Asher nods triumphantly.
“Excellent idea,” he agrees. “We can make it known that you’ve taken Alexandra to your secluded beach house to help her recover from her…trauma. We’ll refer to it as your ‘love nest.’”
He looks so pleased with this idea that it seems a shame to bring him down to earth by pointing out that I’m cringing so hard I’m going to have difficulty standing up now. I open my mouth to say it anyway, though, but before I can speak, Asher delivers his death-blow.
“Oh, and one more thing,” he says, smiling benignly. “You’ll have to kiss.”
* * *
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not doing it, and that’s all there is to it.”
That, however, isnotall there is to it, because as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I instantly start listing all the reasons why me and Jett kissing for the paparazzi cameras would be a spectacularly bad idea.
“For one thing, it’s not in the contract,” I begin, ticking the items off on my fingers. “So you can’t make me do it, anyway. For two, it’s weird. Seriously, though, don’t you think it’s weird?”
I pause to look at Jett, who’s listening to me patiently, with a pained expression on his face.
Asher and co. left the room a few minutes ago, to give Jett and me a chance to talk in private. So far, though, I’ve been the one doing all the talking, so I figure I should at least give him the chance to agree with me. At least that way we can present a united front when we tell Asher where he can stick his stupid “fake kiss” idea.
“Isn’t it, though?” I prompt now. “Isn’t the whole idea of kissing someone you barely know, just for the camera, super, duperweird?”
I have no idea why I’m blushing. Or why I’m finding it hard to say the word “kiss” in front of him. All I know is thattalkingabout kissing Jett Carter is making methinkabout kissing Jett Carter, and that’s a road I know I must not go down, no matter how clear the signposts are pointing me in that direction.
Maybe that’s why I’m protesting so much about Asher’s “staged kiss” idea. And why I can’t seem to say anything other than the word “weird”.
Jett, however, simply shrugs in answer to my question.
“Not really,” he says, surprising me. “Not to me, anyway. I do it all the time.”
My eyes widen in astonishment, and he hurries to correct himself.
“Kissing for the cameras, I mean,” he clarifies. “It’s part of the job, you know? Actors have to kiss each other sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s no different from any of the other things you have to pretend to do as an actor. So, no, I guess it’s not all that unusual for me, really.”
He shrugs again as I consider this. I know his movies almost always have some kind of romance element to them. I’ve seen him in tons of on-screen kisses over the years; sex scenes, too, for that matter. None of which makes it any less…weird… to me.
“I’m not an actress, though,” I point out, stating the obvious. “So it might be just a job toyou, but to me it would be totally—”
“Weird?” He suggests. “Yeah, I got that. Don’t worry about it, Lady M,” he adds, as if we’re talking about the weather, or something equally innocuous. “I get it. You don’t want to kiss me, you don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. It’s cool.”
I look at him suspiciously.
“You wanna do Rock, Paper, Scissors?” he says. “I win, we kiss; you win, we don’t?”
“Wh… what? Are you being serious?”
He grins, making my heart flutter traitorously.
“‘Course not,” he says. “I’m joking, relax. Just trying to lighten the atmosphere a bit. Like I said, you’re in charge, here. I’m not going to ask you to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
“But Asher—”
“I’ll take care of Asher,” he says soothingly. “Just leave it with me. You okay to do the beach walk without the kiss, though? Because I think if we do that, it’ll get him off our backs for a while.”
“Um, yeah. Sure.”
I sit back down, feeling like I’ve been wrong-footed somehow.
I’m getting exactly what I wanted — and without so much as the slightest hint of an argument.
