Page 2 of Romance Is Dead

Please don’t let my nipples be showing, I prayed to whatever deity might happen to be listening. I’d love it if everyone on set couldn’t see my nipples right now. Would be absolutely thrilled.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” a voice shrieked nearby. “I’m so sorry!”

I assumed the panicked voice came from whoever had just drenched me in boiling hot liquid. Straining to peek above the fabric bunched around my head, I spotted the culprit: Trevor, the PA who had driven me to set.

And right in front of me, now in direct eyeline with my bare, scalded chest, was Teddy.

“Trevor!” The urgent call came from another room. Probably someone wondering where their coffee was. They were about to be disappointed.

“Sorry,” Trevor squeaked once more before scurrying away, the cup caddy dribbling as he went.

I craned my neck, still swaddled in my sweater, scanning the room for Mara.

She’d just been here — where the heck could she have gone?

I finally spotted her across the room, where she was helping a young, blonde woman who was desperately gesticulating to her face in an apparent eyeliner-related emergency.

I silently cursed the wardrobe department.

They’d been so determined for my character to look “sexy in a nerdy way” that the sweater they’d given me was at least a size too small.

I’d struggled to pull it on before it was soaked in coffee; there was no way I’d get out of it by myself now.

I was looking for the nearest wardrobe assistant, my arms still pinned in the air and my hands losing circulation quickly, when Teddy cleared his throat.

“Do you need some help?” His smile was smug and self-satisfied, like he assumed I’d been waiting on pins and needles for him specifically to rescue me.

Which, maybe I did need rescuing. But not by him.

“I’ve got this under control, thanks.”

Teddy stared at me wryly. “Suit yourself.” He started to walk away.

“Actually!” I swallowed, my pride slipping down my throat. “Some help would be great.”

“I gotcha.” Teddy said, taking another step closer.

Without my neck having its full range of motion, I was stuck staring at whatever part of his body was at eye level, which turned out to be his collarbone.

This close, he smelled of pine and something earthy — like the forest after it rains. It was. . . pleasant.

How annoying.

Teddy mimed rolling up his sleeves as he widened his stance. “You ready, hon?”

My skin crawled at being called “hon”, but I nodded, at least as much as my limited range of motion allowed.

Carefully, he pulled the bottom edge of the sweater, his fingertips grazing my arms as he lifted the garment up and over my head.

The touch sent pleasant tingles along my shoulders and down my spine, and I was transported back to the night we met — and the way his fingertips along my skin had set my entire body aflame.

Stop it , I reminded myself. You know how that ended .

With one final unceremonious yank, Teddy finally succeeded in pulling the sweater over my head.

I shivered as my body was freed of its acrylic-and-wool-blend prison and immediately glanced down.

Yes, my nipples were indeed visible beneath the wet, ivory fabric of my bra.

Not only that, they were now hard and pointed. Great.

Teddy, however, seemed unfazed. “That’s a new record — it usually takes longer than ten seconds after I meet a girl to help her undress.” He grinned, my now-ruined sweater still in his hands.

I reached up to adjust my wig, which was now horribly askew, before snatching the top back. “I’ll take that.”

Teddy let the fabric slip through his hands. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thanks,” I said grudgingly.

“I’m Teddy.” He reached out a hand, his expression belying no hint that we’d met before.

On the plus side, it looked like my plan to remain incognito was working. On the downside, it still stung that I was just that unmemorable.

“Quinn. Nice to meet you.”

I took Teddy’s palm with as little enthusiasm as I could muster. His skin was warm and dry, his grip firm but not aggressive. A perfectly normal handshake. But the moment our skin touched, tingles once again ignited the nerves from my fingers all the way up my arm and down into my stomach.

I jerked away, dropping his hand unceremoniously. “I, uh, didn’t even know you were part of the cast until this morning.”

“I was sort of a last-minute addition.”

“Poor Drew. And his thumbs.”

“You know what they say. One man’s thumb injury is another man’s treasure.”

I cocked my head. “Do people say that?”

“Now they do.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling and his gaze boring into mine like we were the only people in the room.

A strange warmth bloomed in my chest, and I found myself unable to break my eyes away from his. What were we doing? Bantering? Had I no self-control?

