Unscripted (33 page)

“Sure, I’m here to see you, Alex,” I said mildly. “But I already told you why. I asked you to come back on the show, and you said no. Seems pretty clear where you stand.”

It occurred to me that my relaxed detachment was bothering him—a lot—and I knew why. He wasn’t all that hard to figure out: Alex’s Achilles’ heel was his burning desire to be, well, desired. Professionally, personally, romantically, what have you. My not making a fuss over him just ate at him. Therefore, I reasoned, if I wanted to get my way, my smartest move would be . . .

“Excuse me, Alex. I need to talk to Mas—Professor Mitchell. I’ll see you around.”

And I got up and glided down the aisle to chat with my favorite person in the world, leaving Alex agape behind me. (I snuck a peek to make sure my mad manipulation skillz were still working. Apparently they were.) When I came up to Mason, he gave me a bright, delighted smile that thrilled me to the tips of my toes.

“Doing well, Professor,” I murmured.

“Aw, I kind of miss my other names.”

“The ones I call you in public, or the ones I call you when we’re—” And the next thing I knew, there were hands on me—from behind.

“Faith, I forgot . . .”

Goddamn. Alex again. “Yeah, Alex. What can I do for you?” I looked at Mason. He was staring at Alex’s hands, which were now massaging my shoulders.

“I was going to ask you—do you want to hang out tonight? Maybe talk more about this whole David thing?”

While a part of me pinged to attention at Alex wanting to discuss the possibility of returning to the show, mostly I was horrified that he was coming on to me. What a twisted stinker, that he’d get all flirty just because I wasn’t falling all over him anymore. And right in front of Mason, even though Alex didn’t know that mattered.

I ducked out from under his hands and turned around to face him, which put me next to Mason. “Can’t, Alex, sorry. I have plans.”

His pretty face arranged itself into a confused frown. I’d bet I was the first woman to turn down one of his invitations. Ever. “Oh . . . okay. Sure.”

“Sorry,” I said again, and stood quietly until he figured out that my silence was his cue to leave. After he’d wandered off, I turned to Mason, getting as close as I dared with a class full of students milling around. “Er, we
do
have plans, don’t we?”

He gazed at me warmly. “Now that you mention it . . .”

“Will it involve props?”

“Actually, no.”

“Well, darn.”

“It occurred to me that we haven’t been out on a real date yet, so I was thinking we could go out to dinner tonight.”

“Well, you did buy me coffee and a muffin last week. And you bought me dinner in absentia. Which you then saw proof of when it made its grand reappearance on your shoes.”

“As enchanting and memorable as that was, I would like the opportunity to court you properly, Ms. Sinclair.”

“Why? You’ve already got me.”

His eyes flicked over to Alex. “You sure about that?”

If we were alone, I would have turned him back to me and kissed the stuffing out of him. As it was, however, I had to keep my hands—and my lips—to myself. “One hundred percent.”

Chapter 20

“Here, do your homework.” Mason slipped into bed beside me and handed me his laptop, browser cued up to the episode of
Modern Women
the scriptwriting class was going to discuss tomorrow.

“Do you think we spend an inordinate amount of time in bed?”

“No such thing. Of course, if we find ourselves holding class by Skype from here, then . . .”

“I’m sure the kids would find your lectures much more interesting.”

“I’m going to ignore your implication that my lectures are boring. You’re stalling. Watch the episode, refresh your memory.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ooh, I like that. Will you call me that some more if I ask you to?”

His hand crept under the covers and up my shirt. Although I
really
wanted him to continue, I decided to toss the responsibility thing back at him. “Hey. Homework. You said.”

Reluctantly he pulled his hand away, kissed my temple. “Right. You and me both.” He sat up and pulled some fat folders onto his lap as my video started to play.

I glanced over. “What’re those?”

“Administrative stuff. Department budget, enrollment trends. I’ve got a meeting with the trustees tomorrow.”

“Another one?” He’d just had one today; he’d been gone well into the evening, which had left me a lot of time to brainstorm different story lines for reintroducing David, but I couldn’t deny I had been mighty distracted, watching the minutes tick by until he walked through the door.

“Yeah,” was all Mason answered, as he shuffled through the papers.

That was weird; he usually wasn’t that curt with me. “What’s going on?”

“Well . . .”

Then I had a thought about the next day’s class. “Hey, do you think the students are going to notice how important the sequence of these opening shots is?”

Mason paused, then said, “They might. If they don’t ask, you should tell them.”

“Okay. Oh, sorry—what were you saying?”

“Nothing. Do your homework.”

I turned back to the laptop. Alex wasn’t in this episode a whole lot, but I found myself distracted by the scenes he was in. Not like when I had a crush on him; instead, I started to wonder if bringing him back was the smartest thing to do. I thought back to his last couple of months on the show before we let him out of his contract. By the time he’d gotten ready to fly the coop, he was causing a whole lot of trouble—aimed at me, but of course it had an effect on the whole production. Would he be different now? Would his time as a student have humbled him? Would he be grateful to have his old job back, or would he think he was doing us—or, worse, me—a favor, and try to take advantage of that? There were so many ways this could go bad.

The video kept playing, but I wasn’t really paying attention, even though I kept my eyes in the general vicinity of the screen. Then Mason shifted beside me, resting his chin on my shoulder, and watched a few minutes of the episode. “Alex sure spends a lot of time shirtless.”

