Free Quirks & Kinks by Laurel Ulen Curtis Page B

fifty cups of coffee though. So there was that.
    “Good morning,” Larry greeted cheerfully as he busted into my dressing room without a knock.
    “Good morning,” Ashley recited back at the same time that I complained, “Thanks for the warning. What if I had been naked?”
    “I guess I would have lost my eyesight,” Larry quipped, smiling at Ashley instead of looking at me.
    A small laugh bubbled in my throat, but I forced it back down with a rough swallow.
    What was happening? Was I actually starting to like Larry?
    Not like him, like him. Tolerate him. Find amusement in his arrogance.
    His phone chirped in his hand and he dragged his eyes away from my sister so he could look at it. “Excellent.” Ashley and I looked on in question until he filled us in. “That was Bill out at the gate. Anderson Evans has arrived and should be on scene shortly.”
    Evans. His last name was Evans.
    Butterfly wings skimmed the inside of my stomach as Larry focused on me.
    “Quick, Easie! Cover your horns.”
    This time the humor hit me harder, and a laugh escaped before I could stop it.
    Shit! I was. I was starting to like Larry.
    God. This was the beginning of the end.
    “Come on, we’ll meet in the empty dressing room,” Larry instructed, waving me out of my chair from a distance and helping my sister up from hers with a hand.
    Instinctually, I wanted to argue and tell him I needed a smoke break first, but after last night, even I couldn’t stomach it.
    The three of us filed across the hall, with Ashley in front and Larry bringing up the rear. While I slumped down into a chair at the table and Ashley found a seat on the couch, Larry stood sentry in the open door and waited. His toe tapped in opposition to the calm line of his body.
    We were all on edge and would be a lot better off when all of this was over. With a shooting schedule of one episode a week, and only the same amount of downtime before it aired, that didn’t leave us much room for problems.
    And we were already swimming in them.
    I’d imagine other shows shot a bunch of episodes at a time, but we didn’t have the budget nor the guarantee. We lived or died by each episode, and wasting time on something that would never see the light of day wasn’t in the network’s plan.
    With the second and final episode starring Ryder scheduled to air tomorrow night, we needed to be filming for next week today. Editing would have to be done, and it was always ideal to leave time for reshoots. If the cutting room floor was left empty and uncluttered, sometimes a second attempt or additional shot was necessary.
    When Larry straightened to full height from leaning, I knew Anderson had entered the hall and was making what was surely an attractive approach.
    I thanked the attraction gods for the fact that I couldn’t see him. All that would bring was a meltdown, and as far as I knew, a pile of goo didn’t really do well in a conference type of situation.
    “Anderson,” I heard as a tan hand came into view. Larry reached out and clasped it, giving it a professional yet welcoming shake.
    I’d gotten no shake at my meeting. I’d gotten dissed.
    Maybe I didn’t like Larry.
    “Come in, come in,” Larry cooed. “Have a seat.”
    Green eyes caught mine and smiled, the lush, dark lashes around them plumping with the slight squeezing of each corner.
    “You know—” Larry started in an attempt to perform some sort of formal reintroduction.
    Anderson didn’t let him finish.
    “Easie.” The sound of my name on his tongue seemed sensual, and as soon as the second and final syllable rolled off of his tongue, his smiling eyes seeped all the way down to his lips.
    Scooting the chair out beside me and settling into it gracefully, Anderson pulled a stylish black ball cap off of his head and a pair of gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses out of the front of his shirt and tossed them gently to the worn surface of the old kitchen table.
    I mentioned that the show was low budget. Accordingly,