‘Olivia! So nice to see you. Can’t wait to see the finished product, can you?’
To her credit Olivia straightened, her anxiety vanishing completely as she gave the woman a dazzling smile. ‘No, I can’t. It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?’
‘Who was that?’ Ben asked as Olivia waggled her fingers at the actress and they moved towards the theatre.
‘Liz Chellis?’ She gave him a look of smiling disbelief. ‘Only one of the most famous actresses in the world right now.’
‘I thought I recognised her.’
She laughed and shook her head, and then they took their seats of red plush velvet—in the third row.
‘Don’t want to look too eager,’ Olivia whispered, and Ben nodded.
‘Wise move,’ he whispered back, and then they didn’t have time to talk any more because the lights were dimming and the film started.
Ben hadn’t really thought much, or at all, about the film he’d be seeing. He’d been focused on navigating what was going to be a tricky piece of theatre—and he was no actor. He’d also been trying not to get too bothered about the fakery of the whole thing, because while he hated the idea of it, he recognised the need. But it still felt like lying.
It was lying.
So all that had taken up his headspace and he hadn’t thought about Olivia’s movie at all.
Yet within the first few minutes of the film starting, he found himself caught up in the story. It was a Depression-era period drama, moody and full of sweeping shots of the American plains, and Olivia, he decided, looked pretty fine in checked gingham, her hair blowing in the relentless, dust-ridden wind.
Yet looks aside, she captivated him. Her character was the oldest daughter of the main character, a woman struggling to make ends meet after her husband struck out for Chicago to find work, and while Olivia didn’t have that many lines, when she came onto the screen she took it over with her quiet dignity, her heartfelt delivery. He believed she was Grace Wilton, an eighteen-year-old girl who had run out of hope. He even wanted to make her believe again.
The depth of his own emotion surprised him. Embarrassed him, even. When had he last felt so much about a stupid movie? Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off Olivia on the screen...or the woman sitting next to him.
He glanced at her every few minutes throughout the film, and although she was smiling and looking relaxed, he could see how tightly she clenched the armrests. She was a good actress, he thought with amusement, but not that good.
And when the lights went up she let out a gusty sigh of relief.
‘Was that enjoyable,’ he asked in a low voice, ‘or torture?’
‘A bit of both.’ She turned to him, as breezy as ever, yet Ben saw a touching vulnerability in her chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Well? Dare I ask what you thought?’
‘I thought it was great. Actually,’ Ben corrected, ‘I thought you were great. The movie got a little moody and self-consciously deep towards the middle, but I really believed you were Grace Wilton.’
‘You did?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
‘No, it’s just...’ She fiddled with the simple silver pendant she wore around her neck, a heart whose edges overlapped. ‘I don’t know what to do when you act nicely.’
‘Act nicely back?’ Ben suggested, and was intrigued to see colour touch Olivia’s cheekbones. Were they flirting? Just how nice did he want Olivia to be?
Very, very nice.
‘Come on,’ he said, pushing that thought away. The last thing he needed was to complicate something that was already pretty damn complicated. ‘I think everyone’s going back out to the lobby.’
‘There’s a bit of an after party,’ Olivia said as they headed out of the theatre. ‘Do you mind?’
‘It’s fine.’
But it wasn’t as fine as he’d hoped it would be. An hour of small talk and schmoozing was an hour more than he liked. He hated this kind of fake socialising, made all the more fake by his supposed relationship with Olivia. Posing for a single photo felt different than chatting to a bunch of people Ben didn’t know and making stuff up about him and Olivia.
Well, he wasn’t making stuff up. She was. And she did a damn good job of it, which, unreasonably, he knew, annoyed him.
He’d had too much bad experience with lies. With believing them. And he didn’t want Olivia to be a good liar, even though he could already see that she was.
‘It was a bit of opposites attract, really,’ she said, her arm linked through Ben’s as she chatted with several Hollywood types Ben thought he recognised but couldn’t name, even though he’d been introduced to them fifteen minutes ago. ‘Wasn’t it, sweetheart?’