Page 46 of Home to Me

Lauren wasn't entirely sure what was happening between her and Ben, but she was pretty sure that she was beginning to like him.

A lot.

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Ben knew he was a few minutes late getting to the production meeting and he really didn’t care. He’d been dreading this meeting since he saw Lauren kiss her “friend” on the dance floor at Saturday night’s ball.

He had no idea if she spent the entire night lip-locked to the guy. He avoided her, and the first chance he got, he split.

Logically, he knew he had no say in who Lauren dated or kissed, but damn. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

And he was pretty sure she was purposely ignoring him the whole night. He didn’t get so much as a ‘hello’ from her the entire evening. Not even a nod of acknowledgement from across the room.

Really?

He shook his head. This was not him. He didn’t moon over girls or worry about who they were kissing. He didn’t get his feelings hurt because the girl he liked was ignoring him.

He quickly needed to remove his head from his ass. He knew he had a job to do—bills to pay. He had people in his life that depended on him, people who had real problems, not like the ridiculous things he was worrying about with Lauren.

And his bills were getting bigger lately. He needed the very large paycheck that would come if this second show were to be picked up. It would help take the strain off. He didn't have control over a whole lot of things in his life, but he had a small margin of control in whether or not the pickup would happen. He could give the show the best possible shot by doing his best work.

Trying to shake off the melancholy that was plaguing him since he saw Lauren in the arms of another man, he pushed open the door to the cabin where the production meeting was already under way.

The AD looked up as Ben entered. “Ben! Thanks for joining us!” he teased, and the rest of the meeting attendees joined in good-natured laughter at the joke.

Ben smiled at the teasing and took the sole empty seat in the room, which was right next to Lauren.

He felt her looking at him but didn’t trust himself to look in her direction without giving away a hint of what he was feeling. So—again opting for the mature route here—he just didn’t look at her at all.

Paul stood and started the meeting. “I think we can agree that last week was a success,” he began, and everyone in the room clapped and cheered. Ben's spirits lifted a bit. It could never be a completely bad day when the boss started out a meeting with those words, right?

“But we can't rest on our laurels,” he continued. “We have a jam-packed schedule over these next two weeks if we're going to turn in a kick-ass pilot. I really think we've got something here, folks. But that doesn't mean we're not going to have to work for it. That said, your new itineraries, call times, and info packets are being passed around to you. Any questions?”

Ben felt Lauren shift in her chair beside him before he heard her ask, “It says that we need to do an ADR session?”

The AD was picking up his papers and just said, “Yeah. We can’t use production sound for anything we’ve shot outside.”

He knew she had no idea still what ADR, which stood for Automated Dialogue Replacement, would entail. And last week—hell, three days ago—he would’ve told her exactly what it was and what she could expect in a session.

But, today, he started a conversation with the script supervisor and walked out leaving Lauren and her question behind.

He also made sure that Lauren was out of wardrobe before he was “available” to go in.

But as he stepped into the cabin, he realized he couldn’t truly escape her. He smelled her scent. It permeated the air with the aromas of wildflowers and vanilla. He saw Polaroids of her all over the walls. Were these more Polaroids than usual? Were Marlene and Barbara messing with him? Hell, an obsessive stalker would’ve been impressed with the amount of Polaroids plastered on every damn surface.

Ben shook his head. He needed to get ahold of himself.

His resolve was short-lived, however. As it turned out, Lauren was the hot topic of conversation between Barbara and Marlene the entire fitting. All the wardrobe ladies could talk about was how insanely amazing Lauren’s body was, how much fun she was to dress. How sweet she’d been with them—that it was like she had this hard image but underneath it she was just a big softie.

Ben was silent. He didn’t want to talk about Lauren’s body or the fact that, underneath her outer shell, she was really a soft, sweet girl.

This was exactly why he never let himself get involved with anyone he worked with; it was just too complicated.

15

Lauren was fed up. Yep. Maybe she had felt bad before, but now she had absolutely had enough. She had no idea what crawled up Ben’s butt and died, and honestly, at this point, she really didn’t care.

He’d been giving her the cold shoulder for three days now. Sure, he was being professional, but it was a bare-minimum professionalism. No warmth, no small talk—hell, no talk, period.

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