Hank went to his room to get ready to head out.
Ella started dozing off again—she really had had the wind knocked out of her, in the best way—when her phone rang from the bureau. She groaned and jumped up to get it.
“Hello?” she croaked into it.
“You’re asleep at nine thirty?” It was an English voice. Samantha.
“I had a busy day,” Ella said.
“Well, I need you.” Samantha sounded as if she wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You’re not in the shoot tonight. But I would love to run some lines with you before tomorrow morning’s scene. I figured since your handsome roommate was coming, you wouldn’t mind coming along as well.”
Oh boy. Running lines. Ella was not excited, but she should be. This was Samantha Drake, world-famous, Oscar-winning actor.
“Sure,” Ella said, and ran her hand through her hair to untangle it.
“By the way,” said Samantha, “I think you two should be together. You and Hank.”
Ella held the phone away from her ear. “What?”
“I said—”
Ella put the phone back. “No, I heard you, but it makes no sense. Why would you say that? Maybe you like him.”
“He’s not nearly good enough for me.”
“He most certainly is.” Ella huffed. “Not that I’m encouraging you to think in that direction.”
“Good, because I’m not. But he’s still quite the catch for someone else. So go jump his bones, or whatever you Americans call shagging.”
“We’re already halfway there,” Ella said, “but you can’t tell anyone.”
“You are?” said Samantha.
Ella couldn’t believe she’d admitted that. Maybe it was the wine, or the sex euphoria, lowering her inhibitions. Or maybe she wanted to lord it over Samantha, who only that afternoon had reminded Ella of all the sex scenes and kissing she’d do with Hank. “Yes, we are.”
“Good for you. Is that why you sound … sleepy? Is that a post-coital drowsiness I’m sensing?”
“Please, Samantha,” Ella said. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“If you insist.”
“It doesn’t mean anything anyway.”
“It doesn’t?” Samantha sounded doubtful.
“No.”
“Then why do you sound like it does? You sound like it means the world. Which is quite a feat, considering you’re rather out of it. I can hear your smile.”
“You can’t hear a smile.” But it was true. Ella didn’t even realize it. She was smiling.
“Have you been drinking?”
“A little. But that’s not why I’m sleepy.”
“I’ve heard of women like you. I’m the opposite. After a good shag, I’m rarin’ to go.”
“We didn’t—”
“Oh, right. You didn’t quite get there. Well, halfway is still not bad. It actually must have been damn good.”
Ella didn’t know what to say.
“More details, darling. I know you’d love to spill.”
“We’ve only got a week together, but we’re going to try to make the best of it,” Ella confessed.
Samantha laughed. “Meaning you’re hoping to shag all week long. Good luck. You two will be working, my dear. Grueling hours. And you’re going to fall into bed each night exhausted. You’ll be lucky to get five hours of sleep a night.”
“Maybe we can rendezvous in his trailer,” Ella said, “during the day.”
“That’s a pipe dream,” Samantha replied. “People go in and out of there all day. Makeup, costumes, agents, producers. The caterer.”
“We live together. Surely we can find time.”
“Ella, have you ever been in a movie?”
“No.”
“I promise you that the last thing on your mind when you get home will be making love. You’ll collapse in bed.”
“But he’s so hot, Samantha.” The truth must be spoken. “That won’t happen.”
“I hope not, too, for your sake, darling. He won’t be here long. You must gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and so forth and so on.”
Some old English poet had said that, Ella knew from high school.
The truth of Samantha’s observations—and the poet’s—hit Ella hard. Something twisted in her throat, made her eyes burn. “So I’ll see you tonight,” she said, her voice cracking only a little.
Samantha sighed. “You don’t want him to go on Saturday. Your heart is already involved.”
“No,” Ella insisted, “it’s not.”
“You might as well come to the set as often as possible,” said Samantha, more gently. “It’s Tuesday. The clock is ticking on Hank’s departure. Mine too, for that matter, not that you care.”
“Sure I care,” said Ella, pinching the skin between her eyebrows as hard as she could. It helped her buck up. “You’re a very interesting woman.”
“Thank you. As are you.”
There was a short silence on the line. Ella didn’t know what to say. It was almost intimate, how they were speaking—formal, but as if they were veering toward becoming friends.
