“Truth?” He mimicked her earlier request.
She hesitated. “No. They’re awful.”
“Wow.” He clenched his teeth, frustration at his performance curling in his gut. Once again, he wondered what Charlie thought she could add to his performance.
“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “Lying is a waste of everyone’s time. I spent the last year with a therapist, figuring that out.”
“Did she talk to you about oversharing?”
“No. But she did point out that sarcasm is an indicator of deflecting attention off yourself when you’re uncomfortable.”
Mick released a quick laugh. Spunk. Yeah, that was the word. Piper James was spunky. And eye-crossingly sexy. She’d turned him on the very moment he’d noticed her on the set. And she’d responded to his flirtation—giving it as good as she got. As long as she wasn’t the relationship type, it looked like sleeping with his consultant might be an added perk to this job.
The lights came up and he drew back, the dull throb in his crotch giving witness to how much he would enjoy getting her alone.
“So, Mick, what do you think?” Charlie, the director, asked.
“I see what you’re saying,” Mick answered honestly. He couldn’t refute what had been in horrifying HD on the screen. “But I’ll figure out how to make it work.”
“I’m glad we can both agree that something isn’t working. The emotional scenes aren’t believable, no matter what we do.” Charlie looked around him, transferring his gaze to Piper. “You’re the romance expert around here. What do you think?”
“Oh hell, Charlie,” Piper said. “I don’t know anything about acting.”
“Piper,” Charlie continued, “like I told your agent, you’re not here as an acting coach. This is your story. You’re here to provide a different perspective.
“I can do that,” Piper said, turning her attention to Mick, her face now firm with determination, “but I’m not sure how much I can connect to Chance again. I’m not the same girl who wrote that book.”
That got his attention. She kept her expression blank, but there was a story there. A story he wanted to hear, but right now he had other issues to consider.
This was his first role that didn’t involve driving fast and blowing things up, and he was surprised it wasn’t working out. Unbeknownst to Charlie, Mick had even pulled in a private acting coach, but nothing seemed to help him. He couldn’t rely on personal experience in the romance department because he had none. His expertise with women was getting them in his bed and out of it as soon as possible. No romance. No building a relationship. No love.
“Do you think I should talk to Mara Turner?” Piper asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Mara. His costar, and the one who was nailing the role of Regan perfectly.
“No, Mara and usually I work together fine. I didn’t have any problems with my costar on the John Dark movies, either,” Mick said, omitting his private history with both women. Mara and Tanya had both been bed partners at one time. He’d been clear from the beginning that he didn’t do relationships, and both had been completely on board with the idea. Until they weren’t. So he’d kept it strictly professional this time. He couldn’t risk that kind of crazy on this movie set.
“You’ve got three weeks to figure this thing out, Mick,” Charlie said, heading to the door. He paused and looked at Piper. “See what you can do to help him.”
After Piper nodded, Charlie slid out of the room, leaving Mick alone with Piper. He took a long, slow visual drink of the woman standing within arm’s reach. From the moment they first met, the attraction had been mutual and hot. The burn low in his belly and his half-hard erection attested to that fact.
Seizing the opportunity, he took the few steps necessary to bring his body close to hers, but not quite touching. The space between them didn’t stop him from feeling the vibration in the air when their eyes locked. “You want to come to my place?” he asked.
“I think I ought to get settled in and grab a good night’s sleep.”
Piper’s lips were curved into a half smile that left him wondering whether she was messing with him or not.
“You could sleep at my house.” Mick moved closer, hoping his proximity would change her mind. She didn’t move away when he touched her arm and caressed the soft skin exposed by the sleeve of her sweater. “I’ve got a big, comfortable bed.”
She laughed, a toss of her head sending her glossy curls cascading over the swell of her breast. “I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be getting a lot of sleep.”
