But no, I had suggested the dance studio. Which apart from being completely empty aside from me and soon my costar, also came with mirrors. And a barre.
Which looked tailor-made for resting a lover’s leg on while I fucked them from behind.
But maybe Bee Hobbes already had someone else to do that with?
I paced around the dance studio as I waited for her, rolling my script into the tightest cylinder possible and feeling stupid. Normally, I found a dance studio to be a comforting place. No matter what ridiculous thing was happening in our lives, no matter what was going on between Kallum, Isaac, and me, once we got into a studio, everything became easy. Simple. Learn the routine. Practice till you got it right. There had never been a problem that music and sweat couldn’t fix.
Of course, it wasn’t that easy anymore, in these post-INKtimes. Which was why I was waiting for Bee when she was probably still saying goodbye to whoever had stayed the night in her room.
As soon as I’d thought it, I wanted to hit myself in the head with my rolled-up script, like I was a bad dog. What did it matter if she wasn’t alone last night? She had every right to be with whomever she wanted!
But God—how I wanted it to be me. I wanted those sultry eyes onme, I wanted that hair all tangled and messy fromme. I wanted to kiss her and have her melt the same way I melted when she’d kissed me for the scene yesterday.
You couldn’t anyway, I reminded myself. Even if she wanted me to be the person in her room, I couldn’t be. There was too much at stake for me to risk getting caught behaving badly, even for a woman I’d built a thousand behaving-badly fantasies around. In fact, maybeespeciallyfor that woman, because getting caught fucking around would be bad. But getting caught fucking around with a porn star?Extra bad.
So why had I picked a room full of mirrors and lined with a very inviting barre again?
The unexpectedly sexy environment of the dance studio wasn’t helped by Bee showing up in skintight leggings and a clingy sweater, which was cropped above her waist so that I could see a strip of warm, suntanned skin between the bottom of it and the top of her leggings.
I actually had to turn away while she shucked off her coat and started stomping her boots on the rug in front of the door. She was doing it to get the snow off, but it had the fantastic effect of making her thighs and ass move as she did, and herbreasts too—and if I watched her any longer, I was going to have problems keeping things at Steph-approved levels of flaccidity.
I suddenly needed to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but with a woman who couldn’t be mine for so many reasons, and who was nuking the slouchy-cool control I’d taken years to master.
Just get this over with and escape, I told myself.Then you can get yourself together before you’re actually on set with her again.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Bee said.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice coming out shorter than I’d meant it to. “No problem.”
Since I didn’t hear any more stomping, I assumed it was safe to turn around. As I did, I carefully kept my gaze above her shoulders. I couldn’t avoid seeing her soft mouth or those striking green eyes, but at least she wouldn’t think I was leering at her. But then I felt my gaze drawn back to her mouth in a way that was both leeringandnot helping with the new Bee Strategy of total denial, and I forced my eyes past her to the windowed door and the snowy main street outside.
“We should get started,” I said, avoiding looking at her as I glanced at my watch. “We won’t have long before hair and makeup.”
“Sure,” she said, her voice cooler than before, and when I finally braved a look at her, I saw something almost defiant in her expression. It was gone before I could decipher what it was.
“Okay,” I replied pointlessly, a little bothered and not sure why. I gestured toward the far end of the studio, where there was a small table and two chairs set against the wall. “Shall we?”
“Yes,” she said, and started making her way to the table. I followed after making sure my phone was on vibrate. I couldn’t miss any calls from home, especially if they came after Mom’s appointment today.
Bee sat down and set the week’s pages on the table in front of her. Her hair slid over her shoulder in glossy waves, and all I wanted on this earth was to wrap some of those waves around my fist and tug.
I blew out a long breath. How was I going to survive being in a room alone with her for as long as it took to read through these lines?
I sat down too and carefully unfurled my script from the tight scroll I’d rolled it into, trying to signal that we should get started, when Bee pressed her hands to the table and looked at me. It seemed like she’d lost a bet with herself or something, like she didn’t want to say what she was going to say next, but she had no choice.
“So I have to ask,” she said, her voice still cool, but her words a bit rushed too. Maybe she was curious or nervous... or both. “What is Naughty Nolan Shaw doing making a Christmas movie? For the Hope Channel of all places?”
Well, Bee, I need the money. I need the veneer of safe celebrity. And aside from having been famous once, I have no skills other than getting into trouble and painting theater sets, and so smiling pretty for the Hopeflix camera was my only option.
But I couldn’t say all that, not to my dream girl. So I fed her the spiel Steph had cooked up. “I’ve always loved acting, and this project grabbed my attention.” That was PR-speak forThis was the first project I could get hired for.“And knowingthat it was directed by Gretchen Young made it irresistible,” I added.
That partwastrue. I’d been around manufactured fame and engineered talent long enough to recognize a genuine gift when I saw it, and Gretchen was phenomenal. Which was why it was so fascinating that a made-for-TV Christmas movie was where she wanted to make her directorial debut. I would have thought something indie and sad-quirky, or maybe some big-budget woman-led superhero film. But nope. The Hope Channel.
I suspected her bendy-looking screenwriter girlfriend had something to do with it, but who knew? Maybe Gretchen just really liked Christmas movies.
Bee was looking at me as I fiddled with the pages of my script, and I had the uncomfortable feeling she could see right through my PR-speak and that she wasn’t very impressed by it. I tried not to care; I never used to care about anything! But this was Bianca von Honey we were talking about. My pride prickled hard at her disapproval.
“What about you?” I asked, trying to deflect the conversation away from myself. “What brings you toDuke the Halls?”
