CHAPTER FOURTEEN
REID
“That kiss was so not convincing,” Mona whispered. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”
My apartment.
With a hot frizzy-haired sexually repressed homeless person. Right, say that out loud and see if it doesn’t land you in the psych ward.
“Sorry,” I grumbled. “I’m tired.”
“Well, grab a Red Bull and make that kiss feel real!” Mona was Indian and had the most gorgeous mocha skin and thick brown hair. She’d taken Bollywood by storm and was on her third blockbuster hit in the United States. “Bud will know something’s wrong.”
Bud, our very anal director, had been on a tirade all morning because it looked like it might rain and he wanted to shoot another kissing scene in the park.
I yawned behind my hand.
Mona elbowed me.
“Take fifteen.” The PA slated the scene again and walked off while I gazed longingly into Mona’s eyes.
“I love you,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean it. What I said.”
Mona’s thick eyelashes fluttered before she leaned up on her tiptoes. “Prove it.”
Our mouths met.
It was nice.
That’s it. I was kissing an A-list star and all I could think of was “nice.” You know, like when you get dressed up in nice clothes for dinner. Nice. Nice as in, oh, that purple tulip sure is nice!
Shit!
“Cut!”
I rubbed my face with my hands.
“Reid!” Bud yelled. “Where the hell is your head?”
If I said, “In my ass,” would that get me fired?
“Sorry, Bud.” I faked a yawn so he’d think I was tired. “I’ll do better.”
“Hey, Bud.” The AD ran over. “The lighting’s really good by the bridge. We should move if we want to get that shot.”
“Thirty minutes!” Bud yelled. “Reid, get your shit together and be ready for the kissing scene in thirty minutes.”
I nodded, hanging my head. I’d never had issues getting into character. Nor had I ever had a problem kissing an attractive woman. I was a guy. They had a name for male actors who had issues kissing women with passion. The word is fired.
But I seriously was not feeling that scene, or Mona.
“Practice?” she offered with a helpful shrug.
“Nah.” I exhaled. “I’m going to go take a power nap, do a few push-ups, bang my chest, take a shot of whiskey, hell, I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Thanks, though.”
Mona cracked a smile. “Maybe just the nap, Reid. We all know you’re a man. No need to get drunk or bang your chest to prove yourself.”
“Good advice. Quite sound,” I teased.
“I’m mom to three boys,” she whispered in a low voice. “I know things.”
“Mona!” John yelled. “Your nanny called. Something about one of the young terrorists flushing the goldfish down the toilet? Alive?”
“Aw, hell.” Mona moved away. “Speak of the devil.”
I laughed and watched her get on the cell the PA held out to her and start talking in a mom tone about flushing things down the toilet. I had to admit that tone had inflicted terror in my heart as a child.
Smiling, I turned on my heel and went back to my trailer.
The door was slightly ajar.
When I pulled it all the way open, I found Jordan. Typing furiously on a laptop, black-rimmed glasses askew, and hair pulled back into a high ponytail that made her look so damn cute I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Taking over the world, I see?” I stepped into the trailer and shut the door.
Jordan glanced up and grinned over the computer screen. “Yeah, well, I thought it would piss Max off, so . . . here I am. Give me his social and I’ll do some real damage.”
“Ha. Sell my brother out? Where do I sign up?” My eyes zeroed in on the still steaming Starbucks cup next to her. “Please tell me that’s mine.”
Jordan smirked. “You gotta play harder to get, champ.”
“I’m easy. Shh, don’t say it out loud, Grandma may hear.” I shuddered outwardly. Saying her name always left me traumatized.
“Speaking of Grandma. I found her a home!”
I nearly spit out my coffee. “What? Why? Not that I mind, just tell me it’s in Siberia and we’re getting married right here, right now and naming our firstborn Maxine to spite my evil brother.”
“Er . . .” Jordan winced, her cute lips forming a little pout. “Close. Jersey, okay?”
“Are we talking ten-minutes-away Jersey or—”
“We’re talking a few hours’ drive Jersey in a nice little town where people still get stuck behind cows on their way to work and honk their horns to say hello.”
I took a long sip of coffee; it burned down my throat. “Hmm, can she escape? They have fences? GPS trackers? Guards? Alcatraz.” I sniffed. “That’s a damn pipe dream and you know it.”
“I said a home, not prison, Reid. She’ll have to commit a crime to go to Alcatraz and even then it’s sadly no longer an option for us. Sorry, I can’t work miracles. I have to admit, after meeting her I figured it would be smart to send her away for a few months while you film so close to her hometown, and she was more than thrilled to go when I showed her the picture of the activities director, who’s in his late twenties, sandy brown hair. She sighed and asked if he did private lessons.”
Someone knocked loudly on my trailer. “Fifteen minutes, Mr. Emory.”
I let out a long sigh and set my coffee down.
“What?” Jordan shut her laptop and crossed her arms. “You have actor eyes.”
“What?” I jerked my gaze to hers. “Is that a thing?”
“It’s a thing.”
“You sure?”
“Look, I’m a publicist, I’m saying it’s a thing. Now, why the Oh, no, they’re going to fire me and I’m going to have to give back the doughnuts I stole this morning on set look?”
“I don’t steal doughnuts. I eat them. All of them,” I pointed out. “And what is your fixation with food?” I stretched out on the couch and put my hands behind my head. “And I lost the sizzle.”
“Ah, the sizzle blues.” She leaned back against the couch and set her leather-clad legs up on the coffee table. “I know them well.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Last year.” Jordan held up a manicured hand—it was pretty, and distracting, and did I mention pretty? How were hands so fascinating? Her long slender fingers waved in the air before she thrust one in my direction. “He had the sizzle blues, couldn’t heat things up with his latest costar, and was terrified it would show on camera—which it always does, I don’t care how good of an actor you are.”