“You might be right about that.” Mick lowered his head to kiss her, but she took a step back and reached down to grab her purse from the floor. When she straightened, the playful tilt to her mouth did nothing to diminish his desire to kiss her. But that smile also didn’t bode well for his evening plans.
Piper eased past Mick, the brush of her breast against his arm as deliberate as the eye contact she refused to break. She halted in the doorway, her expression one of flirtatious false sympathy that shot straight to his dick. Damn, this woman was playing him and enjoying every minute of it.
This was the most fun he’d had in weeks.
She fished around in her bag, retrieving a book from it, and tossed it over to him. He caught it one-handed in midair.
“What’s this?”
“That’s your homework, Mr. Blackwell.”
“What’s the penalty if I leave it in my locker?”
She strode to the door. Before she left the room, she called out over her shoulder, “Study hard, Mick. There will be a test.”
Piper James was intriguing, sexy, smart—and apparently playing hard to get. Mick watched her leave, fighting down the urge to go after her and convince her to change her mind—a totally foreign concept. He didn’t chase women. He didn’t have to. It was one of the unwritten rules: Become famous. Beat women off with a stick.
He looked down at the book in his hands. A copy of Regan’s Gift. Piper smiled up at him from the cover, her ample breasts showcased in a V-neck blouse. She definitely didn’t look like the screenwriters on most of his movie sets—pasty, overweight, and wearing Yoda T-shirts. Thank God.
Whistling, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for the Chinese delivery place. It was going to be a quiet evening at home, after all.
He had a book to read.
Chapter Two
“Have you checked out Mick’s ass in those jeans?” Chris, Piper’s agent, whispered in her ear, but the sound still carried across the set.
“I’m working.” Piper willed herself not to look over to where Mick was rehearsing a scene with his costar. The effort was almost painful. Her automatic reaction was to look—yet again. In truth, she’d already taken a long, detail-memorizing look at Mick’s backside, and it was perfection. Firm, muscular, and totally two-hand-grab-worthy.
“If you don’t stop drooling, I’m going to tell Paul you’re eyeballing straight guys again,” she continued.
Chris snorted in derision as he lounged against the table where they were supposed to be working. He was quite a vision himself, all six feet and three inches of ex-NFL football player in khaki pants and a sky blue button-down shirt that perfectly complimented his eyes. Men and women all over the set were falling over themselves to get a better look at him, and Piper briefly considered posting a sign announcing “he’s gay and very taken” before someone got hurt.
“You don’t scare me,” Chris drawled out in his deep Alabama accent, which had charmed many and served him well in a business requiring lots of sweet talk. He didn’t fool her, though—this honeybee had a sting when he needed it. “Besides, I’ll just tell him that you haven’t worked out since you’ve been in LA.”
That got her attention. Paul was Chris’s partner and her personal trainer. He was also rabid when it came to working out. And frankly, he scared her a little. But her skinny jeans loved him—a lot.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.�
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Piper glared at him. “Chris, I’ve been here only a day, and I’m really trying to stay focused on what I need to do. So stop bugging me about Mick. I don’t need the distraction. I don’t know if you remember, but I have a book deadline looming and I haven’t written a damn thing.”
“Nothing?” Chris eased his large frame onto the seat beside her, suddenly all business. His expression was concerned, but it was hard to ignore the frustration that bubbled under the surface. To his credit, he’d been more understanding than most people at both her literary agency and her publisher, but even his patience was wearing thin now she’d passed the one-year mark. But what was the shelf life on heartbreak-induced writer’s block?
“The publisher still wants the books I wrote before the cheating bastard took off, but that kind of book isn’t what is ending up on the page.” At this rate, she’d need to give back the six-figure advance she’d been given by the publisher a year ago, just a month before Antonio’s cheating and Piper’s public freak-out had occurred. She tried to shut out the pain starting to pulse behind her right eye and gathered the script and other papers strewn about on the table in front of her, ready to head back to the apartment the studio had rented out for her.
