After I left the stage, I spent the next twenty minutes working my way through the interview process. I raced through it, anxious to get back to the table before Gloria’s category was announced. When I walked back into the ballroom and got down to the front row to head to my group, I felt Gage’s eyes on me again. I ignored him like it was my job as I took my seat before the commercial break concluded.
The next several minutes were a lesson in anxiety management as I felt him looking my way over and over again. Even when Gloria’s win was announced, and the entire room got to their feet to applaud for her, he was still watching me. I ignored him about as well as I had the rest of the night, which meant I was painfully aware of everything he did.
When the show was finally over, and people stood to start leaving, I saw Gage heading my way with great purpose. He was about halfway to me when Angelina Jolie grabbed his arm, stopping him for a conversation. I yanked Allie’s hand as I stood and grabbed my purse.
“We have to go,” I hissed. “Now.”
Her brow furrowed as she nodded but complied. When we turned to walk away, my traitorous eyes went right back to Gage. The frustration in his eyes was apparent even though he was nodding and pretending to pay attention to Angelina and the other two actors who had now joined them. My pulse skittered when he gave me a look that damn near commanded me to wait. Rather than comply, I shook my head once, grabbed Allie’s hand in mine, and started hurrying us through the ballroom.
I managed to lose Gage in the swarm of people heading to the after-parties. I panicked every time I got stopped by someone wanting to congratulate me, but somehow, I managed to avoid running into Gage again.
I let out a silent thank you to my fairy godmother when we got into an elevator and headed to the first after-party. Luck was with me as we traveled from ballroom to ballroom for the Fox Studios, Amazon Studios, Paramount, and Warner Brothers parties.
After three hours without running across him, I saw him at the Amazon soiree. He spotted me immediately as though we were connected by an invisible thread, and I lost my breath when he started making his way toward me.
Anxious to get away, I grabbed Allie by the elbow and hustled us out of there right quick. I didn’t stop until we were out at the car line, and I was an anxious mess the entire time as I paced and prayed he wouldn’t walk out. I let out a long sigh of relief when our car arrived.
“Any specific reason we just ran out of there like it was on fire?” Allie asked after we’d gotten in and the door closed behind us.
In the quiet darkness of the limo, my concerns about Gage suddenly seemed preposterous.
“Headache,” I answered. “I need an Advil and some water before it blows up into a migraine.”
Allie was silent as she opened her purse to extract a travel-size pack of ibuprofen, which she opened before she passed it over to me. I took it gratefully, grabbing a bottle of water and cracking it open before tossing the two pills into my mouth. Only when I’d twisted the lid onto the bottle and set it down did Allie speak again.
“Want to tell me how much of this headache can be attributed to Gage Ryan eye-fucking you for the past four and a half hours?”
I groaned as I dropped my head back onto the plush leather. “You saw that?”
“Well, I’ve got two working eyes, and I was sitting right next to you. It would’ve been hard not to notice. At first, I thought maybe you’d poisoned his Cheerios or something because he seemed annoyed. But then he started looking at you like you’re the cure for boner dysfunction.”
“Allie,” I groaned, “that’s gross!”
“Is it? Because I’ve never, ever seen you as keyed up about a man as you are by Gage. You just ran from him like he was trying to serve you a subpoena.”
I covered my face with my hands as I laughed. “Shit. I really did, didn’t I?”
“Babe, I’m pretty sure they’re going to need to redo the carpet in that ballroom because you definitely left burnt rubber in your wake.”
“I just . . . something about him unsettles me.”
“Unsettles something in your nether regions,” she snorted.
“That too,” I admitted.
“You know if he wants to find you, he will. This is Hollywood. We all have only six degrees of separation from each other at the most.”
I waved her comment off. “Out of sight, out of mind,” I said confidently. “By tomorrow morning, he’ll have forgotten all about me.”