Page 25 of Act Like You Don't Care
Iwoke up to someone shaking my shoulder. "Hey, you slept in," said a deep voice, one that was kind of familiar but that I couldn't quite place. "I made coffee. What do you usually eat for breakfast?"
"I don't," I said groggily and pried my eyes open. Oh, Security Guy. Miles. "What time is it?"
“Quarter after six. Not too late, but the alarm's been going the whole time and you never twitched." He was holding a cup of coffee in one hand. It smelled wonderful.
"Shit, thanks." I sat up, forgetting for a moment that I’d gone to bed naked like I usually did, and reached for the cup of coffee. I was two mouthfuls in and Miles had already left the room—looking very fine in well-fitting jeans and a dark blue button-down—before I realized I was sitting there with nothing more than a knot of cotton covering the parts of my body that I refused to bare for the camera. My cheeks heated and I drank another mouthful of coffee, then set the mug down to go look for clothes.
I found Miles in the kitchen, talking to the cat about breakfast and how she had to wait because he didn't know if she even ate breakfast. "Badness!” I cooed and scooped her up. "She's not actually lying to you," I told Miles. "She does get breakfast. And she has crunchies to eat all day." I flicked open the cupboard by the refrigerator where I kept her little cans. The cat jumped out of my arms to go stalk her food dish, meowing frantically.
"What do you call her?" Miles asked curiously. He was leaning against the cupboard on the other side of the kitchen, looking even better now than he had when he’d first woken me up.
Down boy, this is business.Still, nothing wrong with a bit of private leering. Call it method acting.
“This," I announced as I tapped her food out into her bowl. "is Badness. And you're not helping me get your breakfast set out," I told the cat as she bumped my arm for the seventeenth time. "Get out of the way." The food plopped onto her dish with its usual gross, wet sound and I took the can to the sink to rinse it out. "Disgusting stuff, but she loves it." I set the can aside to air dry, and reached for my coffee mug again. "Thanks for the coffee this morning. I must have been really out of it."
"Stress burns a lot of energy," Miles said easily. "You needed the rest." He finished his mug and, with a questioning glance at me, reached for the door of the dishwasher.
I nodded and stayed where I was. which meant I caught the faint scent of aftershave as Miles leaned down beside me. Sky Mountain. I liked that label. It suited Miles too, fresh and straight-forward and very simple. He didn't seem like the kind for deep musky complex scents. Fashion now was for something with a lot of different notes, and deep, dark bottom scents that made my nose itch. If I was going to be spending a lot of time in close proximity to Miles, I was glad I didn't have to worry about sneezing all the time. "You can stay here if you want, but I have to get going. I have the scene read-through at seven, then make-up, then we film until it's time to head for the plane."
"No, I'll come with you. Are you going to eat?"
I shook my head. "I'll grab something off the cart while I'm there." I drained the rest of my coffee and put the mug in the dishwasher. "You sure you want to come?" Oddly, I wasn’t bothered that Miles wanted to come with me. The man had been easy to get along with so far, and he hadn't pushed anything that I couldn’t see was necessary, which had been a big worry for me. "You can get something at food service too."
Miles smiled and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Following you around is part of the job. Let's get you to work, or I'll be in trouble for making you late."
Oh, right.Funny how my stomach fell at those words. "Just gotta brush my teeth. Back in a sec." I gave Badness a scratch behind her ears and jogged back to my bathroom to find my toothbrush.
By the time I was done, I’d decided that I’d treat this like any other movie with a love interest. Make the emotion real for the screen, not for the peen, as I’d been told once. Well, I could do that.
I found Miles looking out through one of the living room windows. They looked...different. "Did you guys do something in here last night?"
Miles nodded. "A bit of security." He tapped on the glass. "This coating makes the window glass more like a windshield, so it doesn't shatter when it breaks. And this," he ran his fingers up the edge and beckoned me closer. "See this?" It was a bit of black wire near the top of the door. "Sets off the alarm if the connection is broken. It's on all the time, unless you turn it off with the remote." He handed a small black rectangle to me. "This alarms all of them, so if you have someone over, you'll have to make sure you turn it off if they're going to use the balconies."
I turned the small box with its single, discreet button over in my hand. "Did you do my room?" Had Miles been in my room while I’d been sleeping and defenseless? A shiver ran up my spine and I clenched my hand around the remote.
"No, I'll have my brother come in and while we're away if you're okay with that. I'd do it myself, but I'm not very good at it and I want to be sure it'll work for you."
I glanced up at him, surprised that he would admit to not being good at something. "Thank you."
I half-expected an "It's my job," from Miles, but the alpha just shrugged and said, "You're welcome," which left me feeling more confused than ever.
Miles gently plucked the remote from my hand and set it in easy reach on the shelf in front of one of my carefully curated groups of movies. It seemed oddly appropriate that he’d choose that shelf, where I’d gathered all the movies I thought were good examples of the secret life trope. After all, here we were, in the middle of my very own secret life, right? Maybe I needed to rewatch some of those films to remind myself how it was done.
"Ready to go?" Miles asked.
I shook myself awake again. "Just let me get my hat." I grabbed a ball cap from the closet and crammed it down over my still uncombed hair. "Ready."
Miles opened the door and bowed. "After you."
"Thank you, Jeeves," I said as I passed by him. Miles laughed and felt my mouth curve with my first real smile since this had all started to spiral out of control.
Miles
Tam leaned back in the passenger seat of the SUV and stretched one arm out to drape it across the back of my seat.
"So, how does this work? Do you really have to go everywhere with me?" he asked.
"Pretty much," I told him.
