“Is there more of that?” Tanner asked, nodding at the tea. “Did you make a pot? You make it in pots, right?”
“You don’t like it,” I said quietly.
“What? Yes I do. I mean, I’m getting to like it.” He frowned. “What’s gotten into you?”
I couldn’t tell him about Maury. The guy had been his agent and friend for years. If I came between them, it would look as if I was jealous or something. “It’s just…” I couldn’t put it into words. Too fast? Too scary? Wrong, because he was sort of my boss? Right, because it had been amazing? All of those? “Weird,” I said at last.
To my surprise, he nodded. “Yep,” he said. “I know. That’s not all on me, though. It could have all moved a lot slower if you hadn’t teased me.”
I blinked. “Teased you?”
“I come to you and pour out my heart, tell you you’re my Annabel, and you say, ‘Right, thank you.’” He clapped a hand to his heart, wounded. “Ouch!”
I stared at him. He thought I’d been teasing him?! I was the last person in the world to play games like that. “But you said—I didn’t know you were—You said Abigail!”
“Who?”
I sighed. “Doesn’t matter.” I stared at him for a long moment and then kissed the tip of his nose. “Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Tell me it wasn’t just a one night stand. Tell me you don’t do that with everyone. Tell me it’s going to be okay.”
“Wow. All in one sentence?”
I gave him a look.
“Okay, okay.” He took a deep breath. “It was not a one night stand. And I don’t know how many beautiful voice coaches I have staying over at my place, but if there were any others then no, I wouldn’t do that with them: just you. And yes.” He took my face between his palms again. “It’s going to be okay.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
He released my head and I nodded determinedly. “Right. Get moving and get one of those big breakfasts down you. We have a lot of work to do.”
He looked amused. “You want to go straight back to work?”
I thought of Maury. It was starting to make sense, now that I’d calmed down. He must be able to see how Tanner was changing, since I’d arrived. The last thing he’d want would be for Tanner to get serious—in his choice of roles or in his private life. Maury wanted the bad boy action hero who could bring in the big bucks, and he wanted a bachelor he could use to generate PR. A settled—let alone married—Tanner would be unthinkable.
Well, I wasn’t going to let him win. “We have one day left and we’re going to get you perfect. By the time I’m finished with you, the Queen is going to think you’re a relative.”
He gave me a slow smile and then kissed the top of my head. “You’re amazing,” he told me. “Okay, fine. Back to work. But tonight, when it’s all over, I’m taking you out on a date.”
***
The work went well. It was faster because the stress was gone. In the back of my mind, there were still doubts. Did I seriously think this could possibly work? His life was so far removed from mine, so completely on another level, that I couldn’t even imagine what our relationship might look like.
But his smile and the way he looked at me were enough to let me push the fear down inside, and relegate what Maury had said to a deep, dark place in my mind. We worked well together, and we were disciplined. Despite the temptation, we didn’t run off to the bedroom.
Well, only once. The time in the gym, with me on the weights bench, doesn’t count because we were downstairs.
***
By evening, there was nothing more I could do. Tanner sounded every inch the English gentleman and it was hard to work out which was sexier: his gravelly Californian drawl or his commanding English tones. I decided I’d need to do thorough research before making the decision, and that it should be done in the bedroom.
I was getting excited about the date and, even though part of me was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, I was starting to dare to believe that maybe this thing could work. Tanner didn’t give any sign that it had happened on a whim. In fact, he scarcely let go of me the entire day, grabbing my hand when we walked from one room to another. He’d squeeze. I’d squeeze back. I felt like a teenager again.
Just as we finished, there was a knock on the door. My stomach tightened, but this time it was a mailman. He handed Tanner a large box tied with a ribbon, and Tanner handed it to me. “Go try that on,” he told me. “It’s for tonight.”
***
The box held a dress. A long scarlet dress with a scoop neckline that left no doubt that Tanner himself had chosen it. At first, I thought it couldn’t possibly fit, but the fabric was just the right blend of clingy and stretchy.
I took a critical look at myself in the mirror. The dress was pretty much the polar opposite of what I would have bought myself. It didn’t hide my curves like my shapeless blouses had—it accentuated them. It showed my true shape in a way I wouldn’t have dreamed of allowing only a week ago. But now, knowing that Tanner had chosen it...it was different.
He crept into the room behind me—well, he tried. It’s difficult to creep when you’re as big as Tanner, but I played along and pretended to jump when he wrapped his arms around my waist.
Then I really did jump, because I saw what he was holding in his hands. A silver necklace, like a flat band of liquid metal coated in—
“Please say those aren’t real diamonds,” I croaked.
“Would that make you feel better?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “They’re zirconia. Cheap copies. The whole thing’s worth, like, ten dollars.” He paused. “But...you know. Don’t lose it or anything.”
I gave him a look.
He kissed my ear. “You look fantastic,” he said, running his hands up and down my waist. “You’ll be the most beautiful woman there.”
“Where is there?” I asked, worried. But he just kissed me again.
