Pierce chuckled. “You’re also excellent at avoiding any kind of conversation that might bring up anything personal about you.”
Smart man.
Part of why I liked him so much. In fact, my appreciation for all things Pierce Daniels was almost enough to warrant breaking my rule of keeping all personal relationships temporary. Light. Easy. No drama.
Except, one night hadn’t been nearly enough for my body . . . or my mind.
Not that it changed anything.
I was forty-two years old. I lived and breathed my work.
There wasn’t room for anything else.
“I’m glad you liked it,” I said.
There was a sigh. “Really good at deflecting,” he murmured then louder, “Yes, I liked it. I’m also hoping the fact that you sent it with a terrified intern to my front door at midnight means that you both want me to sign on and also that the rights have been optioned already.”
His tone was so serious I couldn’t tell if that would be a good or bad thing. So, I told him the truth. “Yes. To both.” A beat before I made an offer I’d never ever done before, not on a project I really wanted. “But . . . I’ll also step back from it if you want me to.”
Silence.
Then, “Why in the hell would I want you to step back when you’re the best damned producer I’ve ever met?” he asked, almost angry. “Is it because you don’t like my work? You don’t want to be associated with—”
“Pierce.”
“—me because of my past films. If so—”
“Pierce.”
He stopped.
“I love the book, love the idea of making the film, and I love you as director for it, but also, I don’t want to step on your toes. You’re looking for something,” I reminded him. “And I’m not sure that something is with me pulling my normal control freak production skills with you. Maybe you want—”
“I want this. I want you.”
Oh.
Well, that was . . .
Not interesting exactly. Hell, who was I kidding? It was exceptionally interesting. At least until he went on because then, and another thing I would never admit this side of alive, but I was mildly disappointed.
“I want the most talented producer in film working on this project, and I want her to allow me to direct it,” he said. “This isn’t about me having some sort of ego trip and having to bring a project to fruition by myself. I like working with a team. I like the process.”
I pushed the disappointment away. This was why I worked and lived in temporaries.
Anything deeper got in the way.
“Good,” I said. “It’s settled then. I’ll reach out to my assistant, have her schedule some time so we can get the ball rolling.”
He blew out a breath, one that I would have said sounded frustrated if not for his enthusiastic tone that followed it. “Sounds good, Artie,” he said. “Thanks for thinking of me. I can’t wait to get started.”
“Me neither,” I murmured, saying goodbye and hanging up.
I couldn’t wait.
Not a lie.
But also dangerously close to not temporary.
Shit.
Six
Pierce, Nine Months Later
Her hair was a mess, an absolute mass of blond locks tangling across her face as the wind whipped up the cliffs.
All I could see were snippets of Artie’s features—the corner of a plump, red mouth, one arching blond brow, a glimpse of an arctic blue eye.
And she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever had the luxury of witnessing.
“I’m really loving the fact that my hair tie snapped,” she muttered, wrestling with her hair. Frankly, I was surprised she didn’t have an army of them at her disposal, since she was normally so prepared and put together. However, there was something off about Artie today, something I’d noticed when we’d set out scouting that morning. It wasn’t fragile, exactly, but almost . . . precarious, as though she needed cheering up.
I’d done a decent job of that thus far, the shadows receding from her eyes, a smile creeping into the edges of her lips. She’d definitely been laughing at my crappy jokes during the last ten minutes of the drive.
“Here,” I murmured, unable to watch her struggle with her hair any longer. I gathered the locks at her nape and twisted them into a quick braid that I tied off with a rubber band I had around my wrist. My sisters would probably kill me for daring to put the strip of tangle-inducing, albeit effective at containment, material into another woman’s hair.
But desperate times called for desperate measures.
I could pray for forgiveness to the hair gods later.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” she asked, curiosity dancing across her face.
That was much better than sad, and so I shared. “My sisters.”
“I didn’t know you had sisters.”
I grinned, kept sharing. “I’m the baby of the family,” I told her. “They’re much older—as I love to remind them—and settled with kids of their own.”
“That’s nice.” She smiled. “Are they in L.A.?”
“God no.” I mock-shuddered. “They want nothing to do with the Hollywood crowd. Not that they’re not proud of me. It’s just . . .”
“A lot.”
“Yeah. That.” I shrugged. “And they’ve got kids of their own. Obligations and partners and their own jobs. I’m just the little brother they tortured by making me play dress-up.”
She held up the braid I’d put into her hair. “Well, I definitely benefited from all that dress-up experience, so if I ever meet them, I’ll have to thank them.”
“They’d love that,” I said with a smirk. “They like your movies more than mine.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going around.”
I mock-glared. “Sisters are the worst.”
“I happen to think they have impeccable taste.” She smiled beatifically. “But seriously, how was it growing up as the baby?”
“It had its perks. Besides imparting the braiding skills, they looked out for me and didn’t make me feel too awful when I tried to trail along after them and their friends.”
“How much older are they?”
“Ten and twelve years.”
“Oh fuck.”
My feet skittered to a stop, eyes darting around. “What? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Artie.”
“It’s nothing.”
I tugged at her braid. “Nice try with the lies, but don’t try and bullshit a bullshitter.”
We stared off for several minutes before she caved. “Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “But the only reason I’m telling you this at all is because we’ve always been honest with each other.”
“Brutally so,” I grumbled.
She rested her head on my shoulder, fluttered her eyelashes up at me. “You love my honesty.”
“Is that what I’ve been feeling?” I narrowed my eyes. “Loving your honesty when you nixed my rewrite of Bethany’s death scene?”
“You’ll love it when the reviews come in raving about it.”