Page 45 of Never Date a Celebrity

She had repeatedly fluffed her lines, causing some serious delays in their schedule for the day. She was constantly having to run to-and-fro to look at her script. She was standing in the wrong place at the wrong times. She was missing her cues. It was all an absolute mess.

The only silver lining was that Amelia wasn’t filming with Bridget that morning. That was one person she couldn’t deal with right now. Though she was due to film a couple of scenes with Bridget later that day—if she managed to do her job properly now and stop keeping everyone back. Basically, she needed to get her shit together, and fast.

Amelia knew why she was crumbling. Her head was all jumbled up. Ever since her date with Imogen the night before—her perfect date—she had been reeling. Amelia didn’t fuck around with people. She didn’t hurt them. She had never intentionally misled someone before. That was not who she was at all. But this time, she’d screwed up. Amelia had let her secret drag on for way too long, and now lovely, sweet, kind-hearted Imogen trusted her. Imogen, who had been hesitant, and cautious, and guarded—all things she had been right to be—had somehow moved past all of that and wholeheartedly handed Amelia her trust. And Amelia was not one bit worthy of it.

After their conversation the night before, Amelia had gone notably quiet. She couldn’t help it. She’d passed it off as tiredness and Imogen had respectfully and thoughtfully called it a night and unquestioningly took her back to the hotel so she could get some rest. Only Amelia didn’t get a minute of rest because she had been up all night feeling sick at her own behaviour.

“Do you need a break?” Gabe whispered to her.

Amelia shook her head. “No, we’re almost done. I think I’ve got it now.” If she could manage to get through the next two scenes, then she would have a few hours to regroup before filming resumed later.

And she knew exactly what she had to do in those few hours.

To everyone’s relief, including her own, Amelia did finally manage the rest of her scenes with no further hiccups. As soon as everyone began to disperse from the set, Amelia made it her mission to find Christopher. She had already checked that morning to see if he was working, so she knew he had to be around somewhere unless he was already out on a job. Luckily, after asking around, she found him hanging out by the cars—which in hindsight, might have been a good place to check first.

“Hey. You busy?” Amelia asked him when she approached. She pulled her collar up around her neck. The rain was coming down in a light drizzle that didn’t look like much, but somehow got you drenched. Deceptive. Which seemed fitting.

“Aw, hey, Amelia.” He threw down the end of the cigarette he’d been smoking. He gave her a friendly smile, seemingly unfazed by the weather. “How can I help?”

“I need a favour. I was wondering if you could take me to Ballyluck and have me back again by four?” Amelia gave him her most hopeful face which probably bordered on desperate, which she was. “Please?”

He looked baffled. “Ballyluck? What the heck do you want to go back there for?”

“I have to talk to someone,” she said. Amelia wasn’t going to go into detail. What she was about to do was difficult enough without having to tell the whole sordid story to someone she hardly knew—as nice as Christopher seemed. Still, you never knew who would leak information to the press and who wouldn’t. She’d been unpleasantly surprised by some of the culprits who’d done so in the past.

He regarded her for a few seconds, then checked his watch. “Fortunately for you, I’ve got a free afternoon, and I think we can get you there and back here on time. It won’t be a long chat though.”

A few minutes was all Amelia needed. She was fairly certain that Imogen wouldn’t want her to stick around for too long after she said what she had to say anyway. If she didn’t kick her right out on her ass, it would be a miracle. “That’s fine. Can we go now?”

“Sure. Okay.” He led her to the nearest car, the same one he’d driven her in before, and opened the back passenger door. “Let’s go.”

The second she climbed into the back of the car, the rain started to come down in heavy sheets, pounding loudly against the darkened windows. Amelia stared out at the droplets running down the black glass as the car slowly pulled away from the set.

This was it. She sucked in a breath and let it go. At least she would have a few minutes to gear herself up on the car journey. She lifted her phone and fired off a quick text to Helen telling her what she was about to do. Helen would want to be briefed in case a story came out that Amelia Whitlock had been dating someone under an alias. Amelia doubted it. Imogen wouldn’t want that any more than she did. But sometimes family or friends talked. Helen wouldn’t appreciate being unprepared if that happened. She dropped her phone on the seat beside her and stared back out the window.

Imogen didn’t know that she was coming. Amelia had decided that she didn’t deserve a warm welcome or special treatment. Nope, she’d gotten herself into this mess, and she was going to march through the doors of the Wishing Well and put it right.

She had no real speech prepared. Amelia tried to plan it a few times in her head, but what was the best way to tell someone that you’d been lying to them from the moment you’d met? Lying to them about something that mattered deeply to them. All she could do was tell the truth about who she was, tell her how she felt, and throw herself at the mercy of Imogen’s forgiveness and understanding.

Her only small comfort was that, apart from her massive omission, everything else had been real. Amelia had been entirely herself from the beginning, and every feeling she had for Imogen was painfully, hopelessly genuine. She could only hope Imogen might still be able to see that once she knew the truth.

Wasn’t that what Amelia had always wanted? Someone who truly saw her?

The awful thing was, she wasn’t sure Imogen would want to anymore. And Amelia couldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

“Oh my God, you guys.” Piper burst around the back of the bar where Imogen and Niamh were on their knees doing inventory. “You will never believe what I just heard.”

“What?” Niamh asked, poking her head up from the under-counter fridge like a meerkat. “Wait. Is it something good or something bad?”

“Something so good. The most exciting thing I’ve heard in a month, at least,” Piper replied. “Seriously, your head’s going to explode, Niamhey.”

Imogen straightened, also curious. “A whole month?” That was a long time in Piper-land. “Tell us.”

Piper held up a finger, placed her other hand on her stomach, and took a couple of deep breaths. It was obvious she had been running all the way back to the pub to tell them whatever this groundbreaking news was. “Okay, so I ran into Rory and Jonathan from the B&B.” She paused again for effect. Piper loved a build-up.

“Who absolutely love a chat,” Imogen added knowingly.

“Oh, they so do,” Piper said. “But they had some really good goss to pass on today.”