Temptation's Kiss

by Janice Sims

  “Well, now if the director wants you to cry on cue, you know exactly what to eat to get those results,” she joked.

  T.K. wondered if this was a snide remark about his apparent regard for acting not as an art form but simply a job that paid the bills. For some reason the thought of her holding him in contempt because he wasn’t as passionate about acting as she was pained him.

  “Was that said to elicit a laugh, or do you really think less of me because I don’t believe acting is the be all and end all of my existence?”

  Patrice washed and handed him the last plate. “I don’t think acting is everything either,” she told him, looking him straight in the eyes. “What? You think I think less of you because I went to Juilliard and you didn’t?”

  T.K. rinsed the plate and stacked it on the rack atop the draining board with the other dishes. Then he dried his hands on the dish towel and handed the towel to her. He gave her his full attention. “No, I don’t.” He frowned. “I don’t know, maybe I do. Women are always making assumptions about me based on what they see in movie theaters. I’m an honest kind of guy. I don’t like pretense. I’ve met so many people who told me one thing and meant another. I don’t have time for that anymore, Patrice. I don’t care if you hurt my feelings. Be honest with me. Are you disappointed because I’m not what you thought I was?”

  Patrice grasped him by the arm and moved close to him. “T.K., I don’t know you well enough to have formed an opinion of you. What you told me about your lack of passion for acting was surprising, but it didn’t make me any less attracted to you as a person. I was raised to be tolerant of differences in people. That applies to race, sexual orientation and, yes, the amount of passion someone has for his work.” She laughed suddenly. If he only knew how she really felt about him at this moment, he wouldn’t worry at all about her regard for him.

  He smiled down at her. “What was that laugh for?”

  His back was to the sink. Patrice pressed the length of her body against his. His arms went around her waist and he held her, just held her. Patrice placed her ear against his chest and listened to his heartbeat. It was strong and steady. It’s how she felt about him at this instance. “I like you so much. I wish I weren’t about to do a film with you,” she told him.

  “Why is that?” he asked quietly.

  “Because I’m hopelessly drawn to you. I actually ache to be close to you. But I don’t get involved with men I work with.” She raised her eyes to his. “Is that honest enough for you?”

  T.K. bent and gently touched his mouth to hers. Her sweet breath mingled with his, and she pressed back. This he took as an invitation and gave her the full assault.

  She tasted wonderful, like warmth personified. He felt that kiss all the way down to his feet and back up again. It made his body feel more alive than it had felt in months, and for that reason alone, he could have stood there kissing her for quite some time. But the effect was also arousing, and he could not press his body against hers for much longer without her detecting that he wanted more from her than a mere kiss. When they parted, Patrice slowly opened her eyes and sighed. T.K. smiled at her.

  “Technically, we’re not working together yet,” he said. “But I’m a patient man, and I’m willing to honor your wishes. When you say you don’t get involved, what do you mean? Explain yourself, and be specific.”

  He was looking at her so intensely that Patrice knew he was serious and not simply humoring her on this subject. “I can’t kiss you?” he asked. His eyes lowered to her mouth. “Because I would die if I couldn’t kiss you again.”

  What was Patrice supposed to say to that? The fact was she had avoided getting involved with her leading men in any way, shape or form. When she had worked on the sitcom, the lead actor was married, but that didn’t stop his having affairs with his costars. It was rumored that it was his goal to sleep with every female in the cast. She and another actress were the only two out of six women who hadn’t been seduced by him. When some casts of sitcoms claimed to be like one big happy family when they accepted awards on award shows, they weren’t kidding. As for the two leading men she’d played opposite in her two theatrical releases, one was faithful to his wife and the other was not. She had to avoid being alone with him because he had a habit of grabbing her and saying, “You want me. You’re just playing hard to get.” Impossible to get was closer to the truth. She had been relieved when that film had wrapped.

