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She laughs. “Did you see any of it?”
“No.” My eyes were on her. I got the impression of a small rectangular house, the short end near the street with a garage in the back. An office on the first floor, with the leather couch I fucked her on. The kitchen, dining room, and living room on the second floor, her bedroom, and presumably another bedroom, on the third. Simple décor, warm but neutral colors. Tidy but lived in. Small.
“I have a little rooftop patio. Want to go up?”
“Better not.” There weren’t any paparazzi anywhere on her street—I drove by a few times, just to be sure—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t now.
Ashley draws in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Gabe, what if we just…took our relationship public?”
I lift my head to look into her eyes. “You know we can’t. Not now.”
The corners of her lips tighten. I bend to kiss the tension away.
“Would it be so bad?” she asks. “We’d be able to see each other anytime. No more sneaking around.”
“I’d love that.” I trail my kisses down her jaw to her neck. “But we can’t.” I suck lightly in the spot that usually makes her moan, but she doesn’t respond.
Fuck.
I don’t want to do this, not tonight. A groan escapes, and I bury my face against her neck. “Ash. Can we talk about this later?”
This is the last chance I’m going to have to see her for a while. I’m leaving tomorrow evening for the press junket forThe Last Best Manbefore filming begins on Warwick. Filming should take three months, maybe four, then I have a break and I’m going to tie her to my bed and make up for all the time we’ve missed.
When she speaks, her voice is soft and I can hear the fear beneath the careful words. “We were fake dating, then we were sleeping together and it was meant to be temporary. Is that still what this is?”
I lift my head. “No,” I say, brushing a lock of silvery blonde hair from her face.
She’s silent as she watches me. Waiting for me to elaborate on what this is—what she is—to me. I don’t know how far, how deep this thing between us goes, but I do know I don’t want it to end.
“The only time I feel like myself is when I’m with you,” I tell her. “When I’m not with you, I’m thinking of how much I want to be with you. This isn’t temporary.”
Her hand comes up to cup my jaw. “I’ll be your secret for now, Gabe, but this isn’t what I want.”
“It’s not what I want either.” I pull her hand from my face and kiss her knuckles.
We shift, so Ashley’s lying with her head on my chest, and soon enough, she falls asleep.
I reach for my phone.
A quick search of my name turns up nothing new, and I breathe a sigh of relief. As much as I needed her tonight, coming here was a big risk. In the back of my mind, I knew nothing was going on between Ash and Nic, and my mad dash through LA traffic on my motorcycle was foolish. But all I saw, after the alert I have set to her name went off on my phone, was pictures of Ashley looking gorgeous with the man she once loved. A man she was willing to destroy her cousin’s marriage for.
She’d hung up on me before going out with him. I had to see her.
I need her to wait for me, until this thing with Kate is over, until filming wraps. Until I get that Oscar-winning role. Until not even Ashley Foley can tarnish my reputation.
There’s no one in sight the next day when late afternoon rolls around and I have to catch my flight. We kiss in the doorway until I have to pull myself away. Ash folds her arms over the T-shirt she’s wearing—one of mine—and tells me to be careful on the drive and call her when I get to my hotel. I can’t kiss her again or I’ll never stop. The part of me I’ve locked down begs me to do it. Throw all this away. Get Ashley on the back of the motorcycle and drive up to Canada or down to Mexico. I can’t help but think I’d be happier.
Chapter twenty-eight
Gabe
DavidandIarrivein New York in the early hours of the morning. I check into my suite and, since I slept on the flight, I head to the gym.
Press junkets are exhausting. Answering the same questions over and over, trying to be engaging and authentic but concise, is surprisingly stressful. The heat of the lights and too many bodies crammed into a luxurious but still too-small hotel room make the experience uncomfortable.
And there’s Kate. She’s a ball of sunshine and her career has followed the same path as mine, with the press dubbing her America’s Sweetheart. We got along great on set. The stories she told about life on her family farm—particularly those involving a notorious goose named Charles—had the cast and crew in stitches.
But fake dating her is another story. Any chemistry we might have had on set ended when filming wrapped. At the LA interviews, she laughed and smiled and touched my arm, but every time I smiled back at her, I saw Ash. It felt like a betrayal.
