Rendezvous (Renegades 5)

Rob’s gaze latched on to her, and he stepped halfway into her path. “Brooke, I didn’t see you.” His gaze purposely roamed her, openly hungry. “You look…amazing.”

“Hi, Rob.” She intercepted his hand on its way to her hip and took it in a deliberate grip, shaking it firmly. “How are Amanda and the kids?”

The mention of his family seemed to knock him off balance. “O-oh. They’re…good. Good.”

“Great. Tell Amanda I said hello.”

As she continued on, she heard his faint, “Uh…right…sure.”

Walking into the warehouse momentarily blinded Brooke. It took several moments for her eyes to adjust from Austin’s bright morning sunlight to the dark warehouse. Once she’d focused, it took her another couple of minutes to get her bearings. The space was cavernous, with several huge areas in the roof where the ceiling had been replaced with some kind of translucent material, so the sun filtered through, giving the warehouse an eerie, sci-fi sort of glow.

As the director mentioned, the warehouse had been broken up into different sets where various lighting and filming setups were arranged, but only the one taking up half the rear of the warehouse was being used.

Brooke took a deep breath and relaxed into the setting. Here, Jillian would be swept away by the activity, the energy, the excitement. The burden of coddling and soothing and entertaining wouldn’t be on Brooke’s shoulders. For a few hours, she could be free of those demands, and she anticipated the relief with a Pavlovian response.

She let her mind go and followed Jillian from person to person and group to group, where she was greeted with excitement and reverence. An action scene was obviously being blocked out at the back of the warehouse in a crazy maze of dark, multilevel metal madness. Brooke paused a good distance away from the action, her gaze wandering over the two smashed cars, the varied platforms of metal grates, the stairs…

“Hey, there.”

Brooke turned to the female voice and found a production assistant she worked with often and who shared Brooke’s affinity for chocolate, smiling at her.

“Hey.” Brooke hugged her. “Great to see you.”

“You too. Here for the duration or just a cameo?”

“Duration. You?” Schedules often fluctuated in this business with staff getting put on, pulled off, and moved around jobs as the norm rather than the exception. And actors’ schedules were even worse.

“Same,” Brooke said. “We’ll definitely have to find a time to get together and scope out the best chocolate around here.”

After Keaton leaves.

Brooke wasn’t giving up a minute of the short time they had left. After that, she’d really need chocolate.

“Deal,” she told Stacy. “So, get me up to speed on the film.” Brooke’s gaze strayed toward the back of the warehouse again, where several men planned out some kind of attack on the set with the filming crew. Jillian stood near the stunt crew, speaking with another director.

“The first thing you need to know,” Stacy said, “is that we’re behind schedule.”

Brooke’s attention was pulled from the shadowed corner. “Oh no.”

“I know Jillian’s going to be a bitch about it. I would have called you, but it just happened. Our stunt guy took a bad fall…”

The rest of Stacy’s words faded in shock. The shock gave way to excitement. And giddiness was bubbling in Brooke’s belly when she cut her gaze back to the darkened corner of the warehouse, where one of the men stood on top of a smashed military-type truck. But it wasn’t Keaton. Her gaze dropped to the man pacing out in front of the truck. He was shirtless, well built, and had dark hair, but that’s all she could see from where she stood.

Someone from the sidelines called, “Ready.”

The dark-haired man dropped into a runner’s stance and shook his body loose.

“Go.”

He ran. Long, loose, easy strides that ate up the distance to the truck. One foot took a step to the bumper. The other foot leapt to the hood. One more effortless hop and he executed a jump-turn-kick move so fast, Brooke almost missed it, and the other guy on the roof of the truck flew backward.

Brooke knew in an instant the shirtless man was Keaton. She’d never seen him work. She’d never seen him fight. And during their weeks together in Los Angeles, she’d only seen a sliver of his abilities when he’d been goofing around with the other Renegades, but she knew without any doubt that was Keaton standing on that truck. Which meant not only did she get to have him in her bed at night, she also got to watch him work during the day.

She had to have excitement oozing from her pores, and she didn’t have the first idea how she was going to lie about this to Jillian.

Up on the top of the truck, Keaton offered a hand to whomever he’d just knocked down, and the two busted up laughing about something. The rich, buoyant sound of Keaton’s laughter inflated Brooke’s chest with joy until it spilled over in her own laughter.

In that moment, the fluttering giddiness in Brooke’s heart made her realize she wasn’t just taking a swim with this guy the way she kept telling herself. She’d already jumped in the deep end.