Discomfort settled in Angelica’s chest as she stared down at the touch. Why did this feel so right and so wrong at the same time? Angelica set her coffee mug down, raising her gaze to meet Hope’s. “No, not tonight.”
Hope sighed heavily. “Then yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow at the production meeting. I’m going to have to leave before the end of it, though. I only have an hour before I have to get back here to film even more recipes.”
Angelica looked around the messy kitchen. “Do you need help cleaning this up?”
“I’d appreciate it, yeah.” Hope squeezed Angelica’s hand and stepped to the side, the awkward tension that had been there moments before only intensifying.
Angelica sighed heavily and started cleaning immediately.
Chapter
Three
The oppressive stuffinessof the room had a light sweat pooling at the small of Hope’s back. She reached for one of the cold bottles of water near the center of the conference table and pulled it toward her, twisting the cap and sucking down a good quarter of it. The liquid was so refreshing.
They’d been sitting there close to an hour already, and Hope had struggled to take her gaze off Angelica, and to stop thinking about the other night, about the fact that since they both returned home, she wanted so much more than whatever they had before.
This wasn’t a fling.
It was love. Pure and simple.
And Hope wanted to live fully into that relationship as much as she possibly could. Angelica took notes on her iPad, writing quickly as things were said, and she’d add to the conversation between Logan and Rex and Cadence. But Hope just sat there. She wasn’t someone who would jump into the center of these types of conversations unless she had to. She wasn’t a producer on this show—she was simply there for the ride. And she’d go wherever she was told to go and do whatever needed to be done.
But the feel of the room was so vastly different than the last three seasons.
Hope could only attribute that to one thing.
Josef.
He was gone. Banished from production and filming, banned from a show that he’d created. That was the only part that Hope felt even an inkling of bad about. The rest? He got what he deserved, and those threats he’d made during the break, shortly after his expulsion, still lingered in the back of Hope’s mind.
Along with the video.
“What do you think, Hope?” Rex stared at her directly, no doubt already knowing she hadn’t been paying a lick of attention. “Do you want to go back and revisit some of the previous hotels we’ve worked with? Film a few updates to take up some spots in the lineup this year?”
“Yeah, that sounds good.” Hope’s voice was rough. She reached for the water bottle again. “We can do it quickly in a week or two, so it wouldn’t take up loads of time.”
“Good. I’ll work on figuring out which ones we can go back to,” Logan said.
“You mean which ones still exist,” Angelica chimed in, marking something on her iPad.
Angelica probably already knew the answer to that and just wasn’t saying anything. Hope was certain that Angelica kept tabs on every hotel they’d been in, some more than others, but she wasn’t someone who didn’t want to see the results of her hard work. Hope could appreciate that. But her results—cooking for someone and watching them consume it—had a much quicker payoff than Angelica’s.
“We can even visit some that don’t, and talk about why they failed.” Rex shifted his gaze from Angelica to Hope, looking at her directly.
A year ago, Hope might have taken that as a dig, but right now, she didn’t. He was simply trying to prove his point to Angelica and wanting Hope to jump in to back him up on that comment. But she didn’t really care either way if they visited previous hotels or not. Again, she’d go wherever they told her to go.
She glanced at the time on her phone and bit her lip. She had five minutes before she had to escape back to her house to finish filming for the day. The break had been nice, especially while everything was cleaned and reset. It felt good to get out of her own head and house for a while, but she wanted to be done with at least one show so she could focus on the next. Trying to balance two shows at once was taking quite the toll on her.
“We’re about to wrap up, Hope.” Logan’s voice reached her ears.
She nodded at him, glad he was at least being considerate of her time.
“Let’s plan to add in a quick five-minute follow up to the end of three episodes. If it goes over well, we can add in some more or make a whole episode during the second half of filming.” Logan closed his notebook. “I think that’s it for now. All of us have a meeting with Florence Delrosa in an hour.”
Hope frowned. She was supposed to be in on that meeting, but because of her filming schedule, she wasn’t going to be able to make it. And she’d have to trust that Angelica was going to let her know what happened during it.
As everyone packed up and filed out, Logan pointed at her. “I need a minute with you. And you.” He flicked his finger toward Angelica.
