Plus, her mom would wonder why, exactly, she didn’t have any luggage or even any clothes that weren’t the ones she was wearing. And she’d never been great at lying to them anyway, so the truth about the panicked drive to Palm Springs would come out, and then her mom and dad would both worry about her, and that was the last thing she wanted.

She waved a hand.

“No, no, Florence got me a room at the Ace, I’m fine.”

Ben raised his hand from across the room.

“Miss, I’ll bring the car around.”

Anna hid a smile. She nodded at him, and he disappeared out the automatic doors.

“Okay, baby,” her dad said. “I promise I’ll take care of myself.” He looked at her for a long moment.

“I promise I’ll take care of myself,” she repeated.

He nodded.

“Good. I would ask to see you for breakfast tomorrow, but I’m sure you have to head back to your shoot first thing, so we’ll see you when we get back home, okay? You’ll still be in San Francisco?”

She would be, thank goodness.

“I’ll still be there. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” her parents said in unison, and walked out the front doors of the hospital.

She stood there alone, only the bored woman at the information desk for company. He was fine. He would be fine. She took a halting breath and closed her eyes. Now she felt immensely foolish for that mad rush to Palm Springs. She could have just waited in her hotel room in San Francisco, they would have called in the morning, it would have been fine. She had overreacted on a grand scale, hadn’t she?

A few seconds later, Ben pulled up right outside the hospital doors.

Anna smiled shakily as she walked to the car.

“I almost died when you broke out the ‘miss’ in there, you know,” she said.

Ben grinned at her from the driver’s seat. God, she felt so bad for bringing him along on this anxiety-driven mission.

“I almost said ‘Miss Gardiner’ but then I realized you probably didn’t want No-Affect Lady at the info desk to realize who you were and decide to wake up, so then I was going to go with ‘Miss Rose,’ but I thought your driver wouldn’t know your real name, so I decided to just stick with ‘miss’ alone, and I don’t know why I’m still talking about this when the big news is that your dad is okay!”

He turned to her, a huge, warm smile on his face.

“The best possible news! I would say we have to celebrate, but it’s almost two a.m. and we’re in Palm Springs, so I don’t think that’s exactly possible, but still. I’m so happy for you.”

She smiled back at him, then bit her lip.

“Thanks, Ben. But . . . I’m so sorry I dragged you all this way. I shouldn’t have freaked out after I talked to Chris. I should have just gone back to my hotel and eaten french fries or something and waited for news, and I definitely shouldn’t have made you drive me five hundred miles south for no reason.”

He dropped his hands from the steering wheel.

“Anna, what the hell are you apologizing for? Are you really telling me that you just found out that your dad is okay, and now you feel bad because you inconvenienced me? And here I thought you were a Hollywood diva who did whatever she needed and screw everyone else, but you’re just a softie. Relax, I’m fine! I got an adventure and free In-N-Out out of this and a little birdie told me we’re heading to the Ace tonight, and I love that hotel.”

Now she had to laugh.

“Ben, I made that up, you know. I don’t have a room at the Ace.”

He started the car.

“Oh, I know. I did notice everything you told your mom about the trip down here was almost the truth, so we might as well make this one as close to the truth as we can.”

She relaxed into the passenger seat and relinquished control.

“I knew my mom would lose it if she knew we drove down here—she already almost lost it because I showed up in the first place, even though she tried to pretend otherwise. So I wanted the trip to seem, you know . . . chill.”

He shot her a look as he turned to get back on the freeway.

“Chill? Anna Rose Gardiner, or whatever your name is, I only know you a little bit, but ‘chill’ is the last word I’d use to describe you. And if I think that, I’m sure your mom knows it to her core.”

The man had a good point.

“Okay, true, but, like . . . slightly more chill than it was.” She turned to him and sighed. “What can I do to make this up to you? Basketball tickets or frequent flier miles or . . .”

Ben held up a hand to stop her.

“Anna. I promise. You don’t have to do anything to make this up to me. This was fun—I mean, at least, for me, I had fun on the drive down here, you probably did not, now that I think about it, since you were on your way to your dad in the hospital, so now it feels insensitive that I just said it was fun, but anyway, really, you have nothing to make up for.”

“I had fun, too,” she said in a quiet voice. It was true. She’d been relaxed and happy and had enjoyed herself for most of the ride.

Ben turned and looked at her.

“You don’t have to say that, you know,” he said.

She put her hand on his.

“I did. Really. Thank you for making what would have been a really stressful trip mostly a fun one.”

He beamed at her and looked away.

“You’re welcome. It was truly my pleasure.”

She didn’t move her hand away until they pulled into the parking lot at the Ace.

 

* * *

 

—

Ben looked at Anna when he turned off the car. He had one important question for her.

“Okay. Am I going in there with Anna Gardiner, or Anna Rose?”

She dropped her head to her hands. Apparently, she hadn’t thought of that. One more thing that let him know how stressed she’d been today, since he had the impression from their conversations that she always thought of things like that.

“Oh God, make it Anna Rose. I mean, or just your friend Anna, or some lady named Anna, or anything else, I don’t know. But not Anna Gardiner. I don’t want it to be a whole thing that I checked into a hotel in Palm Springs at”—she checked her phone—“1:42 in the morning. You know?”

He did know; that’s why he’d asked.

“Okay, then. Put your hoodie up and let me handle this.” He stopped to look at her. She’d had an incredibly long day, and that moment at the hospital with her parents must have been exhausting. “Actually, why don’t you stay in the car and wait for me? I’ll come back and get you when I get us rooms.”