“Just giving the fans what they wanted. Did you know there are dozens of Web sites that are nothing more than collections of screen shots of David without a shirt on?”

“And that was painless for the females in the cast and crew as well, I suppose.”

“And a fair share of the men too. Don’t be hetero-centric.”

Mason laughed softly and kissed my shoulder. “Noted.”

I looked up at him. “Hey, about the other day—you kind of hinted that . . . you don’t think Alex and I—?”

To my surprise, instead of denying it outright, he shrugged, silent.

I put the laptop aside and rolled over to face him. “Why would you think that?”

“Observation.”

“What?”

With one of his half-smiles, he said, “Faith, don’t take this the wrong way, but you can be kind of . . . transparent.”

“What! I have an excellent poker face.”

“No, you don’t. Not to me, anyway.”

“Yeah, well, you’re freaky.”

“Maybe so. But it was pretty obvious, even from the first time you came barging into the theater to see Alex, that there was something more between the two of you than you admitted to.”

“I don’t
barge
. And there is absolutely
nothing
between me and Alex.”

“And never was?”

I hesitated. “I . . .
may have been
attracted to him at one point a long time ago. I can’t change the past; all I can do is own up to it and then move forward. And that forward includes you—just you.”

“You two dated?”

“No.” I didn’t think a miserable evening of pizza and awkward conversation that culminated with my gnawing on the side of Alex’s head like a zombie counted as a date.

“And what about now?”

“I just told you, I’m not—”

“Not you. Him. How
he
feels about
you
.”

I laughed. “Oh, I doubt that very much.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself.”

“That’s incredibly sweet. But I’m positive you’re way off base. Alex never had any interest in me, and he doesn’t now. And even if he did, I wouldn’t care, because I have you.” I kissed him nice and deep, for a long time, for emphasis. “Besides,” I added, as I started to pull his shirt off, “Alex is with Kaylie.”

“What?”

The bewildered, hit-in-the-back-of-the-head-with-a-Frisbee look on his face made me laugh. “You never noticed?”

“I don’t pay attention to my students’ love lives.”

“You are missing out on
so
much drama.”

He helped me get his shirt over his head. “That’s what I was aiming for. So . . . Kaylie and Alex? Really? Is that wise?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think so. And I told her as much.”

“Knowing Kaylie, that’ll make her go and do what you told her not to.”

“She does seem to be that kind of a person.”

“She’s going to get hurt, isn’t she?”

“Maybe not. Alex could very well be committed to her. It’s possible.”

“Alex?”

“I know,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“And you don’t think he’s going to lose interest—whether he goes back to L.A. or not?”

“He might stick with her,” I said, trying not to think about all the women he’d gone through in the years I’d known him. “There’s a first time for everything. Maybe Kaylie is the one who . . .”

“
Please
don’t say ‘tames him.’”

“I won’t, if you shut up about Kaylie and Alex’s love life and kiss me instead.”

* * *

“Okay, hit me.”

“Sure you want to open up the floor that way?”

“Professor Mitchell,” I reprimanded him pertly. “Who’s in charge today?”

He gave me a nod from the back of the room, where he was leaning on the window ledge. “I get the feeling you’re in charge every day, Ms. Sinclair.”

The students looked back and forth between us with great interest. Time to make them focus before they decided to grill me about something other than today’s topic.

“Okay, did everyone watch the episode of
Modern Women,
‘Raine Over Me,’ that Professor Mitchell assigned on Monday?” Everyone nodded. “Great. Okay, go ahead—ask me anything. About the episode,” I reminded them, with a significant look at Mason. I just couldn’t seem to manage to keep my eyes off him. He nodded approvingly.

Alice sat forward. “So . . . why did Raine make that big, long speech?”

“The one in Act III?”

“Yeah. Where she told off Ariel and Marcel?”

“Why do you ask?” I knew the answer, but I wanted Alice to explain why it caught her attention.

“Well, because it was . . . kind of long, for the type of scripts you usually write. And I was wondering if you thought that was kind of risky to do.”

“You mean in case we lost viewers’ interest?”

“Yeah.”

“Good question. It was a risk, but it was one I was willing to take. At that point in the story, it was time for Raine to make her positions clear—and it was also time to show that she wasn’t afraid of Marcel. I wanted to make sure that her speech was long enough to get her points across, but not so long that people paused the DVR and wandered off to raid the fridge. It was important to keep viewers there, right then, for the whole thing. To that end, I tried to add enough humor, as well as enough of a variation in tone, to keep viewers’ attention. Now, my question for you is, did it work?”

“I think so,” Alice said.

“Okay, what about everybody else?”

“I wandered off to raid the fridge,” Michael rumbled, slouching in his seat, his long legs all over the place, like he was intent on taking up as much space as possible.

“You did?”

“Yeah. But I brought my tablet with me.”

“So you kept watching.”

“Yeah. I liked it.”

Astute, in-depth observation. Thanks a bunch, Michael. Luckily Brandon spoke up next, to ask about the specific sequence of scenes, and we were back on track.

* * *

“Nice work,” Mason murmured as we followed the students out the door at the end of class.

I shivered as his breath grazed my ear. “Why thank you, Mr. Professor Mason Mitchell. You should have let me do this earlier.”