Those were the windmills on the way out of Palm Springs. The city Ben had driven her to, just because she was terrified, and he could tell. Where he’d soothed her and comforted her, even before anything had happened between the two of them.
Ben had been nothing but kind to her, and this was how she was going to repay him? With deceit, throwing his life into chaos for a month or so, and then just dropping him?
And, oh God, what would this do to his job? This could be a disaster for him. Why hadn’t she thought about that until now?
Fuck.
She knew why she hadn’t thought about that until now—because she’d carefully avoided letting herself think about it. And so many other things.
She stopped walking.
What the hell was she doing? She would be the world’s biggest asshole if she tricked Ben into a very public and very fake relationship with her.
“My dad is doing well—Ben, wait.” He turned to her, but she couldn’t even look at him. “Hold on. I need to . . .”
She couldn’t do this to him.
They were almost at the bar. She couldn’t go in there with him. The photographer might already be there. She turned around.
“Come to my suite instead of the bar?” She gave Ben a big smile. She couldn’t let him know what she’d almost done. “I changed my mind, I’d rather hang out there. Are you hungry? We can get room service! Some champagne, to celebrate the end of the shoot?”
Ben looked confused, but he turned around immediately.
“Sure, that works for me.”
They walked back toward the elevator. Anna walked faster and faster, convinced that, at any moment, the photographer might come walking down the hall and see them and pull out his camera.
But thank God, they got in the elevator without anyone recognizing her.
Anna didn’t look at Ben on the ride back downstairs—she just wanted to not be in public and to be back in her room where she could forget she’d ever thought this idea was good and order some snacks and have sex with Ben one last time and then go back to L.A. and make up a story to tell Simon about why his plan hadn’t worked out.
When the doors opened, she swept out of the elevator and walked as fast as she could to her suite at the end of the hall. She pulled her key card out of her bag and opened the door.
“Okay, great!” She picked up the phone as soon as they got inside. “What do you want to eat? Charcuterie plate? Cheese plate? They have great wings here, too!”
Ben hardly even looked at the room service menu she thrust in front of his face.
“All of that sounds good,” he said.
She nodded.
“Great. Great.” She pressed a button on the phone. “Hi! Can I get the cheese plate, the charcuterie plate, and an order of the wings? And champagne! Yes, yes, the Moët is fine, great. Two glasses, two plates. Thank you!”
Okay. They had champagne coming, now she could just relax and have a nice night with Ben here in her suite and she would forget that she’d been about to trick him into a fake relationship with her.
She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him.
“Hi. I’m glad I have you all to myself.”
She pulled his head down to kiss him. He kissed her back but pulled away after a little while.
“Anna. What’s wrong?”
She took a step back.
“Nothing’s wrong. Why do you think something is wrong?”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“You wanted to come back to the room pretty fast, you know. And you seemed weird in the elevator. What is it?”
She reached for his shirt.
“I realized I’d rather be alone with you. I’m heading back to L.A. tomorrow night and this is our last night together.” She slipped first one button open, then another. “I just couldn’t keep my hands off you anymore.”
He leaned down to kiss her. See, there we go. That was always the way to distract a man—tell them you couldn’t wait to get into their pants.
But then he pulled away again.
“So the thing is, I know when a woman invites me back to her hotel room because she can’t stand another minute without pulling my clothes off, and whatever happened in that hallway up there was not that. I know we don’t know each other all that well, but give me a little credit. You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong if you don’t want to, but don’t lie to me.”
Anna dropped her hands to her sides.
Ben stood there and looked at her. He just waited.
Damn it. Ben was so easygoing, so charming, that she kept forgetting how well he understood her.
She cleared her throat and let out a breath.
“Okay. Okay, um . . . Can we sit down?”
Ben sat down on one of the couches, and Anna sat next to him. She tried to figure out how to say this.
After a minute of silence, Ben turned to her.
“I can just go. If that’s what you want. It’s okay. I get it.”
She shook her head hard. She suddenly knew that was the last thing she wanted.
“No. No, please don’t go. I just . . . I was trying to figure out how to say this but I think I just have to dive in. You know how my manager came in the other day? When we were having breakfast here?” Ben nodded. “Right, okay, so. Well, he knows me pretty well, and he figured out there was something going on between the two of us.”
Ben raised his eyebrows.
“And . . . he was upset about it?”
This story wasn’t going to make sense to Ben, was it?
“No, to the contrary. He thought it was great. He . . . actually he wanted me to let the world think you were my boyfriend. To get more publicity for me and my career and have people wanting to know what was next for me, and that it would get me the role I’m in the running for. The one I told you about, the one I really want.”
Ben turned his whole body to look at her, his eyes all scrunched up in that way they did when he was trying to understand.
“Wait, say that again? Explain how I come into this?”
