by Rosie Danan
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NAOMI POINTED A menacing finger directly at Josh’s heart. “You can’t turn it off, can you?”
Josh sighed. He was already drowning in the quicksand of his feelings for Clara. The last thing he needed right now was a lecture from his ex-girlfriend.
“I can’t believe you would gamble all of our futures to get your dick wet.”
He reached out and batted Naomi’s hand away. “Don’t talk about her like that. Clara and I are not having sex.” At least, not the kind Naomi was accusing him of. Jesus, when had his life gotten so complicated?
“Wow.” Naomi took a step backward that set her dress swinging around her knees. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d lie to my face.” She spread her arms out away from her body. “I knew this was gonna happen. I knew as soon as she moved in. You can’t resist a woman that will never commit to you.”
Josh rejected the burn of embarrassment in his throat. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. We were fixing a blocking mistake. One that you didn’t notice, by the way.” Had they both needed to get on the ground? Probably not. But Clara had on that flirty little skirt with pleats and he couldn’t help himself.
“I did not make a blocking mistake.” She stomped over to the camera mount and peered through the lens. “Are you talking about the framing of the shot? Josh, I had the wide angle professionally cleaned.” She pulled the expensive lens out of her purse. “That’s the standard on the rig. I came back to switch it out. Now, thanks to your amorous shenanigans, I have to move Lance and Ginger’s call time tomorrow up an hour to fix this mess.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh.”
That made sense. Shit. He’d been nervous about having everything ready. Add in the increasingly dizzy feeling he got whenever Clara came within ten feet of him, and he’d clearly jumped to conclusions.
Naomi tapped her foot. “Besides, even if I had made a mistake, what you two were doing was not blocking.”
“Jesus. You’re right. Okay? Look, if it makes you feel any better I got kicked in the balls for my efforts.” He still had a vague stomachache. “You think I don’t know that Clara Wheaton is an impossible pull? She’s a rich, cultured genius and I’m a degenerate college dropout with more dick than brains.”
Everyone thought it was the jealousy thing you had to worry about when trying to date in his line of work, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Jealousy assumed that nonindustry people accepted the moral and social implications of his profession. That they wouldn’t mind introducing someone who made porn to coworkers and parents. That the object of your affection could imagine standing up next to you in front of friends and family and declaring love and allegiance to someone who large swaths of the rest of the world considered unclean. Clara had been clear that her family would never accept him.
Naomi’s eyebrows shot together. “When was the last time you had sex?”
He looked at the ceiling, trying to remember. A vision of Clara, her eyes closed and her mouth open as she arched her back in pleasure, entered his head. Clara didn’t count. Now that he came to think about it, maybe there hadn’t been anyone for a while.
“Too. Long,” Naomi snapped. “If you have to think about it, it’s been too long.”
“I’ve been busy.” Starting a business was significantly more labor intensive than he’d assumed when he signed up.
“Yeah,” Naomi scoffed. “Busy falling for someone completely inappropriate. Did you ever stop to think about all the people who could get caught in the crossfire if you break Clara’s heart? What’s gonna happen to Shameless when the two of you can’t stand to be in the same room together?” She ran her hands through her hair. “If she pulls our funding, we’re done.”
“Who says I’d break her heart?” He didn’t want to hurt Clara. Yes, he wanted to fuck her. But he’d fucked lots of people and they all seemed to like it. For the first time in a long time, he had a lot more than sex on his brain. That impossible word sprang to mind again, but he tucked it away. Later, when he was alone, he could let it out of its box and examine it.
“Don’t insult me by pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Naomi said.
It was Josh’s turn to throw his hands in the air. “What you’re talking about is none of your business.”
“None of my business? Josh, you’re the one who made this my business. And not just me. What about all the performers we convinced to follow us on this suicide mission against Pruitt? What happens to them when the paychecks dry up?”
“All right.” He held up his hands. “You’ve made your point. I’ll back off Clara.”
“Swear to me.” Naomi held out her hand expectantly.
Josh stared at her bloodred fingertips and tried not to let his fear read on his face. “Don’t be dramatic.”
“Do I look like I’m acting right now? Swear to me that you won’t have sex with Clara or enter into any other kind of screwy romantic entanglement, or I’m walking off this project tonight.” She shoved her hand at him until he clasped it briefly with his own.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little hypocritical right now? You and I did it.” He wanted Stu to tell him it was okay. That of course he and Clara could find a way to make it work. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d survive the alternative.
“I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation. You and I never exchanged money. But more importantly, you know as well as I do the only reason our relationship worked was because, for the most part, we left each other alone.”
She had him there.
“I never pushed you and you never tried to rein me in. We always owned up to the fact that we were two people who liked to fuck each other, desperately trying to keep the cameras rolling.” She gave him her signature smile. The one where she barely moved her mouth, but her eyes sparkled. “I liked you ’cause I never had to worry about you falling in love with me, Josh.”
He hated when she was right. “For the record, you are lovable. If you’d give anyone half a chance.”
