Page 150 of He's The Reason Why

“What’s the big deal?” Marshall draped the towel around his shoulders. “So she invested in the movie she’s starring in. What’s wrong with that?”

“You know what’s wrong that. I told you both why I couldn’t take her money.”

He tapped out another message to John.When?

John returned with a date two days after the day he’d demanded twenty million from Blake. Two daysafterhe’d told Piper he wouldn’t take her money.

“You told us some bullshit about how money could get in the way of a relationship.” Marshall’s scorn was obvious. “I didn’t buy it. She didn’t either, apparently. She’s smart, resourceful, and just as stubborn as you. Seems like a good match to me.”

“Jesus, this makes everything a hell of a lot worse.” Blake flicked the sheet closed.

“How’s it going to do that?” Marshall looked confused.

“This is exactly what I was worried about. How am I supposed to make things up to her when she’s a major investor? Now business is in the way.”

“No it’s not.” Marshall jabbed a finger at him. “Your head is in the way. Apologize. Go big with it. She’s a reasonable, down-to-earth woman. She just needs to hear you grovel, that’s all.”

“She’s ghosting me.” Blake scowled at his friend. “She’s not answering texts or emails or the damn phone. She hasn’t even posted online.”

“Ouch.” Marshall winced. “Yeah, man, that sucks. It really does. Maybe she’s embarrassed because her sister slugged you?”

“Doubt it.” Blake touched his tender nose reflexively. Luckily, it hadn’t left him with a black eye, just slight swelling they could hide with makeup. “She’s probably glad Della hit me. She probably wanted to do it herself. Shit. I didn’t need to worry about money screwing up our relationship. I did that all by myself.”

“With a lot of help from Rachel Morris,” Marshall pointed out.

“Dammit, I knew Rachel was baiting me that first day at read-throughs, and I fell for it like an idiot because I was irritated about the deal I had to make to get this project off the ground. Itwasn’t Piper’s fault, she just happened to be there. How can I explain that if she won’t talk to me?”

He’d been chewing on that problem for days and hadn’t been able to come up with anything. Piper’s house was too well guarded to try theSay Anythingapproach. None of her sisters were going to help him out. The only number he had was Della’s, and when he tried texting her, she’d flipped him off with an emoji.

The only way to get a message through to Piper right now was to post on Twitter, and there was no way in hell he was doing that.

“You could try skywriting,” Marshall suggested. “Or maybe wait outside her gate until she comes out and then throw yourself on the ground in front of her like they used to do in medieval times…except no you can’t because we have a movie to shoot and you’re in most of the scenes.”

“Scenes.” A glimmer of an idea sparked in his mind. There was one place Piper couldn’t avoid him. On set, they would be standing face to face with nothing to do but talk. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?” Marshall asked.

Blake picked up the laptop and carried it to the dining room table. “We need to change the script.”

“No.” Marshall looked horrified. “No, we don’t. We really don’t.”

“Yes, we really do.” Blake pulled up the master file and scrolled to the love scene. “You said go big. This is big. I’ll rework the bar fight scene. It’s on the schedule for today. She’s in it, she has to listen.”

“We don’t have time for a rewrite,” Marshall whined. “We don’t have time to even think about a rewrite. We’re over halfway done.”

“We’ll make time.” He shifted a section down in themanuscript to make room for the change he wanted to make. “Stop complaining. This is going to make the movie even better.”

“Next time we do this kind of project, we have to make a deal that no women are allowed anywhere near either one of us, on penalty of death,” Marshall grumbled. “I’m going to get dressed. Try not to screw up the buddy scenes, okay?”

Blake started typing. He wasn’t worried about the buddy scenes. He wanted to put the kiss back where it belonged.

Monday morning, Blake arrived two hours early, hopped up on coffee he couldn’t stand and no sleep. The only people on set were the two catering trucks Piper had lined up for him and the staffers who were setting up the lights in preparation for the day’s shoot.

They were hitting three different locations today, and everyone was spread pretty thin, but that wasn’t why he was all keyed up.

Piper hadn’t been back to the house they were renting. The clothes she left there hadn’t been touched.

His last text to Piper,I miss you, had prompted Della to text Marshall with a message that said take his phone away and for Blake to back off.

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