Free November Sky by Marleen Reichenberg Page A

laundry, and I hate cleaning house. I can just do a little shopping.” He grinned. “But no one can do it all. I promise that I have other compensating qualities.”
    I didn’t find it particularly insulting if a man frankly admitted that he couldn’t acquire a taste for housework. I didn’t find it fulfilling, either. Of course, I still didn’t know about those compensating qualities Nick was hinting at. I was just happy that Nick wanted to give me time. I still harbored a fear that I was a dead loss as far as a true relationship was concerned.
    For most of the night, we lounged around his comfortable leather couch. I asked to watch scenes from episodes in the first season of his series and then some from the current season. It was so much fun to have the leading man on the screen sitting right beside me, providing me inside information about what all went wrong with the takes during the shoot or what was improvised. I was taken aback by the amount of improvisation and wanted to know if people always had to stick strictly to the script.
    “Well, theoretically, yes. But in practice it often turns out that the lines are modified off the cuff, or another actor does or says something that isn’t intended. You can get upset about it or simply keep shooting a reaction that works. Scenes in film and TV are shot several times, and they use the best take. The attraction of this show for me is that I’ve been with it right from the start. I’ve been able to develop and elaborate Herbert’s character.”
    “But how can you play a character so convincingly who’s so totally different from yourself?” I asked. “I imagine that’s incredibly difficult.”
    He smiled. Then he stood up, hunched forward, scratched his head rapidly, and did a perfect imitation of the TV character’s helpless look and slow, labored manner of speaking. Awkwardness flowed from his pores.
    “Ahem, well . . . so . . . how can I put it? It’s not quite . . . er, simple, but . . . to put it in my own words . . . well . . . what I’m trying to say is . . .”
    I almost fell off the sofa laughing. Nick stood up, grinned, and went on in a normal voice.
    “Every actor has his own method of working his way into a role. I always look around for real-life models and slip into their skin. For Herbert I think of a former classmate who was similarly super intelligent, introverted, and barely social. I try to put myself in his shoes when I’m acting. I’ll have conversations with other people, but he withdraws and shuts up. He likes the company of women, but they intimidate him, and he doesn’t know what to say, and so on. It’s a challenge, and I can keep growing by taking difficult roles. I mean, characters who speak, think, and act completely differently from the way I do in real life.”
    Nick sat close to me with a mischievous glint in his eye and pulled me to him. His hands on my shoulders brought on a now-familiar tingling in my gut, and my body tensed in expectation.
    “But right now I’m Nick, who absolutely wants to kiss you on the spot because you look relaxed at last, your laugh is so marvelously uninhibited, and because I find you absolutely beautiful.”
    I could read the longing in his eyes, now grown dark. But the desire was paired with tenderness. Any doubts I had that this man had fallen in love with me were forgotten when his soft, warm lips caressed mine. Oblivious to the world, I wrapped my arms around his neck, closed my eyes, and returned his kiss. Long and passionate. Nick’s hands slid over my spine down toward my derriere. I felt the warmth of his hands through the thin fabric of my sleeveless shirt, and then my tight skirt. To me, the area he now touched was an absolute taboo zone. Not because I was prudish, but because of my shame about my hips and thighs. I recoiled and tried to free myself, but he guessed what I was thinking and held me tight.
    “Please stay here; you’ve got such a gorgeous ass,” he