While We Were Dating Read online

  “What? Oh yeah, another beer sounds great, thanks,” he said to the bartender. “Do you want another drink?” he asked the woman sitting next to him. Rachel. That was her name.

  She shook her head and stood up.

  “No offense, but you don’t seem that interested in me. Have a good night, Ben.”

  Oh God, he was an asshole.

  “Wait, Rachel.”

  She pulled her purse onto her shoulder and looked at him.

  “What?”

  “I want to apologize for being bad company tonight. It’s not you—a really . . . weird thing happened at work today, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m sorry for being a jerk.”

  She looked at him for a while and finally gave him a slight smile.

  “Okay. Thanks for apologizing. Good night.”

  She patted him on the shoulder and left, just as the bartender put his beer in front of him. He didn’t even really want it, but he took a sip as he thought about the day.

  Everything about that day had been strange. The pitch had gone well, he thought, at least it had before the rest of the team had walked in. He grinned again at the expression on Roger’s face when Anna had referred to them as “Ben’s team.” But after that, he’d just tried to keep going and forget about the rest of the team, which had been almost impossible with all of Roger’s interjections, so he had no real handle on how everyone else in the room had reacted. Other than Anna.

  He paid for the drinks and left the rest of his beer as he got up to walk home. It was a chilly April night in San Francisco, but he’d raced out of his house so quickly that morning that he’d forgotten his jacket. Why did he always do that? He’d lived here long enough to know what would happen.

  He wondered where Anna was now. Had she flown back to L.A. right away after all of the pitches were done? Probably. She was probably out on some elaborate date with her famous boyfriend. Granted, his Google searches had said she currently didn’t have a boyfriend, but someone like her must, right?

  His phone rang, right when he walked into his apartment. His boss again. Why was she calling him this late at night?

  “Hi, Lisa,” he said cautiously when he answered the phone.

  “Ben!” She sounded excited. That was a good sign. “I was going to wait to tell you this tomorrow at work, but Roger wants to meet first thing in the morning, so I thought you should be prepared for that.”

  It was nice of her to make sure he’d be there in time for Roger’s meeting the next day, but she could have just texted him.

  “Okay, what time? I’ll be there,” he said.

  Had he really been late that often? Okay, yes, but like, ten minutes late, not “Lisa needs to call him the night before so he’ll get to work on time” late.

  “At nine, but I wasn’t just calling for the meeting! Ben, we got it. Or rather, I should say, YOU got it.”

  Was she talking about the pitch?

  “We did? What do you mean, I did?”

  “They loved you today. So much so that they said we get the ad campaign, but only if you’re the lead on it. From what they said to Roger, apparently Anna Gardiner was a big fan.”

  Anna Gardiner was a big fan of . . . him? A wide smile spread across his face. He’d better be able to tell this part to his brother.

  “Wow. That’s . . . wow. How did Roger take it?”

  Lisa chuckled.

  “Good question. He definitely seemed . . . bemused. He’s very happy we got it, though, that’s for sure. Tomorrow’s meeting is to announce it to the team, and to plan for everything—I’m sure he’s going to want you on set every day—just prepare for that.”

  Hmmm, that would not be a problem.

  “Thanks for calling to let me know, Lisa. I’m thrilled. And don’t worry, I’ll be appropriately surprised in the meeting. See you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  He got off the phone and turned on the TV but didn’t pay any attention to what was on-screen. He would get to be the lead on this ad campaign? He’d only gotten to lead small, relatively low-budget ones so far. Holy fucking shit.

  He picked up his phone again and checked his work email, and Roger, in true Roger style, had had his assistant send out a calendar invite for the meeting in the morning, without saying what it was for. If he’d seen that without talking to Lisa first, he would have freaked out. Thank God she’d called.

  He glanced at his email to see if there was anything else he needed to know before he went to bed, and stopped cold.

  To: Ben Stephens

  From: Anna Gardiner

  Re: Congratulations!

  Hi Ben: I hope you’ve heard the news by now—I loved your presentation today, very glad you’ll be in charge. (If you haven’t heard, pretend to be shocked when what’s his name who got there late tells you, I have a feeling you can handle that). One quick request: can you make sure whoever is doing the lighting for the shoot has worked with brown skin before? I’ve had some poorly lit disasters in the past few years.

  Thanks!

  Anna

  Was that really her? No, it couldn’t be. Anna Gardiner had not just sent him an email. Impossible.

  But no one else would have these details, other than the partners who were at the meeting, and they wouldn’t try to prank him like this. Holy shit. It must actually be her.

  He hit reply so fast he almost sprained his finger.

  To: Anna Gardiner

  From: Ben Stephens

  Re: Congratulations!

  Thanks so much, Anna. Very much looking forward to working with you. Don’t worry, I know just the right people to do the lighting. You can count on me. Email or text if there’s anything else you need.

