Chapter 1 Megan #2
Nikki glances around the diner-set at the other customers and pulls him into the narrow hallway between the eating area and the kitchen.
I follow their characters on the screens on the wall as if I’m at the cinema and am amazed at how real it is when there are no cameras in my peripheral vision.
I feel like a voyeur watching something I shouldn’t, a private moment between two people who believe that they are alone.
“I’m going to tell Evelyn about us, ” Arthur says.
Nikki’s shoulders slump and her expression crumples as if all the fight has been sucked out of her. “Joseph, I don’t think you should—”
“I can’t lie to her anymore. She deserves better than that.”
Nikki turns away from him, a mixture of emotions playing out behind her eyes, and I hold my breath, wondering what she’s going to say next.
When she looks at him again, there are tears in her eyes. “I don’t want you to leave her for me, JoJo.”
The shortened version of Joseph is so charming it makes my heart flutter.
“I already have. Up here.” Arthur taps his temple. “I found myself checking out the moment I laid eyes on you.”
This is the moment where Nikki’s character should smile and tell Arthur that she loves him, but instead, she says dully, “I’m sorry, JoJo, but I can’t do this. I don’t—”
Before she can finish, Arthur pulls Nikki into his arms and smothers her words with his lips.
My hand instinctively hovers in front of my mouth as I watch the kiss onscreen.
“Cut!” The director’s voice makes me jump.
A man with dark unruly curls jumps up from the chair with the word DIRECTOR printed across the back and enters the set. He speaks with the actors, but I can’t hear what he’s saying; someone must cut the sound between takes.
“What’s that man doing?” Amber asks.
I crouch next to her and keep my voice low so that it doesn’t carry anywhere. “He’s telling Auntie Nikki what he wants her to do next.” I hope.
The scene was perfect to me as it was, but what do I know?
The director returns to his seat and the clapperboard comes out again.
Take two.
The actors repeat their lines. It takes me a couple of beats to get back into the mood of the scene as I’ve already watched it once, but when it comes to the kiss, the director yells, “Cut!” again.
I don’t understand what they’re doing wrong, but it clearly isn’t meeting the director’s expectations.
Take three.
This time, I find myself leaning closer to the screen, lips parted in anticipation.
I want them to kiss, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? The audience is supposed to be rooting for them. We’re supposed to believe that JoJo is in love with Jessie, and this kiss should be the knee-trembling, foot-jerking moment that cements their future. Together.
It’s working for me. My heart is still fluttering, and I feel cheated each time the director’s voice snaps everyone back to reality.
Not that I’m an experienced kisser. I mean, the last man I kissed was a customer at the bakery where I work.
A good-looking customer, to be fair, late-twenties, smoky-gray eyes, designer stubble and thick sandy hair that I could imagine running my hands through.
But even so, the guy was a stranger, and I don’t make a habit of kissing strangers.
It was Christmas Eve. I’d served the guy a couple of times, blondie-brownies, because yep, I’m the saddo who remembers our customers’ favorites.
I remembered him, of course, because the guy was cute, and because we don’t serve many hot guys in financial-district suits, so how could I possibly forget him?
But when he pulled a sprig of mistletoe from his pocket, held it above my head, and leaned over the counter, I pulled away.
My cheeks were on fire.
Then I heard my boss chuckling from behind the last few frosted mince pies in the glass cabinet. I knew exactly what she was going to say when I saw the mischievous glint in her eye. “You’re not going home until you kiss him, Meg.”
When I glanced back at the guy in the suit, he was smiling, like they were in cahoots over this. “It’s Christmas. What have you got to lose?”
I’m not sure if it was the reminder that it was, in fact, Christmas, or that I had nothing to lose that swayed me to stand on tiptoes, lean in, and kiss him.
When I close my eyes, I can still feel the imprint of his lips on mine now.
Was it a good kiss?
I don’t have much to compare it to unless I count the slippery-wet smacker with a boy called Liam Bennett behind the art department in high school. Or the kiss with a kid called Ronnie—I never learned his second name—that was part of a game of Truth or Dare at a friend’s birthday party.
I’m still lost in my kissing repertoire reverie when a guy comes over, takes my hand in his, and says, “Come with me.”
I’m caught off-guard, so it takes me a beat to mumble, “What? Where are we going?”
We’re heading straight for the set.
“Wait, I’m not—”
“We’re going to show them how it’s done.”
When he turns his face and smiles at me, I realize that he’s the demi-god from earlier.
Minus the suit jacket, which he has obviously ditched somewhere along the way.
My heart knocks on my ribcage and yells at me to stop arguing and just go with it.
But I’ve left Amber behind, and when I glance over my shoulder, I see that the wiry woman with the glasses is standing with my little sister, her hands on Amber’s shoulders to prevent her from following me.
Panic sets in. I have no clue what the hell is going on here, but I’m not playing along.
“Hey, let me go.”
I try to wrench my arm free, but his grip is like iron. My eyes choose this moment to notice the biceps bulging beneath the blue sweater that clings to every muscle the guy has. And boy, does he have some.
His ears might need some work though because he isn’t listening.
Or maybe demi-gods simply aren’t used to taking no for an answer.
Either way, we’re already on the set, and walking through the diner towards Nikki and Arthur. Well, he’s walking. I probably resemble a jellyfish on speed trying to wriggle free and finding myself dragged along beside him despite my best efforts.
“What are you doing?” I squeak. It’s one way to make a lasting impression, I guess. “I need to get back to my—”
He halts abruptly and our chests collide.
My nipples react by standing to attention and forcing their way through my bra and my halter-neck dress to scrape his solid muscles.
