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Chapter Twenty-eight
Valentina woke to the fantastic smell of pepperoni pizza with her stomach grumbling. As she pushed her hair back from her face and sat up against the pillows, she noted the sky outside the windows was black.
The lights were on in the room, but dim enough that she had to carefully scan the large bedroom for Smith. His eyes were on her from where he stood in the sitting area, obviously having just laid out food for both of them on the coffee table.
She'd worked with him for long enough now to recognize when he was in Director mode, almost as if he were framing the scene with her on the bed with the intention of pulling out a camera to shoot it. She began to move off the sheets to go to him, but her name on his lips held her captive where she was. A flush of heat spread slowly, and then faster, across her skin as he drank her in from across the room, until she was the one saying his name in a voice made slightly hoarse both by sleep and by the way she'd been calling out his name earlier.
"I love seeing you in my bed."
"I love being in it."
Moments later, he was standing in front of her and pulling her up to her knees, the covers completely sliding away from her na**d body as she wound her arms around his neck to press her mouth against his with a passion that never seemed to abate, but only grew hotter, bigger, deeper, with every kiss.
In the back of her mind, she noted how easy it was - and how easy it had always been - to allow herself to be innately sensual with Smith. For so long she'd worked to suppress that side of herself, to make sure no man ever "took advantage" of her need to be touched, kissed, held. But she'd always felt safe with Smith, despite the dangerous hunger that was so often in his eyes when he looked at her. Was it because she felt the hunger, too, that the danger seemed not only okay...but was, in fact, a shockingly lovely bonus?
He brought over the shirt he'd been wearing the night before. She slipped her arms through the long sleeves, but she didn't button it, simply rolled up the sleeves and wrapped the fabric around herself as they went to sit on the couch together.
He didn't reach for food and neither did she. Instead, he took her hands in his just as she was reaching for him.
"Hungry?" he asked her, his deep voice at once soothing and arousing.
She nodded in answer, but knew she wouldn't be able to eat a thing until they talked. Even the biggest stars in the world needed food and sleep just like anyone else. But when it came to the ones those stars loved, and to the potential damage fame could do to their relationships, "normal" came to a crashing halt.
And yet, Smith made her want to believe. Not just in love - she already knew that was real, knew that what she felt for him couldn't possibly be merely the result of close proximity and great sex - but that their love could withstand not only the pressures of life, but of his fame, too.
For so long, she'd thought being strong meant not letting herself be vulnerable. But all this time had she had it backward? Instead of being a weakness, was risking everything to love actually the strongest, bravest thing she'd ever do?
She looked down at their hands entwined together, and knew he already held so much more of her than she thought she'd ever be able to give him.
Now - finally - she wanted to give him even more.
She looked up into his dark eyes, so beautiful, and so full of love. For her. "I don't want to be a mystery anymore. Not with you."
His hands didn't tighten on hers. Instead, his thumbs stroked over her palms, sending both warmth and shivers through her at the same time.
"I'm here, Valentina. Now and always." He continued to stroke over her skin, slowly, surely, steadily. "All you have to do is let me in."
He made it sound so simple.
And then, suddenly, she realized it was.
"My mother was different when my father was alive." As she began to speak, he pulled her closer, so that her legs came over his and she could feel his heart beating from where he was holding her hands against his chest. "She was always beautiful, but she was warm, too. It wasn't until my father died that I realized just how much of that warmth had come through him." She made herself keep thinking back to those first months after her father had died. "And after he was gone, it was like she crumbled away, one layer at a time, until she was gone, too."
"You lost them both."
Smith's gentle words surprised her, then a moment later, resonated, even as she said, "She was still there, just - " She took a shaky breath. "The first actor she dated was barely a few years older than me. That was weird enough, but then one time when she was taking a long time getting ready, he - "
She stopped and shuddered as Smith scowled.
"What did he do? Who is he?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. And no one. He was all talk, innuendo. But I think if I had been willing..." Disgust came at her now just as hard and fast as it had those times her mother's too-young actor boyfriends had come on to her.
"Did you tell your mother what he said? What he tried to take from you?"
"No," she said softly, "I couldn't figure out how or what I would have said. And I didn't want her to feel bad, not when she was just doing her best to deal with her own grief. It was easier - " She paused for a moment, hating to have to use that word, but she wouldn't hide the truth from Smith anymore, not even for pride's sake. " - easier just to pull back. And to focus on my worries about Tatiana, about all those strange men my mother was dating coming in and out of the house. My sister was so pretty even then, and so innocent, that it was a relief to leave school and the dorms to move back in with them and take over managing her business affairs so that I could get her to all of her auditions and jobs." She reassured Smith, "No one ever tried anything with Tatiana. Honestly, the only reason I think they ever came on to me was because I was their age."
