They ran through it once more and when Kyle opened his eyes, she smiled and said, “Hi. You scared me.”
“Better.” Kyle nodded. “But there is still something…I can’t quite put my finger on it….You know what? I need to see the scene, not be in the scene.” Kyle stood and glanced around the room. “Evan, would you mind standing in?”
“Me?” Evan touched his hand to his chest as a look of horror replaced his ambiguous expression.
For the first time, Shayne saw fear in Evan’s eyes. Even when she’d slipped during their hike, he’d never shown even a glimpse of uncertainty. There’d been concern, but not fear. Now, there was definitely fear.
“Yes you! Who better to allow me to see Landon’s humanity, his pain, his intensity than the man who inspired him?”
“I’m not an actor.”
“You don’t have to be. The talented Miss Fox will do all the work. As you saw, she is carrying this scene. Literally. She will pull you up onto the rock and check your vitals and say her lines. All you have to do is open your eyes once she lays her head on your chest. Just as you saw me do.”
Shayne’s pulse picked up at the thought of her cheek being on Evan’s rock-solid chest again. The one time she’d found herself on top of him she would’ve been more than happy to spend the rest of the day draped over him like a human blanket. How something so hard could be so comfortable astounded her. A flush exploded in her as she thought of other parts of Evan’s hard body and just how incredible they might be able to make her feel.
“If you’re not comfortable with it, it’s fine,” Kyle assured him. “I can ask som—”
“I can do it!” Dean, the surfer looking PA volunteered as he started rushing across the room.
Dean was her age, but he seemed a lot younger. He was good looking and he knew it. As much as Shayne appreciated confidence in people, there was a fine line between confident and cocky and he crossed that line. She knew his enthusiasm was because he was an aspiring actor. Getting seen by Kyle Austen Reed was a big moment for him.
“I’ll do it.” Evan’s voice was low and gruff.
The entire room stilled. It was quite a phenomenon to see that even next to arguably the biggest, most charismatic movie star in the world, Evan commanded the space.
“Perfect.” Kyle clapped his hands. “For the next five minutes, you are Landon Carter.”
Unlike Eager Beaver Dean, Brawny Man did not look happy about the opportunity to participate. Which made her wonder why he would do it. Her mind was working on possible explanations when he pushed off the wall and started crossing the room.
Kyle was at his side, telling him to count to three after Shayne lowered her head on his chest and then cough. She assumed Evan was listening but his eyes were locked on hers.
Oh boy.
Every cell in her body roared to life with awareness of him. Each step he took intensified the tingling sensation spreading through her. By the time he reached her, she was vibrating with suppressed arousal. In the next few moments she’d be touching him. She’d be heaving him up to a sitting position. She’d be taking his pulse. She’d be listening for a heartbeat. Thankfully, the scene called for her to be out of breath, so her inability to take in oxygen wouldn’t be a problem.
Before she got any kind of a handle on the situation, Kyle stood back and said, “Whenever you’re ready, Joey.”
Whether or not she was ready for this, it was happening. Just like so many other things in her life, she knew that all she could do was hold on and go for the ride.
Shayne closed her eyes and lost herself in her imagination. It was something that she’d been able to do since she was a kid. She used to transport herself to a warm, safe, place when she was in a scary foster or group home. If she was hungry, she’d create a reality where she was eating a buffet. When she was cold, she’d mentally travel to a tropical beach where the sun shone on her face.
So now, she pictured a fire raging around her. She imagined the fatigue of fighting the fiery beast. She felt the fear of discovering the man that she loved unconscious. She let herself go to the dark place of losing someone that she loved. How helpless and terrified she’d be.
When she opened her eyes, moisture pooled in them. She was in it. She was in the reality she’d created.
“Landon,” her voice was strained with desperation as she used all of her might to lift his heavy form and push him against the wall.
“Landon,” she repeated as she went through the motions of checking his vitals. Teardrops slipped over the edge of her bottom lid and fell down her face at the thought that he could be gone.
“Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me.” She collapsed on his chest and the second she did, she felt his strong heartbeat beneath her cheek.
On cue, he coughed and she lifted her head and cupped his beautiful face with her hands. When his eyes fluttered open, pure relief and joy evaporated all the fear and sadness that had been racing through her.
A large smile spread through the tears that were now pouring down her face as she said, simply, “Hi.”
When the corners of his mouth lifted, she leaned forward, closing the distance between the two of them. She sucked in a breath just before she pressed her lips to his. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised since she’d been the one to kiss him, but she was. The second their lips touched, a shockwave rolled through her entire body.
She froze. She was kissing Evan. It was bad to surprise your costar with an unexpected lip lock. Yeah, it was in the script, but they were just rehearsing.
“Sorry,” she whispered against his mouth, their lips still touching.
When he didn’t respond she began to move away. That’s when everything changed. His hand wrapped around the back of her neck and she lost herself in a totally different reality: the dreamy intimacy of their kiss.
