Laurelin Paige - Take Two

“Uh, duh. Who wouldn’t? Girlfriend, if Micah Preston showed even the slightest bit of interest, I’d rub myself all up and down him before he could say, ‘April Fool’s’. That man is fine.”

Maddie rubbed her chin. “Really? I mean he’s hot.” Super, mega-amazingly eye-blindingly hot. “But it wouldn’t be like just a normal one-night stand. You’d see his face everywhere after and that would just be—”

Chloe cut her off. “It would be awesome, is what it would be. Every time I saw his face I’d say to myself—and probably everyone I know—‘yeah, I hit that.’”

Maddie laughed. Chloe had a point. Sleeping with a super-hot actor wouldn’t be something most people would frown at.

Oh, hell. Why was she such a frickin’ prude? Had she always been this way? Or just with the one guy in the universe that she actually wanted to fuck royally?

“Besides,” Chloe added. “You always wonder if you could be the one—the one that the hot guy finally settles for. But you never know unless you go for it. I mean, I’d never go for it. But that’s only ’cause I’m all talk.”

Maddie sighed. This was crazy. Her and Micah and chances and all of it. Absolute madness. She’d read somewhere that the definition of crazy was doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. Over and over she’d said she was finished with Micah and over and over again she returned to him like a boomerang flung into the wind. If she really wanted to be done with him, she had to do something different.

But what if she abandoned her entire agenda? What if she decided returning to Micah’s arms was actually an okay ending? Heaven knew that was exactly where she wanted to be.

What if he really could give them a chance and she was the one who was holding them back?

What if…

She thanked Chloe for the entertainment and returned to her place at the camera, struggling to hide her sudden giddiness. She’d made a decision and she wasn’t backing down. For the first time since Micah reentered her life, she felt sure.

Micah ran his hand through his hair as he waited for the hotel clerk to make him a new keycard. He’d thought he’d made progress with Maddie that day. Their run—okay, walk—had been tough to get through, even without the physical exertion, but it had ended on a promising note.

The night’s shoot, the last before a much needed day off, had gone well too. Except for a minor awkward moment early in the evening when Heather had tried to resume their occasional sexual activity. Uh, no. If not for Maddie, maybe, but that was hard to even imagine because Maddie was all he could think about.

But after that the shoot had been nice. For the first time since he’d arrived in Colorado, he didn’t try to avoid or seduce Maddie. Instead, he’d stood for all his focus measurements, chatted with her between takes, exchanged glances with her when Joe got off track. It was all natural and easy and fun.

On top of that, his acting had been on fire. He’d remembered all his lines and hit all his marks. The scenes had gone so well, they’d wrapped early.

And that was when things started going downhill.

He looked around for Maddie the second they were done to no avail. He even asked others about her whereabouts, not caring about what they thought or what rumors his inquiry started. No one had an answer. Then he walked down to video village where Adam said she’d taken the camera hard drives. He didn’t find her there either.

He decided to hit his trailer and shower then search for her again. When he couldn’t find her after he’d cleaned up, he wondered if she was avoiding him again. He considered calling her, pulled out his phone more than once to do so, but he didn’t want to push her. She’d said she’d consider giving them a shot. He had to trust her.

Then to top off his already anxious mood, he couldn’t for the life of him find his room key and had to have a new one made at the front desk.

He pulled out his phone again while the night clerk fiddled with the key machine. While he didn’t want to be pushy, he wanted Maddie to know he was thinking of her. He deliberated over what to text her for an embarrassingly long length of time. In the end he went with short and simple. Sweet dreams, baby.

She didn’t return his text, and he worried. But what could he do?

Nothing. Nothing but wait.

By the time he stood outside his room, he was tired and frustrated. And alone.

He considered knocking on Fudge’s door. The idea of entering an empty suite was almost too desolate to imagine. But Fudge had taken off while Micah was still searching for Maddie. He was most likely already asleep. And what use would Fudge be in keeping Micah’s mind off a woman?

With a heavy sigh, he stuck the new key in the card reader to open the door.

