“Oh my god, I gave youonesuggestion. I’m not a script writer.”
“How do you know? Have you tried it before?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again.
I smirk. “I thought not. What if this is the professional path you’ve been missing? You owe it to yourself to at least try, darling.”
It’s remarkable to sit beside a woman and know that her brain is spinning with possibilities, with objections, with worries, with fears, and then to see?—
“You know what? Why not? And if it doesn’t work, I still have my spite bus.”
I beam at her. “Excellent.”
“Simon, if I’m terrible at this?—”
“Bah. All of us are terrible at it. Some merely better than others at fooling the studios into thinking audiences will love our clumsy attempts more than others. Also, you should know—there will eventually be a red-carpet premiere, and you will haveto attend in a new dress and be photographed publicly with me if we do this.”
She grins. “Will you pick that new dress for me?”
“If you wish.”
“You have excellent taste.”
“I have excellent fantasies.”
She leans over and kisses my cheek. “I like living out your fantasies with you.”
I clear my throat and drop my notepad over my suddenly hard cock.
She smiles and goes back to the script, though the second half is clearly not as well-done as the first half, because she keeps checking her phone.
I eventually lift my brows at her. “Is this a good time to point out that I clearly need your guidance, if your lack of enjoyment is any indication?”
She shakes her head. “No, it’s Daphne. I just realized what time it is. She had to go home this weekend, which is similar to if you had to go back to London to see your parents.”
I grimace hard enough that Eddie calls to ask if I’m okay.
“Bea has a theory that she can find things to make me not smile,” I call back.
“Girlfriends do that?” Charlie asks.
“Indeed, and often. They’re quite terrible. You should never have one.”
Bea cracks up.
The boys grin at me, and they go back to their games.
“So her family is awful?” I ask Bea.
“I mean, they disinherited her, and shedidhave a real trust fund that had more zeroes than I’d see in a hundred lifetimes. She doesn’t talk to them anymore. Margot’s pretty cool though. Her sister. You met her. The day that you dumped me in thesink. Daph loves her, but she still lives a different life than Daph now, so…”
“I’m glad I never had a sibling,” I muse. “What a terrible life for someone else to live.”
Bea slants a look at me. “You would’ve gone overboard trying to protect them from what you went through.”
Quite likely.
She smiles as though she knows I’m agreeing with her in my mind but would rather not say so aloud.
