The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) (13 page)

“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.

“Are you okay?” asked Tanner, turning me to him. “What happened?”

I just stared at him. Fresh tears were forming in my eyes.

“Tell me!” he said. “I’ll fix it!”

I shook my head. “It’s
me,”
I said bitterly. “You can’t fix
me!
I’m not right for this! They’re all looking at me and”—my voice hitched—“they’re all talking about me and I don’t want photos of me and it’s
all wrong—
”

He grabbed me and pulled me to him, burying my head in his chest. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He stroked my hair. “Charlotte, I am so, so sorry.”

I sobbed into his shirt. I wrapped my arms around his waist and that helped.

“I shouldn’t have taken you there,” he said. I still had my face buried between the comforting hardness of his pecs but, from the sound of his voice, he had his face in his palm. “I’m a selfish prick. Fellidicio’s was throwing you in at the deep end. I was just so
proud
of you.”

That should have made me feel better, but I couldn’t bear it. I lifted my head from his chest, his shirt wet from my tears.
“Why?!”
I yelled in his face.

He stared at me. I think that was the moment he realized just how deep my insecurities went and, for a second, I thought I’d lost him.

And then his jaw set and he sort of nodded, as if to say he accepted the challenge. “Because I’m in love with you,” he told me. “Because you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. Because I’ve known from the first time we spoke that you had to be mine, or I was going to spend the rest of my life regretting it.” He reached up and cupped my damp cheeks in his hands. “I am going to fix this. It won’t happen again. And I am going to hang onto you, no matter what. Understand?”

I thought for a second that I was going to start crying all over again. I nodded frantically and hurled myself at him. He let out a laugh of release as I pressed up against him, and then my lips were on his.

We kissed for long minutes as the limo sped on through the night. He pulled me fully into his lap and twisted me around so that I was sitting on him side-saddle and he could lean down and kiss me properly. At first, the kisses were soft. Then, when my tears had finally dried, the mood shifted. The kisses became open-mouthed and hungry, full of quickly growing need.

The dress was held up by two shoulder straps. I felt him push one of them down, taking the bra strap with it. I pulled away from him and looked out of the window in panic. We were speeding through the city, office buildings on both sides.

“Privacy glass,” Tanner said. “No one can see in. Not unless they have a flash right up against the window.”

He pushed the other strap down...and then kept pulling it, dragging the dress and bra down. I was bared almost down to my nipples.

“Here?” I asked. My eyes were dry now, but the switch to sex-mode was too fast for me. Tanner could go from zero to full speed in no time at all, but I needed time to warm up.

“Here,” Tanner said.

“What about….” I glanced towards the driver.

Tanner pressed a button and a solid partition rose between us and the driver.

I bit my lip. “But won’t he know why you’re doing that? Won’t he know that—”

Tanner nodded, smirking.

I felt the hot twist of something deep inside. The idea of doing it, right there in the limo, knowing that the driver knew damn well what we were getting up to...on the one hand, it seemed crazy, given what I’d just experienced. On the other, it seemed like the perfect antidote.

I was still sitting on his lap, twisted around to the side. He jerked the straps of my dress down further, dragging the fabric and the bra down past my breasts. My nipples just peeked over the top of the scarlet fabric and he pulled me to him, licking me, leaving the soft flesh hot and shining. I groaned and tangled my fingers in his hair. Ribbons of raw heat were shooting from my breasts straight down to my groin. Maybe I could go from zero to full speed faster than I thought.

Tanner’s hand slid down my body and then up my leg. Up my thigh. Up to the soft fabric of my panties. I caught my breath as his fingertips started rubbing my folds through the thin cloth...and then slid beneath it, teasing my opening. I eased my thighs apart just a little, panting.