And there she was. Standing in his room like a vision.

He stood blinking in the threshold.

“Um, hi,” she said.

Lost for words, he silently stepped in the room, letting the door close behind him. She’s here, he thought. She’s here. Everything but that splendid realization dissolved away.

He set his bag down and cocked his head, looking over the beautiful specimen before him.

“I, uh, don’t know if it’s okay that I’m here.” She played with the hem of her tank top. “And I’m sorry if it’s not.”

He opened his mouth to answer, to say it was more than okay, especially if she was there for the reason he hoped. But she continued talking before he had the chance.

“Actually, I’m really not sorry. I need to be here. I want to be here too, don’t get me wrong. I mean I really, really want to be here especially after everything you said today. Earlier today. When we were running, I mean. And tonight too. Nothing specific from tonight, but just it was really great to talk to you and you know.”

Hmm, so she’d felt it too. Her nervousness was adorable. As if he didn’t want her completely.

“Anyway, besides wanting to be here, I need to be here because I’m going to go crazy if things continue like they have. Well, not like today—today was good—but before today. And actually, I think I may have already gone crazy, but that’s not really relevant to this conversation.”

He watched her eyes as she spoke. They were so expressive, changing as quickly as her rambling took a new direction. Beautiful and engaging.

She took a deep breath and he inhaled with her, syncing naturally to her.

“I have to be honest and tell you that it’s hard for me to trust that you’ll give us a chance. But if I don’t give us a chance either, then I’m no better than you. So I have to just throw my hat in and hope. Hope you do too, I mean. Because I have no idea where we’ll go after that. I mean, what if I totally hate you? You are an actor and I’ve always been turned off by the talent.”

He covered his mouth to keep from laughing at her delightful rambling.

Her voice dropped to a hush. “And I do want to spend time with you in and outside of bed. And since we’ve spent all our time together outside of the bed, and since we can’t seem to keep our hands off each other…”

He almost groaned. She is here for that. He shifted his stance to accommodate his tightening jeans.

“I would have waited in the lobby, but I didn’t want anyone to see me and since I knew where you kept your key, I took it and let myself in. I was going to wait for you with all my clothes off—”

He raised an eyebrow.

“But then I realized that would be especially awkward if you kicked me out.”

He nodded and switched the dead bolt to the do not disturb position. Even at two in the morning, he wasn’t taking any chances. They had been interrupted before and nothing was going to interfere this time.

He walked toward her, slowly, purposefully, still not saying anything.

“I’m probably coming off as one of those creepy, stalker girls right now. I didn’t really think this through, I just…did…you know? Without thinking. I just ran to your trailer first thing after wrap and grabbed your key. I’m lucky you keep it in the same place, though maybe you need to rethink that in the future.”

She rubbed her hand along her collarbone, drawing his attention to her lovely neck. He’d kiss that first—trace the beautiful line up to her exquisite jaw.

“I’m really not this psycho. I’m—this—everything I do when I’m with you, actually, is really uncharacteristic of anything I usually do and I don’t know why I’m doing it when I’m doing it, but I can’t help myself.”

Then he’d nibble on that ear. He bet it tasted divine.

“And I know it was really unfair to ask you to stay away from me when I can’t seem to stay away from you. You just get in my head and make me insane. Oh, ha-ha, I guess I am really this psycho. But it’s you who makes me crazy and I’m…just…”

He stood in front of her now.

“Say something.”

He cradled her face with his hand. “Stop talking.”

He shifted his palm to the back of her neck and pulled her to him. She threw her arms around him and all his plans of where to caress and what to nibble went out the window as his mouth met hers. He kissed her tentatively at first, afraid of the unbridled passion they’d experienced outside his trailer, that it would move them too quickly. He wanted to take his time.

She seemed to have the same idea. Her lips, as they moved and molded to his, still held all the fervor of their last embrace, but none of the desperation. The kiss built and blazed. Soon it absorbed him, her tongue drawing him into a depth of intimacy he hadn’t felt in years. He could live on this kiss.