Naomi shrugged. “In that case, I guess we’ll never know.”
Josh swallowed hard. He had to ask. “What if Clara’s different?” He knew it wasn’t right. That he’d let his infatuation with his roommate go too far. But his feelings for her were too messy, too powerful, to reel back now. In the grand scheme of things, was loving Clara Wheaton really so bad?
Naomi shook her head. “Nobody’s different. They all want the fantasy, but nobody wants the reality.”
“I’m serious, Stu. You should have seen her when I wanted to quit. This whole thing, this insane idea, she did this because she believes in me.” He scrubbed his hand across his face. He couldn’t reconcile Naomi’s words with Clara’s actions. “It sounds ridiculous, I know, but for the first time in my life someone wants me to live up to my potential. Whatever the fuck that means.”
“I know.” Her mouth sat in a thin, straight line.
“She thinks she’s soft, but sometimes she gets this look in her eyes. I don’t even know how to describe it.”
Naomi sighed. “Like she could eat nails for breakfast.”
Josh smiled at his shoes. “Yeah.”
When Naomi spoke, her voice came out deadly serious. “That’s why I made you swear.”
chapter twenty-two
EVERYTHING THAT COULD go wrong did on the morning of Clara’s first big presentation to Toni Granger’s campaign team.
She overslept, having forgotten to set an alarm the night before. She ran out of toothpaste, stubbed her toe in the living room on one of Everett’s wayward amps, and now, worst of all, the bus to Malibu, her archnemesis, had gone MIA.
Not for the first time that morning, she wished Josh were home. He’d driven her in to work before, but she’d barely seen him since shooting for Shameless
had started a few days earlier. After dropping her off last night, he’d gone back out in a cab to meet some of the crew for drinks and hadn’t returned.
She tried not to let herself linger on the way Ginger’s eyes had gobbled him up every time he gave her a scene direction last night or how Naomi could still call him to heel with a whisper. Had he spent the night with one of them? Or, she gulped, both of them? Her heart swam up between her ears and she closed her eyes against the ache. How Josh spent his free time wasn’t her concern, but that didn’t mean she didn’t care.
Besides, likely she was overreacting and he was merely busy with business matters. She couldn’t deny that Shameless created a black hole of work. But she also couldn’t shake the feeling that his sudden absence from the house coincided more specifically with Naomi walking in on them at the studio the other night. When he’d finally returned to the car afterward, Josh had been unusually quiet, opening his mouth only long enough to ask her, “You wanna drive?”
She’d stolen glances at him at every stoplight on the way back to West Hollywood, trying to suss out his thoughts, but the night sky had painted his face in shadow, reducing him to jawline and cheekbones and the hollows beneath his eyes.
The car filled up with the words she wanted to say but couldn’t bring herself to utter. Men like Josh didn’t entertain questions like What’s going on between us? from girls they hadn’t even slept with.
Clara tried to school herself into a calm and detached demeanor, but instead, she’d grown absent-minded and clumsy. Almost as if Josh’s presence in her life had been the rope tying her boat to shore and he’d suddenly cut her adrift.
She swiped the back of her hand across her damp brow and, keeping one foot on the sidewalk, looked down the street. Nothing.
She checked her watch. 8:07. If the bus arrived within the next three minutes, she would only be five minutes late for her meeting with Toni. Five minutes late to a nine-thirty meeting was plausible with L.A. traffic. Not good, but excusable. The kind of thing you could play off with a charming apology.
8:08. Each minute she waited took away her options for alternative transportation. They’d entered prime time for L.A. commuters. If she called a car at this point it would take them twenty minutes to get out here.
She had no choice but to call Jill.
Her boss picked up after only one ring, so Clara knew she too had been obsessively counting down to the meeting. “Hey, what’s up?”
Clara heard the faint cracks in her aunt’s practiced calm.
Juggling the phone, she shifted the stack of printouts she carried to her other arm. “I’m so sorry. I overslept and now the bus is late.” The truth tasted sour.
She’d overslept after staying up half the night waiting for Josh to come home. Somehow she’d let her feelings for him enter into treacherous territory. Every day the way she cared about him became less friendly, but a romantic relationship between them was impossible. Pathetically preposterous. Her family would flip if they knew she shared a roof with someone who made such excellent tabloid fodder. Besides, as far as she could tell, Josh didn’t date. At least, not women like Clara. They’d let off steam together a few times. But like he’d told her that first week, he had no trouble separating sex from feelings. Clara wanted to believe that she’d learned her lesson when Everett left. So why did she feel so sick when she thought about Josh touching someone who wasn’t her?
“I don’t know what to do,” Clara said, half to Jill and half to herself. “I’ve been here for twenty-five minutes already. You might have to start without me.”
There was a long pause on the other line, and she could tell that her aunt, her boss, wanted to choose her words carefully.
“I can’t start without you. You have the copies of the presentation. If you’re not here when Toni arrives, I’m not confident she won’t turn around and walk out the door.”
