“My….” His eyes bulged. “No, I’m not gay!”
“Oh, relax. I get it, now—you have to pretend to keep the female fans happy. Your secret’s safe with me. Hey! You must know who else is gay! Is it true about...you know. Him? Because I always wondered—”
“I’m not gay!”
I nodded. “Of course.” I winked at him and looked around for eavesdroppers. “You’re absolutely not gay,” I said loudly.
“No! I’m serious! I’m really not!”
I gave him a disbelieving look. “Mr. Cole, I’m absolutely fine with it. I have gay friends. Relax.” I sighed. “Honestly, I’m stupid for not seeing it sooner. All those muscles, and that ridiculous over-the-top machismo—”
“Ridiculous—”
“No one’s that full of testosterone.”
“Look—”
“God, I’m so much more relaxed, now. I was actually nervous before—”
He let out a sigh and grabbed me. One huge hand cupped my waist, the other slid into my hair and supported my head. He lifted me as easily as a doll, my feet kicking as they left the floor and then—
His lips were pressing down onto mine, kissing once, twice on my lips, and the hot, hard maleness of him was all around me. I felt my lips flowering open and then the kiss was changing, deepening, his tongue searching out mine. I let out a noise like “MMFFFFFP!” but it very quickly trailed off into a groan. He had me cradled in his arms, hanging almost sideways in the air, and for a second I didn’t feel enormous. I felt...delicate.
The kiss changed again, hot and hungry, now, as he devoured me as eagerly as he had at the coliseum. We started kissing with open mouths, panting and intense. Raw lust pounded through my body like a drumbeat. I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to kiss him forever, draw every breath from his lungs. My dangling leg pressed against him—
I felt it. Hard as rock, throbbing hotly through his jeans, its shape and length easily discernible even through the fabric. My eyes flew open.
He broke the kiss and set me back down on my feet. I staggered a little, my legs like jelly. “Oh God,” I said. “You’re not gay.”
He shook his head slowly.
I touched my lips. “And we just—”
“Just so you know,” he told me.
“Right. Yes,” I said breathlessly. “Thank you, for setting me straight. I definitely know now.” I couldn’t seem to get my breath. I didn’t know whether I should be slapping him or hurling myself back into his arms.
“I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping,” he told me, and walked off down the hall.
***
My room was huge, with a walk in wardrobe that seemed as big as my bedroom back in London. I unpacked the small selection of tops and underwear I’d bought—I’d figured on being in jeans almost all of the time, since we’d be working—and they filled about one percent of the space.
Then I slumped on the bed. What had just happened? Had that really just been a way of putting me straight (no pun intended)? Or had he just used the excuse to kiss me because he damn well wanted to?
No. That was crazy. This was Tanner Cole—a very clearly straight, dripping with testosterone Tanner Cole—and he could have any woman he chose. He wasn’t going to be interested in—
I caught sight of myself in the mirror and immediately wanted to hurl a shoe at it. He wasn’t going to be interested in me, with my curves.
I wasn’t tired, but I knew I should try to sleep and get my body onto LA time. So I took a shower in the enormous en-suite bathroom, crawled under the covers and then lay staring up at the ceiling in a state of shocked disbelief. I was thousands of miles from home, but far, far, further from what I thought of as my comfort zone.
I should never have taken the job.
The previous morning, life had been simple and—well, maybe not actually happy, but I was doing okay. Now, a billionaire who I maybe sort of kind of had a thing for had seen me naked and kissed me. It must be hilarious for him, teasing the big girl. But now it was going to be even harder to look him in the eye. It would have been simpler if I wasn’t crushing on him something chronic but, however much of a jerk the real-life Tanner was, the movie version was still absurdly sexy.
The real life version felt pretty sexy, too, I had to admit. When he lifted me up and—
I groaned and put the pillow over my head. This week was going to be unbearable.
Chapter 3
My body clock finally recognized that it was time to sleep. I smiled and pulled a pillow to my chest and cuddled up to it.
Five minutes later, the alarm on my phone went off. I lay there for a while, cursing, and then stumbled to the shower.
Downstairs, I found Tanner already at the breakfast table, eating a huge breakfast and looking irritatingly magnificent in shorts and a bright red polo shirt. Sunlight streamed through the window—a full-on, Californian end-of-summer day, very different to the one I’d left behind in London. He was reading some Hollywood gossip rag, but tossed it aside when he saw me. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I looked around. The kitchen, like everything else in the place, was massive, all granite countertops and stainless steel.
“There’s normally a chef—Edgar,” said Tanner. “But I figured I’d cook this week. We’re gonna be busy. And I can live without three course meals if you can.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Edgar gets kind of annoyed if you say, ‘I just want a quick snack.’”
I nodded. He seemed oddly...human. And was he really suggesting that he do the cooking himself? What kind of billionaire was he?
“I can do something for you now,” he offered. “Eggs, over-easy, off the skillet?”
“Eggs what? Off the what?”
He smirked. “Sausage and biscuit?”
“Biscuits? You eat biscuits for breakfast?”
His eyes were doing that twinkly thing again. “Grits?”