What started as a tender and tantalizing persuasion turned into a devouring and smoldering heat. Her lips parted and his tongue swept between them, claiming her in demanding mastery. She dissolved into the sensations and willingly succumbed to the forceful domination of his lips, his tongue, and his being.
“Cut!” Kyle’s voice cut through the tornado of sensations raging inside of her and burst the bubble that they’d been in.
She broke their kiss and the moment their lips parted her world was shattered. She was horrified at her behavior. This was as unprofessional as it got.
“That’s it!” Kyle clapped his hands. “That’s what was missing. I felt your fear, your vulnerability.”
He began speaking to the script supervisor, most likely to make sure the changes got made. She glanced around the room and saw that everyone was going about their business. No one seemed to have noticed that the entire world had just shifted, at least her entire world had just shifted.
She looked back at Evan and his face was, surprise, surprise, unreadable.
“I’m sorry.” She pushed off his chest and started to scramble to her feet.
He effortlessly stood and helped her up. Her legs were jelly but somehow, they managed to hold her weight.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Kyle was beaming with excitement as he threw his arm around her shoulders and ushered her out of the room. “That’s exactly what it needed. You, Joey, are the hero that rescues the man you love. You have to be the one that kisses him at the end. And that ‘hi,’ it was heartbreaking. Perfect. Perfezionare. Parfait. Perfecto. In any language, Miss Fox, it was brilliant. You were brilliant.”
She was something alright, but she wasn’t sure brilliant would be what she’d call it. She might’ve just committed sexual harassment. Or public indecency. Or both.
Ruby, her savior, appeared at her side. “The car is here.”
She nodded, still dazed by what had just happened.
“We’ll see you on Monday, Josephine.” Kyle kissed both of her cheeks and as she turned to go, she glanced back inside. Evan was across the room looking out the window.
She wondered what he might be th
inking about the kiss. About her. About the kiss!
After saying her goodbyes, she and Ruby walked out of the building and into the waiting SUV without saying a word to one another.
The moment they began driving away, her friend turned to her, her green eyes wide as she began, “That was…”
“I know.” Shayne nodded.
She didn’t actually know, so she wasn’t sure why she would say that.
“You really…”
“I know.” Again, she had no idea why she kept answering with that phrase. She didn’t know why she’d done anything she’d done in the last ten minutes.
Ruby must’ve seen her panic, because her friend’s expression of shock disappeared and she went into assistant mode.
“So, we’ll be landing in LA by two p.m. and from there you’ll go straight to set in Malibu and be in hair and makeup by three. It’s a sunset shoot which means that it has to wrap no later than seven-thirty. You have a late dinner at Katsuya at nine and then you’ll be on a red-eye to New York.”
Her friend kept talking, listing the events and meetings she had scheduled in New York. She was barely listening. She was too busy trying to wrap her brain around what had just taken place. That was more than just a kiss. That was explosive. That was intense. That was mind-blowing.
She’d never known that anything could feel like that. It was almost as if she’d been living in a black and white world and now everything was in color. How could she ever go back?
And it was all because of Evan. She wasn’t sure if she should write him an apology letter for her behavior or a thank you note for showing her what her body was capable of feeling. Or both.
“Do you want me to pick you up a test?”
Shayne tuned back in, knowing that she was no longer following the thread. Shifting so that she was facing Ruby she repeated, “A test?”
“A pregnancy test.” Her friend said with a straight face. “Because after what I just saw, I think you might need one.”
They both dissolved into laughter. It was exactly what she needed to stop her from feeling like the world as she knew it had changed forever…even if it had.
Chapter 13
‡
Conditions were perfect. Evan was in sweats, sitting in his beloved leather recliner in front of his seventy-inch flat screen. He was watching the Waves, the team he’d loved since he was five years old, the same team that he’d pitched for for two years, destroying the A’s. There was a large ham and pineapple pizza on its way and he had the next two days off.
He should be relaxed. Calm. Happy, even.
But he wasn’t.
“Fuck,” he cursed between clenched teeth as he stood and ran his hands through his hair.
He was anxious and unsettled. He couldn’t sit still. He kept getting up and pacing the floor.
Thoughts were running around in his head like they were Usain Bolt at the Olympics and nothing was slowing them down. Not even baseball, which historically had been the one thing that could distract him from anything.
That kiss had pulled the rug out from under him. Those thirty seconds had shifted his existence as he’d known it. He still wasn’t clear on what had happened.
It was acting. That’s what he kept telling himself. At least, it was acting on her part. On his part, he didn’t know what the hell it was. When she’d gasped right before settling her lips over his, it was as if she’d sucked all rational thought right out of him.
In truth, rational thought might’ve left him even before they’d started the scene. He couldn’t explain his knee-jerk reaction to that Brad Pit look-alike PA throwing his hand up and volunteering to be Kyle’s stand-in like he’d won the damn lottery. I’ll do it, just came out of his mouth. It wasn’t premeditated. It wasn’t a decision that he’d made. Something overrode his common sense.
All of his life he’d been a measured person. He did things with purpose.