Crap.
The stack of printouts in Clara’s arms included weeks’ worth of research, meticulous impression projections, and advanced ROI models. They’d been working tirelessly on this first-round campaign proposal for weeks. Not the kind of thing someone, even Jill, could re-create in thirty minutes.
“I could send you the file and you could print it at the office?” Anxiety clawed at her throat.
Jill sighed over the line. “With our ancient printer, it’ll come out looking like garbage. That’s why we went with professional-grade prints. I’ll have to reschedule.” Her clipped, resigned tone made Clara close her eyes.
So this was how it felt to let down people you loved. Her mother’s face frowned from behind her eyelids. She’d seen that look directed at her father and Oliver countless times, but before moving to L.A., she’d never found herself in its direct trajectory.
Clara found herself hedging. “No, don’t. I’ll figure something out. I’ll be there.” What was that saying about making promises you weren’t sure you could keep? She hung up before her brain could catch up with her mouth. 8:13.
The heavy rays of the sun slammed against her back, threatening to liquefy her where she stood. Clara dug in her purse for a tissue, and her hand grazed cool, sharp metal. Josh’s spare key. His vote of confidence.
She began walking the short block back to the house. Until the shiny black paint of the Corvette winked at her from the driveway. She imagined where Josh was at that moment, probably lying naked in bed, kissing the shoulder of last night’s conquest. Clara’s stomach threatened mutiny.
He would lose his mind if she drove his car without him. The idea of taking advantage of her key without permission made her shake her head at her own train of thought. She couldn’t violate the only rule Josh had ever given her. Not to mention that the idea of driving alone made her legs shake.
But Jill needed her. Her aunt had taken a huge chance, hiring her to work on this high-profile project. Clara couldn’t let the firm suffer the consequences for its most junior member’s selfishness. She had to take responsibility for stretching herself too thin.
Josh did let her drive the Corvette almost every night to the studio and she’d bring it right home after the meeting. After pulling his number up on her phone, she stared at the digits. 8:15. Who was she kidding? If she asked he’d definitely say no and then she’d be out of options.
Clara curled her fingers around the key until the edges bit into her palm.
Please don’t let him hate me for this. With one last glance down the street for the bus, she ran to the car.
The thirty seconds when she had to move the driver’s seat to accommodate her short legs almost stopped her in her tracks. The seat seemed to resist sliding forward, like the ’Vette wanted to save her from herself. Silence smothered the empty interior as she turned the key in the ignition until the sudden roar of the engine made her jump.
Josh would understand. He had to.
“This isn’t so bad,” Clara said to the empty passenger seat a few minutes later. If she kept up a steady stream of conversation, she could almost pretend Josh rode with her.
But then the adrenaline started to wear off and panic threatened to claim her.
She gulped as she sped up to keep with the flow of traffic. So far she’d only had to merge twice.
As she tried to relax her grip on the steering wheel, she realized her fingers had gone slightly numb. The second the meeting ended, she and Jill would take the car back, and Josh would never be any the wiser. She practiced her lines for the presentation over and over in her head.
At last, she exited the interstate and slowed at the four-way stop sign a few blocks from the firm.
Almost there.
The Corvette made it about halfway across the intersection before Clara heard the familiar squeal of rubber against pavement followed by a metallic crunch.
chapter twenty-three
EXCUSE ME, MISS? I’m looking for suspected felon Clara Wheaton.�
� Josh entered the hospital room in last night’s rumpled clothes. Despite the teasing tone, he had dark circles under his eyes, obvious traces of strain.
His familiar presence washed over Clara, soothing her in a way nothing else had.
“Josh,” she said the way someone might utter Wow as they watched a shooting star pelt across the sky.
But then she remembered. Remembered that she didn’t deserve to have him rush to her bedside like some fairy-tale knight in shining armor. She sucked in a shaky breath and fought off the threat of tears, unwilling to risk Josh offering her sympathy instead of the scolding she’d earned.
It felt like weeks since she’d seen him, rather than hours. She’d grown too accustomed to having him around. To the breadth of his shoulders and the steep slope of his nose. To the way he made her laugh even when her brain insisted on working overtime. Clara had taken the gift of his kindness and crushed it under her heel. Why did he always look so handsome? She tore her eyes away from his face long enough to notice the slightly limp bouquet clutched in his fist. The inevitable avalanche of her sobs burst forth.
“Whoa there,” Josh said. “Hey, now. Are you in pain? Do you want me to get a nurse?” He moved closer to her bed, his face drawn, and brought the back of his hand to her forehead.
“What are you doing?” She hiccuped, looking up at him from under his palm.
The tops of Josh’s ears went pink. “It always made me feel better when my mom did it. Like whatever hurt was being taken seriously.” He swiped at the tracks of her tears with his warm thumb.
She had stolen his car and ruined their friendship. Why was he so calm? So sweet? Her shoulders tensed, waiting for him to yell or, worse, quietly express his disappointment.
