His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that it had been squeezed out by thoughts of Nia.
‘No worries. I just wanted to let you know the good news.’ Even from five thousand miles away the elation in his voice was unmistakable. ‘Travis Kemp loved the pitch. So it’s on, baby.’
The road dipped but that wasn’t what made Farlan’s stomach plummet.
The pitch.
How had he forgotten? That should have been first on his agenda, and normally it would have been, but thanks to Nia his mind had lost its usual razor-sharp focus.
With an effort, he kept the confusion and irritation out of his voice.
‘That’s great news, Steve. Really great news. Thanks for letting me know and thank you for making it happen. I know you put in a whole lot of effort on this one.’
‘It was an easy sell. They loved it, and they love you. In fact, Travis is having a gathering this weekend and you’re on the guest list. Check your in-box. You’ll need the zip code to find it. It’s in the middle of nowhere.’
Farlan gazed blindly at the view through the windscreen.
The weather had changed again. Dark swollen clouds were rolling low over the hills, swallowing up the light, turning the landscape bruise-coloured and carelessly flinging raindrops at the car like a commuter chucking coins in a busker’s hat.
Travis Kemp was a ‘name.’ He didn’t just greenlight films—he made legends. Even to be invited to one of his ‘gatherings’ was a coup.
He felt a hum in his chest…could feel it spreading out, fluttering down his arms.
Tom and Diane would understand. Particularly Tom. He was close enough to the movie industry to know what a connection to Travis Kemp could mean.
There was every reason to go back to California, and only one to stay here in Scotland—and it had nothing to do with Nia.
The reopening of the Gight Street Picture Palace was his project, and he’d always planned on visiting it while he was over here. But in the run-up to his leaving LA the trust that managed it had invited him to the reopening ceremony, and he’d agreed.
He could cancel. Only he could still remember his own disappointment when he was at the beginning of his career and people had blown him out.
And then there was Nia.
Her face, her soft brown eyes wide and drowsy with desire, slid into his head.
The memory of her rejection had haunted him for seven years. Seeing her was supposed to have changed things. Put the past back in its box. And yet it wasn’t her rejection that was playing on a loop, but those few, febrile unfulfilled seconds when he had unleashed a different part of their past.
A part that was nothing to do with rejection and everything to do with attraction.
In the distance, the sun was pushing back at the clouds. Suddenly everything was brilliantly illuminated in colour, the hillsides a jigsaw of sapphire and rust and gold like a stained-glass window.
If he went back now she would always be there in his head.
This was his one chance to erase her for ever and have a chance at finding the happiness that Tom and Diane so wanted for him.
That he wanted for himself.
‘I can’t make it, Steve. You know I was heading back to Scotland for a couple of weeks? Well, I decided to go a little earlier.’
‘You did? Are you there for the shooting? Or just catching up with “auld acquaintances”?’ Steve made a poor attempt at a Scottish accent.
‘Nice try, mate, but I’m from Scotland—not Ireland.’
Just as he’d intended, Steve laughed.
But Farlan didn’t join in with the laughter. Instead, staring coolly at his own narrowed green gaze in the rear-view mirror, he slowed the car and, using the passing place, turned it around.