Dean stepped out onto the road outside of the not so empty house. The coast was clear. He was hot, sweaty, exhausted, and had a stupid grin on his face. That woman was something else. What did her mother say her name was? Hazel? Well, if Dean had ever met a woman like Hazel at any point in his life, he couldn’t remember it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever met a woman who didn’t know who he was, and more importantly, didn’t care. Especially a woman who looked as good as she did. He had never been one for blondes, especially because LA was swamped with both the real and aspiring kind, but this blonde was a knockout. Even her irritation couldn’t hide her natural beauty; in fact, it enhanced it. She was confident, brutally honest (read “not fake”), and enticingly fiery. She was his kind of girl. Just thinking about that glossy hair tumbling from her efforts at a bun, and the snap of connection he’d felt when she’d touched him made his grin widen.

What had she been talking about when he’d first arrived? Now that he knew she didn’t mean him, what had she meant when she said something needed work? What was she planning on selling? It must be the house. It was a grand, old beauty but needed some tender, loving care. A scent rose up from deep in his memory, and his adrenaline-fueled charge up the hill slowed as memories washed over him; grass-cuttings, wood-chips, and sweat. He was back in that time and place in an instant. He saw himself pushing on the old door with the rusty hinges that leaked bright orange stains onto the pale wooden slats that made up the door. The bottom of the door would always get stuck on the grass that had grown up and over the bottom of the sill of the old rickety shed. The scraping noise made old Mr. Tanner look up from his work and give him a welcoming grin. Every time.

“Come on in, boy. Let’s get started.”

That had been the best summer of his life. He’d been the ripe, old age of seventeen and Old Mr. Tanner, his favorite and final foster father. He had taught Dean skills more useful than any he’d ever learned in school. It was those skills that landed Dean his construction job. Mr. Tanner had died from a heart attack and Mrs. Tanner had fallen to pieces. Just a few weeks later he’d turned eighteen, aged out of foster care, and left Mrs. Tanner to her grief. Six months later he started a job in construction. He’d been helping to restore an old mansion when Adam had “discovered” him after meeting him in the coffee shop where he bought his daily doughnut. He often wondered what his life would have been like if Adam hadn’t convinced him to do a Skype audition with the casting agent for a film called “Rolling Thunder.”

He’d just reached the front door of Stella’s house when his memories faded and the image of Hazel's flushed skin and flashing eyes popped back into his head, unbidden. It was time to call Isabella. After all, he had a beautiful girlfriend. What was he doing giving another woman so much space in his head?

“Good walk?” Sara was standing at the kitchen stirring a pot on the stove with the baby in a baby pack on her chest. They had just eaten; how could she be cooking again?

“Yeah, thanks. It really cleared my head.” He walked over to the pot and peeked inside. Pasta sauce it looked like. Sara smiled at him and held out the wooden spoon with a dab of sauce on the end.

“Mama’s special sauce. I hope you like anchovies because she loads them in. We think her great-great-grandmother was Sicilian or something.”

Dean blew lightly at the sauce. It was thick and rich and the basil, with the underlying saltiness from the anchovies, enhanced the tomatoes. The flavors exploded in his mouth, and his stomach rumbled. It was dangerous that he was looking forward to dinner when they had just finished lunch. He’d need to be diligent about his workouts while he was here or the Rolling Thunder action hero was going to be an extremely chunky one. Not a problem that he wanted to add to his growing list.

“It’s amazing,” he said. Sara smiled and adjusted the baby on her chest.

“Hey, do you know that house down the street? The big one. It looks empty, but it isn’t?”

Sara returned to stirring the pot. “You must mean the Zanre house.” He shrugged. “Yep. Maria Zanre just passed a few weeks ago. I heard there was some relative coming over from the U.S. to look after it, but, unusually in this town, it’s all been a little hush, hush. It’s a beauty, isn’t it? I always thought it was such a shame for only one person to live in that big house and have it fall apart around them. Why do you ask?”

“Yeah, It’s a beauty all right.” Hazel popped into his mind again. He had a feeling that was going to happen often. Time for an emergency intervention. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble with my cell phone. Could I use the house phone to call Isabella? I’ll make sure to reimburse you guys.”

Sara frowned but didn’t take her eyes from the bubbling sauce. “Sure. It’s in the living room. On the side table in the corner.”

