Dinner? Didn’t she know he wanted to have her for dinner and dessert? He cleared his throat, widening the door and gesturing for her to come in. “That’s kind of you. Come on in,” he said, figuring that sending her back home would be weirder than accepting her gesture.
He was about to send her to the kitchen, looking for the least sexy area and also with the most lighting to make sure no funny business would happen no matter how much he wanted it. But she outsmarted him, and walked up to his living room, the one with wall-to-ceiling glass walls facing the balcony and not very far from them, the ocean view.
“Are you old enough to drink alcohol?” he asked, half-teasing, half-not. Madison was twenty-two years old, and she had studied with Alyssa. His son Trevor was twenty-one.
“I have been since a few months ago,” she said with a smile.
Twenty-one! She was twenty-one. A lump of apprehension lodged in his throat. If he sent her home now, she wouldn’t understand. The girl was trying to be nice, and here he was, in typical dirty old man fashion, thinking she had a hidden agenda.
“I’ve only been in here a couple of times,” she said, twisting the cap open and taking a swig of the beer. “It’s really nice.”
“Thanks.” He hadn’t been alone with her on the quick times she’d come in. One had been for Madison’s birthday party, and another for a low-key fourth of July party he threw and his daughter invited her friends.
“I’ll get some napkins and stuff,” he said, and dashed to the kitchen. His well-lit, safe kitchen. He entered his large pantry, grabbed a couple plates, napkins and then bottles of water from the fridge. When he returned to the living area, she had a slice of pepperoni pizza on her hand, and sat on his leather couch.
“I couldn’t wait,” she said, then grabbed a plate that he offered her. “That whole ordeal with Mr. Fluffers worked up an appetite.”
“I can relate,” he said, then grabbed a piece from the opened box on the coffee table, and sat on the couch opposite her. There, a very safe distance between them. Like the way it should be. “How is it, house sitting for the Smiths?”
“Piece of cake, for the most part. Mr. Fluffers kind of broke my heart, ghosting me earlier, but he knows how good he has it, and he’s resting now.”
“Right,” he said, then lifted the piece of pizza to his mouth. “What do you do in your free time?” he asked before taking a bite. The innocent question should keep excitement at bay.
“You didn’t know? I’m training to be a masseuse.”
He almost choked on his pizza. The picture of her wearing an all-white uniform and touching him over a blanket… then under the blanket… The small piece that got stuck in his throat threatened to leap out of his mouth, but he reached for the beer and gulped it down.
“Are you okay, Mr. Barret?”
“Yes. So you were saying, you’re finishing some course?”
“Yes. I’m getting my certification. I love working with my hands. I like helping people relax and feel better.”
He emptied the contents of his beer, then sat it on the side table. An incendiary heat spread through him, and he found himself in dire need of a cold bath, in a tub filled with ice cubes. “That’s nice,” he said, proud of how casual and calm he sounded.
“I’m sure it’s nothing exciting, especially with your line of work. You get to go to premieres, visit studios, shake hands of the most beautiful and talented women in the world,” she said.
He shrugged. He wasn’t a director or Hollywood star, so he tried to do the minimum promotional events, just to keep his agent and the production company happy. “I’ve only had a few movies out. It’s not like I go to premieres every other weekend. To be honest, the whole thing isn’t as fun as it looks. You stand in a long line, take pictures, talk to a few people, then more lines. More people.”
She chuckled. “You make it seem like such a burden.”
“Feels like that sometimes.”
“What are you working on now? I think Madison mentioned something about writing the third movie for the Hunter Ford franchise.”
The one he couldn’t finish. He shuffled in his seat, uncomfortable. He didn’t want to show her his vulnerability, to tell her how he hadn’t been able to write one fucking page for the past few weeks. In a strange way, he reveled in the way she looked at him, like he fascinated her. Selfishly, he didn’t want to lose that, even if it only lasted a bit. “Yes,” he said, then turned the focus around to her again. “What kind of movies do you like to watch?”
“A little bit of everything really. Say, will Hunter Ford ever have like a female partner?”
“It’s not in the cards. He sees women that can help him get what he wants. But he’s married to his work,” he said.
“Sure, I understand. It’s just that his character is so strong and determined… and I thought he’d benefit from getting emotionally attached to a woman who made him feel less cocky. To show the audience another side to him, you know?”
He slid to the edge of the couch, registering her words. His main character had never had a steady love interest. Instead, he’d slept around and had female spies and co-workers share his bed on occasion. But they all knew the score, and so did the audience. “I guess I wrote the first movie when I was still married, and a part of me wanted excitement, so I focused on the action part and not so much the commitment part,” he said, then frowned as he heard his own words. Why did he share that with her? She wouldn’t give a shit about why his marriage ended. Still. Somehow, sharing that nugget of information about himself was like removing his wet suit after he’d done surfing on weekends. Liberating.
“That totally makes sense. I think that’s why touching is one of my love languages. I wasn’t touched much growing up, and I like to exchange that feel-good sensation with people. The serene energy. Hence the massaging,” she said, and took another drink of her beer, then slid to the edge of her couch.
What was she trying to tell him? A glint of a warm, positive emotion touched her hazel eyes, and he noticed the specks of dark brown in the depths of her irises.
