back.”
Hazel stops. “How far back?”
“All the way back,” I admit, and give her the edited version of events—minus a whole lot of weeping and cursing his name.
“Well.Well…” Hazel blinks.
“Yep,” I sigh. “So you can imagine how I feel now he’s going to be hanging around set for the rest of the shoot.”
“I’m sorry,” she squeezes my shoulder. “That sucks. But, I have to ask, is he…?” she begins, lifting her eyebrows.
“As hot as you think under the suit? Incredibly good in bed? Capable of making a grown woman lose ten pounds in grief weight weeping for the whole summer?Yes.”
“Damn.” Hazel sighs. “Well, in that case, you two need at least one round of hate sex.”
“What?”
“For closure!” she exclaims. “To get him out of your system, and to show him what he’s been missing all this time.”
I snort. “Yeah, somehow that only works in romance novels, and even then, it’s never closure, just a recipe for more shenanigans. Which arenothappening for me,” I add, giving her a warning look. “Seriously, think of the most soul-destroying heartbreak you ever had, and imagine coming face-to-face with it again. Would you really want to hop aboard that train?”
Hazel winces. “Good point. Well, you should be able to keep your distance. He’s only interested in crunching the numbers, and no offense, but that’s way above your pay grade.”
I exhale in relief. “I’ve never been more pleased to be totally powerless and irrelevant,” I quip, and she laughs.
“Ooh, look, they just restocked the snack table. Go crazy.”
Hazel points me to the craft service tent, then gets called away by an eager PA. Luckily for me, the buffet table is a thing of beauty. I pile my plate with an oat scone, a slice of Welsh tea bread, and two flaky kinds of popovers.As first jobs go, having on-site food and regionally specific carbohydrates? Not bad.
I grab some sweet biscuits too, for good measure, and shove one in my mouth as I make my way to a picnic table set up nearby.
“Jolene?”
I startle, choking on the Jammy Dodger. Fraser is approaching, looking cool and collected, of course. And, perfect, he’s caught me at another least graceful moment. Crumbs lodge in my throat, and I cough, spraying biscuit crumbs everywhere as I struggle to breathe.
Fraser looks me up and down as I huff, then calmly plucks a bottle of mineral water from a nearby table, opens it, and silently offers it to me.
Chivalrous, and cool. Damn him.
I gulp the water, finally recovering. “Hi,” I say brightly, as if I don’t have streaming eyes and crumbs scattered down my shirt. “What’s up?”
Fraser clears his throat. “I wanted to apologize for earlier.”
Earlier. Are we talking back at the hotel, or, you know, the whole ‘devastating heartbreak’ affair back in college?
“I didn’t mean to walk in like that,” he clarifies, because of course, he wouldn’t acknowledge being a total asshole ten years ago. “Seeing you was… Unexpected.” He says it flatly, like he has prepared remarks on a crisp piece of paper. “I think we were both a wee bit thrown off.”
“A wee bit,” I repeat, with a snort. “Yes.”
He nods, still all business. “But of course, it won’t affect anything here. We both have jobs to do, and there’s no reason we can’t be professional with each other. What happened between us… Well, it’s a long time ago now. Ancient history.”
Is it?
I narrow my eyes at him. Then why do I remember that, beneath his pressed suit pants, there’s a scar on his knee from a fall at age seven? I’ve kissed that spot on his body. Andeveryspot on his body. Why do I know that his accent gets thicker when he’s pissed off or turned on? Why can I recall the feeling of his lips tracing down my spine?
