“‘What’s wrong with him?’ they’ll ask me,’” she said. “‘Oh, well. It’s his big stubborn streak. All the blood went to his head.’” Jules tossed a pillow at him as though she were Abigail on a tirade. “Stop being so stubborn. You can’t sleep like that. We both know, and the sooner you come over here, the sooner we’re going to sleep.”
He caught the pillow and held it to his face. Maybe he could just pass out. Except the pillow was slightly damp from her wet hair and smelled feminine and floral. He fought against breathing in the stupid pillow. This was a losing battle. He couldn’t sleep like this, and sitting up with her pillow, he ran a hand over his face. He marched toward the bed like walking toward a death sentence. “Don’t throw pillows like your sister.”
“Don’t be bullheaded, and I won’t.”
He’d already messed up by kissing her, by telling her what they both knew but she was choosing to ignore, and now he was crawling into bed with her.Marvelous. Fucking genius.Rhys was going to lose his best assignment—his favorite assignment, despite how much he despised Hollywood—then Vivian would kick his ass. Scarlett too. Sloane would probably throw a sucker punch just because she was like that.
He sat on the edge of the bed. “This is yours.”
She took the pillow and tucked it behind her head again. “If I hadn’t asked you to do this whole stupid charade with me, you wouldn’t be acting like this. I’m sorry I screwed everything up. Don’t be weird with me in the morning.”
She turned on her side, and Rhys crawled into bed and prayed for the strength to keep his hands by his sides. He didn’t even know himself anymore when it came to Jules Lowry, the woman who had been a constant in his life for years and years.
Chapter Seventeen
Jules faced away from Rhys and squeezed her eyes shut. Regret made her temples throb. She tugged the sheets up to her chin and tried to disappear in a mountain of high-thread-count cotton.
“You didn’t screw anything up.” His rough whisper felt like a heavy weight pressed against her chest. “I did. But we gotta let it go. Just forget it.”
Forget what he said? Impossible. His words burned into her memory, as if she had a photographic memory like him. “I can’t.”
He shifted. “Why not?”
“I said too much. No one has ever kissed me like that before.”
His short, hard exhalation punctured the quiet.
There she went, saying too much again. Her heart slammed against her chest. Every part of her wanted to turn toward him, to curl under his arm like they’d lain on the beach. He had been so warm and hard and delicious to lie against. He’d smelled so good. He’d felt so good with her hand on his stomach, his armaround her shoulders. The waves had crashed. The night had twinkled.
And now it was just them again, but this time, they were alone with the sound of rustling sheets and his judgment.
“Have you ever played a game called two truths and a lie?” he asked.
She didn’t blame him. “Sure.”
“Want to play now?”
She rolled onto her back and rested her cheek on the pillow, facing him. “Who goes first?”
He turned onto his side. His midnight eyes captured her complete attention. She could think of nothing else but what he might say and what she wished he might do—and tried to ignore the strangeness of knowing this man for so long, of thinking of him one way and now seeing him in another.
Had that always been the case? Had she ever wondered? Ever glanced again? Jules bit her lip and wouldn’t admit anything, even to herself.
“Your choice,” he offered, his eyes taking her in as though there were more things to say than whatever might come from a silly game.
Or not. She couldn’t read him.
This was only a game. One to change the subject and release the tension. She could do this, but she stopped looking at him in the dark.
“You go first,” he decided for her.
Jules drifted her attention around the room. She didn’t know what truths and lies to tell, and nothing came to mind except for secrets that shouldn’t be shared, like the way she’d held her breath, hoping he’d crawl onto her bed, or how the dip of the mattress under his weight had made her stomach bottom out, and the way she couldn’t help but drink in the way he smelled, shower fresh yet so inherently Rhys Callaghan that she hadn’trealized until that moment he had a distinct scent, like sex and man and safety, that made her mind glitch.
“My two truths and a lie…” She struggled to come up with the most blasé tidbits she might give to anyone. “A museum asked to showcase my Louboutin collection. I do my own stunts. I hate driving at night.”
He didn’t say anything. Seconds ticked by, and the walls seemed to grow closer. Jules heard her breath, her heartbeat, her pulse strumming in her ears like a fire alarm.
Finally, she shifted and faced him. “Well?”