  She decided to tell T.K. the truth. “In the past, I’ve never even kissed a costar. In some ways, I look at working the way you do. I just want to do my job and go home. I have not wanted an on-set romance that can get messy when one of you doesn’t feel as strongly about the other. I’ve witnessed a few of those.”

  “Comes with the territory,” T.K. agreed. He winced when Edina’s image came to mind. “I started my last relationship on location. That didn’t end well.” He met her eyes again. “That doesn’t mean I believe the same thing would happen to us, if you decided to relax your rules in my favor.”

  “Are you asking me to?” Patrice ventured.

  “Are you asking me to ask you to?” he cautiously countered.

  Patrice narrowed her eyes at him. Was he playing it safe now after all that talk about honesty? He needed to tell her what he wanted from her, and he needed to be specific just like he’d asked her to be. “Spell it out,” she told him. “Three weeks from now we’re going to be in Wyoming. By the way, why so soon? Mark didn’t mention that. Usually I have several months to report to work after the contract’s been negotiated. Luckily I was available.”

  “The actress who was to portray Bella got pregnant, and she backed out at the last minute,” T.K. said.

  “Who is she?”

  “Dina Thompson.”

  “I like her,” said Patrice. “She would have done a good job. So I’m second choice.”

  “Does that rankle?” he asked, thigh to thigh with her.

  She laughed shortly. “No, I’m lucky everything turned out the way it did.”

  “That’s how I feel about it,” T.K. said, bending to kiss her again.

  This time Patrice rose onto tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his neck and finally fulfilled a secret wish; she wound up with her hands caressing his bald head and the delicious sensation she was rewarded with was even better than she’d imagined.

  T.K. smiled when she released him. “Can you tell me you can resist doing that for the entire time we’re on location?”

  Patrice took a deep breath and stepped backward, regarding him with clear eyes. “I admit rubbing your head is nearly orgasmic it feels so good, but yes, I can, and I will avoid doing it when we’re on location.”

  “Well, you’re a stronger person than I am,” T.K. complimented her. He couldn’t believe he was about to do this, but he wasn’t going to simply lie down and take defeat either. He wanted her in his arms. He wanted her in his life, and eventually he wanted her in his bed. If he left it up to her and her exalted sense of a work ethic, they might never get together.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he suggested sweetly. “If while we’re on location you can resist kissing me, when not doing so in the course of your job, then fine, we’ll stick to your rules. However, should you kiss me, of your own free will at any time, then it’s on. We, as you put it, will ‘get involved’ while on location.”

  Patrice considered him for a while. That rugged square-jawed face, that smooth golden-brown skin, to say nothing of those lips, those eyes and her favorite feature—his bald head. His hard body was oh so enticing, but what lay between his ears was even more compelling. He was intellectually stimulating as well, and a thinking man always turned her on. He thought he could outmaneuver her. Was that overconfidence on his part? Or conceit? Had he been one of the top actors in the world for so long that he thought he was irresistible to every woman on the planet? She might need to take him down a peg or two.

  She offered him her hand to shake. “You’ve got a deal.”

  T.K. acc
epted her hand but used it to pull her into his embrace, whereupon he kissed her until she nearly swooned in his arms. Patrice peered up at him after he let her go. “You play dirty.”

  “It’s the only way,” T.K. told her with a mischievous smile. “I’d better be going before Patrick comes back out to see what I’m doing to his sister. I saw that look he gave me as he and Nina were leaving the room.”

  Patrice walked him outside. “One more thing,” she told him after she’d pulled the door closed behind them. “I can’t see you again until we’re on location.”

  “What?” T.K. exclaimed, none too happy with her announcement. “We’ve got three weeks before we go to Wyoming!”

  She smiled. “Don’t you see? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. This is to your advantage. Surely after experiencing your kisses and then being deprived of them for three weeks I’ll be ready to fall into your arms once we get to Wyoming.”

  “You’re an evil woman, Patrice Sutton.”

