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“It’s so personal. It’s the first time I’ve ever put down my feelings on paper that way.”
Erin smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much. There’s no way my brothers are going to sit and read an entire romantic screenplay that we wrote. No offense.”
Jay lifted a brow. “Oh, how wrong you are, short stuff.”
Jay was serious. Her eyes widened. As if reading her thoughts, he nodded slowly.
“You aren’t seriously telling me Archer Davenport is planning to read that screenplay.”
“I’m seriously telling you he must’ve started it the second I left. He texted me just as you came in. He says he wants to talk Smith into playing the lead.”
She couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing. The two dogs, hearing the hilarity, had to get in on the act and raced in from the garden.
“Well, it is a very good story,” she said at last.
Jay looked up at her on the counter, his eyes twinkling, full of love. “Andit has a happy ending,” he reminded her, and then leaned forward to give her a long, deep kiss.
It took a minute before she could come up for air. “The best kind,” she agreed. “The kind that lasts forever.”
Epilogue
Damien Davenport was having a hard time wrapping his head around his kid sister and Jay Malone becoming an item. Sure, he could see they were crazy for each other. First Erin had turned into some kind ofsisterzilla, jumping up at the breakfast table and telling him to sit his butt down. Demanding that her whole family stay out of her business. It was a side of Erin he’d never seen before and, he had to admit to himself once he got over the shock, she had a point. He was kind of proud of her. He’d been so accustomed to thinking of Erin as their vulnerable kid sister who needed protecting that he’d never noticed she’d become a grown woman making her own choices. It was pretty clear his brothers had felt the same way.
But to find out she cared forJay Malone, the hotshot agent who had spent the last fifteen years boasting about which top model he was currently dating, had made his blood boil. He and his brothers had planned to teach Jay a lesson one way or another. But then Jay had gone and shocked them all.
Jay Malone had written a romantic comedy.
Jay Malone, who famously never even put his actors in romances, had gone and written one. Co-written, it turned out, with their sister.
And the shocks just kept landing. The minute Jay had left his brother’s house, Arch had started reading the screenplay aloud. Obviously, all of them had figured it would be terrible, something they could have a good laugh at, but after a couple of pages, Arch had stopped reading the lines in a bad falsetto andstarted reading it with feeling. The way a professional would do a table read.
Even with only one voice doing all the parts, Damien found himself swept up in the story. At first, he’d thought it was because Arch was that good of an actor, but then he realized Jay and Erin were actually that good as screenwriters.
At the end of the first act, Arch put down the phone and looked at all of them grouped around him in an astonished circle. “He meant it. It is a love letter to Erin.”
“And one from her to Jay,” Nick had said, stunned. Silence had fallen as the brothers took in this new fact that reshaped their world. Those two most unlikely people were in love. Then Nick added, “I guess we have to be okay with it.”
Arch read on, not aloud anymore, but skimming ahead, chuckling a few times, shaking his head. Finally, he glanced up. “And damn, it’s good. I think the lead could be perfect for Smith.”
Damien had been so shocked he couldn’t believe his ears. “You seriously think this movie could be made?”
“Oh, yeah. And it could be big.”
Nick pondered the question. “You want Smith to playJay?”
Arch shook his head. “It’s not Jay, it’s every guy who’s ever fallen hard for a girl he thought was just a friend. It’s a classic storyline, but they’ve made it feel completely fresh. It’s one of the best scripts I’ve read in a long time.”
While his brothers adjusted to the idea of Erin and Jay, it took Damien some time to process things. He’d always felt extra protective of his youngest sister, but what did he know about love?
He still wasn’t convinced later that evening, when he walked to Arch and Tessa’s for the screening of their Scottish wedding video.
His entire family was gathered together and the smell of freshly popped popcorn filled the air. Crystal Lopez came forward, glanced behind her when he walked in, and laughed, holding up her watch. “See? He’s here just in time. Like he always is.” She was wearing a white summer dress and her black hair hung loose around her shoulders.
He hadn’t been certain whether Crystal would show up tonight or simply send the recording along, but he was happy to see her here. He was always happy to see Crystal. She was one of his oldest friends, and probably the reason he’d made it in the music business.
“It’s true,” Jay said. “Crystal said you’d be here.”
“Fashionably late,” Arch grumbled.