But when her lips touched his, he wasn’t thinking about how he should behave in a professional capacity or that they were surrounded by people watching them. All he was thinking about was that the kiss that he’d been dying to share with her since the first time he saw her at the town hall meeting was finally happening.
The moment he heard and felt her whisper an apology against his mouth, something snapped inside of him. Just like the branch that had snapped during their hike, except this time it was him falling and instead of stopping he went straight over the edge, freefalling into their kiss until Kyle yelled cut.
Afterward, as he tried desperately to regain his balance, both literally and figuratively, he realized that he was in a mild state of shock. He’d treated people in that condition, but had never experienced it himself. He’d walked to the window to try and regain his bearings and give his body a chance to calm down so that his pants wouldn’t reveal that his dick had no idea they had been “acting.”
The entire incident had instantly gone from slow motion to fast forward. One second he was tasting the sweetness of her lips, feeling her body tremble against his, and the next she was gone.
He let out an audible sigh as he started making the same trek from the fireplace to the stairs and back again. The same trek he’d made over a hundred times in the last hour. He had so much pent-up energy with no place for it to go. The unmistakable crack of the bat as it made contact with the ball followed by an outburst of applause played in the background and his only response was a quick glance at the screen to see whether it had been the Waves or the A’s at bat. It was the Waves.
Damn. This mental fog was getting out of hand. He still had four weeks of working on the movie. He needed to get a grip or the next month was going to be frustrating as hell.
There was a knock at the door and for a split second he forgot that he’d ordered pizza.
Yeah, this pining shit ends now, he resolved as he walked to the front door.
“Hey, man, let me go grab my wallet,” he said, turning his back as he opened the door so he could pay the same tall, gawky delivery kid that had been at his door every Friday night since arriving in Hope Falls.
“Hi.”
Evan froze. That was not the voice of a teenage boy.
His head turned and instead of Shaggy, which he assumed was the kid’s nickname because he was a dead ringer for the cartoon character, he saw another look-alike, this one being a Hollywood starlet.
“Shayne.” He couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
She was standing on his porch wearing a white, V-neck T-shirt, blue jeans with holes in the knees, and sneakers and she looked…stunning. It had only been a few hours since he’d seen her but, as always, he was blown away by her beauty. Her aqua blue eyes popped against the dark lashes that surrounded them and he knew that he could easily drown in them. Her lips were a deep shade of red that drew him to them like a moth to a flame. And her hair was styled in soft waves that framed her face and his hands itched to run through it.
“Hi,” she repeated, as her eyes darted to the ground then back up at him.
That’s when he noticed that she was unsure. Nervous. It was behavior he’d never witnessed in her before. She carried and conducted herself with unwavering confidence at all times. Even on the challenging hike.
“Sorry, I just stopped by like this.” Her gaze yo-yoed down then up again. “I have your number, from Kyle, for the movie and I could’ve texted but I didn’t want to talk over text and no one really calls anyone anymore—”
“Shayne,” he interrupted as he opened the door wider. “Do you want to come in?”
“Oh, right, yeah.” She nodded and pulled the strap of her purse higher up on her shoulder as she walked past him leaving an invigorating floral scent in her wake. It wafted up as he inhaled deeply. It was sweet, fresh, and intoxicating, just like she was.
The door shut with a soft thud and he remained near it.
Sensing her nerves, he figured he’d try to make small talk and set her at ease. “I thought that you were in Los Angeles o
r New York?”
“I was.” Her head nodded up and down as she turned to face him. Her anxious energy was palpable as she starting speaking at a much faster pace than he was used to hearing her talk. “And I will be. I had a photo shoot in LA and was supposed to have a dinner meeting before catching a red-eye back east but it got moved so I came back here and am flying out of Sacramento instead of LAX because I needed to talk to you about…”
“About the kiss,” he finished when her words trailed off. He’d gotten carried away and he had no idea what the protocol was when real actors stepped over the line, which he assumed must happen, but regardless he felt like he owed her an apology. Since he wasn’t one to waste words, he got right to it. “I’m sorry. It was inappropriate and—”
“It was inappropriate,” she agreed as a wide smile spread on her face. It wasn’t exactly the reaction he’d expected. “But you have nothing to apologize for. If anyone should be apologizing, it should be me.”
His brow wrinkled in confusion. “You don’t have anything to apolo—”
She lifted her hand, halting his protest and continued, “You are right, though. The kiss is why I’m here.”
His heart started beating so loud he could barely hear himself think. If she didn’t want an apology, then what did she want to talk about? Had she felt the same intensity, the same passion, the same connection that he had? Was it more than just acting for her?
Her tongue ran along the seam of her lips and his dick jumped beneath his sweats. It was involuntary, just like everything he did around Shayne Fox.
*
Shayne blew out a nervous breath as she contemplated running back out the door.
Pull up your big girl panties, then maybe he’ll pull them off, Nolan’s voice sounded in her head. Her stylist piping up in her subconscious was not surprising, since he’d been the one to convince her to show up at Evan’s house and not let the entire weekend go by without talking to him. It had sounded so good an hour ago.
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