***
“There” turned out to be Fellidicio’s, a restaurant right in the heart of downtown LA. People booked a table six months in advance.
Unless they were Tanner Cole.
The entire place was like a giant glass box, with a glass wall separating the dining area from the kitchen. In fact, looking around, I couldn’t see a solid wall anywhere, which made me wonder where the restrooms were.
I looked down. “There are fish,” I said.
Tanner squeezed me from behind. “I know,” he said. “The whole restaurant’s built on a giant aquarium tank. The water’s about eight feet deep. Cool, isn’t it?”
I looked down into the depths, feeling suddenly dizzy. As I watched, an angel fish come up to the surface and tried to nibble at my toes, stopped only by what felt like a thin piece of glass. “It’s...different,” I said carefully. I was wearing the highest, spikiest heels I possessed, since the dress sort of demanded it. I made a mental note not to stamp my foot.
“Oh, relax,” said Tanner. “It’s an illusion. The glass is a foot thick.”
“Really?”
“Almost certainly. Oh look, our table’s ready.”
I was actually quite glad of the fish as a distraction because, as we walked to our table right in the center of the restaurant, I could feel everyone in the room turn to look at us. They were looking at Tanner, of course, not me. Then, once they’d nodded to each other and agreed that yes, it really was Tanner Cole over there, they all murmured the same question: who the hell is she?
We sat down. Okay. Table. Plates. This was familiar. I could handle this. Breathe, Charlotte.
I was okay until I spotted the table of women behind Tanner, all giving me the eye.
“Ev-e-on is uck-in at ee” I said without moving my mouth.
“What?”
I leaned closer. “Everyone is looking at me!” I whispered. I could feel my face reddening.
He smiled. “Of course
they are. You’re the most beautiful woman here.”
I glanced around. I was surrounded by women who looked like supermodels. My stomach lurched—some of them probably were supermodels. When I looked back to Tanner, he was looking right into my eyes.
“I know how scary this is for you,” he said. “You think I don’t, but I do. I know how brave you’re being.” He leaned closer. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Not ever.”
Some of the fear receded, as if pushed back by a warm fire.
Tanner ordered champagne and then said, “Do you know how I wound up calling you in the first place?”
I shook my head.
“I saw your profile online and I knew I had to meet you, even though you were in England. I made Maury email you.”
I stared at him. “There wasn’t a shortlist? You picked me because—”
“I picked you because you were good,” he said, putting his hand on mine. “And because you seemed like you’d be fun to work with. And because I was totally, totally smitten with you.”
I thought about it for a while. I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or flattered. I decided it was both. Then my eyes narrowed. “When you first called, and I was naked…”
“...did I avert my eyes? Of course I did. I’m a gentleman.”
“You’re not a gentleman. You’re a bad boy.”
“That’s true. I recorded it.”
“What?!”
“Kidding. But I didn’t avert my eyes.”
I glared at him…and wanted to hurl myself across the table and kiss him.
***
We drank champagne—which tasted very, very expensive—and ate our starters—which were very, very small. Mine was a cube of cheese wrapped in something that may have been seaweed wrapped in what I thought was beef wrapped in something that was so entirely translucent I was worried it was some sort of packaging and I’d look like an idiot for eating it.
“It’s edible film,” Tanner told me. “Made from sugar and lotus blossoms.”
I looked to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t. “It’s lovely,” I said, gingerly tasting it. “But...do you like this? I mean”—I looked down at the clown fish trying to get at my shoe—“places like this? Isn’t it a bit...over the top?”
He threw back his head and laughed. Everyone turned around to look and then tried to look as if they weren’t looking.
“Do you realize that you’re the only person in Hollywood who’d ask that?” he asked. I reddened. “No, no, that’s why I like you,” he said quickly. “You’re—”
“Quaint?”
“No—”
“British?”
“No—”
“An idiot?”
He put a finger to my lips. “Like me. I was going say, ‘you’re like me’.”
My heart soared in my chest. When the waiter had cleared the plates, I said, “Is that why...last night? Why we….”
He smirked. “Why we—”
“Don’t say it!” I looked around. “Not here!”
“Why we chose to take a chance?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back and gazed at me. It was a strange feeling. I’d never made a man gaze before. “I did it because I can’t think of anything better. It might happen. It might not. I hope it does. But why would we not want to chance that?”
I shook my head. “It’s not that I wouldn’t want it to happen. God…I mean, I think I’d want it to. I’m just not used to...living dangerously.”
He laughed again. “That’s what you don’t understand.” He leaned forward again and took hold of my hands in his. A waiter approached with our entrees but Tanner fixed him in place with a look. “This isn’t living dangerously, for me,” he said. “My whole life has been crazy. Bars. Casinos. Strip clubs. Bachelor lifestyle. And all that’s great, until you’re sitting there at three in the morning buying drinks you don’t even like for people you don’t even know….” He reached up and stroked my cheek. “This—you, me, maybe a baby...that’s the un-dangerous part. It’s what I’m finally ready for. Okay?”