And they weren’t. How could they be already? But look at what had happened with Hank already! Anything was possible.
“Okay, see you in thirty minutes,” Ella said in a rush.
“Goodbye, Ella,” Samantha said in her famous honeyed tones.
They hung up at the same time.
* * *
It was a bright, moonlit night when Ella and Hank started to walk to the Battery, only two blocks away from the carriage house. He grabbed her hand.
Ella let him. She savored the feel of her palm against his. Yet she couldn’t relax into it. Not quite. “What does it mean, us holding hands?”
“That I like you,” he said right away. “That we had fun tonight.… Didn’t we?” He smiled down at her.
“We did.” But she felt stiff for some reason. Unable to relax or to smile.
“I want to hold your hand,” he explained further, “because you’re coming with me when you didn’t have to.”
“I’m helping Samantha with her lines,” she reminded him.
“I know.” They walked on another ten feet before he added, “But this is how I see it: You’re a generous person, and people don’t tell you that enough. I didn’t tell you that enough. I didn’t want to leave the house on my own, and you came with me. Bada-bing. I’m a lucky guy.”
Ella loved hearing those words. She loved feeling his fingers wrapped around hers. But she was worried, nonetheless. “Hank?”
“Yes?”
She kept walking. Somehow he sensed that she wanted to free her hand at the same time she took it back. There was no awkward pulling or grasping to hang on.
And then they were apart.
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She felt sad. And mixed up. She needed to explain further, not only for him but for her. “I don’t mind spending the rest of the week in bed with you,” she said, feeling out her words as she walked. “It’s private. But there’s something very public, something very sweet, about holding hands. It means two people love each other. If someone saw us, they’d assume we were together.”
“True,” he said. “It’s an awkward situation.”
“It is. But I’m okay with it. As long as we keep talking about what’s going on. I just don’t want any surprises this time.”
This time. The end was inevitable. Again.
“I don’t either,” he said.
Their footsteps alternated among loud, hollow, and gritty, depending on the sidewalk, the plant debris that had fallen onto it, the occasional steel gratings, the asphalt streets. But at least those footsteps were going somewhere.
While we wander, thought Ella. Theirs was a love that was doomed to haunt them—aimless, without form—not unlike the ghosts Charlestonians claimed roamed many of the historic mansions they were passing on their walk.
* * *
When they arrived at the Battery, Ella saw a small hospitality tent had been set up on the park grounds for the cast and crew who had to report so late to work, as well as for the police who had cordoned off the area and stood guard.
The residents of the Battery were putting up with the inconvenience of the filming, probably because Samantha Drake commanded a lot of respect in Hollywood and among American moviegoers. In fact, at the edge of the cordoned area, a contingent of fans stood waiting for both Samantha and Hank to notice them. Some carried signs to attract attention.
Samantha was already there, doing her thing, speaking to fans and winning them over by bringing her best Dame Samantha persona: lots of hair tossing, along with her distinctive, droll voice and witty comments. But Ella was more focused on Hank. She watched as he patiently signed a lot of autographs with little fanfare. He had such a beautiful smile. He stayed very busy. His fans adored him. One young woman was a visitor from China and didn’t speak English, but her American friend told Hank that they both loved his movies, and her friend had seen almost all of them in Beijing.
He belongs to the whole world, Ella thought, and her heart ached. He could never belong to her. Holding his hand had been excruciatingly painful because she wanted him back, and he couldn’t be hers.
How could she feel that way after only two days?
All she knew was that she did. She simply had to come to terms with it. It wasn’t realistic. There was something in her, obviously, that craved a happily ever after. Nothing wrong with that. But it couldn’t be with Hank Rogers.
After the fans got their autographs, the police sent them home, and it was time to film the scene. It started with Hank driving up to the Battery wall in a blue Mustang. Samantha was a passenger in a black SUV behind him. He braked swiftly. Ran out of the Mustang, left the door open, and swiftly climbed the stairs to the sidewalk and steel railing fronting the harbor. Samantha exited the SUV, pulled a gun out of her purse, then ran up the steps after him. She pointed the gun at Hank, and that was when he jumped over the wall into the Atlantic.
