Page 60 of Cast to be Mine

Except it wasn’t.

It took every ounce of self-control I had not to pull her closer. I remembered the way she tasted and it was something I craved every fucking day.

“You did good work today,” I said, because I needed to say something that wasn’t I want to take you home right now.

“Thanks.” She smiled up at me, and God, that smile. “I’m excited for Hawaii.”

“Yeah. Should be beautiful. The locations are incredible.”

We were making small talk. Boring, professional small talk. While my entire body screamed to close the distance between us. I wanted to feel her melt against me.

Her eyes met mine, and I saw everything she wasn’t saying. The same frustration. The same want. The same impossible situation we’d trapped ourselves in. We both wanted to be very naked.

“I wish we could just be normal,” she whispered.

“I know.” My hand tightened slightly on her waist. “Me too.”

The song ended. We stood there for a beat too long, neither of us wanting to step apart. Then someone bumped into us, breaking the spell. We separated with polite smiles that didn’t reach our eyes.

“I should go mingle,” she said.

“Yeah. Me too.”

She walked away. The party wound down around midnight. People started filtering out, calling for rides, making plans for the break before Hawaii. I stuck around until the end, helping oversee the cleanup, making sure nothing important got left behind.

Then I went home… alone.

The obnoxious sound of my phone ringing woke me way too early. It was my one day to sleep in after burning the candle on both ends for too long. We had a couple days off before we flew to Hawaii to finish out the rest of the shoot.

The Star Wars theme told me it was my father calling. A joke about Darth Vadar.

I groaned and reached for it on my nightstand.

With one eye, I looked at the screen and saw it was barely after seven.

“Dad?” I croaked out the word.

“What the hell were you thinking, hiring Grace Sterling to be in your movie?”

I sighed. “What’s wrong with that? She’s great. Killing it. I can’t wait for you to see what she’s doing.”

“You can’t trust a fucking Sterling.”

His vehemence surprised me. He was never like that. I grabbed a pillow and tucked it against the headboard and sat up. When Grace told me about the family feud, I didn’t think much of it. But now I wondered if she was right.

How had I never heard about this before?

“Why?” I asked. “What the hell happened between the two of you?”

“Gordon tried to screw me on a business deal a long time ago,” he said with disgust.

I laughed. “That’s what Gordon says about you. He told Grace not to work with a Blackwell.”

“Of course he’d say that. He’s a liar and a thief.”

“What happened?”

I didn’t dare tell him I was very fond of Grace. Family first. That was always the rule, and if the bullshit between them was big enough, I would have to choose my family before anything got too far with Grace.