  Ben

  He hit send. He could not believe he’d just emailed Anna Gardiner. And given her his phone number, because why the hell not? Holy shit.

  He skimmed the rest of his inbox. Oh, here was some random person emailing him; they must be trying to get his help getting a job or something, from the Looking to connect subject line. He got those frequently at this job, because of the big clients this agency represented, and he tried to help people out if he could. Well, he wasn’t doing anything right now; he’d click on this email and see what he could do.

  He skimmed it. And then read it again. He put his phone down, but after a few minutes of staring at the wall, he picked it back up and read the email again.

  From: Dawn Stephens

  To: Ben Stephens

  Re: Looking to connect

  Hi Ben,

  My name is Dawn Stephens. And I’m sorry if this is out of the blue, but I think I might be your sister. Sorry for not leading up to that, it felt easier to just get it over with as soon as possible. Anyway, Melvin Stephens is also my father. I did one of those DNA testing things a few years ago, and I was just poking around on it and it told me there was someone else out there with my same father, and after some research I think it might be you. You look like him, anyway.

  Here’s a little about me—I’m twenty five, I live in Sacramento, I work with kids, and I just got into grad school to get my master’s in education. I’m sorry if it’s weird to email you at work—there were a lot of Ben Stephens on Facebook, so I didn’t know if I’d find the right one. Anyway, I’d love to hear back from you and find out about you—I’m an only child, or, I guess, I thought I was, so it’s both weird and exciting to find a brother. Or maybe other siblings too—are you also an only child?

  You can email me back or text me if you want.

  I hope you’re doing well,

  Dawn

  He’d wondered at points over the years if his father had had another family out there. If that’s why he’d left Ben and Theo and their mom, to start something new, because they hadn’t been enough for him. He’d left so suddenly, all Ben could do when he was a kid was try to figure out why. Ben ha
d moved past all of that, even gone to therapy about it. He hadn’t thought about that for a long time.

  Dawn. She worked with kids. That was nice. He wondered how—as a preschool teacher, or nanny or something? If she wanted to get her master’s in education, maybe the former?

  No. No, he wasn’t curious about this woman; he didn’t want to be. He had a brother, a perfectly fine brother, a great brother, actually, who was on the point of bringing his girlfriend Maddie into the fold to be his sister. He didn’t need this Dawn.

  He had to tell Theo.

  Wait. No. She clearly didn’t even know Theo existed. Theo didn’t need to know about any of this. Theo had yelled at him for doing that DNA test in the first place—gave him a big lecture about private companies having your personal data and you don’t know what they do with it and blah blah blah. He hated when his brother was right. Theo would just give him another lecture about that, and then . . . and then what?

  Maybe this was just some kind of a scam. Someone trying to get money from him. Someone who knew his dad—that sounded like the kind of thing some friend of his dad would do. This woman probably wasn’t even related to him at all. If she even existed.

  When he glanced at his phone again, he had a new email.

  From: Anna Gardiner

  To: Ben Stephens

  Re: Congratulations!

  Knew I could rely on you, Ben. Nice to meet you today, and glad that this all looks like it’s moving quickly.

  Looking forward to working with you too,

  Anna

  Ben pushed away all thoughts of the email from Dawn. Anna Gardiner was looking forward to working with him.

  He turned the channel to the basketball game. The cheers from the crowd felt like they were for him. He sat back on the couch and grinned.

  Three

  Anna was five minutes late on the first day of the shoot for the ad campaign. That was not a power move—she liked to be right on time to things like this, especially at the beginning, to make it clear that she respected everyone else’s time and wasn’t a diva. Well. Not much of one.

  She walked from the hair-and-makeup tent over to where the crew was, and the first person she saw was Ben. She gave him a wide smile, and he smiled back at her. They’d emailed on and off since those first few emails—when he’d booked the crew, he’d sent her examples of their previous work, and she’d thanked him for it, and then congratulated him for his quick work when they’d set an official start date for the filming, only about a month after that first meeting.

  “How did you manage to have perfect, fog-free weather on a beach in San Francisco?” she asked him.

  His eyes crinkled at her.

  “Oh, I didn’t mention this at the pitch meeting?” He leaned in closer to her. “I’m magic.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re magic?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t like to tell a lot of people about it—sometimes they get spooked, sometimes they treat me differently, I’m sure you get that kind of thing, too—but I can control the weather. I try not to use my powers too much, offends the gods and all, but for you? I managed it.”

  She laughed out loud.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.” She flashed the full force of her smile—a smile that People magazine had called “dazzling”—at him. He dropped the clipboard he was holding into the sand. She smirked. Still got it.

  “Well, you’re very welcome.” Ben picked up his clipboard. “Can I introduce you to everyone? Unless you’d rather wait over in the tent for us to be ready?”

  Anna nodded. She was glad he’d offered.

  “Yes, thank you, I’d love to meet everyone.”

  He looked slightly surprised by her quick reply.