Ella watched from afar as Hank leaped across the railing, over and over, to escape the character Samantha played. He insisted on doing the stunt himself. Every time, he landed on a hidden raft and had to crawl back over the wall again. Once he landed on the raft and then slid off into the water, and for a minute there was a lot of shouting.
Ella’s heart was in her throat when that happened. Hank was an excellent swimmer, but it was close to midnight, and the water was black. The wind was starting to blow too, so a mild chop was forming on the harbor’s glassy surface. Soon they’d have to pull the raft out of the water. Too much lifting and sinking on the waves.
In the movie, the scene would take less than thirty seconds. But it took the cast and crew until two a.m. to film it. They had to get Hank new clothes several times. Dry his hair. Redo his makeup. Isabel had him approach the Battery wall from two different directions, too, in his car. A few takes they played around with Samantha’s approach as well. Should she pull the gun out as she was exiting the taxi? Or when she was climbing the stairs to the sidewalk and railing?
In between takes, Samantha, whose role in the scene wasn’t nearly as taxing as Hank’s, would call Ella over, and they’d run through Samantha’s lines for the next day. One scene involved Ella. She had four lines in it. Of course, four lines—all of them easy enough—weren’t enough to gain any sort of traction professionally. But they were satisfying to say, nonetheless.
“It’s a small part, but you’re good,” Samantha said. “You’ve a liveliness about you that’s compelling.”
“Thanks,” Ella said. Those were huge words, coming from such an acclaimed actor. But she didn’t care as much as she cared about Hank.
She was doing it again. What was wrong with her? She should be holding Samantha’s words close to her heart, writing them down in her journal when she got home, calling up an agent and getting work in commercials, or moving back to New York and trying again. She was young enough. Even if she got one juicy role to live on for the rest of her life, wouldn’t that be reason enough to pull up roots in Charleston and try again on Broadway?
“See you,” Samantha said at the end of the night. She sounded exhausted.
“Bye,” Ella replied. She wasn’t nearly as tired and Samantha and Hank. She was only depressed. Screwed up. And she’d been doing so well.…
Until Hank came to Charleston.
She was mad. Really mad. No man could or would control her life. No man would throw her off-balance, especially in such a short time.
No man …
But when Hank walked up, a tired grin on his face, she lit up inside, despite all her self-talk. She couldn’t help thinking how life could change so much in only a few days, how she could go from being strong, confident Ella with no real worries to this emotionally distraught, confused person—
Who was also walking on air.
She was happy when she was with Hank. That was the bottom line. How was she supposed to resolve the push-pull on her heart that she was feeling? Their intimacy, as wonderful as it was, had only made things more complicated.
“Ready?” she asked him.
“Am I ever,” he said in a warm tone that made her blood hum and took her right back to their time in bed. “Thanks for waiting.”
He sounded truly grateful. The way he carried his shoulders, a little low, let her know how exhausted he was.
They walked home through quiet streets.
“You okay?” she asked him.
Up ahead, Beau and Lacey’s house loomed before them, silent, its windows dark.
“It was tough,” he said, his voice a bit hoarse. “But I had a good time.”
“You did? What happened when you fell in the water?”
He laughed. “Swimming at night in the harbor … never thought I’d do that. I felt more sorry for the guy tending the raft than me. He had to crouch out there all night. At least I got to walk around in between takes.”
“He probably got paid well to do that,” said Ella.
“Not really. Sometimes the hardest part of the business is knowing how unfair the compensation is.”
“Think about it this way: You have a special gift—being able to draw millions of people to the movie theater. You deserve to be compensated accordingly.”
“Thanks, but it’s still too much. When I think of how hard everyone else works—”
“You’re creating jobs for them. Don’t forget that. The talent is essential to the making of any film.” She reached out her hand to hold his. “Hey, I’m holding your hand.”
“I noticed.” He grinned.
“Friend to friend.” She squeezed it tight, feeling emotional. “Because you’re a good person, Hank.” He was. His leaving her all those years ago didn’t make him bad. Just not ready to be in a committed relationship. “You’re too hard on yourself. Why is that?”
He released a huge sigh. And didn’t answer the question.
