The momentum rushing through him made it hard not to follow, but he forced himself to spin around and pace the porch instead. His words, on the other hand, would take no such detour. She’d struck a nerve with her comment.
“You didn’t like me?” he hollered. “Could that be because you didn’t give me even a second to defend myself? If you would have let me speak when you showed up at my office, you would have found out that I have plans to make Milton and Brewster more eco friendly than any printing press to date.”
His words bounced off the wood-slatted deck. They echoed off the glass of the beach house. But they didn’t slow down the woman they were meant for. She was too busy hoisting her suitcase onto the bed and dashing over to the armoire, he could see that much from the porch.
“We might have actually hit it off then, Kat. I was attracted to you. I was interested in you. Why do you think I sent you roses?”
Marsha bounded up the steps. “You sent her roses? Before all of this?”
Zander kept his gaze pasted on his view of Kat packing her bag. “Yeah.”
In his periphery, he saw Marsha fling open the door and step inside. She spun around before heading in and spoke through the mesh screen. “Go cool off for a minute. Let her do the same.”
Desperation gripped hold of him, tightening his throat and chest as he sucked in his next breath. “But we need to talk. Can you just get her to listen so I can explain?”
“You know what she is right now?” Marsha challenged, pushing the door back open a crack. “She’s fire.” The intensity in her green eyes made him flinch.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean timing is everything when it comes to women. Right now, she’s a spark ready to explode. And anything you say is gunpowder. If you love this woman—practice some patience. Now’s not the time.”
With that, she yanked the door closed.
Chapter 21
“I’m here once you’re ready to talk.”
Kat stared out the cab window as they pulled up to her apartment building. She couldn’t remember LA looking so gloomy. Early evening, and already the sun was nowhere in sight.
“Kat,” Marsha’s voice came again. “At some point, we need to discuss the upcoming weeks. We can’t just stop production altogether.
She managed a nod.
“Stan, why don’t you help us take her things inside?”
Kat pushed open the door and moved numbly to the trunk of the cab. The team had divided for the trip back. Marsha and Stan accompanying Kat while Tina, the other cameraperson, had flown back with Randall and… and the imposter twelve hours later.
She shook her head each time she considered the truth of it. Her social experiment husband hadn’t really been Duke. He was Zander, the angry brother she didn’t even care for. Only he’d made her care for him. And he’d lied to do it. In fact, Kat didn’t know whether Zander had been acting like himself or trying to behave like Duke in order to keep up the ruse.
Hot knots of emotion threatened to overtake her at the thought, but she pushed them back. It wasn’t time yet.
While packing up her things at the beach house, and then the bungalow, Kat had conjured a barrier to stop her emotions from bubbling over. The shield was nothing so strong as a screw-on lid, rather a thin layer of plastic wrap, clinging to the edges while a pool of her emotions frothed and foamed just beneath.
She’d let them out once she wasn’t surrounded by taxi drivers, fellow passengers, and half the production crew. Kat felt a level of pride for containing herself this far.
Of course, two minor breakdowns had snuck in during her trip home. One in the ladies restroom at the international airport where a woman tapped on the other side of the stall and asked, in broken English, if she needed help.
The other came on in the box-sized restroom on the airplane when Kat accidentally looked herself in the mirror. The woman who’d been duped yet again. A woman who was not-so-smart after all.
And perhaps that was the worst part of it. Kat didn’t have gifts of flirtatious charm or charismatic allure. What Kat Morgan was known for—what her identity hinged on—was her smarts. And they’d let her down in a very big way yet again.
The acknowledgment was a fresh jab of its own. That really was the crux of it all. Fool me once, shame on you. But fool me twice…
It’s not time yet, she reminded herself as the tears threatened to come. She pictured sealing the plastic wrap tightly in place, keeping the pain out for just a little bit more. She could do this. She could wait until she was alone.
The march to her apartment was a blur. Before she knew it, Kat had led the others through the entrance, up the elevator, and down the short, wide hall to her door.
She motioned to the bedroom while Stan and Marsha filtered inside. The steady sound of suitcase wheels moving over the wood changed once Stan rolled it over her bedroom rug.
