Chapter Four
After that first day on set, when Valentina had pulled Smith into his office and warned him not to mess with her sister, she'd made sure to steer clear of him, and had been perfectly polite when they met in a group to discuss an issue with the script or wardrobe or Tatiana's schedule. Even when she was watching them shoot a scene, she held perfect focus on Tatiana.
Too perfect.
Only, if her plan had been to try and fade out of his sight, she hadn't succeeded. Because it didn't matter how many times he reminded himself that he didn't have time to focus on anything but his movie.
He just couldn't get Valentina out of his head.
It wasn't just because of her incredible legs or exotic beauty. In Hollywood a great figure and pretty face were a given. But after seeing her with Nicola, and the genuine pleasure Valentina had shown over the stunning engagement ring and their happy-ever-after, he was reminded of just how much family meant to her. She was all business on set - and with him - but as soon as her sister needed her for anything even remotely emotional, she immediately stopped being a business manager to transform back into a sister. One whose love ran so deep that she didn't hold anything back.
"My brother is one seriously happy guy," he remarked as he walked back into the kitchen and found her standing with her glass in her hand, staring out the window at the city lights.
"They both are," she said as she turned her beautiful gaze back to him. "It was very sweet to see."
"I wasn't sure about the two of them at first," he admitted, knowing he hadn't exactly been encouraging in the early days of his brother's relationship, "but somehow they've made the age difference and the demands of both their careers work."
"Is Marcus also in the entertainment industry?"
"Nope." Not even close. "He owns Sullivan Winery."
"Wow, I wish I'd known he was behind some of my favorite cabernets. I would have liked to thank him for all the hours of pleasure he's given me."
She was clearly surprised by Marcus's profession, and yet again Smith loved the fact that she knew next to nothing about his life, when any fan could have recited his siblings' names and careers by heart. He also loved the way she spoke of pleasure...even if she was giving his brother the credit for it.
"Now I get what you mean about the demands of both their careers," she said. "They really do live in different worlds, don't they?"
Smith refilled up their drinks and carried them into the living room. "I don't think it's always easy to juggle her tours and his busy seasons in the vineyards, but they clearly love each other enough to make it work."
When he set their drinks on the coffee table, he could see her surprise at finding a half-finished puzzle on it.
"I love puzzles," she exclaimed. "Tatiana and I used to do them together all the time before we got so busy."
She immediately sat down on the plush couch, picked up a puzzle piece and clicked it into place. Smith moved beside her and slid a piece into the corner of one of the dog's ears while she filled in the nose on another. He was glad to see her forget to keep the distance she seemed to think was so damned necessary.
This easy companionship was precisely why he'd brought her over to the coffee table, where the puzzle of three silly dogs was halfway done...and it was yet another reason why he loved his brother Gabe's soon-to-be stepdaughter Summer so much. The eight-year-old girl had taken the picture of the three dogs sitting crookedly with their ears blowing in the breeze and had turned it into a puzzle for him. His twin sisters had been great when they were eight, too. Heck, they'd been great at every age, and even if it sometimes seemed like his sister Lori - aka "Naughty" to Sophie's "Nice" - grew to be more and more of a pain in the butt with every passing year, he wouldn't have given them up for anything.
"Some picture, isn't it?"
He loved the sound of Valentina's laughter. "The absolute best. Where did you find it?"
"Two of the dogs belong to my brother Zach and his fiancee, Heather. The huge one," he said, pointing at the Great Dane, "and the little one - " He popped a section of the Yorkie's shoulder into place. " - fell in love first. Zach and Heather weren't far behind them, though."
"What about the poodle puppy?"
"The poodle belongs to my soon-to-be niece. Summer is eight-years-old and she brilliantly maneuvered her single mother and my brother Gabe together. They're getting married on New Year's Eve in Lake Tahoe. It's where they fell in love last year."
"Oh," she said with a little sigh, "that's just lovely." Her eyes, her mouth, were soft as she practically brimmed over with emotion.
Smith had lit a fire earlier, and now, as they sat together working on the puzzle in front of it, it hit him that this was the first time in his life he'd ever experienced something this warm, this sweet, with a woman. Heck, now that he thought about it, this was actually the second time he'd tried to put this puzzle together. The last time it sat unfinished, the woman he'd mistakenly brought home had thought it would be sexy to swipe it off onto the floor so that he could do her on top of the coffee table. A while later, when the woman had gone to the bathroom to straighten her hair and clothes before he sent her home, he'd immediately picked up the pieces.
Doing a woman he'd picked up at a Hollywood event on top of his coffee table was something a movie star did.
Making a puzzle in front of a fire was something a couple did.
"Your family sounds incredible," Valentina said, her words tinged with wistfulness as she reached for another puzzle piece and popped it into place. "Your parents must have had a perfect marriage for everyone to turn out so well."
"They did seem to have a pretty great marriage, although to hear my mother tell some of her stories about my father, he had his moments." Smith winced slightly at the tug in his chest that nailed him whenever he spoke about Jack Sullivan. Smith didn't miss him every day, but when he did, the sense of loss could be overpowering. "He died when I was thirteen."
