“That’s a load of bullshit, Jules.”
“How are you so chill about this? Lots of practice taking women onto the beach to look at stars?”
He pointed at a bright spot in the sky. “That small cluster is the Southern Cross.”
“Does that mean yes?”
“Of course not. I’m the one completely out of my comfort zone. I’m lying here withtheJules Lowry—”
“Oh, shut up.”
“A million people would kill to be here right now.”
“Enough. Enough.” She shoved his side.
He captured her hand, locking her fingers with his and resting their palms on the rock-hard plane of his abdomen. His torso shook with silent laughter.
“Seriously, you’re too good at this. Sloane would be proud.”
“Nah.” His arm under her neck fitted her closer.
She leaned against his broad chest until their bodies were locked side by side. They could have fooled the world, as though they’d lain together under countless starry skies.
“You’re the professional. I’ve never acted a day in my life.”
“You’ve acted with me before,” she pointed out, forgetting that he wasn’t the problem right now. She was. She couldn’t relax to save her life.
“When?”
“When you blend into a crowd or on a red carpet.”
“That’s not acting.”
“It is. You make yourself known as much or as little as you want. That’s acting.”
He snorted. “Then let me amend. My usual type of acting with you doesn’t require me to kiss you while snorkeling later this week. What’s a stage kiss like anyway? No tongue?”
She laughed. “Camera angles do most of the work. We have directions. What kind. How intense—”
“Intensity agreements? I didn’t see that in Sloane’s plan.”
Her smile tugged her cheeks. “Then there’s hands and body language. There’s a formula. Palming a cheek or cupping a chin plus a kiss equals intimate. Pulling a shirt and diving into a kiss means urgency.”
“Just like real life. Got it.”
Her eyebrows arched. Rhys grabbed shirts and cupped chins? That’d never happened to her in real life. Not a single damn time had anyone cupped her cheek and kissed her. Never had anyone been so desperate for her mouth that they reeled her in with a yank of her shirt. “That’s not real life.”
He tilted his head toward her. His long lashes framed his midnight eyes as he stared. The scrutiny reignited the rush of nerves that had only just quieted. “It can be.”
Her heart stalled. It simply ceased to work as the oxygen left the atmosphere.
She wanted to believe he was talking about her and him. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
“Sure.” Her voice sounded too breathy. She cleared her throat. “Stage kisses—any intimate scene, actually—are clinical. They clear the set as much as possible, but there are still so many people up close and personal with everything that’s happening. The end result always looks so different from how it feels while filming multiple takes.”
“Do we need an intensity agreement?”
“Rhys.”
