We keep swaying to the music long after he finishes singing. Eventually Flynn pulls back slightly, enough to look down at me, but our bodies still touching. I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry from the way he’s looking at me. His eyes are half-mast, the heat in them unmistakable, when they drop to my mouth and linger for a long moment. He wets his lips and, I swear, my heart pounds so loudly I can hear the blood pumping through my ears. Ever so slowly, his head begins to drop, his eyes watching mine—silently seeking permission. Our faces are almost lined up when, like a needle scratching to a halt on a record, something comes over me and I effectively kill the moment when I speak.
“Do you think it’s going to rain later?” Inwardly, I smack myself in the head for sounding like such a dim wit. I couldn’t come up with something less obvious?
Flynn’s eyes close, but then he rests his forehead against mine, and chuckles when he speaks. “Worried you didn’t bring rain boots?”
A cameraman comes in and interrupts, asking us to move to a different area where the lighting is better. I’m grateful for the quick change in mood it brings.
“Wanna go for a walk on the beach?” Flynn asks, releasing me from his arms, but keeping his hand still meshed with mine.
“Sure.”
“Do you want to go change?”
I look down at the gown I’m wearing. The salt will probably destroy it. “Nah, it’s theirs, not mine.”
Flynn smiles.
We walk along the shoreline for a half hour. The warm water occasionally reaching up and wetting our feet.
“So who is he?” he asks after a long, comfortable bout of silence.
I look around. There’s no one else on the beach.
“The guy who you won’t let go long enough to give me a real shot.”
I turn to look for the winded cameraman that was following us. The boom can pick up our conversation a hundred feet away.
“He’s sprawled out on the jetty a half mile back,” Flynn says, reading my mind. “Probably still cursing us for making him do more exercise than he’s done in ten years.”
“Oh.”
“So, who is he? Ex-boyfriend or fiancé?”
“Neither, actually.”
“Damn.” Flynn clutches at his chest. “You’re killing me. At least pretend there’s some great guy waiting in the wings.” He smiles.
“It’s not you. Really it’s not.”
“This conversation is getting worse by the minute. What comes next? ‘It’s me, not you’? Like I haven’t thrown that one around before. You’re ruining my self-esteem, here.”
I laugh. “I think your self-esteem is just fine, rockstar.”
“It was.” He turns and walks backwards, holding both of my hands. “Until I met you.”
“You’re sweet. But you’ve had twenty women throwing themselves at you. I think you’ll bounce back quickly.”
“Nineteen,” he corrects me. “But I’d really like to get the twentieth on board finally.”
“You’ve had nineteen other women chasing you. Why do you need number twenty?”
“Number twenty is all I need. The other nineteen aren’t for me, long-term.”
“I think your ego is just looking for a little stroking.”
“It’s not my ego that wants you to stroke it.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
The tide washes up, covering my feet. I splash a wall of water in Flynn’s direction, catching him by surprise. He splashes back and before I know it, we’re both drenched from head to toe. An hour later, we walk back into the house arm-in-arm—soaked, smiling and stirring a scandal we didn’t know was brewing.
Chapter twelve
Cooper
Tatiana Laroix is the it girl of Hollywood. But she still needs an appointment to make it past Helen. Thank god. I thought by now she’d be chasing someone equally as enthralled with seeing himself up on the big screen. No such luck.
“She said she’s shooting the trailer edits in hangar three and needs to speak to you. She didn’t look happy at being turned away. Again.” Helen hands me a stack of messages. “James Cam is also in that pile, he said it’s urgent he speaks to you this morning. I’m guessing the two may be related.”
I groan. James Cam is the director of the movie Tatiana just wrapped for Montgomery Productions. The two didn’t agree on anything. I thought I was finally done with the petty disputes when we closed down production, but then the trailer needed reshoots, so we had to bring them back for a few days.
I call James back. Apparently Tatiana is refusing to shoot what he wants, claiming it isn’t the artistic vision she had in mind for the trailer. Actresses.
Two months ago, I made the mistake of taking Tatiana to a premiere. I knew by the end of the night it would be our only date. The way she spoke to people, her newfound fame had already gone to her head. At the after-party, her fingers crawled up my thigh under the table.
I ended the date early, by Hollywood standards anyway, and told her I needed to go home, get a good night’s sleep. But she didn’t take the hint. Instead, she tried to unbuckle my pants as I drove to her place.
There was no avoiding her at any of the film related parties when we finally completed production. She was always by my side, her hand wrapped possessively around my arm, even though the gesture wasn’t returned.
I told her I was busy the next few times she called. Then she showed up at my apartment unannounced. She was near tears, upset about a fight with a director, so I let her in. It was a line I shouldn’t have crossed. She was nicer when she wasn’t in public putting on a show, but still not for me. She dropped by my place once more, twice now at the office.