Celebration's Bride. Nancy Thompson Robards

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      “Actually, I do.” Sydney looked at her friends. “The girls and I have already tossed around this idea. So Pepper, A.J., Caroline, feel free to jump in at any time.”

      “You’re doing a great job,” said A.J. “Run with it.”

      “We were talking about giving away wedding catering services to a bride and groom. Perhaps we could film the selection process—choose a handful of finalists and narrow it down to one lucky couple. Maybe we could even get the public involved by allowing them to vote on the winners.”

      “That sounds like a great idea,” Miles said. It was a slight departure from what they’d been doing, but it still remained true to the feel of the show. Plus, anytime there was a contest, it always drummed up new viewers. “Good ideas, everyone. I’d love to hear more about it now, but we’re already behind schedule. So we need to get back to work. But, Sydney, let’s you and I schedule some time to iron out the details. Sound good?”

      Miles certainly hadn’t turned out to be the monster her friends had portrayed him to be earlier that day, Sydney thought as she drank the last sip of her wine.

      Given that Catering to Dallas’s twenty-six member cast and crew had gathered at Murphy’s Pub to welcome Miles to the team, it was proof that no one harbored resentment or other issues from the morning.

      Since Sydney hadn’t seen exactly what had transpired and liked him well enough to go out on a Monday night to toast his arrival on the show, the only conclusion she could come to was that this morning had probably just been a misunderstanding…possibly perpetuated by the not-so-minor detail that no one had known where to locate her in the midst of the director-change storm.

      Looking back on it from this vantage point, it probably hadn’t been the wisest move to leave the country without telling anyone where she was going.

      Oh, well, what was done was done. There was no need to fret over it now. And there was no need to tell anyone about the job interview just yet. Not unless she made it to the next level of the process.

      Time would tell.

      In the meantime, there was a welcome party going on and she fully intended to enjoy it. Especially when Miles came back from the bar with a fresh beer and a glass of white wine, which he placed in front of Sydney. He planted himself in the seat beside her and took a long draw of the beer. When they’d first arrived a couple of hours ago, he’d been sitting at the opposite end of the table with Aiden and some of the other crew members. She’d been talking to the girls. Every once in a while she would glance up and catch him looking at her. The first couple of times she’d looked away. Then she’d decided to join him in his game, cocking a brow, raising her glass to him. If she hadn’t known better she might have thought he was flirting with her.

      And now he was bringing her wine.

      “Thank you,” she said.

      He nodded and touched his beer bottle to her glass.

      “Good to see that this is still a pretty happening place for a Monday night,” he said, glancing around the bar. Sydney followed his gaze, trying to see Murphy’s through his eyes and then remembering he grew up in Celebration. It was probably more familiar to him than it was to her.

      “Did you come here a lot before you moved away?”

      The corner of his mouth quirked up into a half smile. “Well, not as much as I would’ve liked to since I was underage.”

      Murphy’s was one of Celebration’s best-loved spots. It was a casual place where anyone could drop in for a drink or a respectable offering of pub food.

      A long wooden bar, staffed by bartenders who had been there since the beginning of time and could mix any drink known to mankind, ran the length of one wall. People were dancing to songs from the sixties, seventies and eighties that drifted from the jukebox in the corner. A couple of pool tables occupied the left side of the room. They always seemed to be in use. Booths and tables filled in the rest of the room.

      Sydney spied Aiden shooting pool with Caroline’s husband, Drew, who was the editor-in-chief of the Dallas Journal of Business and Development. For a split second, she wondered if she should go over and see if Aiden was pitching Drew a story about Miles’s arrival. Public relations and dealing with the media was her area of expertise, after all. However, she was off the clock and a little looser from the wine. Even though his arrival would make a good news story—Hometown Boy Who’s Done Well Comes Back to Work on Locally Filmed Show—Aiden could handle it…or it could wait until tomorrow.

      She turned her eyes on Miles.

      Maybe it was the combination of the wine and exhaustion, but she suddenly felt very relaxed sitting there. Miles had just sat down and she didn’t want to be rude getting up to talk to the press, especially when the press in question was her good friend’s husband. “Did you leave for college right after high school graduation?”

      He shook his head. “I joined the army right after I left Celebration.”

      “You were in the service?” Sydney asked. The ­e-encyclopedia hadn’t mentioned that.

      He nodded as he took another long draw of his beer.

      “How did you go from soldier to scary filmmaker?” The place was noisy and she leaned in a little closer to hear what he had to say.

      “I’ve always loved film,” he said. “I even shot when I was on active duty, but then I was injured.”

      She thought she’d noticed him walking with a subtle limp. “So, you’re a war hero?”

      “That’s stretching it a bit,” he said. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

      He didn’t strike her as the type to fake modesty. “What do you mean?”

      Everyone else had either gotten up to dance or shoot pool or was engrossed in conversation within their own huddles. The music was so loud, they were sort of in their own little world. It was nice…and intimate.

      “It’s a long story,” he said.

      “I have all night.”

      “Do you?” he asked.

      That was a loaded question, and there was something in the inflection of his voice that she could’ve taken all sorts of different ways if she’d wanted to.

      Instead, she smiled at him and said, “Relatively speaking.”

      “I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “You tell me where you were this weekend and I’ll tell you about how I was injured.”

      As the jukebox switched to a mournful country tune, a guy singing something about wasted days and nights, those who were dancing moved close together and swayed to the rhythm. “Why do my whereabouts on my free time matter?”

      “I’m just curious,” he said. “But technically, you were MIA on my watch. Even if it was only a few hours.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in an unexpected touché, and the raw sexual energy that danced between them made her want to reach out and touch him.

      “If you don’t want СКАЧАТЬ