She nodded.

“It’s fine, I’m fine.” She tried to smile but failed.

Ben went back to the craft services table and brought her another can of sparkling water.

“You need to get out of here, don’t you?” he asked.

She stared back at him. She wrestled with how to answer. She should stay; she should get her work done. But no, wait, she needed to take care of herself, remember? She was supposed to stop forcing herself to stay and get work done when she knew she needed breaks.

Ben looked at her as she silently battled with herself, then turned away.

“Gene?” he called out.

About a minute later, Gene clapped his hands.

“Folks, we’re done for the day. See you tomorrow at . . .” He glanced at Ben. “Let’s say nine a.m., for a treat. Good work, everyone.”

Ben walked back over to Anna.

“Okay, let’s get you out of here,” he said.

She picked up her huge tote bag and looked around for her phone before she realized she was still clutching it in her hand.

“My car . . . I have to call for the driver. I don’t think he’s here yet.”

Ben shook his head.

“Don’t worry about your driver. I’ll get you back to your hotel.”

She followed him, with no energy to argue or tell him it wasn’t his job to shuttle her around, that they already paid a service very good money to do that. As they walked to his car, she barely noticed the beautiful view of the San Francisco skyline from here or felt the chill in the air. All she could think about was her dad, in a hospital bed somewhere five hundred miles south of her.

She suddenly came to herself as they dodged traffic on the city streets on the way back to the hotel.

“Actually, Ben,” she said, “can you take me to SFO instead of my hotel?”

He glanced over at her and barely blinked.

“Sure.” He looked around at where they were and took a right at the next corner. “Hold on.”

Anna looked down at her phone and scrolled to her assistant’s name.

“Florence, hey,” she said when her assistant picked up. “Can you get me on the next flight from SFO to Palm Springs? Text me when you have a boarding pass.” She usually wasn’t this short with her assistant, but she couldn’t handle going into details right now.

She looked outside at the fog in the sky as they crept along 101 South to the airport. Why were airports always in such high-traffic areas, anyway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put an airport in an easy place to get to, so people didn’t have to sit in traffic to and from it every time?

She looked over at Ben, who was staring at the road. He hadn’t asked her a single question about what was wrong, what that phone call about plane tickets had been about, or why she suddenly needed to go to SFO. God, that made her like him so much.

“It’s my dad,” she said into the silence. “He and my mom are in Palm Springs—well, actually they were in Joshua Tree, and now he’s at the hospital. My brother says he’s fine, that it’ll be fine, but . . . he had a heart attack a few years ago, and I’m always afraid . . .”

Ben turned to smile at her, and the look on his face felt like he’d given her a hug, even though he hadn’t touched her.

“We’ll get you there,” he said.

He hadn’t said it would be okay, or that her brother was right, or that her dad would be fine, or anything like that. She was so glad.

“I just . . .” Her phone rang before she could finish that thought.

“Okay, so how close to the airport are you?” Florence asked.

Anna looked around for landmarks.

“With the way traffic is . . . I’d guess around thirty minutes away, minimum.”

Florence let out a sigh that Anna rarely heard. It was her bad-news sigh, and Florence almost never had to give her bad news; she was just that efficient.

“The last flight for the day is supposed to be at 8, but that flight has already been canceled. I have you ticketed on the flight at 6:10, but I don’t know if you’re going to make it.”

Anna looked at the clock in the car. It was 5:30. Florence had worded her bad news very delicately.

“Shit. Okay. Okay, maybe you should . . .” Her mind went blank. What should she do?

“What about—” Florence started.

“Let me call you back.” Anna ignored Florence’s attempt to cut in. She needed to think.

“No flights?” Ben asked.

Anna bit her lip.

“The last one of the day is in forty minutes, and while it’s much faster to get through airports when you’re me, I still don’t think I can make it.” This was probably a sign that she should just go back to her hotel and wait for her brother to call her. “Thank you so much for trying, but I’ll just go back to my hotel. My brother can get there tomorrow; he can call and let me know if . . . if everything is okay.”

Ben turned to her, and that grin of his spread across his face.

“I have a better idea. I’m already heading south. What’s a few more hours of driving?”

 

* * *

 

—

Anna stared back at him like she hadn’t heard or didn’t understand what he’d said.

“What?” she finally said.

He gestured at the road in front of him.

“What will it take, like, six or so hours to get there? Okay, maybe seven, because of traffic now, but I bet we can make up some time later. That puts you at the hospital at around one a.m. It’s not like you won’t be awake then anyway; you’ll be stressing about your dad all night; might as well do something productive.”

He was looking at the road now, but he could tell Anna was still staring at him.

“You don’t have to do this for me,” she said.

He shrugged.

“What else am I going to do, go drop you off at your hotel and wave good-bye with you feeling like this? Please. I have a full tank of gas, I won’t have a shoot tomorrow anyway because the talent has a family emergency—remind me to text Gene that, by the way, so the crew all knows they have a day off—and I’ve always liked Palm Springs. Hadn’t planned to go there today, but”—he shrugged again—“why not?”

She leaned back in her seat, still looking at him.

“Why not indeed,” she said.

She was silent for a while, and Ben couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Did she want him to do this? Or was this another one of his wildly stupid ideas? Had he just kidnapped an A-list star? Shit, his boss was going to kill him.