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Chasing Change (River's End Ranch Book 57) by Caroline Lee (3)

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

Archie winced when he heard his name and pinched the bridge of his nose. The movement dislodged the colored contact covering his left eye, but he blinked to shift it back into place.

As soon as that “blimey” had left his lips, he’d known he’d tipped his hand. In his first Oscar-nominated role, a contract he’d signed while still living in Sheffield, he’d played a London street sweeper who dreamed of opening his own restaurant. The role had been easy for him; his great-grandfather had been a chimney sweep in Portsmouth…Only years of practice and diction lessons had removed the Yorkshire from Archie’s accent, and then he’d gone and screwed it up by shouting out Mum’s favorite word.

He sighed.

“You are Archibald St. John, aren't you?” she asked in that same accusing tone.

Archie lowered his hand from his eyes and shrugged sheepishly. “My friends call me Archie.”

She narrowed her lovely, slightly mismatched eyes. “Not James?” Her tone said she wasn't charmed by knowing who he really was.

She deserved an answer, so he glanced down at his hands when he confessed, “No.”

“’Archie’,” she repeated softly. “Does that mean we're friends?”

This time, his wince was a little theatrical when he peeked up at her. “I don't know what else to call a woman who just spent a half-hour making me pee in fear all over her upholstery.”

A little grin tweaked her too-wide lips. “That's why these seats are made out of rubber,” she quipped.

Taking heart from her joking tone, Archie managed to smile behind his bushy beard. “So you mean I'm not the first man you've had screaming like a terrified toddler up here?”

“And you probably won't be the last.” She lowered her hands from the steering wheel and turned to face him as fully as she could with them sitting side-by-side. “All of that was for show by the way,” she confessed cheerfully. “I'm the best UTV driver on the ranch... Maybe in the county.”

“Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, “that's why I hired you. Or rather, that's why Wade Weston suggested you.”

She stared at him for a few seconds longer than was comfortable, then raised a dark brow. Then, without having to even look at the latch, she undid the pitiful webbing—which in no way replaced a door, as far as he was concerned—and climbed out of the vehicle. Once she was standing in front of it, she placed her hands on her hips and stared out over the vista in front of them.

 “Yeah, why is that, Archie? Can I assume this is for a role or something?”

He’d almost forgotten what they were talking about. “What?”

Still without turning, she explained. “You’re here on the ranch, super-mysterious, in disguise, willing to pay to have someone tutor you in very specific skills. What’s up with that?”

If Cait was going to be his tutor, maybe she should know the truth. Not only that, but Archie had the strangest urge to tell her everything…he felt as if he could trust her.

He knew he could trust her.

“It’s for a role,” he confirmed, fumbling with the latch to open the webbing. “We’re more than halfway through filming for—well, I don’t think it’s proprietary information. The title is Big Sky Divide. It’s about an Isolationist whose compound is raided by the FBI, and he goes rogue, all mountain man-y on the run.” There. Finally managing to get the webbing undone, he climbed out to stand on shaky legs. “We’ve got a few of the action sequences left to shoot, and I requested some time to learn the skills they need. We’re moving locations, so they gave me two weeks to find a ‘tutor’.”

“Why, though?” She turned slightly, so he could see her profile. “I mean, if you’re almost done filming, why not just get a stunt guy to do those shots?”

He moved up beside her and rested his butt on the still-warm hood of the UTV. “I don’t use stunt men if at all possible. I’m a method actor; that means I become the character to the best of my ability. I chartered time on the Vomit Comet airplane to learn how to act in zero-G for Vega Return. I took months of intense piano lessons for 30 Lincoln Center—although I’ll admit they dubbed the actual music—just so I could nail the hand movements.”

She made a noncommittal noise, and Archie felt the strangest urge to defend himself.

“So this role calls for a fairly intense UTV chase and a series of primitive survival scenes. So I need to know how to do those things—how it feels to do those things. So I can better become the character. I have to really feel like I’m in that situation if I want to—”

She swung around. “What about the disguise?”

Archie blinked. He wasn’t used to being interrupted, and wasn’t used to having his explanations dismissed. “What?”

“This.” She waved her hand dismissively towards his face. “The bod and the beard, okay, I guess that’s for the movie, yeah? But your eyes?”

He bristled. “What about—oh.” He was wearing his blue contact lenses, the ones he wore when he didn’t want to attract attention. “I tend to go incognito when I’m out in public.”

She snorted, her attention still—at least nominally—on the view. “Yeah, like you big-shot Hollywood stars could go anywhere incognito.”

“Really,” he said softly, not even trying to enjoy the vista. His arms were crossed in front of him, and he didn’t stop to wonder why it was so important this woman believe him. “I like becoming other people. It’s part of the fun of method acting. So even when I’m not on a job, I like to go out in public and pretend to be—I don’t know, nobody, I guess. A regular guy. Sometimes I give myself names and jobs and backstories, even.” He shrugged, a little embarrassed. “But I’ve noticed that it’s all about body language. If I move like a big shot, I am one, but if I stand and move and walk like a regular guy, no one gives me a second glance.”

