Page 18 of I'm Not His Style

Charlie sat back and surveyed the mess in my room. I hadn’t lied to my mom; I really hadn’t begun packing yet. There were still a few days before I had to report to the airport, but it was never too early to plan, right? Every outfit that I deemed a possibility had been pulled out and draped somewhere in my room so I could stew over it. That meant my bedroom was basically covered in black.

“How many bags are you taking?”

“I’m allotted one,” I said quietly. “Not counting my makeup cases.”

Charlie’s raised eyebrows indicated how well she knew me. “We’d better start consolidating.” She got to work helping me narrow down my clothing into piles of maybes and must-haves, and we chatted about how her painting was going and her husband’s charity work.

“I started a mural for the nursery. You’ll need to see it when you get back.”

“Is it dinosaurs or a Disney scene?”

“Neither.” She tossed a hat at me, and I caught it. “It’s almost as much for Liam as it is for the baby.”

“Okay, then it’s an African safari. No! A giant wall of your face? No! USC’s football stadium!”

“That’s not a bad idea. Maybe I could do a stadium and fill the stands with tiny versions of my face.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and I finished folding a black jumpsuit and tucking it into my suitcase. Charlie looked up and shook her loose brown waves out of her face, grinning. “I’m kidding. You got it. It’s Africa. I’m copying a picture he took during a sunset a few years ago but adding a few safari animals.”

“Liam will love that.”

“Hopefully so will this guy.” She rubbed her round belly and looked down, and a pang ricocheted in my chest.

I picked up a pair of black pants and began to roll them so they wouldn’t crease. “He will.”

“Liam spoke to Rhett yesterday.”

I looked up. “About me?”

“Yeah, I guess Rhett called to vet you.”

“Rhettvetted me? Or his assistant did?”

“The man himself.”

A squeal ripped from my throat. “Liam told him how wonderful I am, right?”

“You know Liam loves you,” Charlie said. But that wasn’t exactly answering my question. She looked away, then leveled her gaze on me. “Listen, Rhett’s had a tough year. Liam didn’t give me details, but Rhett had to deal with some crazy women working with him, and he is really put off right now by superfans.”

Ah. Click, click, click. Everything was making sense now. “Which is why you told me on my way to San Francisco last week not to go full-Beth on him.”

“Yes,” she said, relieved. “Exactly. If you want a real chance with this guy, you have to play it cool. Like ‘Colin Firth as Darcy’ cool. Like ‘make him wonder if you even like him as a person’ cool.”

“Or in normal people terms: I should keep things professional?”

Charlie didn’t blink. “Yeah,professionalworks. But my analogy is much better.”

“Of course it is.” I smoothed my hand over the black tee dangling from my lamp and considered her advice. “He has to like me a little already if he went to the effort to vet me himself.”

“He also called to invite Liam and me to the San Francisco event. It’s the final date or something? They’re premiering that new train movie.”

“Oh.”

Charlie reached up and took my hand. “Just enjoy this time with the love of your life, and don’t put any pressure on yourself.”

Or on him—that was what she wanted to add. I knew Charlie as well as I knew myself. But I didn’t say anything else. I just nodded.

If Rhett didn’t want a crazy fangirl hanging around, I could stow my obsession away with my T-shirts of his face and my striped-sweater-wearing teddy bear, down in the bottom of my case where no one would see them. He would get half-Beth, and I could still win him over.

All I had to do was recreate the sparks we felt during our first session. And if there was anything I was confident in, it was my ability to create sparks.

---