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“What. Are. You. Doing?” he grits out, his minty breath puffing against my forehead.
“We are madly fucking each other, remember?” I toy with his thick hair within view of the cameras. “I thought you were an actor.”
“Challenging role,” he mutters, but, hands at my waist, he grabs a fistful of sundress in each. There’s no way he’s aware of how high he’s hitched my skirt up my legs, but I feel every inch, my skin tingling at the exposure, my breath catching.
“You could pull out,” I say coyly, staring up into his eyes with enough admiration and love to win an Oscar.Thisis how it’s done.
Instead, he’s gone stiff, and not where it counts. Well, maybe there, but I don’t press my hips to his to find out because I’ve had enough disappointment lately.
“No,” he says, but he doesn’t sound certain.
“Then kiss me.”
He turns us a bit for the cameras and kisses me.
Wow.
This is, without a doubt, the worst kiss of my life. It’s dutiful, his lips unmoving against mine, and when I snap out of my shock enough to try to show him how it’s done, the mismatch between us feels like a bad movie kiss. The kind where the actors have zero chemistry and barely tolerate each other—which, fair. It’s us.
I could continue to try to force my tongue into his mouth or draw his into mine, but to what point? If it feels this terrible, it must look worse, so I pull back.
His hands tighten on my waist before he pushes me away. It’s a gentle push, but unmistakable.
I can’t help it. I laugh.
He shoots a panicked glance at the cameras and grabs my arm.
“Are you a robot?” I ask as he ushers me toward the car. My voice probably doesn’t carry to the paps, but honestly, I’m not sure I care if it does. They witnessed that train wreck of a kiss. “That was terrible.”
“Maybe if you stop trying to suck my face off.” He opens the car door for me and I stop.
Blink.
Step back.
“Wrong car. This”—I gesture at the muscle car. It’s vintage and I have no clue how old it is, but it’s in perfect condition.—“is the car of a man who knows how to kiss with his tongue and teeth and his whole body. You, with your closed-mouth church-kiss, drive that.” I fling my hand toward the Lexus.
Gabe glances at the Lexus and back at me. His back is to the cameras, so they can’t catch the resentment in his eyes. I think I struck a nerve. His jaw could crack a walnut. “This is fake,” he says to me like I’m a kid who won’t listen. “That kiss wasn’t real.”
I step closer, jabbing his chest with my perfectly manicured nail. “Say it a little louder, I don’t think they all heard you.”
He winces. “Are we doing this or not?”
“Do better.”
“You too,” he shoots back, and I’m surprised at how much that hurts. He doesn’t mean do better fake kissing. He means be a better person. And I can’t.
I can only be me.
The woman who ruthlessly uses people to get ahead on a TV show. The woman who tried to end a marriage and will keep trying. The woman who nearly destroyed her family. I’ve had my reasons, but it always comes down to wanting something. Wanting to win, wanting to be loved, wanting a goddamn break.
I rub at my chest with the back of my coffee-clutching hand and suddenly the inside of the car is too small, the freshly re-upholstered black leather smothering. I have to survive ten days of this bullshit, in there, with him.
“Fine,” I say when I realize he’s waiting for something from me.
He pulls my coffee out of my hand. “No food or drink in my car.”
I claw for it, but he’s already passing it off to his assistant.
