Free Summer with a Star (Second Chances Book 1) by Merry Farmer

that analogy or offended.”
    He laughed. “I hope you’re not offended. I didn’t mean to offend. And that’s my problem.”
    “You have problems? You? A famous celebrity?” she teased.
    His impish grin was enough to make her wish she had a fan. “I do,” he said. “My problem is that I want everyone to be happy. Everyone except me.”
    She arched an eyebrow. “Come on. That sounds like a line out of one of those scripts you’ve been reading.”
    “Hey now.” He pointed his fork at her. “It’s taken a lot of therapy for me to admit that I’m an unhealthy people-pleaser.”
    “Therapy, eh?” she said, as playful as she could be. Icy fingers crept down her back at the thought, though. Jenny had suggested a bout of therapy when Brad pulled his shenanigans. So had her principal. And her mom. She had insisted to all of them that she wasn’t crazy. Spencer Ellis didn’t seem to be crazy either, and yet he’d done his time on the comfy couch.
    “I’m beginning to be able to tell when you’re thinking un-vacation-like thoughts,” he said, snapping her out of her downward spiral.
    “I was thinking very vacation-like thoughts,” she lied. A playful lie was more fun than the depressing truth.
    “I’ll give you a penny for them,” he said.
    She shook her head. “Then I’d only continue to think them, and I don’t want to at the moment.” It was true. It was also liberating. “So why don’t you leave Hollywood and, I don’t know, do Broadway or something?” she steered the conversation back to him.
    He laughed, as warm as the setting summer sun. “I would love to do theater for a while. I’ve got a good friend who is a big-deal director on Broadway, Benjamin Paul.”
    Tasha wracked her brain, but had to admit, “Never heard of him.”
    “That’s sort of the point. Broadway is its own world with its own rules. It’s not as easy to just walk in and do it as you’d think.”
    “Even for Spencer Ellis?”
    He hummed and tilted his head to the side as he considered. “Possibly. I’m sure Yvonne could bully her way into getting me a part in something important. It would help if I could sing, though.”
    “What? Spencer Ellis can’t sing?”
    He answered her ribbing with a sheepish grin and a glance through his long lashes that sent butterflies all through Tasha’s important parts.
    “I can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” he confessed.
    Tasha could feel the heat in her cheeks as she tore her eyes away from his and concentrated on finishing her dinner. There was something decidedly awkward about discovering she liked him. Liked him as a person, a guy she was having dinner with. She’d assumed it would be months before she could randomly like a guy after Brad. It underscored how big of a pain she’d been for him these last few days. She hadn’t given him a chance, and that was unforgivable. Yet there he was, forgiving her. Now, if only she could forgive herself.
    “There are other big-ticket shows on Broadway besides the musicals,” Spence went on. “But I might have another direction in mind for my next project.”
    “Oh?” She dared to look up at him again. The devilish grin was gone and he was back to being a man talking about his job prospects.
    “The problem is, most big budget Hollywood films plan years in advance. I should have a whole string of projects lined up to take me through the next five years.”
    “Don’t you?”
    He shook his head. “I’ve committed to a few indie projects working with friends, but after the last movie I filmed—it’s tentatively called University City , and it’s still in post-production—I canceled a couple of the big films I was slated to shoot.”
    “Why?”
    He finished the last bite of his salmon and set his fork down. As he leaned back in his chair, he glanced off across the south beach. That beach was rockier and the waves crashed ashore rather than rolling. It reflected the emotion that filled his expression. Tasha held her breath,