“Show me,” she said.

He smiled at her, but . . . shyly? She’d only known Ben for a little while, but that wasn’t a descriptor she’d ever expected to use about him. She held back a grin. Despite her misgivings, this was pretty adorable.

“Okay!” he said. He dropped the bags on the bed and pulled something out of one of them. He held it up for her to see.

“Do you like it? I thought you might like it, but I wasn’t sure. You seem like you like colorful things—I don’t know why I think that, you were wearing all black yesterday, maybe it’s too bright?”

He was babbling. It was so cute.

As was the dress. It was a T-shirt dress, pink, with a blue and orange embroidered design on it. Very Palm Springs.

“I love it. Let me try it on.”

She grabbed the dress out of his hands and stood up, letting her robe drop to the floor. It was fun to see his eyes widen at her in a bra and nothing else.

She pulled the dress over her head, and he whistled.

“Well, I think that looks fucking incredible on you, but it might turn a few heads if you have to go to the bathroom somewhere.”

She looked at herself in the mirror, and she could see what he meant. This dress hugged her curves perfectly, which meant it was a little snug—and a little short—for an incognito day.

He tossed another dress at her.

“This is the same dress, just in a different size and another color, in case you didn’t want to be quite so visible.”

This one was in black, but with orange and pink embroidery. She put it on and then reached into her bag and grabbed her enormous sunglasses.

“How’s this?” she asked him.

He narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head. That wasn’t what she was expecting.

“The dress is perfect, even though it obscures some of your glory.”

She grinned.

“Nice way to put that, but?”

He took a few steps over to her and gently slid the sunglasses off of her face.

“But these sunglasses are too movie star.” He reached into the Target bag. “Luckily, I got you these.” He tossed her a pair of plain black plastic sunglasses. “And . . .” He looked down, not meeting her eyes. “I thought you might want these, too. I wasn’t, um, sure on style, so I got a few options.” He handed her the bag, and then turned to pull a T-shirt for himself out of a different bag. She glanced down and was charmed to see an assortment of underwear—some cotton, some silky, a few bikinis, one thong. All, if she wasn’t mistaken, the right size. She plucked the red cotton bikinis out of the pile and pulled them on.

“It’s like you’re Santa Claus over there,” she said. “What else do you have in those bags?”

He was pulling his jeans back up over his hips. He must have put on his own new underwear already. She’d unfortunately been so distracted by the underwear he’d bought her that she’d missed that.

“Just a plain black dress for you in case I’d gotten the other stuff wrong. Don’t worry, the snacks are all in the car waiting for us.” He took off his shirt, and she let herself stare openly. Mmm, yes, she was glad she’d given in to temptation. She hadn’t even noticed that tattoo on his biceps last night; she’d been too busy. She wanted to trace it with her fingertips. And then trail her hands over to his chest and move her hands down, and down. The way his jeans clung to his hips . . . No, no, they didn’t have time; they needed to get on the road soon if they were going to get back to San Francisco before too late.

He was suddenly much closer to her. His shirt was still off.

“We have thirty minutes before we have to be out of the room,” he said in a low voice.

She reached for his chest. She couldn’t help herself.

“Do we really?” she asked.

They made it, with three minutes to spare.

Once they were back on the freeway, with the date shakes he’d insisted on stopping for on the way out of town, she looked over at him. She suddenly started laughing and couldn’t stop.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

She gestured at the car.

“Everything! All of this! You, me, the piles of Doritos in this car, my new clothes, your new clothes, that we’re leaving Palm Springs right now when we should be halfway through our workday in San Francisco, that you drove me down here in the middle of the night last night because you could tell I was freaking out, that my dad is okay, everything!”

“Don’t forget that I had to wheedle our way into a hotel room,” he said.

“Oh, right! How could I forget Niamh?” She went off into another peal of laughter, and he joined her.

They were quiet for the first few hours of the drive. Not in an awkward way, thank God, just relaxed, easy, comfortable. She put music on again, but it was less aggressively cheerful music than the day before, more Andra Day and Corinne Bailey Rae than Britney and Lizzo. They didn’t talk much, and they didn’t touch at all, but she somehow felt as close to him as she had in bed the night before. When she’d cried, and he’d pulled her close. And—in one of the sweetest things a man had ever said to her—had offered to leave the room if she’d wanted him to. That had only made her want to burrow herself even tighter into his chest.

And that, of course, was the thing that had made her spill her guts to him. She remembered now.

“Um, about last night,” she said.

He shot her a grin, but his smile turned to something else when he saw the look on her face. Something softer. More kind.

“Anna. We don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want to.”

She put her hand on his.

“No, I know. I want to. And telling you why . . . why I had a little breakdown last night, or rather, this morning, might help explain why I needed to come to Palm Springs so urgently in the first place.”

He turned his hand over and held on to hers.

“Okay. I’m listening.”

She took a deep breath. Why was she even doing this? She didn’t have to tell him all of this. But she’d already told him part of it, and she couldn’t take it back. She’d feel better if he knew the whole story.

“Last year . . . last year was really hard on me. The past few years were, really, but I guess I didn’t pay attention—didn’t have to pay attention—until last year. My career . . . my fame, I guess, came on so quickly. I’d been working quietly in Hollywood for years, and then I exploded, with that Oscar nomination and all that press a few years back. And it was incredible and gratifying and brought me more than I ever could have dreamed of.” She let out a long breath. “And my whole life changed. Sort of before I even realized it was happening.”