Olivia let it go, knowing he wouldn’t surrender. “So, are you actually going to call your agent?”
Chuck glanced out at the pool deck. The film crew milled about looking bored and like they were used to such drama. Parker and TJ were having a heated conversation under the umbrella.
“No,” Chuck said. “Not now anyway. Let’s give them a few minutes. They’ll come around.”
“You sound remarkably confident about that.”
He shrugged. “They’ve invested a lot in this show. They aren’t going to let us walk that easily. And besides, we haven’t broken any rules, so it’s not like they can kick us out.”
She realized he was right. She chewed her lip, hearing her heart still beating too fast in her ears, and watched Parker and TJ’s conversation. Her eyes drifted over to the camera crew on the lawn. One of them had slipped off his shoes and stood ankle-deep on the pool’s first step. A dip in the water didn’t sound half bad; she considered taking one later that night.
She turned back when she felt Chuck’s fingertips graze against her shoulder. She looked down at his hand hovering with his thumb tracing out a little circle, and then up at his face.
He guiltily bit his bottom lip. “You had a…um…fuzz on your sleeve.” He brushed the backs of his fingers against the crown of her shoulder again.
Olivia arched one brow at him, not believing him for a second and feeling the same fiery ache she’d felt when he’d put his hand over her chest an hour earlier. “A fuzz? Just like I had a hot mic before the interview? Iknewyou’d be the one to break the rules, Chuck.”
He opened his mouth to respond when Parker appeared at the door. He knocked on the glass and slid it open.
“Hey, guys. Sorry about that. We’re ready to get things back on track now.” He gave them an apologetic smile and beckoned them with a hand before turning around.
Olivia glanced at Chuck.
He’d stowed his guilty gaze and put on a smug smile. Heheld out a hand and nodded at the door. “Told you they’d come around.”
•••
The interview took up mostof the afternoon. Once they were done and Olivia had peeled off her fake eyelashes, Chuck left her alone in the bedroom to finish unpacking.
She made use of her allotted five hangers and took the liberty to steal a few of his. He certainly didn’tneedten different pressed shirts, nor the blazer he’d hung in the walk-in’s far corner like it was some kind of precious artifact. He’d packed a small mint of clothing—one of his button-downs alone was worth half of everything Olivia had packed combined—and she couldn’t deny that the soft, rich fabrics felt heavenly between her fingers when she removed them from their hangers and folded them on the dresser in the closet’s center. She gave herself credit for not simply throwing them on the floor.
She was unloading her socks into a drawer when an otherworldly screech that she’d never known the likes of tore through the house.
“OLIVIA!” Chuck screamed like a banshee.
She jumped so hard, she stubbed her toe on the dresser and dropped the little nugget of folded socks she held.
“OLIVIA, COME HERE NOW!”
In a panic—because he had to be in grave danger to be making such sounds—she took off running toward his voice. Her heart slammed into her ribs. The cameraman who’d been in the closet with her followed right on her heels. A pain in her toe from catching it on the dresser throbbed up through hershin like a hammer stroke with each step as she ran down the hall. He’d called from the other wing of the house, and by the time she found him in the living room, she was ready to dial 911 on the phone clutched in her hand, slick with panicked sweat.
Except Chuck was not floundering amid a bloody murder scene like she’d expected. He was standing in the middle of their furniture-less living room pointing a remote at the TV.
“What?” she demanded, out of breath and hopping on one foot while her toe turned purple. “What happened?” A second cameraman stood in the corner, aiming his equipment at them.
Chuck turned to her with an ill, stricken look on his face. “There’s no internet,” he said as gravely as if they’d been sentenced to death.
Olivia exhaled a breath big enough to make her head hurt. “Chuck!I thought you were dying out here!”
“I might as well be!” he nearly shrieked. He clicked the remote at the TV, which Olivia then noticed was a gray screen withNo Signalscrawled across it. “Nothing works. There’s no cable, no streaming. I hadn’t checked my phone before now because we’ve been busy since we got here, but look for yourself!” He nodded at her phone clutched in her hand.
Her speeding heart had begun to slow. She took a breath as another kind of panic set in. “There can’t be no internet,” she muttered as she thumbed her phone. When she saw that her Wi-Fi signal had been reduced to none, she realized that she hadn’t checked her phone since they’d arrived either. She had an unreadHow’s it going?text from Mansi, so at least the cell service worked. But no internet…
“No,” she said plainly. “This can’t be.”
“I know. It’s like they jammed the signal,” Chuck said. “Did you guys know about this?” he asked the two cameramen in the room with them. Parker and TJ had long since left.
Neither of them responded.