Anna let out a breath. At least she’d started.
“You know how we talked the other day about that movie I want, the Liz Varon movie? And how the studio is the holdup?” Ben nodded. “Okay. Simon thinks if I get some good headlines it will help me get it, and that stories about me and my hot new boyfriend will be just what I need.”
He grinned when she called him hot, thank goodness. Flattery was always a good idea.
“Please thank Simon for me,” he said. “But . . . were you going to . . .”
The flattery wasn’t enough for him to miss that key point, though. She might as well confess everything.
“No. I wasn’t going to tell you,” she said. “Simon arranged for a photographer to be up in the bar tonight to get some pictures of us together, and then the plan was to get you to come to L.A. to visit me next weekend and let you think it was just because I wanted you to be my boyfriend and we could be out in public together some, even come to the Vigilantes premiere with me, and we thought that might be enough to be the career boost I need.”
Ben didn’t say anything.
She almost told him why she hadn’t planned to tell him the truth—that Simon thought he might sell the story, or blackmail her, or something. But if she said that, Ben would think she didn’t trust him. And she suddenly realized what she should have realized before: she trusted him completely.
She kept talking.
“But when we were walking down the hall upstairs I realized I couldn’t deceive you that way, especially after everything you’ve done for me, and because . . . I guess because I like you, and the idea of lying to you about this for weeks made me feel like an enormous asshole. So that’s what was wrong up there, that’s why I turned around and made you come back to the suite—
”
“That’s why you were almost running back to the elevator, because you didn’t want the photographer to catch us?”
He’d noticed that part, too.
“Yeah.”
Ben nodded slowly. He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Anna expected him to get up and walk out the door. Instead, a grin spread across his face.
“So your only problem with doing this was deceiving me? Okay. Now I’m in on it. Let’s do it.”
Anna sat back on the couch and stared at him.
“What? Are you . . . really?”
Ben’s grin got wider.
“You want a pretend boyfriend for a month? I can be your pretend boyfriend for a month. I don’t have anything to do next weekend; I’ll come to L.A. This sounds like a blast.” He stood up. “Let’s go back upstairs and make sure that photographer sees us.”
Anna didn’t move.
“Wait. Ben. Don’t you want to think about this? I didn’t expect . . . I didn’t expect you to want to do this. Won’t this fuck stuff up for you at work?”
He thought about that for a second.
“Good point. I’ll talk to my boss—as long as I tell her in advance, it’ll be okay. Plus, the client is thrilled about how well this ad campaign went, which means everyone in the office is thrilled with me. I might have to fudge the time line a little, but it’ll work out. See, there we go, problem solved.”
The doorbell chimed.
“Room service!”
Damn it. She’d forgotten about room service. She went to the door to let them in.
“Shall I open the champagne, Ms. Gardiner?” the waiter asked as he set up the food on the coffee table.
Anna looked at Ben, who shook his head. Maybe he’d reconsidered already.
“No, thanks,” she said. She scribbled her signature on the bill and added a hefty tip. By the time the door closed behind the waiter, though, Ben had already picked up the bottle and was pulling off the foil top.
“Room service is great, but why let someone else have the fun of opening a bottle of champagne?” he asked. He popped the bottle and then filled two glasses.
“How about it, Ms. Gardiner?” Ben handed her a glass. “Do we have a deal?”
If he wanted to do this, who was she to argue?
“We have a deal, Mr. Stephens.” They looked into each other’s eyes as they clinked glasses.
Ben took a long sip and then buttoned up his shirt.
“Can we still make it for that photographer? I don’t want to spoil Simon’s plan.”
Anna laughed and checked her watch. Incredibly, it was barely eight thirty.
“We can still make it. But we can also wait to do that part later, now that I’m not trapping you into this.”
Ben shook his head.
“No time like the present, like my mom always says. How do I look? Am I wrinkled?”
She grinned as she looked him over. She was in a much better mood about doing this now.
“You look perfect.”
He took her arm and stopped right before they opened the door.
“Wait. One quick question. If the answer to this is no, I won’t change my mind, just so you know—I just want to temper my expectations. But . . . do we still get to have sex?”
Anna laughed out loud.
“God yes. As long as that’s okay with you?”
Ben backed her up against the door and kissed her hard.
“What do you think?”
Anna breathed him in, let her hands trace over his arms and chest. She kissed his collarbone, his cheek, his lips. Damn, being with him felt so good.
“I think I don’t want to go back upstairs.”
Ben kissed her again, then backed away.
“Oh no, Ms. Gardiner, you’re not getting out of this that quickly. Let’s go.”
He opened the door with a flourish, and she grinned at him as she stepped into the hallway.
Thirteen
By the time they made it to the bar, it was eight forty-five. Someone immediately set drinks in front of them as soon as they slid into their booth.