Her eyes widened at the information, giving him even more confirmation that she hadn't spent one moment of her life reading about him in a magazine or looking him up on the Internet.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't know."
He was amazed by how much it meant to him, this possibility of building a relationship with someone where they both started from the same place, so that they could both uncover and discover each other's stories at the same time that they wrote their own story together.
"My father," she said so softly he had to focus on her lips to hear the words as her eyes closed and she sucked in a breath, "died, too."
It was pure instinct to cover her hand with his over the loose puzzle pieces. "How old were you?"
Her breath shook slightly as she said, "Twenty-two. I know I should be over it by now, but - "
It wasn't enough to simply hold her hand, he needed to wrap his arms around her. It didn't surprise him when her long, lean limbs fit perfectly against his.
"I used to think the same thing, that one day I'd wake up and I'd be over it. That I'd be able to think of him without it hurting." He took one hand from her back to put it over his heart, as if to soothe the ache. "It hasn't happened yet."
When she instinctively moved her hand over his to try to comfort him, his chest squeezed tight at just how good it felt to have her touch him with such innate sweetness.
"I miss my father so much," she admitted. "Everything changed after he died."
"I know exactly what you mean." And he did. Because even though his mother had been amazing as she stepped up to the plate to parent eight kids by herself, and even with his brothers and sisters all banding together to take care of each other, it had still sucked to lose his dad. Really, really bad. "That first year, all nine of us - " The nine that their father had left behind. " - were all trying so hard just to be normal. But how could we be when nothing was normal anymore?"
"Normal." Valentina echoed the word in a hollow voice. "I would have given anything for normal. Especially for Tatiana."
"How did your sister and mother deal with losing your father?"
"Tatiana is beautiful, but resilient," she told him. "A lot like her character in your movie. She seems so fragile and gentle, but she's actually tougher than most of us."
Impressed with her insight into the character he'd written, he told her, "My sister Sophie is a lovely, soft-spoken librarian." He shook his head as he thought of all the times people had underestimated his quiet sister. Especially the man who had recently become her husband. Jake should have known he never stood a chance. "She also has a core of strength that any warrior would envy. I thought a lot about her when I was writing Tatiana's character. It helped that Soph was pregnant at the time so I could easily picture her in the role if I needed to."
Valentina had relaxed against him by degrees as he'd spoken about his sister. He left her hand where it was still resting on top of his, even though he knew it probably wasn't fair to take advantage of her momentary vulnerability.
"Do have any other siblings apart from Tatiana?"
"No." She paused before adding, "It's always just been me and her."
No question, there was something more behind that statement. So much more that he said, "What about your mother? How did she deal with losing your father?"
Valentina jolted back from him as if he'd burned her. She blinked at him from across the couch, looking as though she had abruptly surfaced from a dream. One that had surprised her - and scared her - in equal measure.
A beat from reaching for her again, Smith realized it was exactly what he couldn't do. Not unless he wanted her to run. But just because he knew that didn't mean it was any easier to shift his attention back to the puzzle and pick up one of the pieces.
His entire adult life, when Smith had seen something he wanted, he'd taken it. In many cases, it was given to him before he even had to reach for it. But he knew without a doubt that Valentina wasn't like anything else he'd ever wanted: If he wanted her to trust him, he'd have to earn that trust moment by moment, truth by truth, smile by smile.
"Everyone has always said how well my mother dealt with losing my father," he said slowly. "And she did. She has." He slid another piece into place without even really seeing the picture before him. "But she's never let herself love anyone again. She's never even been with another man, as far as I know, in all these years."
Valentina picked up her drink and drank it all down in one long gulp that had his eyebrows going up with surprise.
"Funny," she said, "my mother's just the opposite. She's slept with every single man, every actor, who so much as looked at her or said she was pretty." Her words were sharp, now, with pain she wasn't bothering to hide. "But you know the funniest part about it?" She looked straight at him as she said, "I don't think she loved any of them, either."
When he saw pain in her clear, beautiful eyes, nothing could have stopped him from reaching for her again.
Nothing but the ring of the doorbell that had Valentina jumping entirely off the couch this time. Her face flushed with guilt as she looked between him and her empty margarita glass.
"I'm sorry, I never should have said any of those things to you. Especially about my mother. Please don't say anything to Tatiana about - "
He took his final chance of the night to slide his hand over hers. "I promised you I wouldn't hurt your sister, and I won't hurt you, either."
She stared at him, her pupils dilated again so that her eyes were entirely green for a moment, and he wasn't sure if she believed him. And maybe she was right not to, because even though he now had an inkling of why she was wary about trusting a man in his profession, it was still so easy to imagine coaxing her upstairs to his bed, stripping off her clothes layer by layer, tangling her hair in his fingertips, and taking the rest of the night to explore her. To learn her most sensitive curves and hollows, to experiment with touching and tasting her until he knew precisely what would have her begging for more. Begging for him.
The doorbell rang again and he had to all but force himself to walk away to let her sister in. But throughout the rest of the night, as the three of them worked through promotion timelines and interview requests, with Valentina sitting as far from him as she could without raising her sister's eyebrows, Smith couldn't force away his desire for her...or the memory of just how good it had felt to hold her in his arms in front of the fire, his heart beating against their linked hands.