Elliot looked away, his face hard. And maybe it was the vestiges of jetlag, maybe it was frustration, but I couldn’t take a single second of this rollercoaster anymore. This man was unyielding, packed full of mystery and unwilling to open up, even though he knew the stakes at play here. He didn’t care about my fate in the slightest, and it was pointless trying to force a connection. I stood, threw a ten-dollar bill on the table to cover my coffee.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“I have to work out how I’m going to find a new job. Thanks to you.” Because that was the outcome of this mess, if Elliot wasn’t going to let me in and embrace the process as RJ had instructed.
“Hey, where are you going?” he said as I turned to navigate my way out of the little café. “Wait!”
He called after me, but his words were lost as I charged out of Giorgio’s. Perhaps storming off was a bit dramatic, but Elliot Fox had bought me to the limits of my patience. I had to admit defeat; I was going to fail at this job and Lin was going to fire me. I ran blindly up the steps into the obnoxiously sunny street, hoping that I was heading in the general direction of RJF. If I spoke to RJ now, perhaps he’d let me go back to London with some kind of cover story so I could keep my job? Surely, he would appreciate honesty, surely, he’d understand that I was doing what was best—
I was suddenly yanked backwards, colliding hard with something warm and firm, just as a courier bike flew down the road within millimeters of me.
“Learn to ride, asshole!” Elliot screamed after the rapidly retreating cyclist, who yelled something intelligible back. He then grabbed my shoulders, gazing into my face. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. What—” I realized that I had stormed out of the café in such a rage I’d walked into the middle of the road but checked the wrong direction for traffic.
Elliot’s eyes roamed all over me. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I repeated, dazed.
“You move so fast.” He was pale. “If I hadn’t grabbed you—” A horn blared. A taxi was making its way towards where we stood in the middle of the road, and Elliot dragged me to the pavement. “I can’t believe you ran off like that.”
He was still holding me, the warmth of his touch burning through my clothes. “He – he came out of nowhere.”
“They are a menace,” Elliot said.
I brushed off his grip, blaming the cyclist for my short breath and flushed cheeks. “Right, well, thanks for saving my life. I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”
“Lucie.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I couldn’t look at him. I feared if I did, I would scream and not stop.
“Life Is Beautiful,” he blurted.
I halted. “What?”
“The movie.” He stepped closer to me. “The one that made me want to go to film school. It wasLife is Beautiful.”
I wavered. It felt like he was offering an olive branch, but I wasn’t sure if I could accept it. “Why?”
I expected him to curl his lip, to snipe at me that he doubted I’d seen it, but he lowered his head, scuffed his feet.
“The power of hope,” he said. “I liked that.”
Chapter Fifteen
“This is never going to work unless you stop squirming,” I told Elliot.
“Do you believe everything you read on the internet?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “There’s this prince in Nigeria who is going to make me rich one day.” Turned out, Elliot really hadn’t had any idea about the circumstances of how my report had landed in RJ’s inbox, and he certainly hadn’t known my job was in jeopardy as a result of his resistance. The exertion of yelling and running into the street after me had caused the cut on Elliot’s lip to begin bleeding again. And although I sensed he still wasn’t going to discuss the origins of the cut or the book I’d seen in his bag, I’d felt compelled to help fix his lip, so we’d agreed to a truce and headed back to RJF to raid the tea caddy, much to Elliot’s confusion.
“Was this prince the same guy who said this was a good fix for split lips?” His last few words became a mumble as I pushed the damp teabag harder against his mouth, causing him to hiss.
“No, my Nan taught me this,” I said. “Teabags can reduce swelling. But it won’t work unless you keep still.” He sat onthe table in our writers’ room, and I stood before him, dabbing the cut while he tried not to whimper too heavily.
“Do you think I’ll need stitches?” he said mournfully.
I lifted the teabag and inspected his lip. He smelled like a lazy Sunday morning, warm and clean. “You’ll live.”