“Did you call and order drinks ahead for us?” Ben asked as he picked up the pint of beer the waiter had given him.
Anna rolled her eyes and took a sip of her pastel-colored cocktail.
“No. This has Simon’s fingerprints all over it. I’m sorry he decided what you should be drinking tonight. I promise, that’s not how the rest of the night is going to go.” She stopped for a second and then grinned at him. “Well. Not most of it, anyway.”
Ben looked at her over his glass. He’d been pissed at first, when she’d told him why he was really there that night. That she’d only asked him out to trick him into getting photographed with her, and then trick him into dating her, and it was all to benefit her career. He was still kind of pissed, actually, even though he’d agreed to do this. He hadn’t lied to her when he’d said that it sounded like a blast—it did, especially since he’d get to keep sleeping with Anna the whole time. Was he glad that he had a built-in excuse to be away from the Bay Area next weekend? Yes, fine. Was he fucking thrilled to get to keep sleeping with Anna? Absolutely. So, sure, he’d do whatever playacting Anna wanted him to do. Why not?
He looked across the table at her. God, she was beautiful. She almost shone, sitting there across from him, taking tiny sips of her pale purple drink. She smiled that glittering smile at him, not the way she did when it was just the two of them, but the way she’d only smiled at him a few times—that first day on set, and then the day before, when she’d . . . Wait a minute.
“Is the photographer here?” he asked her as he lifted his beer in front of his mouth.
Her expression barely changed, but her eyes did. They looked—surprised? Impressed?
“How did you know?” she asked.
He reached across the table and took her hand. If they were going to do this, they might as well do it.
“That look you just gave me. I just realized you’re acting when you do that.”
She held on to his fingers and rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb. He wondered if she’d be anxious now, because of what she’d gone through before with the press and everything else, but she seemed as relaxed and confident as he’d ever seen her.
“When I do what?” She raised one eyebrow at him, and he raised one right back at her.
“When you do that Helen of Troy smiling thing.”
She laughed out loud. She tossed her hair out of her face and smiled at him like she had in the hotel room, that morning in Palm Springs. Did she know how sexy she was?
“This is so much more fun with you in on it,” she said.
Yeah. She knew. He played with her fingers and shook his head.
“You’re a nightmare, you know that?” he said to her. “You and your movie star-smiles and sexy little hair tosses and that sway you put in your hips when you know I’m watching you.”
She laughed at him again, their fingers still intertwined.
“Oh, I’m the nightmare? Excuse me—who, exactly, was the person who sweet-talked us into a room at a sold-out hotel just last week by flirting his head off with the clerk, and making sure she knew immediately the woman he was there with was his sister? Because that was one of us at this table, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me.”
Ben grinned at the memory. It had gotten them what they needed, hadn’t it?
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it as he looked her in the eye.
“We seem to be well matched, then.”
He could tell by her wide eyes and closed lips she was doing everything possible not to laugh.
“Well played for the camera. You’re such an asshole. Do you practice these things?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I think I’ve j
ust always known.” He lowered his voice. It was time to get her back a little. “Just like I’ve always known that you like it when I pull your hair when I kiss you. Just a little. Just enough to make you tingle.”
She swallowed. He let his grin widen.
“I do like that,” she said. “In the same way you like it when I climb on top of you, and you’re at my mercy.”
Oh, she was going to try this, too, huh?
“Mmm, that’s because it gives me better access to those incredible breasts of yours,” he said. “I know you love it when I bite your nipples, especially afterward, when I lick them to make them better.” God, he loved the look on her face right now. “And thank God you love it, because I really fucking love doing it.” She was breathing heavily now, and he could see her chest rising and falling. “Did you wear that dress tonight because you knew I wouldn’t be able to help myself from staring at your cleavage?”
She nodded.
“I did. Did you wear those jeans tonight because you knew I would spend the whole time we were in here thinking about your ass?”
He had, as a matter of fact.
“Hey, I saw the way you looked at me the other day when we were in my apartment. A man’s got to do what he can to get ahead. All’s fair in love and war, isn’t that the saying?”
He couldn’t believe his luck. He’d just signed on for a month of sex with Anna, for the cost of, what, a few magazine pictures? And it got him out of town right when he wanted to be unavailable. Perfect.
“I like it when you look at me like that,” Anna said.
He let his eyebrows go up again.
“Like what?” he asked, even though he knew what she was talking about.
“Like you want to tear my clothes off with your teeth,” she said.
Ben bit his bottom lip and let his fingers trace patterns over hers.
“More like I want to crawl under the table and slide my tongue into your pussy,” he said. She shivered. He felt triumphant.
“Finish that beer, asshole, and as soon as we get back to my suite, I’m going to hold you to that.”
While We Were Dating Page 19