A large hand moved into her field of vision, gently taking the papers from her and placing them into her open messenger bag. She looked up, expecting to see Chris.
Oh. My. God.
“Mick.” Piper’s movements stuttered to a halt with her surprise. “Thanks. I was just—” Her focus scrambled when their hands touched. Wow. A whisper of his callused fingers on the tender skin of her wrist and she’d been rendered incapable of speech. Before she could stop herself, her breath caught with an audible gasp. Mick flashed his sexy, wolfish half grin as he settled against the edge of the table with all the confidence of a man who was used to getting whatever woman he wanted.
Oh, right. He was used to getting whatever woman he wanted.
A gentleman would have noted her reaction and backed off a little. Not Mick. He wasn’t crowding her, but he stayed close enough that she could smell the warm, earthy scent of his skin. She breathed him in, every female part of her perking up at the proximity of a hot male.
Giving her a reprieve, he broke eye contact, glancing down at a pile of DVDs on the table. DVDs of John Dark movies she’d brought with her to review.
“What are these?” He picked up the stack, then whistled long and low. “Wow. There’s a whole lot of me going on here.”
Piper maintained composure even though heat traveled along her skin and undoubtedly turned her cheeks scarlet. There was no reason for her to feel self-conscious. She had a completely legitimate reason to hold her own private Mick Blackwell movie marathon—research. Plain and simple. And if she also got to ogle every muscle-rippling, bare-chested, gun-toting, fast-driving, sexy-smirk-wearing, action-packed moment of Mick’s incredibly successful movie career? Well…
It was a tough job, but someone had to do it.
“I thought reviewing your movies would help me understand the problems you’re having with Chance.”
His completely lickable mouth quirked up in the corner with self-satisfied amusement. It would be so easy to give in and indulge herself. But she’d decided that the best way to handle Mick was to keep him guessing. It wouldn’t hurt to keep him off kilter. She stood a little taller and tried to project an image that was a less fangirl and more Inside the Actor’s Studio.
“We have a meeting with Charlie tomorrow, and I want to be prepared. I figure I could get a better feel for what your strengths are and how you approach your craft from watching your films. It can’t be that different from the way authors approach their writing. If you study their books, you can figure out their strengths.”
He moved closer and leaned in so his warm breath caressed her cheek. “I could come over and help you out. What better way to feel how I work than up close and personal?”
Piper laughed. Her hot button with a man had always been confident swagger with a touch of wry humor. Mick had both in spades. The combination appealed to the sensual woman buried down under the layers of hard lessons learned. She was a challenge, and he was an expert at seduction by inches—like when his lips brushed against the sensitive shell of her ear. Her body involuntarily arched into his caress.
“Maybe later.” She emphasized her words by stepping away from his field of sexual gravity.
“Do you ever just say yes?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“Another yes. I’ll take it.” Mick boldly tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear.
Her stomach did a flip-flop at the touch, and her nipples tightened under her top. Oh, he was good.
And apparently, not done with her yet.
“Now let’s nail down some specifics on this ‘maybe later’ business.” He pulled a phone out of his pocket and thumbed across the touch screen, his handsome face a mask of determination. “I can bring over Thai, and then we can settle in for a discussion of your book and movie marathon of me.”
“Oh my God, enough already.” A man’s voice interrupted their conversation.
Piper whipped her head around to find Chris, still lounging in his front-row seat to The Mick Blackwell Show. Hell. She’d totally forgotten about him in the web of sex, words, and fantasy Mick had spun.
Chris stood up, his body posture radiating hostility—that overprotective big-brother thing she hated. He stepped forward, his frame crowding Mick. “Christian Moore. Piper’s agent and best friend.”
“Mick Blackwell.” Mick flashed a grin in her direction that did nothing to disguise his interest in her. “I’m not sure what I am to Piper, but I’m working on it.” He leaned forward and stage-whispered to Chris, “You’re kind of killing my buzz here, man.”
