Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [27]
She nibbled on her lip. “About the greenhouse…”
“Yes?”
She looked over his shoulder, obviously spying the camerawoman. Jacey couldn’t join them in the sitting area, it was too tiny. But she was taping them from a few feet away.
“Nothing,” Tori muttered.
He followed her lead. “Good. You didn’t lose the g.”
“Pardon?”
“Did you make a noise?”
She laughed, a bright, joyous sound that spilled across her lips and washed over him like something sweet and clean. He began to relax for the first time all day.
“You’re bad,” she said. “Saucy.”
“I think the saying ‘it takes one to know one’ might be appropriate here.”
And it did. They were very much alike. He’d sensed that since the very beginning, even if she still hadn’t realized it. “By the way, I was complimenting you on finishing the ing at the end of your word.”
She grimaced. “Mr. Halloway, he’s the kinda teacher who’d probably kept a switch in his desk back a hunnert years ago when he was teaching.” Then she shook her head. “I mean a hundred years ago.”
He noted the way she corrected herself, not a bit surprised at how quickly she was adapting to the changes in her daily life and dialect. “But you’re doing well.”
She nodded.
“And the rest of the classes?”
She shrugged, looking bored. “I suppose if Queen Elizabeth ever invites me over, I won’t shock her by using my soup spoon to stir my tea.”
The smart-alecky tone had returned to her voice, so at odds with the subdued way she’d behaved back in the kitchen.
“So what’s the real reason you didn’t come to my class?”
Her eyes shifted down, her half-lowered lashes concealing them from view. “Maybe I don’t feel smart enough for current events yet.”
“Yesterday,” he said, his tone dry, “you missed a sparkling conversation on the Brad and Jen rumors. And today was even better, with everyone bringing up at least one topic they’d seen on a news program they were asked to watch last night.” He couldn’t help adding “I never knew Entertainment Tonight had such hard-hitting stories.”
Her lashes came up. Those laughing blue eyes appeared again. “Are you going crazy yet?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Not so much. But we haven’t really started doing a lot of the hard stuff yet.”
He was almost afraid to ask. “What’s the hard stuff?”
“Wearing fancy dresses.”
Her grimace and tone would have been appropriate for someone who’d been invited to dine on monkey brains.
“I’ll probably break my ankles if they make me wear any shoes higher than an inch.”
“You found your g’s. You’ll find your high-heel ankles.”
Hearing a sound, he looked over his shoulder and saw Jacey capturing every word with her camera. She had a smile on her face. Not, he was surprised to note, a predatory one. But a rather nice one. As if she enjoyed Tori as much as he did.
He made a mental note to drop his dislike of the woman down one notch.
“Are you ready to get to work?” he asked Tori, trying to forget they were on camera.
“I didn’t watch Entertainment Tonight last night.” She nibbled her lip, looking almost guilty and tentative.
“No?” Then, knowing without a doubt what she had been doing, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay then. Let’s talk about Tom Sawyer.”
5
J ACEY T URNER HAD BEEN around enough to know attraction when she saw it. She might’ve had to have her own romance pointed out to her by Digg—who’d told her she was falling for him even before Jacey realized it herself—but she didn’t have much trouble seeing it in other people.
And there was definitely something to see between Dr. Drew Bennett and race-car driver Tori Lyons.
“I’m telling you,” she told director Niles Monahan, “Tori Lyons is the one.”
The crew had gotten together for a week-one wrap meeting very early Sunday morning to discuss the latest round of cuts that had left them with nine contestants.
The director, a pale-faced whiner who had this really irritating, watery sniff after every third word he spoke, rolled his eyes. “You