Isabella hadn’t mentioned when she might join him. Maybe he should push the issue. Try and get her out here over the next few days. He dialed the cottage, and the phone rang for a while before Isabella finally picked it up with a breathless, “Yes?”

He could picture her running in from the pool, the white beach and teal blue ocean stretched out behind her as she headed toward the patio doors, and felt a pang of homesickness.

“Hey, Izzy. Were you swimming?”

“Ugh, I hate when you call me that. No, I wasn’t swimming. How're the outer edges of the universe? Does anyone speak English?”

Dean surprised himself with a wave of protectiveness for this little town. “It’s not exactly the outer edges of the universe. It’s stunning and quite sophisticated. You’re going to love it.”

“When?”

“When what?” he said, confused.

“When am I going to love it?”

“What do you mean? You’re coming, right? I thought I could look for flights this week.”

Isabella’s snort came across the miles. “I’m not coming there. I thought we decided that before you left.”

He moved to the window and gazed across the road. There was a field in front of a lovely, coral red villa. A couple had spread a blanket in the lush grass and were lying together laughing and feeding each other cherries. It made his heart hurt. How had he missed that tone of irritated derision that always seemed to accompany all of Isabella’s sentences? Had he not been paying attention?

“I thought we decided that you wouldn’t come right away.” He turned from the couple. “I didn’t realize you’d decided you weren’t coming at all?”

She must have heard the rise of emotion in his voice because suddenly she was purring. “What do you want me there for, baby? You know I’ll just be unhappy. I might miss some auditions, and I won’t be able to eat a thing. Pasta makes me fat. You’re much better off recovering there on your own. Sara’s helping you, right?”

“What if I asked you to come? What if I said I needed you, specifically?”

Her flighty giggle caused prickles of irritation across the back of his neck. He needed to keep his temper. Being angry wouldn’t help anyone.

“You wouldn’t ask me that, silly! You know how important my career is to me right now. You know how anxious I would be away from it all. You love me too much to ask me such a selfish thing.”

Did he love her? He had thought so. Before he had invited her to move in, he’d even had flashes of their lives together many years in the future. But now? Since she’d moved in, she’d changed. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe he was just seeing all of her now, instead of the carefully curated Isabella that she’d presented to him on their weekly dates. There was a mumbling of a male voice in the background, and he heard the muffling sound of her hand going over the receiver and her mumbling back. “Who’s there, Iz?”

More mumbling and then another muffled swish as her hand came away. “Oh, just the gardener. He wanted to know if we are passionate about that baby lemon tree or if he can cut it down. Are we passionate about it?”

“Not particularly. So you’re not coming? Like, you’re never coming?”

“Well, never say never, baby, but I don’t think I need to be there right now, do you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “On another note… how is the testing going?”

Before he’d left LA, Adam had handed him a case filled with equipment. A large tripod, a camera, and a standing light. The idea was he could create a fake set somewhere and use the camera to test himself, to see if he had any reaction. It would be a kind of litmus test for his mental health. “Isabella, I just arrived a few hours ago. I haven’t even unpacked my bag yet, let alone set up equipment. How about next week?”

“Next week!  You need to get on top of that stuff before next week, Dean. You need to be focused on getting your act together, right? I mean, that’s what you’re there for, right?”

Dean turned from the window and sat heavily on the couch. “No, I meant next week to fly out here. That gives you a week to get things set up for a short absence.”

Dean heard the opening of the patio door swishing along its track and the sound of the waves of the Pacific hit his ear. She’d gone back outside. A signal she was done with the conversation. “Why don’t you stop worrying so much about me and start worrying about your health, baby? We’re all waiting for you to come home. The quicker you get that equipment set up and start practicing, the quicker you’ll get back here. Gotta go, baby. The gardener needs me again. Love you!”

Dean heard Isabella disconnect and sat there with the phone against his ear. Seriously, she wasn’t going to come? He jumped when another voice came through the receiver, loud in his ear.

“That’s not a very nice lady,” the voice said.

“Stella?” Stella appeared in the living room doorway and pressed the end button on the extension in her hand.

She shuffled over and enveloped him in a crushing hug before stepping back and shaking her head at him. “Not a nice lady. Must be a California problem. We need to find you someone better.”

Dean raised his eyebrows at her in confusion, and she raised hers right back and headed toward the kitchen, tutting her tongue and shaking her head. “Not a nice lady.”