Page 89 of Slow Burn Summer

“Like Superman?” he said. “I don’t think he’d look good in tights.”

“MoreTop Gun,” she said, touching the aviators he’d put down on the bar.

“Only taller,” he said.

“He looks at me sometimes with his beautiful whiskey-cola eyes,” she said, holding his gaze over the rim of her glass. “And I want to ask him what’s really going on behind them, but I don’t.”

She wasn’t certain if she’d moved forward or he had, but her knees were inside his now, his hand on her leg.

“Why not?”

She sighed, bit her lip. “Because we met under really bizarre circumstances which didn’t allow space for us to have feelings for each other.”

He nodded and looked down into his glass. “And now?”

She lifted one shoulder. “I know what I want, but I don’t know how he feels.”

He swallowed. “He’s probably working out how to tell you he’s realized the best way to honor his father’s memory is to follow his gut rather than walk in his footsteps.”

She nodded slowly. “And where is his gut leading him?”

“Here. To tell you he’s decided being a talent agent isn’t what he wants to do with his life.”

He splayed his hand on the side of her leg, his thumb a slow, warm stroke over her kneecap that became all she could focus on.

“He’d also tell you he signed over all rights to the film script in L.A., because he doesn’t belong there anymore. He can write new scripts anywhere.”

Kate watched his eyes, the fullness of his mouth, the movement of his throat as he swallowed. He was standing now, closer again than he’d been before.

“Where does he belong?” she said as he took her glass from her fingers and placed it on the bar beside his own. She slid to her feet too, their bodies pressed together from shoulder to hip.

“Wherever you are,” he breathed, his palm hot against the small of her back.

She laid her hand along his jaw. “So you’re not my agent anymore?”

He shook his head. “We’re just Kate and Charlie.”

“Two people in a bar,” she said.

“You’re so damn beautiful.” His eyes adored her, a look that told her everything she needed to know.

“I love you,” she said. “With every single beat of my fragile, messy heart.”

“I’ve loved you since the first day you walked into my office,” he said.

“Smelling of baby sick,” she said.

“Your hair fastened back with Hugh’s tie.”

She paused, remembering that morning, the guy leaving Francisco & Fox just as she arrived. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t made the connection herself. “Oh my God, you’re right, it was Hugh.”

“He’d just been in and had a shouting match with Fiona because he wasn’t prepared to go through with it, then he ran into you downstairs and called up to say he’d changed his mind. Seems you had quite an effect on him too that day.”

“So many random things have happened,” she said. “We could so easily not have been here.”

“I don’t think they’re random,” he said, sliding his hand down her arm. “It’s all about you. Your bravery in sending the letter, your kindness in holding that baby, your strength in protecting the people around you when things fell apart. You make things happen, Kate, you’re a beautiful, chaotic magnet holding everything together.”

“I don’t feel very together most days,” she said.

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