Chapter 3

"No, Dennis, that's not hurt," she suddenly said quietly, stripping the plea out of her voice. "Hurt is when you work your ass off for three years, and in the credits your name gets reduced to 'assistant.' When they hand your script to someone else because you refused dinner with a producer in a private hotel suite and everything that came with it. When they fire you for 'professional incompetence,' though really it was because you slapped away an arrogant hand under your skirt."

She exhaled, pulled my chair toward herself so its small wheels slid across the floor, and sat down in it. Fixing her hair, she lowered her eyes.

Now the woman in front of me wasn't optimistic Allie with her pile of ideas and plans. She was a young woman who'd had to defend herself too early. And, apparently, too often, if she'd finally decided to talk about it.

"Hurt, Denny, is watching my dream fall apart like a house of cards after all that work, and knowing the project will go to someone else. Because if we're being honest... there will be a fight for this show, and I'm afraid I'll lose. I'm afraid I won't handle it and I'll lose my chance to become a director in my own right. You're the only one who can help me keep control if something goes off plan. The only one I can trust."

Allie lifted her head and, with total sincerity, did her own version of the cat from Shrek. Then she breathed out quietly, with devastating sincerity:

"Please."

My older sister. Not very grown-up, often stubborn... impulsive, proud, generous, and endlessly dear.

And if someone had handed me a script right then where the stone-hearted hero turned away coldly and said no, I would have burned it. Because in real life, strange as it is, even hard-hearted people have their weaknesses.

And my weakness was sitting there in reindeer pajamas, with a napkin in her hand and the stupidest, most honest question on her lips:

"Little devil, you love me, don't you?"