Page 67 of He's The Reason Why

She studied his face. Everything from his shoulders to his eyebrows was slanted down. He looked tired or maybe defeated. It made her anxious to see him look like that.

“Then why do you sound so depressed?”

Blake pulled out his phone, crossed to the couch, and sat down. “Because If I were her, I’d be rewriting the scene right now. Which will mean looking at every other scene just to make sure it flows. I’ve done the same thing a hundred times onConned. Usually takes us two or three weeks to make a big change like that.”

“Three weeks.” She processed that little gem of information, along with the look on his face. The stress rolling off him wasn’t aboutScorched. It was aboutConned. “You mean if you move the kiss like I suggested the other day you’ll have to rework the whole script?”

“Not the whole script. Just the back half,” he said with a rueful smile. “Especially right now with Marshall tied up on a location hunt.”

“I’m so sorry.” She sat down next to him. “I didn’t know. You should put it back where it was. I take back everything I said.”

He shook his head. “No. You were right. It’ll make a stronger third act if we move it.”

She chewed her lip, not quite sure what to say.

He rubbed his face. “It could be a good thing, actually. If they put off the voice work for a week or two, I can join Marshall in Vegas. Maybe speed things up there. But—”

The intercom clicked on.

“Um,” Jeanette said, “can you two come in here, please?”

They both stood up.

“Sure,” Piper said.

The apologetic look on Jeanette’s face told Piper that Blake was right. The schedule had just been derailed.

She glanced at him. His expression had gone carefully neutral.

He tucked his phone in his back pocket and gestured for Piper to go through to the booth first.

She squeezed his shoulder. “Buck up. It might not be as bad as you think.”

“In another reality, maybe,” Blake muttered under his breath.

Piper opened the door to a flurry of excited chatter, with words like rewrite, rework, and rethink floating out above the rest.

Blake huffed a soft sigh of resignation behind her.

Paul spun to face them. Piper had time to notice his bright-purple shirt with tiny pink dots that could have been crabs—or maybe lobsters? —before he pulled her in for one of his trademark bear hugs. He didn’t have an accent, but Paul sure hugged like he was from the South.

“That was brilliant!” He emphasized each word. “Brilliant!”

“Thanks,” Piper said. She returned his hug with genuine enthusiasm. “It was just a warm-up, though.”

“Oh it was so much more than that,” Paul said. He pulled back but didn’t release her shoulders. “Somuch more. And you…”

He let her go to give Blake a hug. “Well done, Blake. Well freaking done. Iknewyou were the right man for the job. I told Tamar you were the best choice. Didn’t I, Tamar?”

Tamar made a noncommittal noise of what might have been considered agreement, but she didn’t take her attention away from the tablet in her hands.

Paul was shorter and rounder, and it looked almost comical watching Blake try to keep some distance between them without actually pulling away.

“Thanks, Paul.” Blake’s distant tone was lost on the man.

She had no idea how Blake managed to sound so polite even when she knew he was so stressed he could barely stand still. Inthe heat of all the excitement, she doubted anyone in the booth had noticed he wasn’t exactly thrilled.

“I don’t know how you did it, but you did.” Paul waved his hand at the monitor, where a playback of the scene continued to play. “Diane always said she hated the new opening we came up with, and she was right. She was absolutely, one-hundred-percent, kick-me-in-the-ass right. Wasn’t she, Tamar?”

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