"You know that's not the only reason, Valentina. You told me once that I could have any woman in the world." He stared into her eyes with such intensity that she couldn't possibly look away. "I want you."
Valentina couldn't have possibly held back the words, "I want you, too. I just wish - "
Again, she knew it would be easier not to say any of this to Smith, but painful experience with her mother had taught her that easier wasn't better. All trying to avoid pain in the short run did was make everything hurt worse later...and become pretty much impossible to fix.
Only, while her mother had flitted around her and her sister's lives, Smith was right here, holding her hand, letting Valentina spill everything out.
"I would never ask you to change what you do, or who you are," she told him. "I love you too much to even think of stopping you from sharing your incredible gifts with the world. But I've been on plenty of sets over the past ten years. And I've seen what happens, how inevitable it all seems when men and women who've professed their love to other people end up falling for their co-stars, how marriages happen too fast and then end even quicker once they move on to other projects on other sides of the world."
"You're right, my work is important to me," he told her. "So are you. So important that I don't want to make big life and career decisions all alone anymore. From here on out, I want to make them with you."
Even as his words had warmth filling her from head to toe, she had to tell him, "But it scares me that we met on a film set. And that it all happened so fast. It's so hard to keep a normal relationship together. I don't know how many Hollywood relationships have ever really worked apart from Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward."
It wasn't that she didn't believe he could want her. She could no longer deny his desire for her, or hers for him. No, she was simply trying to make sure that both of them went into this relationship with their eyes wide open.
"The first couple of years after my breakout movie were difficult to adjust to," Smith told her. "Really difficult. I loved acting, and I knew if I was really good at it I'd become famous, but I had no idea what it would actually be like to lose my privacy. To have the press calling up my family and friends to ask them questions about me. I'm not going to lie to you and say that we won't have more hurdles, that there won't be a thousand other journalists and photographers trying to make a buck by sticking their noses into our relationship." Determination held ground with love on Smith's face as his voice remained as steady as hers had been shaky. "But I've waited my whole life for somebody like you, for a woman I wanted to be with forever, and I refuse to give you up. I was afraid you'd never come, that there'd never be a woman who didn't want me because of who I am, what I have, who I know. Until you."
He lifted her hands to his mouth and gently pressed his lips to each of them before saying, "Tell me what love means to you, Valentina."
She didn't have to think. "You."
His mouth found hers then, at once gentle and firm, sweet and passionate. If anyone had asked her before Smith if those contrasts could possibly coexist, she would have known the answer, been utterly certain that when she finally let herself love it would make sense...and that she would be in control of her heart, from the first beat to the last.
But every moment they'd been together, Smith confounded her expectations...and exceeded what she'd believed to be the limits of her heart.
"I know we can love each other enough to make our relationship matter more than anything else ever has," Smith said. "Yes, Hollywood is crazy, but even though I just broke rule number one today by bashing in a photographer's face," he said with a slightly rueful half-grin, "I'm convinced we can transcend the pitfalls from here on out."
He got down on his knees before her. "I want you by my side not only for red carpet events, but for the nights when we're both exhausted from a long day on set and fall into bed, too tired to do anything but hold hands and fall asleep. I want to kiss the sugar off your lips while you're eating sweets for breakfast. And I want you there to drag into the shower with me to make up for not having the energy to make love to you the night before."
Nothing Smith had said was flashy. There were no big diamonds blinding her, no expensive promises or glittering, sweeping vistas before them. He wasn't like any other man she'd ever met, and he'd definitely broken the movie-star mold by being beautiful not only on the outside, but on the inside, too. He would never hurt her or her family, just as he would never hurt his own family.
Weeks ago she'd asked him why love couldn't just be as pure as two people who realized that they couldn't live as well, or as happily, apart as they could together.
Now she knew it could be.
Finally finding her voice, Valentina put her hands on either side of his face and told him, "You can have it, Smith. All of it. And I want you there, too, to grill Tatiana's new boyfriend with me. I want you to sit and read the paper with me on a Sunday morning. I want to sit with you under a blanket on the couch in front of a fire and make puzzles of every dog and cat in the family."
And as he picked her up and carried her over to the bed, food still forgotten, they fulfilled their most important hunger of all.
For love.