  “Wait a minute,” Patrice said, thinking. “If I lose the bet, you get, well, me. But if I’m able to resist you, what do I get?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that because I’m not going to lose,” T.K. told her honestly. “However, you have a point. Name it, and it’s yours.”

  Patrice spied the car parked at the curb. She walked over to it and ran her hand across its hood. It was a beauty. “Is this a Camaro?”

  “Yes, it is,” T.K. said with a note of pride. “It’s a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro SS. I restored her myself.”

  “Then she means a lot to you?” Patrice asked speculatively.

  “She’s my favorite,” he confirmed.

  “I’ll take her if you lose the bet,” Patrice told him.

  Even though his heart skipped a beat in shock and disappointment at her demand, T.K. didn’t protest. “I’m not going to lose the bet because you’re going to want to kiss me every minute of every day while we’re on location.”

  “Don’t hold your breath!” Patrice said with a laugh as she turned to go back inside. “Good night, Trevor Kennedy McKenna.”

  “Good night, Ms. Sutton,” he said grimly. Let her think she’d won that round.

  T.K. chuckled after he got behind the wheel of the Camaro and started the engine. He liked her spirit. He had no intention of losing the bet!

  Chapter 7

  Three weeks later, Patrice arrived in Casper, Wyoming. She drove through one of the city’s main thoroughfares, looking for the name of the street of the inn where the cast and crew would be staying. She’d flown in to the Casper/Natrona County International Airport and rented a car. She would have driven the nearly nine hundred miles, but then she’d realized that if she had she would be driving back home in the snow in December when filming was supposed to end. She didn’t like driving in the snow.

  Soon, she found the inn and pulled the Ford Focus into the parking lot. It was eighty degrees out, and the sun felt wonderful on her skin as she walked to the inn’s entrance.

  “Hey, Patrice, you made it!” a male voice called from across the parking lot. Patrice removed her sunglasses and smiled at Mark Greenberg. “Mark, yes, a day ahead of schedule. Has anyone else arrived yet besides you and I?”

  Mark, looking relaxed in a golf shirt, khaki slacks and athletic shoes, came and gave her a quick hug. “A few,” he said. “But I don’t expect most of them until tomorrow just in time for the first meeting.”

  Patrice knew what he said was true. She liked to arrive a day early so that she would be well-rested and sharp during the meeting about the shooting schedule. Smiling up at him, she asked, “Any sign of T.K.?”

  Even though she and T.K. had not seen each other in three weeks, they had stayed in touch by phone, and he had told her he would be arriving today. He was driving because he wanted to bring Sam with him, and Sam hated air travel.

  He left the dog with a friend or his parents when he had to be out of the country, but when at all possible, he took Sam with him on location.

  “Not yet,” Mark told her. “It’s early. He’ll probably get here before dark.” He gestured toward the inn’s entrance with a nod of his head. “Come on. Let’s get you checked in. Then, if you’re not too tired, we can go get some lunch.”

  “I am a little travel-weary,” Patrice told him. She turned, and he placed a protective hand at the small of her back. “So, you and T.K. have gotten to know each other?”

  Patrice smiled. “Yes, a little,” she said, leaving it at that. They’d spoken every day since he’d come to dinner that night, and she thought she knew him quite well by now—so much so that she could barely contain her eagerness to see him again. No, she was not going to make it easy for him to win their bet by leaping into his arms and kissing him hello. But she wasn’t going to be too hard on herself if she couldn’t resist giving him a hug or three.

  Mark opened the door for her and admired the shape of her bottom in her jeans. With her jeans, she was wearing a sleeveless white cotton blouse that buttoned up front. Mark looked down at her feet—cowboy boots. She would definitely fit in around here. He’d never seen so many people wearing them before, and he’d been to Texas twice.

  At the desk in the beautifully decorated lobby that had a highly polished hardwood floor and an Italian marble front desk, the clerk took her name, checked her registration and handed her a key card. “Your room is all ready for you, Ms. Sutton,” said the young man, smiling warmly.

