Page 98 of Second Act
The dizziness was vaporized by a blaze of regret. “That’s much nicer than I deserve, but thank you for being so honest and so kind.”
Pete shrugged with a crooked smile. “No point in pretending otherwise.”
She remembered how focused Pete had been in his pursuit of her until Hugh had come back into the picture. But she hadn’t done the same with Hugh, had she? She’d allowed him to walk away with barely a fight. He’d hit her in her most vulnerable spot, taking her back to that little girl who always had to get everything exactly right, reminding her that she had grown up in the cornfields of Iowa rather than in the sophistication of LA or New York.
But Hugh’s upbringing was no more sophisticated than hers. He had grown up in foster homes. Maybe that made his outside shell thicker, but he still had the small, unloved boy curled up inside him.
“Oh my God, that’s it! That’s why he did it.” Hugh couldn’t forget that his mother had bailed on him when things got too overwhelming for her. He thought Jessica would do the same thing because she’d broken the engagement before.
“I think your train of thought has left me behind,” Pete said, amused chagrin in his voice.
“I know what I have to do,” Jessica said, pushing back her chair and standing up with a slight wobble. “Thank you. I need to go home now.”
Pete rose as well, putting out a hand to steady her. “Let me pay the bill.”
“Oh, right. We’re friends, so I need to pay my half.” She fumbled with her purse.
“This one’s on me.” He pulled out his credit card and handed it to the waiter, who’d appeared at Pete’s signal. “I have a feeling I might not get to buy you another one.”
She shook her head. “No matter what happens, you will always be my friend. You’ve been a good one.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said.
Jessica tried to carry on a conversation with Pete on the drive home, but her mind was taken up with how to convince Hugh she wouldn’t leave him when the going got tough. For one thing, he was in Prague and she was in New York. An elusive thought darted around her alcohol-soaked brain for a long moment before she pinned it down. She smiled. He was coming back to present an award to Gavin Miller. She just had to figure out exactly where and when. And she had to find a way to be there.
“Cut!”
There was a long silence as Hugh slowly rose from his crouch on the stone floor of the Gothic church in Prague. “Did you get the shot?” he asked, trying to figure out why no one was moving.
“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Bryan said.
“Do we need another take?” Hugh asked, rolling his shoulders under the straps of the shoulder holster.
“Definitely not.”
“Okay.” Hugh started toward his trailer.
“Hugh!” Bryan called.
Hugh stopped and looked over his shoulder.
“You ripped my guts out. Great job,” Bryan said before turning to his crew. “All right, set up for the interior pan.”
Gavin Miller stepped out of the controlled chaos of the film crew and fell into step beside Hugh. “Bryan’s right. You had me reaching for a tissue, and I wrote the damn scene.”
Hugh unbuckled the shoulder holster and shrugged out of it as he walked. “You gave me a lot to work with.”
He’d been dreading that particular scene, because it was the moment when Julian Best finds out that Sara, the woman he loves, is dead, and it’s his fault that she’s been killed. He knew if he chose to do it right, he would tap into all the soul-destroying loneliness and loss he felt over Jessica—and he didn’t want to go there. However, he owed it to Bryan, Gavin, and everyone else on the film crew to suck it up and be a professional. Actors mined their own emotions, so he’d allowed his feelings to wreak their agony on him as he did the scene.
“You took what I gave you and raised it to a whole new level,” Gavin said. “That scene is going to turn the movie into an extraordinary experience for the audience. You might even get nominated for an Oscar.”
“They don’t give Oscars to spy blockbusters.” Hugh tried not to think about the other scene he shrank from for an entirely different reason. In fact, Sara is not dead. When Julian sees her alive and well, there would be a highly charged scene of lovers reunited. Where he was going to find the resources to pull that off, he had no idea.
The two men climbed the few steps into Hugh’s trailer, which was considerably smaller than the one he had used in New York City.
“Where’s Allie?” Hugh asked, glancing around. “I thought she was waiting here.” Allie and Gavin had flown over on the same plane as Hugh so Allie could visit the set and tour Prague. Watching them together reminded Hugh of what he had almost had and lost.
“She decided to go shopping. Want a drink?” Gavin rummaged in the small bar, pulling out a bottle of bourbon.
