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“Do you want to die today?” I growl at him, and this time the paparazzi can hear. An excited hush falls over them as they strain to catch more.
Lea snatches the drink off Gabe’s assistant and hands it back to me. “Drink,” she says, and I do, pulling the sweet, sweet coffee through the straw.
“You don’t have to win him over,” Lea says in a hushed voice as I slowly drain my drink. “You don’t have to compete with anyone. All you have to do is convince people you’re dating. You do this, and the jobs will flood in.”
She’s right. I’m using him to get work, to keep myself busy until I can get to Nic. Gabe doesn’t have to like me, not when he needs me too.
I drain the last of the coffee. I can do this.
“Last chance,” Gabe says. He’s put his body between me and the paparazzi across the street, thank god. “We can go our separate ways and pretend none of this ever happened.”
I hand my cup to Lea and step close to Gabe, running my hand through his thick, dark hair for the cameras. “I’m not backing down. Are you?” I ask.
He has the gall to look exasperated. “Then get in the car.”
Because I can, or because there are cameras, or maybe because I want to throw this man off-kilter, I tighten my hand in his hair and bring my other hand up to grip his chin. He stares at me, his dark eyes flashing, but he doesn’t move as I slide the pad of my thumb over his thick lower lip, dragging that soft flesh down. Christ, this mouth. Quick, before he can stop me, I rise on my toes and kiss him, sucking lightly on that lip. The surprised, strangled sound he makes is delicious and I eat it up.
I’m smart enough to end the kiss first, slipping away from him and into his car. When I smile coyly up at him, he blinks away the dazed look on his face and slams my door.
Chapter four
Gabe
Davidstopsmeinthe front of the car.
“What was that?” he hisses.
I motion weakly to my unwelcome passenger. “She’s so…” If I’m being completely honest, she has me wound so tight I’m not sure I’m going to survive one day in the car with her, let alone ten. I like a challenge, but I’m not winning and I don’t know how to even the playing field when I’m constantly on defense.
“Awful,” David finishes for me. I nod, though that’s not what I was thinking.
She’s maddening, but what’s making me unreasonable right now is how hard it is to get the taste of her out of my mouth and the image of her breasts out of my head. I am better than this.
I thought I was.
“We need this,” David says quietly, glancing at the paps. “The publicity she’s giving you is good.” His eyes fix intently on mine. “It’s only going to stay good if you can make this believable, and whateverthatwas? It looked bad.”
“You try kissing her,” I mutter, not caring how petty I sound. She tastes sweeter than she has any right to. Not kissing her the way I wanted was an act of self-preservation.
“You couldn’t pay me enough,” he says with a gag. “So I get it. I do.”
He clearly doesn’t.
“But you need to make this look real,” he says, landing the knockout blow.
I scrub my hand over my face and all it seems to do is rub the feel of her lips on mine deep under my skin. I itch, everywhere, all at once. My eyes drift to the car. To her.
Ashley is giving me that bratty little smile of hers. She drags her perfectly manicured fingernails over my dashboard and I feel it on my skin beneath my clothes.
I tamp it down and glare at her.
She blows me a kiss.
“We can’t change who she is, so let’s approach this strategically,” David continues. “This isn’t your first rodeo.”
My other fake relationships were easy. The women were kind, and we were able to be friends. I don’t see that happening with Ashley.
“The Savannah Protocol.” David at least has the good grace to wince as he says it.
