Method Acting: An opposites attract, found family romance (Center Stage Book 2) by Adele Buck (web based ebook reader txt) 📕

“Not at all. You go right ahead and do what you need to do to…accommodate the temperature. I am enjoying the view just fine.” Her eyes ran down his torso, and Colin resisted an absurd urge to flex and pose. Her eyes glinted as if she knew what he was thinking, and he sipped his coffee, the heat in his cheeks having nothing to do with the sunshine.

“So,” he said, trying to gather his composure. “How should we spend our day?”

Alicia drew her feet up onto the seat of her chair and wrapped the hem of the robe under her toes. “Our day?”

“Beg pardon. That was presumptuous. I should have said, ‘Would you like to spend the day with me, and if so, doing what?’”

“Well, I’m currently a little limited as to wardrobe,” she said.

“We’ll go to your place before anything else, of course.”

“Hmm.” She looked across his little garden, a bit of green lawn surrounded by flowering plants enclosed in a high wooden fence. “What would you do if I wasn’t around? If you were spending a Saturday on your own?”

Colin shrugged, the sun hot against his shoulders. “Go for a run, meet Russell at the gym maybe. Catch up on some work…”

“Sounds like a laugh riot.”

He lifted his eyebrows as he drank his coffee, acknowledging the truth of the statement. “Boring old barrister, that’s me.”

“Okay.” She cocked her head at him, assessing. “When was the last time you went to an art museum?”

Colin thought for a long moment. “Probably when my family last visited me.”

“And when was that?”

“Last year.”

“Philistine.” She put her cup down on the little table. “We’re going to look at art.”

Alicia dug her bare toes into the plush carpet of Colin’s car and tried not to feel ridiculous. The running shorts and the tee shirt that he had loaned her were better than trying to put on her evening gown and heels again, but she felt like she was wearing a particularly silly costume in a completely ridiculous play.

And at the same time, wearing his clothes…it was another intimacy, another quirky piece of domesticity that unsettled her.

Pulling up in front of her apartment, he gestured at her front door. “Go on ahead. I’ll find a parking space and come back. I don’t want you walking any farther than you have to on bare feet.”

Nodding, she got out of the car and retrieved her dress, shoes, and evening bag from the back seat, clutching them to her chest and picking her way across the brick walkway and down the stairs to her front door. Inside, she hurried back to the bedroom, hanging up the gown before digging out her own shorts, shirt…and underwear.

A tap on the open door of the apartment announced Colin. “All right if I come in?” he called.

“Sure,” she replied, fastening her bra and tugging on her shirt. Running her fingers through her hair, she grabbed a pair of sneakers and walked out into the living room, sitting on the couch to lace them up. Colin looked like he was taking inventory, his eyes roaming over the furnishings and framed posters of her little apartment.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said.

She looked around, nonplussed. “Me? I’ve done nothing with the place. It’s a furnished sublet. None of this is mine.” Her gesture took in the Turkish rug, the tan sofa, the Art Nouveau posters in their stark, black frames.

“Ah. That’s right. I had forgotten. Shall we?” As she locked up, he asked, “So, what is your own apartment like?”

Suppressing a surge of irritation, Alicia reminded herself that this was a reasonable question for most people. “I don’t have one.”

“Come again?” He looked confused.

Resisting the urge to grit her teeth, she said, “I don’t have an apartment. Not one of my own. No long-term lease, no condo.”

Colin stopped, his feet shuffling to half-turn back toward the little apartment as if it held answers. “But…where do you live when you’re not here?”

She huffed a brief laugh. “I sublet, I house-sit. Sometimes I even couch surf, but I know enough people who own or lease their own places and tour a lot, so that’s pretty rare.”

Now he didn’t look confused, he looked appalled. “No home of your own?” he asked as they reached the sidewalk.

She shrugged. “No.”

“Whyever not?” As they walked, the occasional mature trees provided intermittent shade, leaves rustling in a slight breeze.

“I’m an actress. My base is New York, but I go off on location, on tours, on out of town gigs. I can’t afford to keep a place in New York when I’m not always there. Most of what I own fits in two suitcases. Large suitcases, but still.”

Colin was silent for a moment. “That’s…astonishing. I can’t conceive of not having a place of one’s own.”

Alicia dug deep for a reserve of patience that was rapidly dwindling. Keeping people at arm’s length meant she didn’t often have to defend her choices, an exercise that brought childhood insecurities roaring back. “A home may be a necessity for you, but it’s a luxury for me. Or worse, it’s a trap.”

Colin looked around at the quiet residential street with its neat façades and tidy gardens. “Forgive me for saying so, but that sounds rather melodramatic.”

“Well,” she said, allowing an edge of irritation color her voice. “I am an actress.”

Chapter 11

Colin wasn’t sure what he had said to make Alicia close down the way she had. Her jaw was set and her stride seemed overly long as they made their way toward the National Gallery. It irritated him, this unprovoked defensiveness.

He was relieved when they walked past the East Building. Its focus on contemporary art disturbed him. He wasn’t sure half the pieces in that building were art at all. He was further surprised when Alicia’s swinging walk took them past the West Building as well. His own steps lagged.

“We’re not going inside?”

She surprised him yet again when she took his hand as they crossed Seventh Street.