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them together. She stirred her roux with more vigor than necessary, sloshing milk all over the place. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t felt the very same way, so why was she so upset?
    Because, she admitted as she moved her wooden spoon through the slowly thickening sauce, when the guy who had provided endless fantasy material for the past year had unexpectedly shown up in her living room, she couldn’t help but indulge in the hope that maybe she’d end up naked with him again soon.
    Yet it was hard to reconcile the quietly intense, infinitely passionate lover with the cold, aloof man who’d just left.
    She shook her head as she drained the macaroni. Just goes to show, just because you know all the spots on a man’s body that elicit an immediate erection, doesn’t mean you actually know him as a person.
    Funny, she’d never felt an iota of shame about her one and only one-night stand in Hawaii. But now the thought that she’d let such an unemotional jerk do all those…things to her gave her a slightly sick feeling.
    “Doesn’t matter,” she said to her empty kitchen. “I don’t need to be friends with the guy just because I slept with him. He’ll be gone in a few days, and then I’ll never have to see him again.”
    Reggie laughed mirthlessly at all the times over the past year she’d wondered if things would have been different if she hadn’t snuck out without a word. Let herself fantasize that if she’d only left her phone number, her e-mail, Gabe would have tracked her down.
    Obviously he hadn’t felt the same connection, hadn’t wondered if maybe their casual romp could have turned into something real. If nothing else, today had ensured that she’d no longer entertain naive illusions about the one she left behind.
     
    The high trill and bumping backbeat of Natalie’s cell phone pierced the quiet of the hallway where thirty other actresses pored over their scripts, trying to come up with the perfect inflection that would make a viewer run out and buy a comfort fit bra.
    The casting director’s assistant, or Attila, as Natalie had mentally dubbed her, shot her a dirty look. Geez, she knew her ring was obnoxious, but so were all of the others included in her new Nokia.
    One of the other actresses shot her a sideways glance and nodded at something on the wall above Natalie’s head: PLEASE TURN CELL PHONES OFF .
    Crap.
    Natalie glanced down at the display. Reggie. Double crap. She knew exactly why Reggie was calling. Natalie still hadn’t gotten her travel schedule over to Tyler. Everything was good to go, but she hadn’t had a chance to type it up yet. She planned to go over to Reggie’s right after her audition to borrow her computer and e-mail Tightass Tyler the info he needed.
    Her thumb hovered over the power button. But she had promised Reggie that she would get her act together. And as much as she hated to admit it, Reggie was saving her ass out of the goodness of her heart, because God knew, her strategy of moving up to San Francisco to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond had certainly backfired.
    At this point, her mercy job as Reggie’s assistant was the only thing keeping her decently housed and clothed.
    “Hi, Reg. I’ll have the schedule over to Tyler tonight.”
    Natalie only half heard Reggie’s protests as she realized that Attila was stomping in her direction, clipboard clutched to the front of her perfectly pressed white shirt.
    “Excuse me,” she said, “if you’re going to take a call, you have to go outside.”
    Natalie raised a finger in the universal “give me a minute” signal.
    “You have to leave,” Attila insisted.
    Natalie pressed her thumb over the tiny mouthpiece so Reggie couldn’t hear. She was already irritated at Natalie’s tendency to drop anything and everything in favor of an audition. “But I’ll lose my place in line.” She’d already waited over an hour, and the open call was first come first serve for only the next forty-five minutes. No way