  “Excellent,” he said. “I always find with these things that we’re all more comfortable if we at least can put a name to a face.”

  Ben took her around and introduced her to the camera crew. They were all still in the middle of setting up their equipment, so at least she didn’t feel as bad about being late. Then he brought her over to his assistant.

  “Glad to see you again, Vanessa,” Anna said. She didn’t miss Ben’s quick grin at his clearly nervous assistant. That was sweet.

  Everyone was very nice and low-key and only a little starstruck, which was exactly how she liked it—people who were too obsequious really stressed her out and made her feel embarrassed, but people who basically ignored her seemed like assholes. So far, no assholes here.

  Ben had a low-voiced consultation with the camera guy while she was chatting with Vanessa, and then turned back to her.

  “It’s time to get you mic’ed up, but our sound guy is stuck in traffic, so I’m going to fill in for him for right now, if that’s okay with you?”

  Anna nodded.

  “As long as it’s okay with them, it’s okay with me,” she said.

  Ben picked up the tiny microphone and its attached battery pack from the table. He stood in front of her and looked her up and down in a very clinical way.

  “You don’t have any pockets in this dress, do you?” he asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “Unfortunately not.”

  He made a face.

  “I was afraid of that. Okay, do you mind if I attach the battery pack to your bra, or do you want to do it?”

  Anna shrugged. She was used to this.

  “I don’t mind.”

  Ben came closer to her and held up the mic.

  “Okay, I’m going to clip the mic to your neckline, if that’s okay.”

  Anna took a step forward.

  “Of course.”

  Ben gently lifted the neckline of her dress and clipped the mic on her. He didn’t even touch her, but as she watched his nimble fingers on her dress, a shiver went down her back. He moved slowly and narrated everything he was doing as he did it.

  “Great, it’s clipped on there, all set. Now I’ll just tuck the pack down back here,” he said as he walked around her.

  She lifted her hair and moved it out of his way. She could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck. She wanted to move closer but stayed right where she was.

  “Now I’ll slip this down your dress and clip it to your bra here.”

  She appreciated the way he told her everything he was about to do and warned her every time he was going to touch her. She’d been mic’ed up thousands of times by now, and this kind of care and attention to her comfort was rare. Most of the time it was a quick and silent procedure, though she’d had her fair share of guys, early in her career, who took the opportunity to grope her. No one had tried that in a long time, but she also couldn’t remember the last time someone had made her comfort such a priority.

  One of the things that had surprised her, a few years back, after she’d gotten that Oscar nomination and had hit so many magazine covers and so many more people knew who she was, was how many people felt entitled to her. To information about what she was doing and where she was going and who she was with, to her attention whenever they wanted it, and especially to her body. People would interrupt her when she was with her family, they would reach for her as she walked through a crowd, fans jumped to take selfies with her without asking and would throw their arms around her. And of course, men at parties and on set would casually brush her ass or the sides of her breasts like it was nothing, like her body was theirs for the taking.

  But Ben touched her in such a businesslike, matter-of-fact way, and made it clear she was in control the whole time. He could have easily taken this opportunity to flirt with her some more, or touch her neck or waist or back. But he didn’t do any of that. She was certain, more than ever, she’d made the right decision about this shoot.

  “Okay, we’re all set,” he said, and took a step back. He looked over at the cameras.
“And not a moment too soon. I think it’s time for you.”

  She smiled at him and met his warm brown eyes.

  “Great. Thanks.”

  They turned and walked across the sand to the cameras, where Anna did a series of sound checks to see how her voice and the mic held up against the waves and the wind.

  She was absolutely not going to start something with Ben Stephens. Yes, she hadn’t slept with anyone since last year, since the anxiety attacks had started, and okay, yes, she was ready for that drought to end. Yes, she’d been flirting with Ben since the moment she’d met him, but that was just the fun kind of flirting, where everyone knew it didn’t mean anything. She’d had a firm policy since the very beginning of her career to never get involved with men she was working with—the Hollywood rumor mill was too vicious for her to get tangled up in it, at least, not on purpose. And sure, Ben wasn’t a costar or anything, but they were still working together. No, she was absolutely not going to start something with Ben Stephens.

  But it was really fun to think about.

  * * *

  —

  Ben watched Anna as she chatted with the director. Damn, she was even more incredible than he’d thought initially. And he’d initially thought she was hot as hell. But he’d sort of assumed she’d be difficult, just because of the nature of her job and her status, but she didn’t seem to be like that at all. She definitely carried herself like she was the star, which she was, but she was friendly to everyone there, and she seemed to be able to roll with the punches in a way he hadn’t expected.

  Okay, he had to focus and stop looking at her. This job was the biggest one he’d ever worked on at this level, and he wanted to kill it. Because if he did good work on this campaign, that was the entry point to do more work like this, and that was his goal. Which was why he had been up since well before sunrise and had been here on set since before the crew arrived, which was not the norm for him.