calculated to make Drew forget what she’d just let slip. ‘It sounds important.’
‘Yeah. I’m taking a break from important at the moment.’
Her face hardened suddenly and Drew regretted the words. He hadn’t been thinking, and he’d let his prejudices show. That wasn’t going to encourage any confidence on Sophie’s part.
‘Why?’ She almost snapped the word at him.
‘The hospital where I worked closed last month. I’m taking some time to look at my options for the future.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been a painful time for you.’ Suddenly the ice cracked and the look of concern on her face seemed meltingly genuine. Drew reminded himself that Sophie was an actress. However beautiful she was, however much she made him long to make her smile, it was all an illusion.
He searched for something else to say. He didn’t want to talk about the hospital or the closure, or how much it had hurt. They were real things, and they had no place here. ‘Your English accent is very good.’
‘I should hope so. I am English.’ She waved away his apology. ‘It’s okay. A lot of people who saw me in MacAdam assume that I’m American.’
‘The TV cop show? I saw the trailers.’
She gave him an amused look. ‘Have you seen anything I’ve been in?’
‘I…’ Drew gave up the unequal struggle, remembering that his first task was to gain her trust, not impress her. ‘I haven’t had much time for TV recently, I’ve been pretty busy. Are you going to be making another series?’
‘What?’ Her sudden glassy-eyed look turned quickly into a frown.
‘Another series.’ Drew deliberately didn’t proffer any more information. If she’d lost the thread of the conversation, he wanted to see if she could pick it up again, without prompting.
‘How would I know?’ She made it sound as if this was a detail that didn’t warrant her attention.
‘I just thought you might.’
‘Well, you thought wrong.’ She’d scanned his face, as if looking for clues, and then the frown gave way to a don’t-mess-with-me glare. Sophie got abruptly to her feet and stalked away from him.
Drew watched her go. As soon as she’d put thirty yards between them her pace slowed a little, almost as if she’d calculated that she was now at a safe distance. Her angry movements gave way to a more graceful rhythm and Drew forced himself to forget the way her waist moved, and consider dispassionately whether she showed any signs of impaired co-ordination.
Nothing. She carried her beauty in a different way from Gina. Gina had known she was beautiful and had used it to wind Drew around her little finger, rock his world, and then smash it. But Sophie dealt her bewitching smiles carefully, playing her cards close to her chest. It occurred to Drew that it was a far more effective form of enchantment, and a great deal more dangerous.
She shouldn’t have done that. Snapping at him and walking away only drew attention to the fact that her mind had suddenly blanked, right in the middle of a conversation. She should have thought of something clever to say to change the subject.
Clever was a bit beyond her at the moment. But she knew enough to know that no medical scenes this morning meant they didn’t need a medical consultant, and Sophie had wanted to find out what he was really here for. And somewhere, hidden deep in those cool grey eyes, she’d found it. A spark of knowingness, as if he already knew the secret that no one else did.
‘Forget it.’ She muttered the words to herself, smiling grimly at the thought that forgetting came far too easily to her these days. People could, and would, suspect anything they pleased. If she didn’t confirm those suspicions, they were nothing but idle speculation.
Carly was sitting on the steps leading up to the door of her trailer, basking in the midday sun. ‘Where have you been, Soph?’
‘I met the doctor.’
‘Yeah? What’s he like?’
‘Good looking.’ Sophie had always liked dark hair and light eyes in a man. ‘Very good looking, actually. I don’t think he approves of us much, though.’
‘Why, because he’s a doctor? Just because your father disapproves, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all doctors disapprove.’
What followed or didn’t follow was more than Sophie could think about at the moment. And she didn’t want to think about her father either.
‘He might just be shy. He’s new here…’ Carly warmed to her point.
‘No. He’s not shy.’ Those grey eyes, the assessing gaze had been anything but that.
‘Perhaps you are, then. You said he was good looking.’ Carly shrugged, betraying a slight unease with the gesture.
‘I don’t know what he’s doing here today. There’s nothing medical in the script.’
‘Forget it. Just sit back and enjoy the scenery.’
‘You’ll enjoy it with me?’ If Carly was around, perhaps the effect of the doctor’s all-too-knowing gaze would be diluted a little.
Carly grinned. ‘Sorry. Can’t help you with that. I’ve only got one piece of male scenery on my mind, and he’s back in the States.’
‘So sweet. I’ll tell Mark you said that.’ Sophie smiled. Mark and Carly were solid, best friends, lovers… Just the sort of thing that she had dared to hope for with Josh. Everyone had told her that he was a risk, that he was a little more in love with her fame than he was with her, and Sophie had refused to believe it of him. But just when she’d been at her most vulnerable, Josh had dealt his most crushing blow.
Carly chuckled, opening the door of the trailer. Inside, the table was set for two, and lunch was waiting for them, the paper cups and plates of the catering truck banished in favour of china and glass. Sophie almost envied the altogether simpler life of rushing for a place in the queue, chatting with the film crew about the morning’s work.
‘Carly…’
‘Yes?’
Wordlessly, Sophie hugged her friend. How could it be that one secret could erode almost everything between them? She missed being able to talk to Carly about everything, but even her closest friends were an unknown quantity these days. And Sophie knew that if she said anything, Carly would only tell her what she didn’t want to hear, and insist she go for a check-up with a doctor.
‘What’s this for?’ Carly was clinging to her tightly.
‘Nothing. Does it have to be for something?’ Sophie gave a final squeeze of her arms around Carly’s shoulders and then let go. ‘Come on. Let’s eat.’
After the noise and chatter of the bus back to the hotel, Drew savoured the quiet of his hotel room for ten minutes, then opened his laptop and typed Sophie’s name into the search engine. Maybe if he could watch a couple of episodes of MacAdam online, he’d get more of a feel for how Sophie
