Parker’s hands fell to her sides and she shook her head in disbelief. “Jesus, Tyson, it shouldn’t be this hard.”

He touched her arms. “Yes, it should be. It should be so fucking hard that it takes every ounce of strength to board a plane and fly thousands of miles just to see the one person you can’t shake from your mind, no matter how hard you try, no matter how irritating this feeling in the pit of your stomach is. Even when you know this could end so badly . . .”

“Does this rambling get to a point? I need to be on set soon.”

She wasn’t going to make this easy. Why should she? He’d been a complete idiot. He didn’t deserve a second chance to make things right. He didn’t deserve her. He knew that. Hadn’t that been his reservation about getting involved all along? He stood staring into her dark eyes, looking for a trace of something he could grab hold of, but there was nothing but hurt. Reluctantly, he let his hands fall away from her. “I’m sorry . . . You’re right. I won’t keep you.”

A look of disappointment flashed in her eyes, but her face concealed anything else she might be feeling. “Sorry you came all this way for nothing,” she said, turning to leave.

Everything he never knew he wanted was just within reach and he was once again just going to let her walk away. “Parker . . .” He took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her.

“What’s this?”

He held her hand a fraction longer than was safe, then reluctantly released her. “Everything I can’t say.”

*   *   *

She should just throw it away . . .

Nothing in this letter could change the fact that Tyson Reed would never be the kind of man who fought for what mattered, for what he wanted—not in his personal life anyway. Perfect example—he’d flown all the way to LA for what? To hand her a note? What, were they twelve years old?

She balled the piece of paper and tossed it toward the trash. It missed.

But he had flown to LA.

She paced the empty makeup trailer on set, staring at the crumpled letter on the floor. She hadn’t heard from him in weeks. She was moving on. The movie was less than three weeks away from being finished and she had a stack of scripts waiting to be read, for parts in all kinds of films . . . She was back. Her career was back on track. Life was back to normal. Did she really want to complicate things by reading that letter? Over the last few weeks, she’d been successful in pushing Tyson to the back of her mind . . . where he stayed and refused to go away, Goddamn it. She sighed.

She’d been doing just fine without him. Some days she didn’t even think about him . . . except for every other minute.

Retrieving the paper, she unfolded it.

Her eyes scanned his messy handwriting as she read . . .

I hate leaving you, knowing I’ll miss you the moment I’m out the door.

Needing you and wanting you are two different things . . . I feel both and so much more.

I realize now that there is nothing else. Just this moment, just you, just me . . . just us.

Parker blinked back the tears burning her eyes. The long list of quotes from the leading men in her previous movie scenes filled the page. It was impossible to swallow the lump in her throat as she read them. He’d watched her movies . . . every single one.

Everything he can’t say . . .

She sat back in her chair as tears rolled down her cheeks. What the hell did she do now?

*   *   *

“So, you’ll be home for Christmas?” her grandmother asked on the phone an hour later.

Parker lifted her eyes to the ceiling as the makeup artist applied a black liner along her bottom lid, once she’d finally been successful in stopping her tears from falling. “Yes. We are filming through the weekend, hoping to wrap up early next week.”

Christmas was less than two weeks away. By the following week, filming would be done and she could take her grandmother anywhere in the world for the holidays. She certainly didn’t feel like spending them in Vegas.

In fact, she hadn’t told her grandmother yet, but she was thinking about selling the house in Vegas and moving back to LA. If the amount of scripts Ian had been receiving for her was any indication, she’d have more roles coming her way after this movie released and, well, she just didn’t want to be in Vegas.

“How is filming going?” her grandmother asked, the note of longing ever present in her voice when she asked about Parker’s work. She had accepted her forced retirement reluctantly. Parker suspected she would still audition for roles if she wouldn’t now be cast as secondary grandmother-type characters.

“Great. We’ve already filmed the fight and training scenes . . .” With a body double doing very little, she was pleased to announce. Brantley wanted them out of the way early, in case her lack of daily training meant muscle loss. He was right about that. A few weeks away from the gym, and already she could feel her muscles relaxing, the sharp definition disappearing with each day of no training.

She remembered Tyson’s offer to help her get her old body back and her chest ached. That was one offer she knew she couldn’t accept. Not that she believed he would honor it. Besides, she liked her new body. She planned to continue working out on her own. Maybe not to the same extent, but just to keep her new shape. One Tyson had called beautiful, sexy . . .

As the makeup artist moved away to get her eye shadow, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was a different person now inside and out. And it was all because of him. She sighed.

“Everything okay dear?” her grandmother asked, genuine concern in her voice threatening to destroy Parker’s freshly applied makeup.

Do not cry. She’d done enough of that earlier that day after reading Tyson’s letter, and every day since arriving in LA. She had to pull it together and focus on the movie. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes, everything’s great. I can’t wait for you to see the movie.” She launched into detail about the scenes they were scheduled to film that day, but her grandmother interrupted.

“It’s losing its sparkle isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Tinsel Town. It isn’t shining so bright anymore for you, is it?”

She hesitated. This make-believe world still shined, she’d just discovered something that captured her heart more. “Of course it is, Grandma.” She loved her acting career as much now as she had twenty years ago. She loved the excitement, the chaos, the commitment to the role. Unfortunately, she was also falling in love with something else—someone who didn’t fit in her world, at least according to him.

“You know your grandfather wasn’t an actor.”

She blinked. No, actually, she didn’t. She knew almost nothing at all about the man since her grandmother refused to talk about him and he’d never been a part of her life or her mother’s. “He wasn’t?” she said slowly.

“He was the contractor that built my summer home. The year my first movie released in 1968 and I bought that run-down cottage in Lake Tahoe with the money I made from the film because I knew it would be a perfect place to bring a family someday . . .” She paused.

They’d never gone to the summer home her mother had told her about once when she was angry at her grandmother. As far as Parker knew, the summer place had been boarded up a long time ago. Yet, her grandmother refused to sell it.

“His name was Arnold Fitzgerald and I loved watching him work. It was exactly the kind of love affair we portray on film—passionate, quick, and over too fast.”

She wasn’t sure how she felt hearing about her grandmother’s sex life, but the fact that her grandmother had decided to finally open up and tell her the story kept her still and silent as she waited for her to continue.

“When the summer home was finished, so were we.”

“But . . . why? If you were both in love and happy, why wouldn’t you be together?”