Chapter 8 #2
He leveled me with one of his signature icy stares, but it no longer intimidated me the way it once did. Not now that I knew he was more sensitive softie than scheming villain. Ryder was all bark and no bite.
“Listen, can we call a truce? If we’re going to nail this movie together,” I emphasized, “we need to trust each other completely, not spend our days coming up with creative forms of sabotage. I need to focus on my performance, not worry about whether you’re poisoning my coffee when my back is turned. ”
He nodded thoughtfully, like he was considering the dastardliness of that deed and finding it appropriately devious.
I turned stern. “I wasn’t trying to give you ideas.”
He grinned, and it was the closest I’d felt to getting that happy-go-lucky guy from the lobster shack back. “Can you at least try to be a little less good?”
“Ryder.”
“I’m kidding. So co-conspirators instead of competitors,” he mused.
“Yeah, you know, what we should have been the whole time,” I said pointedly. “Partners.”
“In crime?” he suggested hopefully, a fizzy sparkle in his eye.
I considered it. “As long as the foul play is targeted at others, I’m game.”
We locked eyes and said in unison: “Jason.”
Ryder rose from his chair abruptly—and there was suddenly a whole lot of manhood flooding my field of vision. I forced my eyes due north, fixing them on his (vast, tan, mouthwatering) pectorals, which probably wasn’t much better but was less likely to get me reported to HR, at least.
I stood as well, but slower, savoring the view on my way up, taking some mental snapshots of his stacked-stone abs and bookmarking them for later fixation. It was a lot of skin to take in. A lot of skin, and a lot of man.
He lifted his chin. “Change your ringtone and we have a deal.”
I coughed a laugh. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, huh?”
“Savage. Just a Machiavellian level of torture.”
I preened and dropped a little curtsy. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Oh, but it was.” I grinned up at him, and everything about him was suddenly so much less threatening than it was a few minutes ago.
His mouth curved as he stuck his hand out to shake, and when I clasped it, I was zapped by that electric shock again.
This pesky attraction was always showing up at the most inopportune times, like now, when I’d more than earned the right to hold a grudge.
So damn inconvenient. He smirked, and I realized I’d been staring at his mouth too long. I needed to say something.
“We should tell each other something embarrassing,” I blurted without thinking, and he spiked an eyebrow. “You know, to seal this blood pact,” I blundered on, the spontaneous idea gaining traction. “Something I can threaten to expose if you start acting out again.”
He was amused. “Straight to blackmail, huh?”
“Think of it as insurance.”
“Or penance?” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “Fine, I’ll play along.” He pursed his lips and squinted skyward, as if mentally riffling through his closetful of skeletons. “On set, I’m always carrying a rubber ball in the pocket of my costumes. You’d find one in my robe right now.”
I wrinkled my nose. This “secret” had the distinct whiff of some strange sexual fetish, and I immediately regretted going down this road. “Okay…”
“It’s an old trick I learned on the set of…
knock it off.” I’d already started snickering, knowing he was referring to Kids Only Club.
“It’s something I picked up on a previous set.
” He sliced me a look, as though daring me to keep it up, and I flashed my palms in surrender.
“For shirtless scenes, if you squeeze a rubber ball, it sort of…naturally flexes your biceps and makes the veins stand out.”
I chortled. That was pretty embarrassing, actually. I could work with that. “So you’re a student of the rubber ball school of acting,” I said with mock seriousness. “Got it.”
“Laugh all you want, but it works. No limp noodle arms for me,” he said, curling his arm in a tight flex—and since it was clearly an invitation, I hooked a hand around his bicep and squeezed, and he was right: Noodles definitely weren’t among the descriptors I’d use to describe the hard muscle filling my palm.
Chunks of carved granite, yes. A Roman statue, sure. Overcooked pasta, not a chance in hell.
“So all it takes to become a Marvel superhero is a rubber ball,” I joked, trying to distract from the fact that I was still running my hand over all that smooth muscle.
I was stroking his bicep like a genie’s lamp.
“Who knew?” He flexed again under my palm, and I whimpered, my internal temperature rising by a thousand degrees.
He knew what I was up to. “Quit stalling, it’s your turn.”
I pried my fingers off him with effort and gave my system a hard reboot. Get it together, Scarlett. You’re a professional actress headlining a major motion picture, not a teenage girl with a crush on the lead in the school play.
“Mine is way worse.” His face sparked with interest, and I took a measured breath, like I was confessing a crime. “I have toe thumbs.”
His eyebrows shot sky-high. “Toe thumbs? What the hell are toe thumbs?”
I gave him a double thumbs up, presenting the evidence, and he grabbed one for a closer look. “Stumpy thumbs that look like toes.”
His eyes bounced from my pint-sized thumb to my face and back to my thumb again, scrutinizing it from all angles like a rare and peculiar artifact. I’d be offended, but I was used to it.
“It’s a real condition, it’s called brachydactyly type D,” I explained to his apparent disbelief.
“It has a bunch of funny nicknames too, like clubbed thumb, hammer thumb, even murderer’s thumb.
My friends used to call them Quasimodo thumbs.
” He’d been valiantly keeping a straight face up to this point, but at that last one, he started to crack.
“I know, they’re hideous. It’s my cross to bear.
I even had to talk to Nate about it before we started shooting. ”
He was really losing it now, laughter erupting out of him. “What? Why?”
“I had to! I can’t let them film a close-up of me touching your face, these freakish things would be so distracting!
” He was wheezing now, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“He agreed we’d camouflage it somehow, shoot around it or get some sort of hand double stand-in if necessary.
This isn’t a joke!” I said, slapping at his chest.
He seized my hand and held it up to his, husky laughter still shaking out of him, and placed my palm flat against his own, comparing the sizes. My runty little thumb only reached to his knuckle. His eyes met mine in amazement.
“I know. Trust me, I’ve heard every joke,” I sighed, trying not to focus on how sexy I found his hands.
They were strong and masculine and tanned, perfectly veined, his fingers long and graceful.
His hands were a microcosm of him, really: powerful and muscled but not overly so—just right. Can hands look healthy? His did.
“They’re really cute, actually,” he teased playfully, and I scoffed. He held my thumb up, twisting and turning it like a jeweler showcasing a diamond, its facets catching the light.
“Cute like a car crash.”
His eyes turned mischievous. I was starting to recognize this impish glint—it always preceded shenanigans. “You know, they’re so cute that I really think they should make an appearance in the movie.”
I ripped my hand from his grasp. “Over my dead body.”
I could see the gears turning in his mind, a cheeky grin curving his mouth. “Sorry, it’s my personal mission now. I won’t rest until I’ve given them the close-up they deserve.”
I gave him my stoniest, most menacing glare. “You’re breaking the blood oath you’ve just agreed to.”
He donned the expression of a man in love, then reached for both my hands and placed them on the sides of his face, trapping them there so they cradled his jaw, my thumbs front and center in the hollows beneath his cheekbones. “Now this is the money shot.”
“I hate you.”
When we went to tell Nate we’d kissed and made up, I purposely lagged behind him a couple of steps. And for the record, this was the money shot…and I had a sudden craving for peaches.
No reason.