Ella stayed silent and held on tight. He needed her. She could tell. And she was going to be there for him. Sometimes words couldn’t comfort the way sheer human contact could.
When they got home, she pulled the front door shut behind them. It was two thirty in the morning. “What time do you have to be on the set tomorrow?” she asked him. “I report at noon.”
“Nine, for me. It was supposed to be seven, but they’re giving Samantha and me a few more hours because of tonight.”
“Wow. So you have six and a half hours between now and then. To sleep, to shower.”
“Not even. They’re going to send a taxi over at eight thirty.”
They stood looking at each other.
He put his arms on her shoulders, bent low, and kissed her on the lips—a slow, sexy kiss that lingered. A hungry kiss, one a hard-working man bestowed on the woman who could best bring him comfort.
“Your mouth is sweet,” he whispered. “I want you. Badly.”
She blinked up at him. “I’d like that.” She couldn’t help a smile curving her lips. He was adorable. And she wanted him right back.
There was another pause. He cupped her bottom with his hands and stared down at her as if she was his everything.
She could get used to that look.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said, “that you’re here with me. In the same house.”
“But we both know you need sleep,” she whispered. “You’re worn out.”
“I know.” He gave a slight shake of his head. “This sucks. But thanks for being here.”
She snuggled next to him, her breasts flattened against his chest. He held her close, his chin on top of her head, his arms around her waist. If they were in high school, they’d look like that couple that was always joined at the hip.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “But I’m just going to say how I feel and ask for what I want.”
“Tell me.”
“I want to sleep with you,” she said. “For real. Or even sleep next to you. But I know if I do, we’ll be awake too long.”
“You’re right.”
“And we might be doing the wrong thing. I don’t know.”
“I know what I want.” He held her back a little so he could look at her. “A second chance with you.”
She didn’t know what to say. To think. She was confused. Plain and simple. “But there’s so much stuff in between us. Hurt on my part.”
“And a ton of regret on mine.”
“I don’t know why it still hurts.” She wasn’t imagining the ache in her heart. “It was so long ago. And we had an agreement to pursue our careers.”
“I shouldn’t have chosen the movie in Hawaii over you,” he said. “Whatever our agreement was, I should have chosen you, the way you chose me.”
It meant so much to her to hear him say that.
“But honestly,” she said, “I have huge misgivings about the choice I made. I put my own aspirations on the back burner for a guy, something my dad told me never to do. And that bothers me, not just because of Papa, but for myself. I never got to see how far I could have gone.” She paused. “You were right to choose your career.”
“But look what I gave up.” He played with her hair. “You.”
“It’s never wrong to do whatever it takes to be the person you’re supposed to be,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “There’s no easy answer.”
“But there feels like there should be,” he said.
“If we’re still wondering how to judge the situation after ten years, I think that proves both our points. We need to let it go.”
“Let’s think about starting over.” His voice was rough with fatigue, but there was energy to his words too, something that made her feel hopeful.
But she had to be smart. “On what grounds?” she asked him. “That we’re still attracted to each other? We’re brand-new people. We have ten years of experience behind us. It’s changed us. Have you ever seen a huge ship try to turn around?”
“It’s slow. It takes forever, actually. But it can be done.”
“Not in a week, at least not this ship. It would take a heckuva lot longer than that.”
“I get it.” He ran a soothing hand down her back. “There’s a lot of cargo to shift. But time passes either way. Why not spend it working on the thing that you want to make happen, however long it takes?”
They stood in silence.
“Let’s stop thinking about it,” Ella said, “and go to our own beds.”
“All right. You go first. I’ll wait until you’re out of the bathroom. And then I’ll come up.”
“Okay.” She walked upstairs ahead of him and looked over her shoulder. He was still watching, so she blew him a kiss. “Good night.”
“’Night.” His smile was distracted.
She could tell he was already worlds away, back on the set. “I’ll get up in the morning to make sure you get out of here.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.” There was a half-beat’s pause. “I want to,” she added.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Thanks, Ella.”
Life was filled with small moments like this, she thought as she turned her back to him. Over and over, we choose how to live, who to love.
Right now she was choosing Hank and everything that came with loving him, even the hurt she knew was inevitable.