Page 35 of A Lucky Shot

“I’ll talk to him.”

Karl raised his brows. “Good luck.”

Cass crept up, staying in Josh’s sightline.

“So, how’s it going?” she asked carefully.

He glared as he looked up from the sheets in front of him, but a look of recognition softened his face when he saw her. “Fine.”

She crossed her arms. “Doesn’t seem ‘fine’.”

“It is.”

This was going great. She shifted back into his eyeline and tried again. “It’s going so fine that people are calling you a tyrant.”

“I’m not a tyrant,” he said, affronted. “I’m particular.”

“Two of the grips are having panic attacks in the back, and an extra just quit.”

A flicker of guilt crossed under his scowl. “They’re not giving me what I need.”

“That’s because they don’t know what you need.”

“But I said?—”

“Three different things. In three different ways.” She tried a smile to soften the blow. “You’re blowing up at people for not keeping up with changes they don’t know are coming, and you kept them three hours late last night.”

The crew edged around the set, throwing nervous glances between her and Josh’s thunderous expression. He eyed the crew and huffed through his nostrils.

“Are they really having panic attacks?”

“No, but they are freaking out that they’re getting fired.”

Josh ground his teeth. “No one is getting fired.”

“You should tell them that. And maybe apologize?”

“I’ll apologize,” he said, like he was offering to donate a kidney to his high school bully.

“Maybe wait until you aren’t scowling,” Cass said, and when he narrowed his eyes at her, the hint of a dimple appeared in his cheek. Good. The snit was over. She pressed her lips together and smiled. “Everyone wants this to succeed. We’re all behind you. We just need you to work with us on this.”

“Alright. Work with everyone,” he grumbled, turned and shouted at the crew, “Everyone, take ten.”

An audible sigh went up from the people around them, and Cass grinned as he gave her a look of begrudging acknowledgement. Not so much of a tyrant, after all. She checked the time on her phone. Shooting would wrap in two hours. She and the girls would head out after wrap to poetry night. The line up was strong. Maybe he would come. Not as a date. Only if he didn’t have plans.

A not entirely unexpected flutter stirred her stomach. Cass shifted over, and hesitantly said, “I was thinking?—”

A crash across the set snapped his head up. Josh tore his eyes away from her and the scowl took up residence on his face again. “Hold that thought,” he said, and strode over to where Stephen and Karl argued in hushed tones.

Of course. He was the most in-demand person on set. She’d monopolized hours—days, really—of his time over the past months. Cass could have written a paper after all the research she did leading up to the design meetings. It had been time well spent. After everything, Melanie had agreed to dial back the outlandish vision they’d had for costuming Brynne as the harried-but-glamorous astrophysicist and Dawson as her longtime collaborator and sometimes lover. Josh had jumped to agree with Cass’s designs.

Now that costume designs were signed off and in production, he wouldn’t need to spend as much time with her. Other people on the crew needed him more. Priorities and all.

Cass backed away until she drew level to where Dawson and his dialect coach were running lines. With the way he’d stepped between Josh and the grips earlier, she was surprised he wasn’t covered in scorch marks.

“What fire’s burning his butt?” Dawson asked, running a hand over his sandy hair.

“Fire, not far,” his coach enunciated. “And you’re dropping your ings again.”

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