Free Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) by Magdalen Braden Page B

between them. After a few minutes, she began to relax.
    The movie gradually engrossed her. Libby could see where things were going with Powell’s forgotten-man-turned-butler really being a Boston Brahmin. Even so, the ending surprised her. When the credits finished, she turned to Rand with tears in her eyes.
    His arm curled around her shoulders. He opened his mouth to say something, but never spoke.
    They stared at each other. Libby thought about his skin, his golden-brown eyes, his lips.
    He leaned in and kissed her. She lost herself in the moment, magical because of Godfrey’s savoir faire and the image of Rand’s skin. She let him deepen the kiss, pull her into his arms, tangle their tongues, and touch her back with a hand snaked in under her sweater. Everything he did, she reciprocated. When she got to pull up his shirt, the feel of his skin made her think about her bedroom not twenty feet away, just beyond Lissa’s roo—.
    Lissa. He was kissing Lissa. Libby jerked back in an awkward move.
    “I’m sorry. I just realized—” she began. Oh God, what could she say? “You—you’re not, I mean, you shouldn’t be kissing a contestant, should you?” A rhetorical question.
    He removed his hands from her torso and pulled back a few inches. “No. I mean, yes, you’re right. I shouldn’t.”
    Libby scooted away from him. She looked at the TV, now showing a blue screen. “I love the movie,” she said.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I got carried away.”
    “The power of film,” she joked. Her voice sounded shaky, though, and it wasn’t even funny.
    Rand stood up. Libby looked away to avoid staring at the crotch of his jeans. At the bulge in the crotch of his jeans.
    “I should probably get back to the airport,” he said. He didn’t move.
    Libby stood up. “Uh, look, I know you weren’t trying—I mean, I know you didn’t—you can’t make the game any easier for me. That’s not why I kissed you.”
    His smile held real amusement. “I think I kissed you first.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    He laughed. “All too well.” He packed away his laptop. “So do you have a better idea of what a ditzy person is like?”
    Like…someone who could fall for the one guy she can’t have—if for no other reason than he thinks she’s her twin?

Chapter Six
     
    Rand froze, one finger hovering over his mouse.
    He couldn’t watch the raw footage he’d shot of Lissa again. With his luck, Marcy would walk up to his desk and demand to know what he was doing.
    What was with this urge to watch Lissa’s tape over again? Every time he saw it he focused on now-familiar details like the way her hair flowed over her shoulder when she flicked it back, or that cute way she had of touching her teeth to her bottom lip just for a second, or the glow in her eyes when she was joking. Then he’d notice something new to add to his list of favorite moments. He was losing it, and he wasn’t even sure why.
    He pulled up his spreadsheet of the competitions, but all he saw was Lissa. She obsessed him.
    It couldn’t be the screenplay. He’d written as much as he could before the show started. He had an opening sequence that established his protagonist, Brad, as a dimwit in a seemingly glamorous job that turns out to be really boring. Brad’s boss, Nanci—with a smiley face to dot the i—is insufferable. Fun to write Nanci’s dialogue. Less fun but just as necessary had been Brad’s conversations with his best friends, one at work and one outside of work, telling him to quit. Rand thought he’d nailed Brad’s motivation for staying in the job. Maybe Brad’s father needed to show up sooner in the movie. Rand made a mental note to check that.
    Finally, he’d developed Lissa’s character, Jenna. In Rand’s screenplay, she works as a waitress at a diner when she applies to be on The Ant Farm , and only admits that she’s planning to attend med school in her interview with Brad. Rand had them almost hook up but stop