Like an evil mind-reading sorcerer, Tom went in for the kill. “If we can work together, this script is the kind that can go all the way. I’m only going to do this if it can win awards. It will make your career. You’ll be swimming in—”

“Please stop.”

Tom laughed. “That usually works.”

“Not with me,” John said. “I’ll take the job, and I’ll give you a short-term option on the script.”

Tom nodded as if John’s acquiescence was a foregone conclusion, but John didn’t miss the way the other man’s shoulders relaxed. Something about The Final Vampire had Melton’s knickers in a twist.

“My lawyer will courier the contract this afternoon. I look forward to working with you.” Tom stood and held out his hand.

John shook the man’s hand and turned to leave.

The agent cleared his throat. “I saw you talking to my ex-wife last night.”

John glanced back, his stomach twisting in knots at the words. Tom was straightening the already-neat papers on his desk. Again.

“I talked to a lot of people last night. It happens when you’re a waiter.”

“You don’t know who she is?”

“Should I?”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “Frank Amato introduced you. Annalise Kovács.”

How did she marry a guy who calls her Annalise? “The woman in the designer dress with the big hair. Yeah, she really stood out.”

In the end, it turned out Anna was just another Hollywood ex-wife. She may as well have been interchangeable with a dozen other women at the party. He ignored the part of himself that knew such uncharitable thoughts weren’t true.

Tom laughed. “We’re going to work well together.”

Chapter Eleven

Anna stepped out of the truck and onto the parking lot of the movie studio outside Rome. The early-morning sun shone bright in the cloudless sky. The sound of honking horns and squealing brakes filled the air. Rome’s reputation for traffic was well earned.

Anna loved movie sets, and she couldn’t believe she finally got to shoot at the famed Italian studio. She felt at home on a studio lot or a location shoot in a way that she never did in any of the places she actually lived: temporary apartments in foreign cities, roadside motels at film festivals, or Jenny’s couch in Los Angeles. She didn’t have to pretend to be comfortable with permanency when she was shooting a movie. The nervous energy that fizzed and sparked when she was looking for her next project, waiting for the next call, or taking the next meeting dissipated into a pleasant hum of work.