Page 97 of Between Never and Forever
My eyes widen with surprise. Well. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Dunno, Boss,” I hedge. “You’ll have to talk to your dad about that one.”
“If he says yes, will you teach me?”
I agree immediately. I don’t even think it through. I recognize that desire, that pull to play. Something tells me she might need it just as much as I do, but for different reasons.
She squeals and claps her hands, and then I hand her back the now-autographed magazine.
“Let’s jet before your dad blows a fuse.”
23
Brynn,Red, and Zigalicious follow me out the door and I find a golf cart waiting for me.
No Dakota.
When Red moves to sit in the driver’s seat, I dart around him and throw myself into it before he can get to it. He raises a brow, so I raise one right back. He sighs and reroutes to the back bench, patting the seat for my dog while Brynn climbs up next to me.
“Know where he’s at?” I ask Brynn as I put the cart in drive.
“Yeah. In the back lot. They’ve got to add some New York thing.”
That’s right. Our filming schedule had to be moved around, so some of the on-location filming was changed to the studio. Something about contract negotiations. Now, instead of filming next week in New York, we’re filming here before we have to film on location in Oakport. The turnaround is tight, but from the sound of it, the crew is going to be done in no time.
I head to the back lot, past the Italian village courtyard and into the downtown New York alleyway. I slow down when I see one of the builders, and he waves politely at me before turning his attention to Brynn.
“Hey, Boss. What’s the word?”
Brynn doesn’t miss a beat.
“Vicissitude,” she says. “Noun. A favorable or unfavorable event or situation that occurs by chance.”
She watches the guy expectantly, so I look back at him. His lips are pursed in concentration and he’s squinting at his feet. When he speaks, it’s slowly, as if he’s trying to work something out in his head but doesn’t quite know how to articulate it.
“Sometimes...life...Sometimes life can have a rude vicissitude.”
“Ehhhh,” Brynn says, tapping her chin. “C minus, Luke.”
The guy grins.
“That’s better than last time,” he says proudly, and Brynn beams back.
“It is! Great job!”
I hear a chuckle come from Red, and I’m opening my mouth to inform Luke that I, too, was a C minus student, when a very angry, very booming voice, cuts through the set, and I get goosebumps. I have to temper my smile.
Showtime.
“Brynnlee,” Levi calls, and Brynn’s back goes ramrod straight.
“Oh, curse it,” she whispers, and I can’t hide my snort.
By the time Levi marches up to us, I’ve lost the battle with my smile, and he looks pissed about it.
Pissed, but also stupidly sexy. All rugged and roughed up. There’s no tool belt, thank god, because if there were, I’d probably lose my nerve.
A plain blue t-shirt stretches across his chest with some sort of white logo on the breast pocket. His arms strain the sleeves. His beat-up blue jeans hang low on his hips and mold around his thighs, then taper off around brown work boots. And on his head, covering his light brown hair, is a fucking backwards UNC ballcap.