“I know all about your buzz.” Chris folded his arms across his chest. “I suggest you take it somewhere else. Piper doesn’t need another Hollywood asshole—”
“Chris, shut the hell up.” She pushed between them. Her friend was on rocky ground with this stunt. “Back off.”
“Piper, are you crazy?” Chris placed his big hands on her shoulders, giving her what she figured was a warning squeeze, and whispered, “Blackwell is no different from Antonio.”
Mick’s reputation for temporary, purely sexual entanglements was well documented in every entertainment rag on the newsstands. Protection of her flaky, overly sentimental heart was the main reason she’d chosen the men she’d slept with since her breakup. Nice men. Successful men. Boring men. Those men weren’t a whole dessert—just those little bite-sized portions that were all the rage in restaurants.
Mick was a man-sized portion of death-by-chocolate-layer-cake, and she wanted to eat him up. She took one last, lingering look at his tempting body and knew she had to tread carefully. Chris might be a jerk with the way he was handling this, but he was right.
“I’m out of here,” she said, staring Mick down. “And I already have dinner plans tonight.”
“La Bella, eight o’clock,” Chris confirmed, frowning.
Piper nodded, then turned to gather her things. When Mick picked up her messenger bag and eased it onto her shoulder, she paused. His fingers brushed the skin exposed by the scoop neck of her top and lingered there. She shifted, the heavy arousal in her belly making it difficult to stand still.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Piper asked.
Mick laughed. “Don’t you have movies to watch?”
Piper didn’t miss the fact that he’d sidestepped her question. She flashed a glance at him and saw he wore one of those bad-boy grins that seemed to hide a secret. He was up to something. But she had work to do. Resisting the urge to stay and figure his plan out, she gave them both a final wave and walked away. If there was one thing she knew about Mick Blackwell, whatever he had planned was sure to be interesting.
And God help her, she couldn’t wait to see what it was.
…
Hollywood was nothing like Ne
w York City.
Piper thought all the people were fake and too preoccupied with physical beauty and eternal youth. Not that those people didn’t exist in the City, but there they were diluted by the sheer numbers of regular New Yorkers.
She also had the New Yorker, East Coast bias about the lack of places one could walk to in this town. For a gal who was used to walking out of her building and into the bustle of the city, Hollywood was a bit too TV-sitcom perfect for her taste.
But tonight, with her stomach pleasantly full with the best gnocchi in cream garlic sauce she’d ever tasted, seated in a cozy restaurant, she could forgive Hollywood anything. If only Chris were in a better mood.
“Are we going to talk about why you’re mad at me?” she asked.
Chris paused. His gorgeous face was blank, but the jump of the muscle in his hard jaw was his number-one tell. She could read him like a book. Too bad she couldn’t write one her publisher wanted.
“I think it’s a colossally bad idea for you to get involved with Mick Blackwell.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“You aren’t too big to get hurt again.”
“It’s just sex, Chris.” She took another sip of wine and reined in her frustration at having this conversation. He loved her—he was her best friend and had picked her up when she’d hit rock bottom after her flip-out over Antonio. “I learned my lessons. I know not to get emotionally involved.”
“Maybe your head is saying that, but I know you. Your heart hasn’t changed. You write romance, for God’s sake. You believe in love like kids believe in Santa Claus. Piper, you won’t be able to help yourself.”
She gave him the worst death stare she could muster. At least he had the grace to look embarrassed.
“I’m just saying that you need to quit while you’re ahead.”
“Quitting is for losers,” a familiar voice came from behind.
Piper knew who it was before she turned to see Mick standing next to her table, his eyes an intense, deep evergreen, and wearing a hot pair of low-hung jeans and a button-down white shirt. His bold stance and cocky grin said he knew damn well he was a walking female fantasy. She glanced around the now-hushed restaurant at all of the gaping patrons. She waved him down into an empty seat, anxious to get everyone to stop staring at her table. His very presence drew the attention she didn’t want.
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