I sat there, stunned, as he kissed my fingertips. Eventually I nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Because that waiter’s desperate to serve you what looks like orange string wrapped around a giant peanut.”
***
When the entrees had been cleared away, I went to find the restroom. To my relief, there were solid walls on it, but hidden behind mirrors to maintain the illusion that everything was glass. Very shiny mirrors. I bumped into them a few times before I figured it out.
In the restroom, I shut myself in a stall, sat down and let out the world’s longest sigh. My head was spinning, and not just from the champagne. How had I come from struggling to pay my rent in London to walking on fish and food I didn’t understand in Hollywood? Things felt like they were going well, but I still felt like something awful was about to happen. Paranoia? Was I just unable to accept finally being happy?
Tanner continued to confound me. Just when I thought I’d got him figured out, he’d throw me another curveball. I was still reeling from the notion that he’d hired me because he’d had a thing for me. If I hadn’t been so scared, so uptight, we could have got together as soon as I’d arrived. God, he’d even kissed me, not five minutes after I walked into the mansion! How many signals did I need?!
But if I had...maybe it wouldn’t have worked out as well. Maybe I’d needed that time to be ready. Especially since we’d taken a whole dramatic step since then. I looked down at myself and ran my hand over my stomach. Even now, a whole complex ballet of perfectly-synchronized changes could be underway. I visualized it as one of those world record-breaking domino runs. One domino knocked over in just the right place and then it was totally out of control.
I’d been shocked, in bed with him, to find the idea of it making me hot. What was more shocking was that now, when I could think halfway-clearly, it still made me hot. And I still liked the idea. It had a sort of primitive, instinctive urgency to it. Was this what Rachel had meant?
I was still going over it and over it when I heard the door open and three pairs of heels click across the floor to the sinks.
“Nobody actually makes bets like that,” one of them said. “That only happens in movies.”
“It’s the only explanation,” another said. “It’s gotta be for a bet.”
My insides turned to freezing water. Then: don’t be stupid. They could be talking about anything.
“She could be a screenwriter or something,” a new voice said. “Or his sister.”
I froze completely. I think I stopped breathing.
“He had her head in his hands,” said the first one. “He was kissing her fingers. Your brother ever do that to you? She’s his date.”
It’s funny, but the one word that came next hurt the most of all.
“Why?!”
It was the incredulous tone in which she said it. The laughter that followed. I managed to stay silent until they’d flocked out of the restroom. Only then did I lean forward and put my head in my hands.
It wasn’t just what other people thought. It was what I thought, inside. Why?!
The tears started as hot, silent drops into my hands and grew into shuddering, aching sobs. I cried because of everything they’d said. I’d tried because I knew they were right. I cried most of all because it was something wrong with me, not us. I’d ruined everything.
I cried until my tears ran dry.
When I ventured out and looked in the mirror, my eyes were red and swollen and my mascara had run in long, dark tracks down my cheeks. And, stupidly, I’d left my handbag and any chance of repairing the damage on the table with Tanner.
There was nothing else to do, so I hauled open the door and began the long walk to the table, trying to keep my eyes on my destination. But the restaurant was huge, and every table I passed fell into shocked silence as they saw my face. I was suddenly eighteen feet tall and twenty wide.
Ahead of me, Tanner
looked up, saw me and jumped to his feet. I saw him dig out a wad of bills and toss them onto the table, then scramble for his phone. “Charlotte!” he said as I reached the table. “What—”
“I’m leaving,” I said simply, and headed for the door. I had no idea where I was going to go or how I was going to get there. I only knew I needed to get out.
“Wait,” Tanner said behind me. “I called the driver. He’s pulling around front.”
I kept walking. I could hear Tanner’s footsteps as he ran to catch up. I put my hand out to pull open the door—
“Charlotte, wait!” yelled Tanner in sudden panic.
I jerked the door open and, as I stepped through, my world exploded into light and pain. A bomb must have gone off, because people were screaming. But the blinding light didn’t dim; it kept getting brighter and brighter, flash after flash after flash. I staggered backwards and almost fell. Tanner caught me just in time, and the flashes came even faster.
“Tanner! TANNER!”
“Who is she?”
“Did you make her cry, Tanner?”
“Tanner, are you fucking her?”
There was a screech of tires and a lot of cursing and the flashes slowed as some of the photographers were forced out of the way. I had purple spots in front of my eyes, but I could dimly make out a car at the bottom of the steps, its rear door open.
Tanner’s strong arms locked around my waist and suddenly I was being lifted up and carried down the steps, my head on his shoulder. I clung to him for all I was worth. He ducked and swung me inside the car and followed me in, slamming the door behind us. A couple of photographers almost lost fingers.
They were all around us, pressing against the glass so hard I thought it would break, the inside of the limo lighting up as if there was a lightning storm outside. The driver kept the speed low until he’d forced his way through the pack and then shot forward, cameras scraping against the glass as their owners angled for one last shot. Then we were clear.
The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) Page 9