I can see in his eyes that he felt it, and I groan inwardly.
I sense Nikki’s confusion as she watches her best friend—her non-acting best friend—join her on set with a literal walking sex-bomb.
“That’s better.” He grips my upper arms like he knows I’m going to bolt the instant he releases me.
Wrong! I’m going to melt into a puddle of embarrassment at his feet when he lets me go. I’ll end up slithering back to Amber and she’ll carry me back to our motel room in a bucket, sloshing tiny droplets of me over the side as we go.
The amusement in his deep brown eyes is evident when he says calmly, “I’m going to let you go now, okay?” I can see the amber flecks in those eyes and force myself to close my mouth. “All you have to do is kiss me back.”
All I have to do?
“Wait. No. There’s been some mistake.”
I have to stop him before he realizes that he’s got the wrong person and accuses me of sexual harassment or something equally desperate.
And illegal.
“No mistake.” His lips move closer to mine.
The guy is either insane, or he can get away with this kind of thing because, quite frankly, I bet he’s never been refused a kiss in his life.
“I can’t kiss you,” I blurt out. “I’m not—”
Too late.
He lowers his arms and our lips meet. He entwines the fingers of his left hand with my hair, tilting my head backwards. He grips my chin with the thumb and index finger of his right hand and pushes his tongue between my lips.
And I don’t stop him.
I don’t stop him because I can’t feel my body.
All that exists in the moment is his tongue dancing with mine. The pressure of his lips, the feel of his hand in my hair, the amber flecks of those oh-so-beautiful eyes winking at me like he knew all along what effect he would have on me once I stopped resisting.
For one brief blissful moment, I forget where I am.
I forget that this is a film studio. I forget that I traveled to LA to watch my best friend in her first movie role. I forget that somewhere nearby, Amber is watching me kiss a complete stranger.
The image of Amber being restrained by the woman in the white shirt jerks me back to my senses.
But before I can twist my mouth aside and push the demi-god off me, his hands are gone, and he’s watching me with an expression that I can’t read.
Anger flares inside me. Not only did he kiss me without my permission, but he chose when to end the kiss too, denying me the satisfaction of telling him to get his fucking hands off me.
“What was that?” I narrow my eyes.
My pulse is racing. I can still taste him. I can smell his uber-expensive cologne, and feel his hand in my hair, and I want to yell at him in front of all these people, that it’s fucking wrong to humiliate women this way.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Every part of me is clenched, and I wonder how badly it would hurt me if I punched him straight on that perfectly chiseled jaw.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” His perfectly groomed eyebrows lower, and he appears genuinely perplexed.
I bet no one ever asked him that before.
“It was a kiss,” he says, and I can’t help staring at his lips. “We showed them how I want it to look onscreen.”
“Onscreen?”
My voice has abandoned me, leaving me to fight my own battles without it, like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, and I have a vision of the sea-witch cackling in the background like she’d planned this all along.
The director appears from somewhere behind me and claps the demi-god on the back on his way to speak to Nikki and Arthur. “Okay, guys, let’s roll again.” He makes a circular motion with his hand.
I catch Nikki’s eye briefly before the director yells, “Focus!”
My anger subsides and is quickly replaced by guilt. This is Nikki’s moment, and I feel like I barged in and stole her thunder through no fault of my own. How dare this man think that just because he’s arrogantly handsome he can get away with this.
“Look, I’m sorry.” His voice penetrates my thoughts; he has a slight accent, Mediterranean perhaps. “I didn’t think you’d object. You can use the scene as part of your portfolio if it’ll help.”
My portfolio?
I have no idea what he’s talking about until I glance up at the screen behind the director and watch our kiss being replayed.
“It was being filmed?”
I’m thinking out loud. The cameramen and crew are focused on Nikki and Arthur again, but I can see that Nikki is watching my reaction to seeing myself on TV wrapped in the arms of the hottest man to ever walk the planet.
“No.” I shake my head and walk away. “No. No. No.”
I need to find Amber and get away from here. Away from the film studio. Away from LA. My mind is already on fast-forward to what will happen when I get back to the UK. Where will we go? What if he’s waiting for us at the airport?
But the demi-god grabs my arm and swings me back around to face him. “Hey, what’s wrong? It’s not like it’s going to make the big screen. It was just a kiss.”
I square up to him, so close that our noses are almost touching. I’m beyond caring what this man thinks. All I care about is Amber.
“You have no idea what you’ve done.”
He studies my face closely, his eyelids flickering, his expression suddenly serious. “Why don’t you tell me? Whatever it is, I’ll sort it out. I promise.”
“Ha!” The sound escapes my lips before I can stop it. “Is everything just a game to you? You hurt someone and then you promise to make it better?”
“Did I hurt you?”
Is that a glimmer of fear I see in his eyes? Is he worried I’ll slap a sexual assault charge against him? It’s no less than he deserves, but I don’t have time to think about it.
“You’ve already done enough. Please just leave me alone.”
I turn around and make my way back to Amber. Perhaps he heard the warning in my tone, although I’d bet that men like him don’t pay much attention to warnings if it prevents them from getting what they want. But he doesn’t follow me.
“Who is that man?” Amber asks when I take her hand and lead her towards the exit.
“He’s an actor.” I’m guessing. He didn’t exactly introduce himself before he stuck his tongue down my throat. “Don’t worry, we won’t be seeing him again.”
Outside, the brilliant sunshine makes me squint after the artificial lighting inside the studio.
We hand over our passes to the security guy on our way out and take a taxi back to our motel. I don’t want to cut our holiday short, but unless we can find somewhere else to stay at short notice, I don’t know what else we can do.