“I nodded my head in that direction but you kept walking this way so I followed you because I thought you knew where you were going!”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you usually do!”

Now Anna had to fight back laughter again. Soon they stopped walking, and she heard a very quiet ding. Ah, they must be in the elevator.

“Everything okay in there?” Ben asked. “Knock twice for yes, once for no.”

Anna laughed and knocked twice.

“What were you going to do if she knocked once?” Maddie asked. “Drop her to the floor and unzip the suitcase now? The guy watching the hotel elevator video cameras would have gotten a kick out of that.”

Anna giggled at that, but Ben ignored it.

“Don’t worry, we’re in the home stretch now! Elevator’s almost there!”

“Oh my God, why are you talking to the suitcase?” Theo said. “Isn’t the whole point of this to be stealthy?”

Theo had a point there.

“The video cameras in elevators don’t have sound—did we all learn nothing from that video with Solange and Jay Z?” Ben asked.

Ben also had a point.

The elevator slowed, and then stopped, and the procession moved on. Anna should have told them they could set her down in the elevator, but that would probably hurt their egos too much.

“Maddie—”

Maddie cut Theo off.

“Going ahead now to direct you guys. Follow me.”

Maddie must have figured out the way to Anna’s suite without incident, because the next time they stopped, the suitcase jostled around some.

“Sorry . . . um, no one, just had to get the room key out of my pocket,” Ben muttered.

And then, seconds later, Anna heard the door open, and they moved again, super quickly.

As soon as the door closed, she was slowly lowered to the ground.

“We did it!” Ben said. The zippers slid apart, and the lid popped open. Anna sat up and saw Ben’s gleeful face. “I was worried for a second there in the lobby; we got a few weird looks, and I was trying to plan for what to do if we got stopped, but we made it!”

Anna laughed out loud.

“I panicked for a moment there, too, but I’m glad I had nothing to worry about.” She grinned at him. “That was so much fun.”

And yes, despite her brief freak-out in the lobby, this had been as fun as she’d wanted it to be.

Ben took her hands and pulled her upright.

“That was a blast.”

Anna looked at Ben for a second. Oh, the hell with it. Maddie and Theo knew the deal.

She grabbed Ben and kissed him hard. He kissed her back without hesitation. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her out of the suitcase. She tilted her head back, laughed out loud, and kissed him again. She felt victorious about this small, fun, silly thing she’d done for herself, and had enlisted this fun, silly, excellent fling of a guy to do with her. The kiss was a celebration of herself, of the pieces of herself she’d thought she’d lost and wasn’t sure if she’d ever find again, of everything in her life that had brought her to this moment, of Ben and the strange but delightful way they’d come together.

When they finally pulled apart, Ben had that delicious, lustful smile on his face again. And Maddie and Theo, still standing by the door, had shit-eating grins on their faces. Ben glanced over at them, then quickly bent down to zip up the suitcase. Anna had a feeling they’d tease Ben about this hard. Just thinking of that made her smile.

“Um . . . we should take off,” Theo said. “I have to, um, get to work. We’ll take a cab back to my car.”

Ben, Anna noticed, did not argue.

“Thanks for everything, guys,” Ben said. He picked up the suitcase and handed it to his brother.

Anna walked over to Theo and Maddie.

“Yes, thank you both so much. Maddie, for the brilliant idea and Theo, for carrying it out.” She winked at them. “Literally.”

Maddie laughed.

“It was my pleasure. This was definitely a morning I’ll never forget.”

Anna thought of something right before they opened the door.

“Oh, Maddie, can you send Ben those pictures? And also . . .”

Maddie held up a hand.

“The only people who will ever see those pictures are standing in this room right now. I swear.”

Anna smiled at her.

“Thank you.”

Maddie and Theo said good-bye again, and Anna didn’t miss the smug look Theo gave Ben. Anna turned around to Ben, suddenly shy to have him here in her suite.

“Um, I can go, too, if you want,” he said, as he fiddled with the room service menu. Maybe he was shy about being up here, too.

She took the menu from him.

“I don’t. Want you to go, I mean. But you know what I do want?”

He grinned at her.

“Breakfast,” he said.

“Breakfast.” She grinned back. “I have an hour before my meeting; we have time.” She picked up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later, room service arrived with their huge breakfast spread.

“Okay, first of all,” Ben said as he unfolded his napkin, “do you always get food that fast from room service? I feel like it takes at least an hour whenever I order it.”

Anna picked up a sausage link.

“I sure do,” she said. “It’s pretty fantastic, I’ve got to say. Maybe not worth having to dodge paparazzi at unexpected times, but if I have to do that, I might as well get the benefit of lightning-fast service.”

He opened the basket of pastries on the table between them.

“Do you do a lot of stuff like what we did this morning? Suitcase capers, I mean. Because, I have to admit, that was a hell of a lot of fun, but I can see how it would get old after a while.”

She laughed.

“It was a hell of a lot of fun, wasn’t it? And, no, I’ve never really done stuff like that before—probably because I’m mostly either in L.A. or living out of hotels while on set and having very prescribed comings and goings, so I’ve never had to. I’d probably hate things like today if I did it a lot, but today I was basically giggling the whole time.”

Ben’s brow cleared.

“Oh good. I was worried about you in there—I remembered you’d said some of your worst anxiety was because of all of the photographers outside the set that other time, so I didn’t know if all of this stuff was hard for you for that reason.”