Funny You Should Ask(6)

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said.

“It bothers me,” he said. “It’s your name. I want to be able to say it correctly.”

Well.

“Like ‘knee,’ but with a ch. Chani,” I said, using the back of my throat to get the proper half-hacking, half-rolling sound.

As I did, a tiny bit of spit popped out of my mouth and arched in the air between us. Thankfully it fell before it came into contact with any part of Gabe’s person, and he was gracious enough not to comment on it.

I wanted to die.

“Chani,” he said. “Chani. Chani.”

He got it right on the second try, though I could have listened to him say my name all day long. Because he said it as if he was tasting it.

“My makeup artist on Tommy Jacks was named Preeti,” he said. “But everyone on the crew said Prit-ee instead of Pree-tee.”

He gave the puppy a good scratch under her chin and she snuggled up close, tucking her head against his chest. Lucky dog.

“She told me that she used to correct people but it never seemed to stick and after a while, she just got tired of trying.” Gabe shrugged. “I always think about that. How much it must suck to have your name constantly mispronounced.”

He wasn’t wrong—I’d just learned, like Preeti, that most people didn’t care.

Gabe obviously did.

We stood there for a moment—him shirtless and holding a puppy, me with my crush on him growing exponentially larger with every second. And me helpless to do anything about it. I felt like a teenager again, with hormones I couldn’t control. It was disorienting.

“What were you saying before?” he asked.

“About my name?”

He shook his head. “No, when you were coming up the walkway—it looked like you were saying something.”

My face got prickly and warm. Getting caught talking to myself wasn’t exactly the first impression I’d hoped to make.

“Sorry,” he said. “Guess I just revealed I was kind of spying on you through the window.”

He gave me a sheepish smile, even though I was the one who was beyond embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I was, uh, I was just talking to myself.”

There was no way in hell I was going to tell him what I had actually been saying. Between that and being compared to a clock, this interview was already awkward enough.

Gabe looked at me for a long time.

“Do you do that a lot?” he asked.

“Talk to myself?”

He nodded.

“Um, sometimes?” I squirmed a little under his penetrating gaze. “I guess it just helps me sort out my thoughts? It happens when I get stuck on things, sometimes. Like, saying them out loud makes them real? Or, I can organize them better than if they’re just in my head? Almost like a list? Or not really a list, but a documentation of my ideas? For posterity?”

I was rambling about talking to myself. Wonderful.

Gabe leaned back on his heels and let out a whistle, as if I’d just said something profound.

“A documentation of your ideas,” he repeated. “You are a writer.”

Suddenly I got this horrible feeling that there had been some huge, weird mix-up and he didn’t know I was here to interview him. Or I was being pranked.

“Yes? Broad Sheets sent me?” I hated how my voice kept going up at the end of my sentences, making everything a question.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, as if I was the one who wasn’t making any sense. “You write other things too, right? Like, fiction?”

“Yes?”

He grinned at me as if I’d just told him I had the cure for cancer.

“That’s awesome,” he said. “I love books.”

I didn’t know what to think. On one hand, it seemed that all the people who had thought that Gabe was too much of a himbo hick to play Bond might have had a point. On the other hand, he was so damn adorable, it was hard not to find him and his “I love books” comment utterly charming.

“Should we get started?” I realized that I’d been in his house for almost ten minutes, seen him shirtless, and still hadn’t asked him a single serious question. “Where’s the best place to talk?”

“I thought we’d go to lunch,” he said. “There’s a great pub on Ventura. Do you mind driving?”

“Uh…”

“But first,” he said, walking past me. “Let me show you something.”

I didn’t have any choice but to follow.

Broad Sheets had said I’d be getting more access than other interviewers. Gabe’s management really wanted to counter the anti-Parker narrative coming from Bond fans.

But when Gabe showed me into his bedroom, I stopped in the doorway, knowing that there was access and there was access.

“Check out this view,” Gabe said, throwing open the curtains.

It was quite the view.

The puppy sat at Gabe’s feet, the two of them a gorgeous, film-worthy tableau, bathed in the December sunlight. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt. His back was incredible. All smooth muscles and sleek lines. I wanted to stand behind him, wrap my arms around his waist, and press my cheek against one of his shoulder blades.

The desire to do so was so strong that I could practically feel his hot skin against my face. Or maybe that was just because my own skin felt warm. Very warm. I pressed my cool hands to my throat and looked away.