Page 46 of The Magic of Sea Glass
He stopped and faced her with wide eyes. “What?You’ve never had s’mores?”
She shook her head.
Brody linked his arm in hers, the motion startling her. “We’re fixing that right now.”
His fingers brushed her forearm as they walked together until they got back to the group. He let go and her skin still felt his touch where his hand had been. Mary gave them both a happy greeting when they arrived.
“Mary, Lauren has never had a s’more.” Brody grabbed a skewer, and handed it to Lauren.
Mary gasped.
Stephanie got out of her chair and picked up another skewer. “You haven’t?” She reached over for the bowl of marshmallows, offering it to Lauren. “Take one and put it on the stick like this.” She threaded the marshmallow onto the pointy end of the skewer.
Lauren followed her lead, loading the marshmallow and jutting it into the flames, the marshmallow turning black on one side.
“Oh, save her, Brody,” Mary said, waving a finger at Lauren’s skewer.
Lauren compared her own to Stephanie’s, and realized that her marshmallow was now on fire.
Brody came toward her. “There’s an art to it,” he said, putting his hand around hers and lifting the skewer from the bottom of the fire. He blew out the little flame. “You want it right about… here.” He guided the marshmallow onto the top of the flame.
As he kept it steady, she couldn’t help but assess the way his hand felt around her own. It was a new feeling, yet at the same time it felt oddly comfortable, like something she’d done before, even though she hadn’t. But what struck her the most was that she didn’t feel the instinct to yank her hand away. Perhaps it was because he’d been so kind to her tonight, or the fact that she knew he wasn’t looking for a relationship of any kind, so there was nothing behind it.
“Placement in the fire is the most important part of the entire activity. You want your marshmallow super gooey, and youdon’twant it charred to oblivion.” He looked down at her, and she noticed that something changed in his eyes as they locked with hers—it was as if he were only just then seeing her for the first time. He let go of her hand. “You should be good now.”
Stephanie handed Lauren a couple of graham crackers and a square of chocolate, but Lauren was still focused on the zinging sensation rushing through her body after her and Brody’s little moment. As she looked over at him, she wondered what those hands would feel like on her face, what those arms would feel like around her. Realizing how distracted he could make her, she focused on stacking the chocolate and marshmallow onto her graham cracker.
“Who’s that?” Stephanie asked, distracted from the marshmallows by a crew of people as they trudged through the sand.Cue the record scratch.
“Oh. That’s Dave Hammond, the producer of the show.” Lauren handed Stephanie her s’more and left the group to head him off. After all,shehadagreed to this, but she hadn’t even warned everyone else yet about the filming. “Hey.” She waved, trying to be friendly. “Why don’t we start filming tomorrow?”
Dave shook his head. “We have less than a week, right? We need all the footage we can get.” He tapped on his iPad, bringing up a form. “We’ll just need a few electronic releases. Here, you go first.” He handed her the iPad.
A director that she didn’t know was holding a fuzzy microphone on the end of a boom pole over their heads and a camera guy had his camera rolling while the set designer and location manager went ahead of them to speak to Brody and Mary.
“Let Diane touch up your makeup for the lighting,” Dave suggested, looking around. He fished around in his shoulder bag and lifted the slate out before sinking his hand back inside, presumably for the wipe-off marker he always used to label the scene. “I’m gonna need some set lighting for this. Carl!”
The man speaking to Brody turned his head.
“Think we can get a few of the lights up?”
“Yep!”
While the woman with a crop of dark hair and a crew badge—presumably Diane—jogged over to Lauren with a powder brush and a palette of makeup, Carl ran off to greet more of the crew who were filtering in with large boxes of equipment. They began setting up portable lighting units and running their extension cords up to the inn. The lights came on with a loud puff when they hit the switch.
“Just act normal,” Dave called to everyone happily as the crew descended upon them like a SWAT team. He threw the black-and-white slate in front of the camera and clapped the arm on the top. “Action.”
Mary looked around her from the edge of her Adirondack chair with an anxious smile while the others chatted in hushed tones.
When Diane moved on to Stephanie, Carl took over the iPad, getting everyone’s electronic signatures. Then, as the cameras were rolling under the large lights plonked in the sand, Dave came over to Lauren.
“I’m just getting some initial clip options to feed into the intro reel for the opening and closing credits. Then we’ll need to get with the bride and groom as soon as possible for a few candid shots.”
“They’re here.” She pointed to Stephanie and Mitchell.
Dave followed her direction. “Funny. You’re the same size as the bride. If she takes off the day of the wedding, we can do back-shots and have you fill in.”
Lauren rolled her eyes at his joke, but she knew that if any of them would be running, it would probably be her and not Stephanie.
