AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When they had finished the fanciest Caesar salad Maggie had ever had, the dressing for which had been basically the Platonic ideal of creamy, Cole leaned back in his chair. “So the meeting this afternoon didn’t go as planned. I thought we could have a nice meal, and then—”
“Nope,” Tasha interrupted. “I don’t want to talk about that. It’ll just make me angry. What I want to do is enjoy this food and recover from my jet lag.”
“Tasha doesn’t do well with international travel,” Cole said to Maggie.
He kept doing that, offering context or explanation, as if he knew that Tasha needed to be translated. He obviously understood Tasha, but he was also being very considerate of Maggie.
There her stomach went again—missing the bottom stair and wiping out.
Luckily, the servers materialized again, now with plates of roast chicken. The skin was golden and crispy, and the aroma had unlocked some feeling in Maggie’s chest that could only be characterized ashome. She felt like that mean critic inRatatouille, except without the whole being-a-food-writer thing.
The entire meal had her feeling grubby and ignorant. And it wasn’t just that she was sitting next to two people whom she’d seen a thousand pictures of. It wasn’t just the white-glove treatment the staff lavished on them. It wasn’t just that each dish was more elaborate than the last, containing flavors and aromas and ingredients Maggie had never heard of. It wasn’t even the cocktails going to her head ... though, okay, it was that too.
It was that this meal felt like a personality quiz in the back of an oldCosmo. Tasha was chic and discerning, Cole was affable and open, and Maggie was a peasant.
It didn’t help that Tasha kept resisting all Cole’s attempts to talk about Maggie’s role or filming the show.
When she’d been dealing with a student with opposition defiance, Maggie would try to establish common ground with the kid and to offer them choices, all while trying to figure out what was causing the resistance. This afternoon, Tasha’s temper tantrum had almost wrecked Maggie’s fragile confidence. But because she’d been here before, she knew that the real key was you couldn’t, under any circumstances, get dragged into a power struggle. It was sincerely one of those situations where you won by not playing. Solving someone’s resistance took time.
But Cole barreled right in during the dessert course. “So I gotta ask, why are you so opposed to this? You’ll do what the production wants when it’s training, but—”
“Please,” Tasha scoffed. “I’d rather wax my cunt.”
Maggie was grateful she hadn’t had any food in her mouth.
“Something that’s supposed to be about protecting actors: that’s where you draw the line?”
Tasha sipped her wine and ignored Cole.
A beat passed. Then another. Then ten.
Finally, Tasha said, “I don’t have a problem with intimacy coordinationin theory.”
Cole looked at Maggie and beamed, as if to sayNow we’re getting someplace.
Maggie’s heart leaped into her throat.
Resting, Cole’s face had a sculpted beauty, with his high cheekbones, straight nose, and architectural brows. But when he smiled, his features went goofy. Happiness, like the kind he was trying to share with her now, muddled his cheekbones and wrinkled his nose.
He suddenly looked boyish, but somehow so much better looking. Cole wastouchablewhen he smiled.
Except Maggie had no business thinking that.
Which was why it was a relief, totally a relief, when he took that smile with him as he turned back to Tasha. “So you have a problem with Maggie?”
“No.”
Now that oxygen was getting to Maggie’s brain again, she could tell Tasha meant that.
“But I was blindsided this afternoon, and I don’t think it’s necessary for us to work with Maggie. If other people on the set want her, like Owen and Rhiannon, that’s fine. I’m sure that she’s ... fine. But can we just eat our baba in peace?”
The golden custard looked amazing—everything had been amazing—but Maggie would much rather go down this rabbit hole, even if she was simply observing this conversation and not participating in it.
“No,” Cole said to Tasha. “This is a weird thing to dig in about. Also, I realized today that you haven’t done much nudity sinceCosa Nostra.”
That was, in the mildest sense, a lie. Maggie had pointed it out to him. But she suspected Cole was saying this not to take credit for Maggie’s observation but in order to shield Maggie from any more of Tasha’s wrath.
Tasha ground her teeth, slowly, making a show of it so that Cole and Maggie would realize she didn’t want to talk about this. It wasn’t a power thing, not quite. Maggie had the sense that she was doing it for herself as well as for them.