  A few minutes later, Patrice was opening the blinds in the suite to allow some light inside while her bags were being placed at the foot of the bed by a strapping young man with blond hair. She tipped him when he was done and locked the door behind him.

  With a sigh, she threw herself onto the bed and lay flat on her back looking at the ceiling for a few minutes. She had declined Mark’s lunch invitation in favor of a nap. She’d been up since four o’clock this morning, and tiredness was finally coming down on her. He’d looked disappointed when she had told him she preferred sleep to food right now. She hoped it had only been a friendly invitation between colleagues. Mark seemed sweet, but it was T.K. who fascinated her. He’d talked to her about his brother Malcolm and how devastated he and his family had been when he’d died. She had been so touched that she’d wanted to hop in her car and drive to Malibu to comfort him. They had talked for hours that night. She told him that although she had lost her grandparents to death, she couldn’t imagine what he was going through because their transition had not been unexpected. Her grandparents had prepared the family for their deaths by living long lives and planning their own funerals. In the case of her grandmother, Ina, every detail had been planned down to what kind of flowers would drape her casket to the desire not to have a funeral but a wake at which the family would celebrate her life and not mourn her passing. Malcolm’s death, however, had been unexpected and a shock to his family.

  They had also discussed their last relationships. He told her he’d had suspicions that Edina was not with him out of love long before he’d discovered her many infidelities.

  “It’s one of the things you have to be wary of in this town,” he’d said. “People are willing to do anything to get and stay in the limelight. Unfortunately, celebrity is not based on talent anymore. You can be a celebrity simply by association or by being notorious.”

  Patrice had to agree. Today, women and men, who’d had affairs with prominent people, could wind up with their own reality shows and bring in millions of dollars of revenue. Or by virtue of giving birth to multiple babies, you could have people all over the world observing your life 24/7.

  She told him about Andre, whom she had loved and thought was the man she would spend the rest of her life with. He was not in the business. She’d met him at a restaurant he co-owned in Los Angeles. Initially, he told her he had never been married. Months later, after she was already in love with him, she had learned that not only had he been married before but the co-owner of the restaurant was his ex-wife. They had not been able to agree on who
would get the restaurant in the divorce settlement. Both had been so vehement about hanging on to it that they were still hanging on to it. Because they still worked closely together practically every day, their love had been rekindled, which left Patrice out in the cold. She could not hate Andre, though. Even though he’d broken her heart and lied to her about never having been married, at least he’d done it by getting back together with his first love. They were remarried now.

  “Are you sure you don’t have any hard feelings for him?” T.K. had asked. “He lied, and then he started fooling around with his ex-wife while he was with you.”

  “When I found out he’d lied about his ex-wife, yes, I wanted to dropkick him into the middle of next week, but after I thought about it I wondered why I was upset. He loved her. My moaning and groaning wasn’t going to change that fact. Sometimes you have to simply let go.”

  T.K. had sighed but had grudgingly agreed with her. “I just wish I’d given up on Edina long before the world found out about her extracurricular activities.”

  “It’ll take time, but you’ll forget the hurt one day and thank God you didn’t marry her,” Patrice had returned.

  He’d laughed. “Yeah, thank God for that!”

  Patrice fell asleep while reminiscing about that particular conversation. When she awakened it was late afternoon, the sun had gone behind a cloud and the room was in shadows. She sat up and switched on the bedside lamp. Golden light illuminated the dark corners of the room. Rising, she went to the bathroom, used it and stood in front of the mirror to assess the damage. Her short black hair was sticking up on her head at weird angles, and she had the imprint of the bedspread on her left cheek where she’d lain on it. Wide, dark eyes laughed at her reflection. “You’re why actresses have professional makeup artists on the payroll,” she said.

  Her cell phone rang, and she hurried out to the bedroom and snatched it from the side pocket of her purse. She squinted at the display. It was T.K.