“I know.” She searched for the right words, waving her hands in the air. “He’s kind, and he has these thighs, and he’s good at saying the filthiest things. He’s the whole package, you know?”

Reed cleared his throat. “I don’t know exactly, I suppose, but I hope you’re good at making coffee. It’s a requirement if you date screenwriters.”

“I don’t know how to make coffee, and I have terrible taste in men.”

“You have terrible taste in one man, and he’s long gone. Why don’t you take a chance with someone that makes you happy?”

Anna had asked herself the same thing many times. No one made her feel like John did. Tom had been too calculating for that kind of uninhibited desire, the kind that pushed her up against a wall and wanted her, cared for her without assessing first, without testing to determine if she was worthy of him, without testing to see if she would change for him. John didn’t understand why she didn’t stand up for herself, and Anna hated that he even had to ask. She wondered the same thing too.

“Has Jenny been talking?”

“Maybe.” Reed leaned forward. “Have you communicated with him? I may be new at it, but I’m pretty sure talking about your feelings is an important part.”

Anna put her head in her hands. A man who had once streaked, drunk and naked, across a movie set was telling her to act like an adult. She watched as John walked upstairs. Then she finished her drink, decision made.

She walked down the hallway to John’s door and knocked lightly, but he didn’t respond. She didn’t want to wake him, but she lingered at the door, hoping to run into him again, hoping to explain. Eventually, she returned to her own room.

#

JOHN WOKE TO SUNLIGHT streaming into his hotel room. He missed Anna in his bed, but he had ignored her knock the night before. He didn’t want to explain until his deal with Tom was over.

John knew he couldn’t work with the man. He had ignored the feeling of doubt that tugged at him on that first day in the agent’s office and every day since. He couldn’t ignore it now. Even finding a lawyer willing to be opposite the agent was tricky. Both lawyers he had talked to, though, had agreed that the contract was ironclad. There was no way out. John was obligated to give the agent another week, but if Tom didn’t have a signed contract by then, the rights would revert back to John.

The phone rang. John glanced at the name. It was time for this farce to be over.

“What kind of an asshole do you have to be to do that?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Tom laughed. “You’ll learn soon enough what it takes to make it.”