Page 3 of Keeping Zita

“Don’t leave me alone with her,” he blurted, sounding slightly desperate.

Obi-Wan had recently endured a bad experience with another woman who’d decided he was going to be her next fuck. She’d spotted him at Anchor Point with his friends…and proceeded to pester him incessantly for weeks. It was annoying as hell, and she’d almost ruined his pleasure in going to the team’s favorite hole-in-the-wall bar. She seemed obsessed with bagging a Night Stalker, and it was only because her family moved to the other side of the country that he’d actually gotten a reprieve.

Not that he thought a world-famous actress would take one look at him and decide she just had to have him. In fact, most people might think he was being conceited, assuming it could happen twice…but Obi-Wan didn’t want to take any chances. He’d been told often enough that he was good-looking, and that, plus his job as an elite helicopter pilot was apparently enough to make some women lose all common sense.

He was a man who liked to do the pursuing. He preferred taking the traditional role in a courtship. He enjoyed dating, holding hands, getting to know a woman. Not that he didn’t like to know a woman was interested…but there was a definite line between interest and obsession.

To his relief, Zita didn’t laugh. Or roll her eyes.

She simply said, “I won’t.”

Obi-Wan nodded. He was glad for Zita’s warning. There was always the possibility that she was jealous, that she didn’t like Carmen because she was beautiful enough to get any man she wanted. But he didn’t think so. Zita was gorgeous in her own right, and she seemed down to earth. Grounded.

She also hadn’t been eager to share her thoughts.

All things that led him to believe what she was saying was worth taking to heart. And that he needed to be extremely cautious in what he said and did around Carmen St. James.

Looking at her phone after it chimed, Zita said, “They’re waiting for us. We need to go. The last thing we want is to throw off the first day’s filming schedule.”

“Lead on,” Obi-Wan said.

Zita looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and turned, heading for the director’s trailer.

CHAPTER TWO

Zita wanted to kick herself. Why was she such an idiot? She was always putting her foot in her mouth when she met new people. Especially when they made her uncomfortable. And Obadiah Engle definitely fell into that category. She’d read up on him—as much as she’d been able to find, which probably wasn’t even a drop in the bucket.

He was a true hero. The missions he’d been on were full of danger and his skills as a pilot were unmatched. Not only that, but the man was freaking gorgeous. And that was saying something, considering she spent her life around men and women who made at least part of their living on their looks.

But Sage’s vibe was completely different from the actors and actresses she knew. Even the stuntmen and women had an air of…superiority about them? She wasn’t sure if that was the right word. But they all knew how good they looked. How revered they were on set. How special.

Sage? His wide-eyed wonder at seeing everything on the set was refreshing. It didn’t matter that he was an actual hero. It made her smile at how excited he was to be there, and to be sharing his knowledge.

And him saying he was a nobody? What a joke. Carmen was going to pounce on him; Zita knew that without having to think twice. She’d see how different he was from every other man on set, and she’d immediately set her sights on him.

Zita actually felt a little sorry for Sage. What he was in for.

It was surprising that, instead of being excited over the idea the famous actress might want a fling, he seemed almost panicked.

He’d asked her to not leave him alone with Carmen, and Zita had no problem with that request. For one, she needed to escort him to the assistant director afterward, anyway, who wanted to discuss the end scene being filmed that morning.

The thing about movies was that they were never filmed in chronological order. Today, Carmen and Logan were actually starting with the touching reunion scene that takes place at the end of the movie. Logan had spent the last three months losing thirty pounds to match what his character would look like after spending time in the wilderness without much food and after walking miles each day. He’d get a month-long break after all the forest scenes were done, to bulk up before coming back to finish filming the early scenes in the movie, where he was muscular and healthy and living with his family.

The helicopters they were using in the film were on loan from the US Army. They weren’t the actual choppers the Night Stalkers flew, for security reasons, and Sage would be giving his thoughts on those as well, when the time came. For now, he had a fairly busy morning ahead of him, and the last thing Zita wanted was his time on set starting off on the wrong foot due to any delays.

They arrived at the trailer and Zita knocked on the door. She heard someone call out, “Enter!” and looked over at Sage.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” he confirmed.

She opened the door, and he held it open as she went up the two stairs into the small space.

Henry Grubbner was sitting on a plush couch with a large sheaf of papers in his lap and Carmen sitting next to him. She wore a pale yellow dress printed with large white flowers. Logan was standing off to the side, leaning against a small counter, and he’d obviously already been through wardrobe and makeup, because he looked like hell. He’d had what looked like dirt spraypainted on his arms and face, and his clothing consisted of a ripped and stained pair of coveralls and worn-in boots. He had a scraggly beard, and his hair was long, greasy and dusty, and hanging over his forehead.

It was Logan who moved first. He smiled and held out a hand to Sage as he boomed, “Welcome to the set!”

His tone was completely at odds with his appearance, and while stuff like that used to startle Zita, nothing much fazed her after all her time working in the business, and seeing actors and actresses move in and out of the roles they were playing. Not to mention the sci-fi movies she’d worked on, when the actors and extras were all dressed as various forms of aliens.