This time she really did look at him, a skeptical stare with one brow raised sarcastically. “I sincerely doubt anyone could ‘not give a second glance’ to someone as hot as you.”

He’d been called “hot” before. He’d been called “sexy” before, even. Heck, one magazine once voted him the month’s “sexiest man”. But hearing that Cait thought he was hot…well, for some reason, Archie found himself flushing. In embarrassment? Or pleasure?

He made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a laugh, and shrugged with his arms still crossed, staring at his feet.

“Did I embarrass you? Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry.

“No, I…” He met her lovely eyes again. “I just didn’t expect it. I came here to be just a regular guy. To learn some things.”

“To be James Smith?”

He thought for a moment. Then, “…yeah.”

When she stepped closer to him, he didn’t move, and before he was really sure what her intentions were, her rear end was propped up against the hood of the UTV next to him. She even crossed her arms in front of her, like him.

They stood like that for a few minutes, staring out over the view of the ranch. The sun was hitting the distant lake, glittering on the tops of the little waves thrown up by all the pleasure boats. He inhaled deeply. It really was beautiful here, and if he were the type of man to settle in one place, to be one person, he could see it being here.

But who would he be?

“You know…” She hesitated, then cleared her throat and started again. “I used to be really self-conscious about my eyes. It’s genetic abnormality, to have two different-colored eyes. I’ve even heard it’s caused by having parents who were related to one another, although that’s not true in my case.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw her shrug, as if brushing off the thought and the worry. He wasn’t sure if he should be comforting her or not.

She continued, “But then, about five years ago, I saw you on the cover of a magazine—I don’t remember which one.” A flash of a too-wide smile. “In all of your movies, you become the character so well, I hadn’t realized you had heterochromia too. I bought that magazine, just so I could see your eyes and remind myself it was okay to be different. Then I rented The Horror of Sunshine, so I could see you act with your real eyes.”

Archie’s heart was pounding against his chest, and he couldn’t figure out how to make his voice work. He knew he’d touched people’s lives. He knew there were fans out there who admired his acting and his skills. But he was standing here with a woman—a woman who seemed hard to impress—listening to how he’d affected her just by being…himself.

He cleared his throat. “I, uh… I grew up in Portsmouth, yeah? I wanted to be an actor, and I was good at it. Stage acting is more fun, because you can become a new person for two hours straight, and don’t ever have to break character. But the real money is in film acting, even though you have to do the same scene again and again and if you’re not really devoted to the role you end up breaking character in between.” He shook his head, remembering he wasn’t here to give a lesson on acting. “When I started auditioning, I wasn’t getting any roles. I’d worked hard to lose my accent, to look like everyone else in Hollywood. I was even wearing these colored contact lenses.” He jerked a thumb towards his face. “Then I met someone at a party who told me that was my problem—I looked like everyone else. My very next interview, I went without my lenses, let them see that I had one blue eye, one green eye…and I got the part. I was unique enough to draw their attention. I used my British accent in the next role I landed, too, and it felt good to remember who I really was.”

Beside him, she made a little noise which might’ve been a grunt of approval…or not. “But now? You’re hiding your real self again.”

That surprised a burst of laughter out of him, and he dropped his arms. “No, don’t you see? I’m successful. That means I can be whomever I want, whenever I want.” In his attempt to get her to understand, he placed his hand on her upper arm. “That’s the fun of doing my job, and I don’t ever want to stop!”

She’d stiffened when he’d touched her, but he’d been too intent to notice. Now though, he noticed as she slowly relaxed, exhaling softly. When she dropped her arms and turned slightly to face him, he didn’t remove his hand from her arm, and she didn’t move away.

They stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed like forever…then she nodded.

“I think…I think I do understand,” she said softly. “I think stability—doing the same thing day after day—is boring, too. I don’t change who I am, but I like to change what I do, what I see. Life is an adventure, as long as it’s always changing.”

He liked that. “Life is an adventure,” he repeated in a whisper. “That’s a great philosophy.”

Another long moment of staring at one another, then she nodded once, firmly. “So, Mr. Big-Shot Hollywood, you wanna go on an adventure?”

“With you?” His huge smile wasn’t at all forced. “Anytime.”

Her smile matched his as she jerked her thumb. “Alright then. Climb in to the driver’s seat, and we’ll give you your first lesson.”

He was already moving, but called around from the back of the UTV. “I don’t have to drive up the same trail, do I?”

“Of course not,” she said with a laugh. “We’re already up the mountain! You get to drive back down!”

He groaned theatrically as he strapped himself in to the vehicle, but found he didn’t really mind. For some reason, being beside her made the impossible seem reachable. She was here to teach him, after all.

And life was an adventure.

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