Thankfully, before we could continue, the assistant director loudly cleared her throat.

“Positions!” She cupped her hands around her mouth and repeated herself. “Positions, people!” She looked me up and down, a withering expression on her face. “And you. Get some clothes on.”

I rarely got embarrassed on set. After years of filming scenes running around half naked while screaming and ugly crying, it took a lot for me to feel self-conscious.

So while stripping off my top in front of everyone on day one wasn’t ideal, it also wasn’t the worst thing to have ever happened to me at work.

(That honor belonged to the time I accidentally ate the prop food for a picnic scene set in a graveyard. It was potato salad. It had been sitting in the sun for hours. I was immediately sick everywhere.)

And yet hours later, after we’d finished blocking the scene and wardrobe had fetched me a new sweater, I was still flustered.

I didn’t mind that I’d flashed half the cast and crew, but I was unnerved by how easily I’d been swept into conversing and joking with Teddy.

One smoldering look, and I’d immediately dropped my defenses.

The heat from the spilled coffee must have momentarily overcooked my brain.

“Last looks!” the AD hollered, once we were in position to begin filming. “Finishing touches, let’s go.”

The makeup and wardrobe assistants waiting in the wings jumped into action, ready to make any last-minute tweaks to ensure we all were camera-ready. Mara scurried over, giving my face a quick study.

“You got this,” Mara whispered as she gave my makeup a final touch-up. “Think about capybaras.” It was an inside joke, something we’d come up with years ago as a way of saying good luck. And for the smallest second, it grounded me.

“Think about capybaras.” I squeezed her hand and walked onto set.

In addition to Teddy and me, there were three other actors in the main cast. I already knew Brent, a surfer type with shaggy blond hair and sun-kissed skin, from our time filming Killer Croc Attack together a few years ago.

He was playing the resident bad boy in the group of friends and was currently staring at his phone as the hair stylist touched up his slicked-back hair.

I suspected the faint whiff of marijuana detectable on set was coming from him.

In contrast, Chloe — an actress a bit younger than me, with bright blue eyes and a tumble of long blonde waves — was chatting Mara’s ear off as she touched up her lip stain.

If I remembered correctly, this was her debut film.

I resisted the urge to tell her to run, quickly, before the industry could ruin her life too.

A loud giggle pierced the air. It was Audrey, a pretty British woman who would be playing the film’s villain: the witch.

She had one hand over her mouth, trying to contain her laughter at something Teddy had just said.

Because much of the witch’s look would be added by special effects in post-production, she was decked out in a special bodysuit covered in inch-wide sensors that looked like ping-pong balls and would be used to align the digital costume and effects with her movements.

Teddy whispered something in her ear and she shook even harder, the sensors jiggling even more frantically.

Gross.

Deciding to ignore them, I closed my eyes and whispered my traditional prayer to the patron saint of scream queens herself, Ms. Jamie Lee Curtis.

“Oh, badass mother of final girls,” I murmured, “watch over me while I carry the torch as yet another girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. May my screams be convincing, my acting adequate, and my legs strong enough to run for more than half of this movie. Am — ”

“Am I standing in the right place?”

I opened my eyes in irritation. It was Teddy, who had apparently had enough of flirting with Audrey and was now posing his question to me.

“How should I know? Am I supposed to remember your marks?” I did have them memorized, actually, but that was beside the point.

“I just thought — ”

“And they didn’t tell us to hit our marks yet anyway.”

“I was just asking a question. You don’t have to be so uptight.”

“Uptight? Are you serious? I — ”

An older man who was moving very fast for his age brushed past us, knocking me off balance and interrupting our squabbling.

“Took me near a dozen flea markets before I found the perfect one,” he said proudly, setting down an ornate lamp and rubbing a microscopic smudge off one of the stained-glass panels in theshade.

Ah. The props master.

“Couldn’t just pick one up at Pier One?” Teddy grinned, clearly impressed with his own joke.

I winced. As a general rule, props masters were not only extremely particular about their props, but also took their jobs extremely seriously.

Indeed, the man did not find this amusing. Instead, he looked downright offended. “Why, so it can look like every other house in this country?” He adjusted the lamp once more before he left, grumbling as he went. “Young people. No respect for the art form. Always want instant gratification.”