“Wow, not helping. Not at all. You suck at this.”
Jordan slapped my chest with that perfect hand. “Not finished.”
I rubbed my chest where she hit.
“So this actor, let’s call him . . . Max.”
“Really, his name is interchangeable in so many situations,” I grumbled. “Son of a Max!”
Jordan nodded. “I like it.” She wiggled her heeled feet. “Anyway, the problem was that he wasn’t in a relationship, hadn’t been on a date in weeks, and had lost his . . . touch.” Her eyebrows rose in that knowing way that had me ready to kiss her just to prove her wrong.
I squirmed uncomfortably as Max’s prophetic words hit me square in the chest. Holy shit, was the universe really working against me? Was that a thing?
“So.” I tugged at my shirt. “What did he do to fix this problem?”
“He went to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, hit on one of the models, kissed her, and married her two days later.”
“Huh, scrappy little thing.” I checked my watch. “But since I’m on a time crunch?”
Her eyes narrowed behind her thick glasses. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“That look? And that smile, stop smiling!”
I smiled wider.
“Reid!”
“Hey, you’re my shrew, you do what I say.”
“That’s not how this works!” Jordan wailed. “And here I was feeling sorry for you!”
“I’ll make it fast.”
“Oh, good.” Jordan threw her hands into the air. “You’ll make it fast? What girl wants to hear that? Especially when a sexy guy—” She covered her mouth with her hands.
My chest puffed up. “You think I’m sexy?”
“No.” She shook her head twice, three, four times. “I meant—” Her eyebrows furrowed.
“Wow, well, while you give yourself a stroke from thinking too hard, I’m going to use you as practice. I need help and you’re going to help me.”
Jordan glanced at the door.
“Seriously? Now you’re worried about cameras? Aren’t I supposed to seduce you tonight at dinner anyway? Give pointers out on my Twitter feed?”
“That you don’t have,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Please?” I held my hands out in front of me. “I’ll beg. I’m not above begging. I’m not one of those guys with pride for days. I will honest-to-God get on my hands and knees in desperation. I love my job. I need this job. And I need to sell that damn kiss.”
Jordan made a choking sound, then jerked her glasses off her face, nearly taking a few stray pieces of frizzy dark hair with her. “Fine. But if this is going to work, I’m going to correct you on where you’re going wrong and what you need to do more, all right?”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
I stared.
She stared back.
“Uh.” Jordan’s face flushed red. “Are you going to do it, or do I need to suddenly grow a pair since yours are MIA?”
I glowered and leaned in, bracing my hands on either side of her body, my chest nearly touching hers as my lips brushed her mouth.
Jordan pulled back. “Weak.”
“Not done,” I said through clenched teeth, then gripped her shoulders. “Just getting started.”
“Wha—”
Our lips fused. She tasted like rich coffee and sugar. Swear it was more about her taste than the way her mouth felt—and it felt hot, soft. Shit, I was going to start panting. My hands moved to her face as I tried a different angle, a different dip with my tongue. Damn, she was tasting better and better.
When I pulled back, Jordan’s face was white as a sheet.
“That bad?” Panic made my voice hoarse.
“Um, I’m not sure I—” Jordan gripped my shirt and launched herself against me, her mouth attacking mine with a ferocity that would have been a little frightening had it not felt so damn good I was ready to sell Max and his firstborn in order to keep experiencing it.
We broke apart. Both out of breath.
“You lied,” Jordan huffed. “You don’t have the sizzle blues, your sizzle is off the charts.”
“Really?” I smiled. “I’m not horrible?”
“In a world full of fives, you’re at least a nine.”
“My shrew just loves her compliments.” I kissed her mouth again—it was instinct. But to be fair, she kissed me back.
And suddenly we were making out like teenagers.
Rocking my damn trailer for the world to see.
I was just about ready to rip that blazer from her curvy body when the door opened.
“Mr. Emory, you’re needed on set.”
Jordan and I broke apart.
Her lipstick had completely disappeared. I’d most likely devoured all traces of it.
“Go get ’em.” She winked, her voice heavy with lust.
I was worried someone was going to have to physically restrain me from jumping on her when a throat cleared. “Mr. Emory. Now.”
I almost gave the PA the finger but knew my publicist, aka the best kisser in the universe, would be pissed.
Besides, what the hell was I doing?
She wasn’t my girlfriend.
Or a real shrew.
Or anything.
She shrugged and picked up her computer like we hadn’t just been ready to rip each other’s clothes off.
Right. I was her job.
I needed to remember that.
A job.
A means to an end.
“Let’s do it.” I slapped the PA on the back and made my way to set.
It took us one take to get the kiss.
“Cut!”
“Damn,” Mona whispered under her breath. “That must have been some girl you were thinking about to get you that hot and bothered.”
“Ha-ha.” I laughed. I had to. Because I wasn’t thinking about just anyone. No, I was thinking about my very off-limits publicist with the crazy hair and an inability to keep it contained.
I was thinking about her coffee stains.
About her tight leather pants.
Her high heels.
And again her hair, it was big enough to need at least two thoughts.
Her lips.
Her soft moans.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“What?” Mona winked. “Problem?”
“Nope!” I lied.
Hell, yes, there was a problem. I was falling for someone who was very much off-limits, someone I needed to NOT screw. My career really did depend on her ability to do a good job.
I gulped.
It would be fine. As long as I remembered it wasn’t real. It was fake. Everything I did with her was fake.
Fake.
Fake.
Fake.
“Huh?” Mona asked.
Shit, I’d said that out loud. “Take.” I licked my lips. “Let’s do another take.”