Method Acting: An opposites attract, found family romance (Center Stage Book 2) Adele Buck (e novels to read .TXT) 📖

on that path, reminding her how his lips felt on hers, his solid muscles under her hands, the wild heat that he could make coil inside her.

And…he’s a good man. A good person. Kind and smart.

Her lips compressed, and she tried to re-focus on the script pages. This is the biggest job of your life. Don’t get distracted by…whatever that was. The party’s over, remember? It’s time to call it a day.

“Dude, if you’re not careful you’re going to send that thing into orbit.” Russell’s dark eyes widened as he stood behind the weight bench, watching Colin rhythmically shove a barbell toward the ceiling.

Colin grunted and pushed the weight up one more time, arms trembling. He nodded at Russell, who helped him rack it. Sitting up, Colin wiped down the bench with a towel.

“Your turn,” he said, nodding at the weight.

“Given your mood, I’m not sure I trust you to spot me. You look like you want to murder someone. What’s going on?” Despite his words, Russell lay on the bench and lowered the weight to his chest, preparing to press.

“Alicia. She left.”

Russell blew out a breath as he began to lift. “Back to New York?”

“No. She’s got another job here. But…we’re not together anymore.”

“That was…fast. What happened?” Russell grunted slightly as he pushed the bar up.

Colin gritted his teeth. Exercise was supposed to burn off tension, but it wasn’t working today. He felt even more wound up than when they had walked into the gym an hour before.

“It was the education thing. Some sort of ridiculous class nonsense. She insists her background is so different from mine that we’re doomed from the start.”

Russell’s dark, shaved head shone with sweat, and his eyes focused with concentration on the ceiling as he kept a slow, even tempo with the weight. “So, is that it? It’s over? Or are you going to try to get her back?”

“Well, she promised she would at least think about making a go of it.”

“And you don’t believe her?” Russell sighed as he racked the weight, sitting up and shaking out his arms. “Again?”

Colin scrubbed his hand over his face. “We moved beyond that, Russ. It’s not that I don’t trust her. But I don’t know what she’s going to do.”

Russell took a long drink from his water bottle and wiped his mouth. “Sucks to have it taken out of your hands, doesn’t it?”

Colin huffed a short, mirthless laugh. “Yeah. I want to go camp out in her front garden until she agrees to give us a chance. But I promised I’d give her space.” Space. It reminded him of her insistence that they were from different worlds—aliens visiting new planets.

“Yeah, no. Chicks don’t dig the stalker thing.” Russell moved away from the bench and toward the rack of smaller free weights, Colin trailing behind. Taking two dumbbells, Russell began alternating bicep curls. “You just going to stand there, or are you going to lift?”

Colin mentally shook himself and selected weights of his own, concentrating on the steady rise and fall of the dumbbells in his hands, first one side, then the other. He watched his own biceps bunch and stretch and tried not to think about the way Alicia had run her fingers over his arms, seeming to like the size and solidity of them.

Closing his eyes, he let his arms hang at his sides and shrugged his shoulders, trying to release the tension that had made him ready to snap at everyone and everything all day. In his self-imposed darkness, Russell’s voice carried over the clanks and grunts of the weight room; “Time to get you a beer, my friend.”

Two days later, Alicia shut the door of her trailer, kicked her shoes into the corner and flopped into an armchair, flexing and pointing her toes.

Fucking heels. The balls of her feet throbbed. Standing on the sidewalk doing take after take in stilettos in D.C.’s August heat could kill a girl. A tap on the trailer door made her groan, and her head dropped to rest on the back of the armchair.

“Come in,” she called, raising her head. The door opened, and Laura Wu, the episode’s director, poked her head in. Alicia scrambled to her feet. “Laura, hi. What can I do for you?”

Laura adjusted her baseball cap, her long, dark ponytail trailing out of the hole in the back. “I can come back later if you need a minute, Alicia. I just wanted to chat about something with you.”

“No, come on in. Have a seat.” Alicia waved at the love seat in the small room, trying to ignore the flutter of nervousness in her gut and plopped back into the armchair. “I was just recovering from foot fatigue.”

Laura wrinkled her nose as she sat down. “I don’t envy actresses’ wardrobes. Life behind the camera has many distinct advantages.” Waving a hand to indicate her own faded Wonder Woman tee shirt, worn jeans, and sneakers, she leaned back. “And that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. Wardrobe. Or the opposite.”

Dread curled in Alicia’s stomach. “The nude scene?”

“Yeah. I want to change it.” Laura’s dark eyes, intense and intelligent, bored into Alicia.

“To…what?” More nudity?

“I don’t see that there’s any need for the skin, frankly. The guys in the suits like it, but they’re guys in suits.” Laura laughed, but it had a hollow sound. “Emphasis on guys. I’ve already gone ten rounds with a bunch of male executives who talk about how naked women are empowered and strong because they’re not wearing a stitch. But before I go all in on this, I want to make sure that’s in line with your vision of the character. So, what do you think? If you want to do it, we can shoot it as written. Otherwise, I have a final conference call with L.A. later today and I’m going to try one last time to get it taken out.”

Alicia blinked. “This…was not the conversation I thought we were going to have.”

Laura