“Now you’re just making things up. That’s very kind of you, Mr. Cole, but I’ll make my own breakfast, thank you.” I searched around for a toaster and eventually found one. After a few minutes, I asked, “Where’s the tea?”
“Tea?”
“Tea. Tea.”
He looked at me blankly and then shook his head.
“You don’t drink tea? Ever?” I probably sounded more aghast than I’d meant to, but...really?
He shook his head again, smiling now. “You’re so British,” he said in wonder.
I sighed and poured myself a coffee from the pot. One sip and I wasn’t sleepy anymore.
“Too strong?” he asked, smirking again.
“Not at all,” I croaked. “I’m just used to...you know. A gentler start to the day.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” he said. “I’m not used to being gentle.”
For some reason, that brought a wave of heat to my face.
***
After breakfast—his culinary independence only extended as far as the cooking, I noticed; there must be a maid somewhere who’d clean up—we went to work in the living room. I tried not to be distracted by the huge windows looking out over the gardens and pool, or the Academy Awards in the trophy cabinet.
It’s just what you normally do, I told myself. You’ve done it before. Except my normal clients weren’t so...big. Or strong-jawed. And they certainly didn’t have eyes that did that twinkly thing.
He showed me a synopsis of the movie he’d be shooting, together with a few paragraphs about his character. “Okay,” I said. “So we’re looking at a home counties, upper-class, Victorian accent.”
“Home counties?” he asked.
I tried not to smirk. This was my eggs, over easy. “The posh areas around London,” I translated. “Let me hear you say, ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.’”
“The—what?”
“I’m analyzing your vowels.”
He did that thing I’d seen him do in the movies, where he dipped his head and looked up at me almost through his eyebrows, and something
hot and needy tightened, deep inside me. I gulped.
“The rain,” he drawled, staring right into my eyes, “in Spain, falls mainly on the plain.”
I swallowed.
“Well?” he asked. “How are my vowels?”
I cleared my throat. “We have a lot of work to do.”
***
Tanner was a surprisingly quick study, once he stopped joking around and got down to it. He understood what he had to do and had no problem following my instructions. He didn’t seem anywhere near as arrogant as I’d imagined a famous actor—especially a billionaire0—would be. Even the minor TV actors I worked with back in London were harder to work with. What did that mean? Was Tanner like this with everyone and the stories were just stories? That seemed like the only explanation, because the alternative—that he was making an effort for me…that made no sense at all.
It was still going to take time, though. However hard he tried, he couldn’t change his voice in a morning. It takes time to unlearn things. It takes time to delve down deep enough into the wiring in your head to really start reshaping things.
And there was another problem, aside from his voice. He was too…unrefined. Not just his voice but the way that he moved, the way he used his hands. He was like a bull or a bear when he needed to be a cat. It was perfect for playing a blue collar action hero, but for an English lord it wasn’t going to cut it. I didn’t say anything, of course. My job was his voice, nothing more. So I held my tongue.
I managed to hold it for the entire morning. Then, when we were eating a very good salad Edgar had left us, I snapped.
“That’s not going to do,” I told him, as he picked up his fork in his right hand.
Luckily, he looked more shocked than annoyed. “…what?”
I sighed. “Nothing. Ignore me. Sorry.”
He frowned. “No, tell me. What?”
I bit my lip. He stared at me with those gray eyes, pinning me with his gaze. “It’s…If you really want this part….”
“I do,” he said firmly. Again, I was surprised by how serious he sounded about it.
“If you want it,” I said slowly, “you’re going to need to change more than your voice.”
He looked at me and then down at his fork. “Like how I use a fork?”
“Well, for a start you should be using a knife with it. But it’s how you hold it, how you eat—” I sighed. “Are you sure you want to get into this?”
He put the fork down. “Yeah.”
I thought through what I was going to say. “You’re very…I mean, I can see how the audience connects with you because you’re an everyman. You’re like them.”
He smirked. “You mean I’m from the wrong side of the tracks?”
I flushed.
“It’s okay. I am from the wrong side of the tracks. My dad worked construction. My mom mopped floors.”
I hadn’t known that. I’d kind of assumed that the roughness was at least partially put on. “Oh.”
“So be honest. If there’s a problem, I want to know.”
I took a deep breath. “I think…if you’re going to play a lord…people are going to want you to be different to them. More…refined.”
He raised one eyebrow. “You’re saying I’m unrefined?” His voice was a low rumble.
I swallowed.
“Relax. I get it. I’m more like a Mustang, or a Dodge Charger, right? All brute power. And I need to be more like a Jaguar,”—he pronounced it Jag-wah—“more…controlled.”
“It’s maybe not the analogy I would have picked,” I said slowly. “But yes. More controlled.”
He slowly picked up his fork and started to eat again, this time using his knife, too.
“Don’t attack the food,” I told him. “You look like a famer.”
He burst out laughing. “You got a problem with farmers?”
I colored. “I didn’t mean—I just mean that for the movie, it’s inappropriate.”
He nodded. “I get it, I get it. It’s just funny. Go on, my Ladyship. Tell me how I should be doing it.”
