They were here to fuck around and find out. Except… Sophie’s gaze wasn’t on Holly, it was on Nate. And there was nothing professional about it.
Holly watched as Sophie came into the room, gravitated toward him and laughed at something he had said between takes. Touched his arm. Tilted her head like a vulture pretending to be a canary, like they weren’t standing ten feet away from Holly like they wanted her gone. Jealousy wasn’t what twisted low in Holly’s gut. That would be absurd. Right?
Nope, no jealousy. It was just that Holly trusted Sophie about as much as she trusted a TikTok apology filmed in a car. And Nate was charming in the way men like him always were. Easy to manipulate. Easy to burn. And the last thing Holly needed was Sophie baiting him into some reckless PR disaster that ended with production throwingbothof them under the bus.
And then Sophie had the gall to smile and lay a hand lightly on his heavily tattooed arm. “I’d love to get you to sign a stick. For my niece, of course,” she laughed, though the subtext was very muchI am the niece.
Holly felt her irritation ratchet up, and she felt a scoff forming in the back of her throat. But then—oh,then…Nate edged himself back from her.Deliberately.Now just shy of the range of Sophie’s paws, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers like he was making a statement, he gave her a look.
“Sorry, I’m not here for hockey. I’m here to dance.”
Holly felt her heart leap, but she reined it back in fast and turned off their music.
She turned off the music.
“Let’s take five,” she said, too brightly.
Nate frowned from his new pigeonhole next to Sophie, whose mouth almost twitched into a smirk. The executive producer murmured something under her breath to him and then retreated, heading back to the hell-hole from whence she’d crawled.
Nate came wandering over, looking at Holly like she might be concealing a third head somewhere underneath her practice wear. “We’ve only been at it for half an hour, Martinez.”
Holly ignored the stupid nickname that she absolutely didn’t like even a little. “You need carbs. And I need to stop visualizing murder. Dinner?”
He blinked and had the decency to look genuinely shocked. “Wait. Are you—are you asking me out?”
She gave him a flat look. “Don’t flatter yourself, Eriksson. I’m trying to protect the show from your inability to detect predatory blondes in heels,” she pointed out with a brief flick of her gaze toward the door.
He followed her glance, picking up her meaning even though Sophie was now out in the hallway chatting quietly to Lars, who looked bored and kept peering through the door at Holly.
“Ah. Consider the show rescued,” he quipped, clearly not fully understanding the nuances of what just happened. And then, just like that, he shrugged and grabbed a towel. “Dinner sounds great.”
Nate
“She told me not to make it weird. Which is tough, because I’m already halfway in love with her.”
The city looked different at night. Softer and slower, like someone had stripped off the Hollywood drag and left the city’s bones in the heat to steep.
Nate followed her through the quiet streets with a six-pack under one arm and a brown paper bag in the other, the scent of garlic and basil clinging to his jacket. He didn’t ask where they were going. Didn’t need to. She walked like a woman with a plan, and he was too interested in watching it unfold to argue.
When they’d ducked into the restaurant, it had been like stepping into another version of her. One he hadn’t earned yet. The girl behind the counter had yelled “Bella!” and accused her of living on espresso and spite again. There’d been laughter. A head shake. A murmured apology for leaving it so long between visits that’d made his pulse throb in places that had nothing to do with hunger.
The people running that restaurant had treated her like furniture that’d been there since the dawn of time. Not flashy. Just essential. Nate had barely gotten a word in, and he didn’t mind a bit. Because seeing her there in a place that was so authentic had shown him yet another side to this fascinating woman, and he was finding it impossible to ignore.
Now they walked in companionable silence, the streetlights humming overhead and the sidewalk still warm beneath their feet. He liked the way her shoulder almost brushed his. The way she let him carry the food without comment. That had to mean something, right?
Eventually, she cut through a narrow side street and pushed open the chain-link gate of a tired little park. There were graffiti-tagged swings and a busted slide. The type of place a real estate agent would crop out of the brochure. But when he looked up, the Hollywood sign blinked at him, front and center, from the dark shadows of the hills. A little wobbly and distant, like a promise you could see but never quite touch.
She didn’t explain. Just dropped onto one swing like she was home and nodded toward the other like this was a thing they did now.
He sat. “Nice view.”
“Yeah. Lies beautifully,” she muttered.
He grinned. “Sounds like my agent.”
She huffed a laugh that barely sounded like humor.
They ate with disposable forks straight from the containers, perched like oversized kids under the streetlights. The pasta was incredible. Oil and garlic and heat. The garlic bread was frankly obscene. He moaned dramatically around his first bite, and she rolled her eyes but didn’t hide her smile. He glanced at her sideways, watching the way she inhaled her meal like she’d done it a thousand times before.
