** Eli **
Something seemed off about Harper. Even in the dim light of the theater room, Eli could see the flush on her face. The rosy hue over her cheeks had turned into a bright red, and she looked like a perfectly ripened peach.
Was she drunk? Eli glanced at the empty martini glass in her hand. It was only a light drink. Could her tolerance really be that low?
"What about a soda if you don't feel like another round?" he offered again and straightened back into his side of the seat, reaching for the tablet as he tried to remember what kind of drinks she liked as a kid. "Strawberry lemonade?"
"No, I'm fine, really," Harper replied all too quickly. "I'm just— Actually, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I could always use a strawberry lemonade in the summer."
… She was definitely behaving oddly. Eli studied her with another skeptical look, affirming his suspicion that she was super lightweight. He wondered idly how that was possible for someone with the last name McKenzie, or how four years of college life had not trained her at all.
Their order came quickly. As soon as the curtains rustled and the glass clinked lightly on the table behind them, Harper got up, not even giving him a chance to bring it over for her. She grabbed the drink, downed a huge gulp, then settled herself at the mini bar.
"I think … I think I'll take some cookies too," she mumbled, her eyes locked on the dessert tray in front of her.
Eli felt a bit lost. Even more so when Harper just sat there, not actually moving to take a cookie as she claimed. It wasn't until then that he noticed she looked unusually tense. She was stretching her back taut in a rigid line, and she rubbed her thumbs together in a way that she always did when she was nervous.
Wait. It couldn't be that she was shy?
Realization struck, and it finally occurred to Eli that she had only started taking those huge gulps of her drink when things got too heated on the screen. The flush of her cheeks … Could that have been from blushing, instead of alcohol?
His gaze must've lingered on her for too long. For probably the first time since the movie started, she turned her eyes to look at him. "Um, don't mind me," she smiled, seemingly with some effort. "Don't miss the next scene—" she nodded toward the screen.
Then she froze when she saw what was playing.
Following her stunned stare, Eli shifted his attention back to the movie. The second intimate scene was going full-force now. A bit more subdued than the first one, after the main characters calmed down from their dramatic escape, but the slow and measured body motions only made the scene feel more sensual.
Given the expression on Harper's face when her eyes landed on the screen …
Holy shit, she really was shy!
Eli was dumbfounded. The first thought that came crashing into his mind was: how could someone who wrote adult romance books be shy about a movie like Bullet to His Heart? In the grand scheme of the market, these scenes really weren't that wild at all!
The second thought that followed close on the heels was: geez, she'd better not be thinking of him as a pervert now, for bringing her to see such an off-limits movie.
Eli took a silent sip of his own drink, trying to process how things ended up so derailed. He certainly hadn't intended for it to turn weird like this. It was Harper who said that she relied on movies and books for inspiration … What kind of movies and books was she talking about, if she couldn't even handle this one?
Or maybe he had made the mistake of completely misjudging her character. Ever since he saw the bold premise and edgy language in her web novel, he had been trying to adjust to this new image of Harper, a daring vixen who had long shed her timid shell. That impression was only reinforced by the sight of her when they met outside the theater — when she shimmied over to him in that tight-fitting dress and those tall stilettos like she was gliding down the catwalk, she was one hundred percent the sexy woman who wrote steamy romance scenes, not the eighteen-year-old girl he remembered.
So he had simply assumed that she'd be open-minded enough when it came to mature topics, that they'd be able to watch this movie and talk about it as if it was a textbook. But he had forgotten that she was just a girl after all. He had forgotten that no matter how adventurous she looked, it was still natural for a girl to be "lightweight" when it comes to watching this kind of movie with a guy.
His eyes darted to the mini bar again. Harper was back to focusing on the dessert tray, as if she was determined to devour those cookies with her stare. Was she planning on camping there until the end of the night? With a helpless inward sigh, Eli rose from his seat. "I suppose I'll mix something for myself," he said, moving over. "Want to swap places? You can always bring those cookies to the couch."
He watched as Harper nodded hastily, almost too eager to return to the loveseat and put some distance between them.
Oh well. Looked like he'd better start making a completely new plan to help her with that writing career.