“This is Calvin. My costar,” she adds, assuming correctly that I have no idea who he is.
“Nice to meet you.” I offer a hand to Calvin. “I’m Warner Hayden.”
Calvin shakes my hand. He smiles, and his perfect teeth sparkle. “Tate who?” he says teasingly, glancing at Tenley.
She narrows her eyes. “Stop. You know Warner is letting me shadow him on his family’s ranch. Showing me all the things so I’m familiar with them for the movie.” She smiles sweetly at me.
“Tenley, Calvin, are you two ready?” someone yells. “The lighting is best right now and I don’t want to miss it.”
It takes me a few seconds to find the person yelling, but Tenley and Calvin look immediately to the source. It’s an older man with wavy salt and pepper hair, his arms crossed and staring over this direction. I don’t appreciate the exasperated look on his face.
Tenley squeezes my forearm as she passes by on her way to the guy who yelled. I watch her and Calvin joke with one another as they walk.
“Hi,” a guy says to me, leaning into my line of sight. “Are you a friend of Tenley’s?”
“Uh, yes.” As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I am. A friend who kissed her four days ago and hasn’t since, but not for lack of wanting to.
“Would you like to sit?” He leads me to a seat under a tent.
“Yeah, thanks.” I take the seat and the bottle of water he’s offered me.
“My name is Max if you need anything else, okay? I’m an assistant, which basically makes me everybody’s bitch.” He says it in a joking way, but it still takes me off guard. I can’t imagine a universe in which I would ever describe myself as somebody’s bitch, joking or otherwise.
“Thanks,” I say, looking away. Tenley is at the entrance to the beat-up wooden round pen, and the guy who yelled is gesturing and saying something I can’t hear. She nods, and so does Calvin.
What’s the deal with Calvin, anyway? They’re very friendly. Suddenly I wished I watched movies. I only know old-school action movies, like Die Hard. If Bruce Willis had stepped from that trailer, I’d have known who he was instantly.
The wavy-haired guy steps back from Tenley and Calvin. Someone hands him a big camera. He peers into the lens and adjusts something. He points it at Tenley, takes a picture, then looks into the screen. He adjusts something else on the camera, then tells another person who’s standing off to the side to do something. They run over, grabbing a giant white concave thing near Tenley and moving it a few inches. The photographer takes another picture, checks it, and they do it all again. He must decide they are ready to go, because he starts directing Tenley and Calvin. They start funny, making faces at one another, like they can’t believe they’ve been forced together. The photographer says something else I can’t hear, and Tenley turns into Calvin, pressing into him and looking up like he was the first man to walk on the moon, not Aldrin and Armstrong.
My fingers curl into my palms. I can’t believe I’m jealous. It’s been so long since I felt this way. Did I even feel this way when I saw Anna with that guy? I don’t think so. I was mad because she was my wife, because I hoped we could rebuild our family and my kids could have their mom again. But jealous? That’s an emotion I don’t recall feeling.
The photographer twists one finger in the air, making a spinning motion, and Tenley turns her back toward him, but angles her shoulder his way, glancing directly into the camera with a demanding and sexy look.
It makes me want to stomp over there, push Calvin and the photographer the hell out of my way and continue our kiss.
“Clarissa!” The photographer bellows, his moody eyes searching the area where I’m standing. “Cover up this fucking scar of hers! It’s going to ruin my shot. Do you think people want to see a movie poster with this thing on her back?”
What the fuck is this prick going on about?
The woman wearing the apron hurries past me, mumbling something about photo editing. She runs over to Tenley and bends down, pulling tools and a bottle from her apron. She shakes the contents of the bottle on a sponge and begins dabbing it on Tenley’s lower back.
I look up and catch Tenley’s gaze. Her lower lip trembles. I don’t know what the fuck this talk of a scar is, but I’ll be damned if anybody is going to make Tenley feel like shit.
I’m up from the chair in an instant, but Tenley shakes her head quickly back and forth, a small but insistent movement. She plasters a smile on her face and calls out, “Warner? Would you mind grabbing a salad for me from the diner?”
I stare at her, willing my heart rate to slow, deciding if I’m going to listen to her and back off or teach the photographer a lesson in manners.
I can’t go against Tenley’s pleading expression. “No problem,” I growl. I nod tersely at the bitch assistant and get in my truck. I highly doubt the diner has the kind of salad Tenley would eat, so instead I head into town and get an oversized brownie from Marigold’s. I’m halfway through it, along with a cup of weak coffee, when Tenley texts and says she’s finished.
She’s standing beside the trailer when I arrive, Calvin’s arm slung over one shoulder. I stride over, and Tenley smiles tentatively when she sees me. A flush creeps up her neck, and I don’t know why it’s there.
Before I can say a word, the asshole photographer walks up with an open laptop in his arms. He steps in front of me to show it to Tenley and Calvin. “This one is it. Good work, you two.”
Tenley glances at the screen, then back up to me. The photographer turns and follows her gaze.
“Who’s your friend?” he asks Tenley.
“Warner Hayden,” I answer, sticking out my open hand.
“Hayden,” the guy repeats, like he’s trying to remember why he knows the name. He shakes my hand with a limp dick handshake that makes me dislike him even more. “Do you have a ranch around here?”
“I do.” The arrogance in my tone rivals that of Wes’s.
He adopts an obnoxious look. “We wanted to do this photo shoot on your ranch, but we were denied.”
I keep my expression fixed. “Is that so?”
“It would’ve been a good move for you, to bring publicity to your ranch. You could have had attribution.” He reaches up to pat my shoulder, the same way you’d placate an upset child. “We all make mistakes.”
This motherfucker… I shrug off his hand. “Being a cattle ranch, we step in a lot of shit. I’m sure you can understand why we’d be careful about who we allow on our property. We don’t need more pieces of shit than we already have.” My friendly tone confuses him, and he’s still trying to work out what I’ve said.
Not Tenley. She’s holding back a laugh. “Okay, well, this was fun,” she says, swallowing her laughter. She ducks out from under Calvin’s arm. “Thanks for everything. Calvin, I’ll see you on the first day. Call me if you want to run through lines before we start.” Tenley wiggles her fingers at everyone standing around and grabs my hand, walking to the truck.
Her pent-up laughter fills the space as soon as the doors are closed. “Oh my God, Warner, that was the best thing I’ve seen in years!” She laughs into the fingers she has pressed to her lips. “Do you know who that photographer is?”