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

you. I want your prickly independence. Your innovative mind. Your passionate intensity. I want the similarities I see between us and the differences that you perceive. In short, I still want it all.

I understand that you may still feel wary or afraid. There are never guarantees, after all. But I am willing to take those risks. I hope that someday you are willing to also.

The purpose of this letter is not to badger you or argue you into feeling something you do not feel, but merely to give you something tangible to show you that I have not changed my mind should you ever doubt me. “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks” might as well be my motto these days.

Wishing you the very best for your health and happiness,

Colin

Alicia’s hand had crept up to cover her mouth as she read the letter, her heart hammering. She re-read it again and focused on the line from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, her memory completing the phrase.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Colin gripped his glass of whiskey and wondered how long he had to endure before he could leave. He’d grudgingly agreed to join his colleagues on the trip to a bar to celebrate the successful acquisition of the new client, a large tech firm. The client company made it clear that they wanted Colin’s services as well as the litigation services that they had initially been pitched, concerned they wouldn’t have a workforce in ten years if America didn’t invest in STEM education. He should have been elated.

Instead, he stood and stared at nothing and wondered if Alicia had received his letter yet. If she had read it or tossed it away. Had he gone too far with the Shakespeare?

Had he not gone far enough?

A hand clapped his shoulder, and his startled eyes focused on Brandon standing next to him.

“Congratulations,” Brandon said, clinking his glass against Colin’s. “I understand your skill with congressional staff has more than a little to do with this shindig.”

Colin shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” he said, even though the CEO of the company himself had told Colin that he was impressed at the firm’s forward-thinking attitudes in investing in education.

“Typical British modesty, or is something else going on?” Brandon asked with his usual quiet shrewdness.

Jaw set, Colin considered Brandon carefully. The other man’s hazel eyes were serene as they traveled around the bar, lighting with a smile as he focused on something. Colin turned to follow Brandon’s gaze and saw a mass of copper curls come in the door and start through the crowd on the way towards them. Looking back at Brandon, he saw the other man’s face relax into a smile as he watched his fiancée work her way through the crowd to join him.

Colin’s heart squeezed as Mari reached Brandon and the pair exchanged chaste cheek kisses and conspiratorial smiles. Mari turned within the circle of Brandon’s arm and grinned at Colin.

“Hi,” she said to Colin. Her eyes flicked around the bar. “Where’s Alicia?”

Colin didn’t miss the way Mari looked at the air around him as if Alicia was just supposed to materialize. “She’s…we’re not together anymore,” he said.

Brandon dropped his arm from around Mari’s shoulders. “That’s too bad. You seemed like a nice match. We liked her a lot when we met her at the gala.”

Trying for an easy smile that he was sure looked more like a ghastly grimace, Colin waved his hand at the pair. “Please don’t stop your canoodling on my account. It’s not like we were together long.”

Mari regarded him seriously. “Does that matter?”

Trust Mari to somehow skip straight to the heart of the problem. Once, Brandon had told Colin that his fiancée had a brilliant mind and an oddly developed sense of empathy, often using movies, television, and other pop culture references to try to understand people. This method produced erratic results that were sometimes off, but more frequently they were eerily accurate.

Mari was right. Colin may not have been with Alicia long, but the yearning he felt for her was like being towed out to sea, helpless and swamped by the emotion that rushed around and over him.

“No, maybe not,” he admitted.

Still staring at the letter in her hand, Alicia realized she was chewing on a fingernail. A fingernail that had been manicured for her glossy congresswoman role. Whipping her hand away from her face, she folded the letter and put it back in the envelope with trembling hands. Her phone rang in her bag, sounding as if it were coming from a long way away. Heart pounding, half expecting it to be Colin, she was puzzled to see Melissa’s name on the screen. Her agent was the last person she expected to hear from right now.

She answered the call, and Melissa’s harsh voice cracked out. “Hey, before you ask, no, this isn’t about an audition, and you’re not getting fired from your current gig.”

Alicia blinked. “Okay. What is this about?”

Her agent sighed. “I got a weird call today, and I almost decided not to pass it along. But I figured better to let you make your own decisions. Do you have a sister called Grace?”

Ice water ran through Alicia’s veins. “Gracie?” Her voice was a tiny squeak.

“You do have a sister? Seemed weird to me that a sister wouldn’t have your contact information, but it also seemed weird to me that in more than ten years you wouldn’t ever mention you had a sister. Yeah. I got a call from a Grace Johnson who claims to be your sister and wanted a way to get in touch with you.”

Alicia simultaneously wanted to cry and to throw up. “Is she okay?” Her own voice sounded small and far away.

“Seems like it. She said to tell you that she’s going to college and that she ‘left,’ whatever that means.”

Her little sister. Her “Juliet.” On her own and getting an