Page 54 of Love At First Fright
“We’ll see. And I agree with Rosemary, it makes no sense to have a fight scene here, we should stick with the scene as planned. Don’t you agree, Vincent?”
Vincent, who had been tapping away furiously on his phone, looked up. “What? Oh, yes, sure. Continue as originally planned, thanks.” Vincent’s personal phone buzzed then, and he shouted, “Take five while I get this, everyone, it’s my partner.”
Ellis clapped his hands together. “Well, that’s sorted.”
Rosemary watched Jeremy stalk away, angrily pulling out his vape as he left. Her hands were shaking. But she’d stood up for herself, and she was proud.
She hadn’t needed Ellis’s help, but he’d helped anyway. Despite what he’d said this morning.
“Rosemary, can we talk?” Ellis said from close behind her.She turned, and the expression on his face stilled her and set her alight, all at once. This was not the same man she’d been dismissed by in the kitchen earlier. This was that Ellis, thetrueone, the one who had devoured her with his kiss, who had talked her through an orgasm over the phone. It made her insides swoop just to look up at him like this.
“What do you want, Ellis?” Rosemary stammered.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Okay then, shoot,” she bit back. Rosemary wasn’t a brat. Except tonight, she wanted to make Ellis pay for upsetting her, for dismissing her, all of it. He couldn’t tell her what they did was unprofessional and then still want more. Acting like this, it would drive him crazy.
“In private,” he ground out.
“We’re professionals, Ellis. Don’t you remember?”
“Give me two minutes, Rosemary.”
She rolled her eyes but nodded, and Ellis grabbed her wrist, pulling her towards the darkness of the forest. It shouldn’t have turned her on as much as it did, the firm grip of his hands on her.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quiet” was all he said.
They stomped over tree roots and ducked under low-hanging branches, until the sound of the film set grew faint and they were only lit by the slivers of moonlight that dappled through the trees.
“I saw a place earlier, just up here,” Ellis said. He tugged her into a clearing, and there, moss-shrouded and abandoned by time, were the chapel ruins that Cecilia had told her about. The roof had been reduced to three weathered beams, the inside bare except for a stone altar and a few stone bench pews. A single arched window, that once would have contained stained glass, allowed Rosemary to see inside—it was empty.
“I thought you might like this place, it feels sufficiently spooky,” Ellis said, his hand moving down her wrist to hold her hand. She should have pulled away, but didn’t.
“Is this all a game to you?” she asked. “Dismissing me this morning, telling me you don’t want any of this, that you don’t wantme,and then taking me here, showing me this place?”
His hands cupped her cheeks. “No, Rosemary. None of it was a game.”
“Then what? Why did you say it?”
“I was ashamed.”
Tears threatened to fall from her eyes. “Of me?”
“Never of you, love.Never.Of myself. Of what I want.”
“But I already told you, Ellis, I want it, too.”
“There are things about me, Rosemary, that I’m not proudof.”
“Have you ever hurt anyone?”
“No.”
“Killed, blackmailed, exploited, burgled?”
The smallest of smiles tugged at the corner of his mouth.