The my ladyship thing sent a sort of quiver through me and I wasn’t sure why. “The food is not the enemy,” I told him. “Don’t hack at it. I shouldn’t hear the knife on the plate. The blade should never touch the china except to softly caress it.”
Tanner stared at me.
“It’s what it said in an old manners book I read,” I told him.
“They don’t just teach you all this, in Britain?” he asked.
“No. I…read it.” I looked down at my plate, hoping he didn’t ask why I’d read it.
“Well, I’m glad you did,” said Tanner. “I want to get this right.” He looked down at his hands. “Like this?” he asked, slicing a cube of feta cheese in half.
I bit my lip. Was he for real, or just trying to make me feel better? “Not…quite,” I said. “But, you know, it’s probably fine. It probably doesn’t matter that much—”
He leaned forward and I was struck again by how big he was, like a bear looming over me. It should have been intimidating, but somehow it wasn’t. My eyes were drawn to the triangle of tan skin revealed by the collar of his polo shirt. I could see the tops of his pecs there, smooth and deliciously big. “You remember that movie I did, with a car chase through three states?”
I nodded. “Hard and Dangerous.”
“Well, when they cast me for that movie, I could barely drive. I mean, I could drive down the highway, but I couldn’t drive fast, you know? And they said that’s fine, we got stunt drivers and people to do all that.”
I leaned closer. “Okay….”
“But I wanted to get it right, you know? Like, how they do the gear changes really fast. How they hold the wheel in a skid. So I went and found this gang of real-life street racers. Met up with them every week for a month, paying to ride shotgun while they raced. We nearly got caught by the cops about a million times, but it was worth it. It meant I got it right.”
My eyes were wide. “Really? You really did that?”
“Oh yeah. Nice bunch of people. Lori, the one I drove with was called. And there was another one they called Princess, and a big guy called ‘B’.” He looked at me seriously. “So when I say I want to get it right...I want to get it right. This stuff matters to me.”
I nodded dumbly.
“Come around behind me and show me.”
I slowly got up and walked around to stand behind his chair. Then I leaned forward and took his hands in mine. Oh God! His hands were so warm! Not hot and sweaty—warm and dry and somehow very solid. My own hands looked tiny by comparison. “Slowly,” I told him. “Patiently. You’re a rich lord. You have all the time in the world. Savor the food.” I guided his hands and he let them move under my control. I sliced into a tomato, the juice squirting and oozing. “Move the knife...languidly. Like you’re playing an instrument.”
He nodded.
“And small bites,” I told him. “Morsels.”
“How big?” he wanted to know. “Show me.” He turned his head to the side so that he could look at me.
My heart was thumping faster. I sawed off a small piece of roasted pepper and raised the fork to show him.
“Go on,” he said, his voice a rumble that passed right through me, leaving me trembling.
I had to lean forward to see what I was doing. I knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t have any choice. I felt the loose blouse I was wearing touch his back first, and then the warmth of him was touching the twin peaks of my nipples and I could hear my heart pounding. I leaned closer still, and my breasts started to pillow against his back. I swallowed. We were as close as lovers, now, and I knew he must be able to feel how hard my heart was beating.
I lifted the forkful of pepper to his mouth and he accepted it, chewed and swallowed. His eyes never left mine for a second.
***
When we went back to work—my hands still shaking—we started working through speech exercises, training him syllable-by-syllable in h
is new accent. I could see he was frustrated—it’s hard, saying the same thing again and again and being told it’s not quite right. It drives every one of my clients crazy, but Tanner was more patient than most. Again, not the side of him the media ever showed. Between his patience and his desire to get every detail right, I was beginning to see why he’d been so successful.
I eventually called a break because I could see his eyes beginning to glaze over. “Thanks,” he said as he made a fresh pot of coffee. “I was starting to lose it. I guess it could be worse, though. If I was a woman, I’d have to do all this and wear a corset.”
I burst out laughing. “You know their waists actually got smaller?” I asked. “Some women’s lung volume shrank so much, they had to shallow breathe. That’s where the whole heaving bosoms thing came from—”
I cut myself off because, just as I said heaving bosoms, Tanner’s gaze flicked down to my breasts. That means nothing, I told myself. Just a male reaction to hearing anything to do with boobs. He wasn’t looking at my boobs, just the nearest available pair. “Anyway,” I managed. “Yes. It was worse for women.”
“All those long skirts must have got in the way,” he said, staring right at me. “When they wanted to…y’know.”
“Oh, no,” I said without thinking. “They just lay back in the grass and hoiked their skirts up around their waists.” And then I stared at him like a bunny in the headlights, unable to believe what had just come out of my mouth.
“Did they?” he asked, smirking.
I nodded.
“You like them,” Tanner said, folding his arms.
“I—What?”
“English gentlemen, as they used to be. You like them, right?”
Hot, raw embarrassment soaked through me. How could he know? How could he possibly know? “I—Well, I mean—” I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Why?”
My cheeks were hot. “Because they treated women with respect.”
“Did they? Weren’t they all taking the maids in the scullery, and wasn’t it all arranged marriages and stuff?”
The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) Page 4