He drew back a little and I could tell he was about to really lash into me. But he held himself back and started running his hands through his unruly hair. “Baby, stop being so crazy.” He reached across the couch for my hand. “She’s just a friend, and I don’t know why you’re so insecure about other women. Look, she has a boyfriend, okay? She’s dating Colin Farrell, but she doesn’t like anyone to know.”

“She’s dating Colin Farrell? I think I would have read about that on PerezHilton.com or something if it were true. Was she the one in the sex video?”

“No, that sex video is ancient history. Chloe is in that new western he has coming out. She told me that, between takes, they got to know each other, and that one thing led to another and she found herself making out with him in his trailer. She said he was so rough with her that his jeans rubbed her thighs raw—that’s how intense they are. Believe me, she’s totally into him. Chloe had another boyfriend before shooting started and said she felt so bad about all the Colin stuff that she had to break it off with the guy back in England. Okay?”

“Okay what?” I asked. “Is this conversation about Chloe’s roughed-up thighs supposed to make me feel better?”

Dave squeezed my hand and focused his eyes directly into mine. “You know how crazy I am about you. You take my breath away, Dani. When I saw you for the first time at the airport, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

This perked me up, but I was still going to make him earn this. “Really?”

“Really. So will you please stop being crazy like this?”

“I thought you liked it when I was crazy.”

“I do, but when you’re crazy-sexy and not really crazy.”

I thought about this for a second and then tilted my head toward him. I could feel his breath on my face, and I whispered into his lips, “I’ll stop being crazy.”

I closed my eyes and we kissed. I went over everything in my mind. He should be allowed to have female friends; I couldn’t strangle him like this. I reminded myself of that poem about a caged bird: If you open the cage door and it flies away, it was never really yours. I had to leave the cage door open. The show would finish taping the following week and Chloe Johnson and all those freckles would be history.

SEVEN

SEVEN

The next few days at work were a blur as we put the finishing postproduction touches on the Marilyn episode.