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Her gaze stayed on the patch of darkness the sounds had come from. “Is it safe here?”
“Safer than most public beaches after dark.” There wasn’t much he was afraid of, and the odd homeless drifter punting for change certainly didn’t bother him.
They sat on the beach and looked out over the moonlit sea as the waves washed in, digging their toes into the soft sand. He took the packet of fries Nina refused, smiling as she bit into the burger. She closed her eyes and savored the taste, all her concentration focused on the food.
“What?” she asked, looking up and catching his grin. She wiped at the sauce dribbling down her chin. “Have I sprouted another head? Or are my granny pants showing again?”
“No, though now I’m really tempted to take a peek under that jacket. It’s a rare sight to see a woman enjoy her food the way you do.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to pay for it tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow.” He licked his salty fingers. “Who’s Sonia? Your agent said you could kiss Sonia goodbye.”
“Sonia Fairchild.”
He shook his head. “I’m still not getting it.”
“From the Revelations books.”
“Books? Those are the things you have to sit down for hours on end to read, right?”
Nina’s wide, dark eyes reflected the moonlight. “You don’t read?”
“Unless it’s the Hollywood edition of Vanity Fair, no. Would that be a deal-breaker?”
She bit her lip for a moment, considering him. He didn’t need to be a genius to decode that look. He’d seen it often enough on other faces over the years. She was figuring him for all brawn and no brains, the stereotypical stuntman. He shrugged it off and tossed the empty fries packet into the paper bag.
“The Revelations trilogy is a fantasy series in which angels and demons come down to earth to fight the final battle between good and evil. Sonia’s an ordinary girl trying to get through college when she loses her family to this new holy war. Then she discovers she has some special skills, kind of like Neo in The Matrix, and she goes Ninja to save the world.”
“She sounds like a kick-ass chick. I might like her.”
“They’re casting the movies based on the books and I want to play her.” Nina sucked in a breath. “That’s why I wanted to meet with you.”
He arched an eyebrow and waited for her to go on.
“Every actress from here to London wants to play Sonia. It’s the role of a lifetime. Paul got me a chance to read for the part, but the producers weren’t convinced. I’ve been stereo-typed as the ditsy romantic interest for too long. They don’t see me as the intense, hard-core action type. They’re looking for someone more heroic.” She flinched at the last word.
“And you thought I could toughen you up to help you get the role? If it helps, you’re already my hero. It takes guts to do what you did tonight – to stay true to yourself.”
She bit her lip. “I guess there isn’t any point bothering now. They’ll never take a chance on me after tonight.”
“You turned down a marriage proposal. It’s not like you mainlined heroin in front of everyone or got so wasted they had to call the cops.”
“I might as well have. Paul has a lot of influence and I hurt his feelings.”
It wasn’t his feelings that were hurt. Dom shook his head and stretched out on the sand. “The days of any one person controlling this business are long gone. He’s not the only one with friends.”
He knew a few people, too. But how much did she really want this? Because he wasn’t going to put himself out for some fickle actress who wasn’t prepared to do the work. His reputation was all he had going for him right now and he wasn’t about to throw it away for a pretty face. Pretty faces were cheap as dirt in this town.
Character, now that was a different creature entirely.
Nina bit into the burger, taking her time over it before she spoke again. “I’m still an idiot. I could have said yes and then changed my mind later, in a less public place.”
“He’s the idiot. Who in their right mind proposes to a woman in front of a crowd like that?” Only someone with an ego the size of the Antarctic would be so confident of being accepted. Only someone who cared more about the spectacle than about the woman he’d proposed to would share such a private moment with a room full of strangers.
Or… “When an actor has been on the market as long as Paul de Angelo has, without even one failed marriage behind him, the rumors start.”
“Paul is NOT gay.”
“He doesn’t need to be for the gossip to spread. You know that. You’ve obviously heard the rumors. But an engagement would shut them up for a little while. A very public engagement at the party hosted by the hottest celebrity magazine on the planet would shut the rumors up a whole lot longer.”
She bit her lip as she digested the thought. “You think he was only dating me for his image?”
He hoped she didn’t want an answer, because he couldn’t answer honestly without offending her. Not that she looked particularly offended. Or heart-broken. “Why didn’t you want to marry him?” he asked instead.
She shrugged and looked away, but nothing could hide the flush that stained her neck and cheeks. Not even the moonlit darkness.
“Tell me,” he coaxed. “There’s no one here but you and me, and the sea.”
She shuddered, still not looking back at him. “I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life with him. I’d grow bored and I’d want excitement, and quite frankly I don’t see any point making a promise to spend my life with someone, knowing from the very beginning that I wouldn’t keep it.”
He nodded slowly. He hadn’t realized they had so much in common. He grew bored quickly too and craved excitement, and he never made promises he couldn’t keep.
“How would you propose?” she asked, licking her fingers.
The question was unexpected and not one he had an answer for. He hadn’t given proposals any thought before. The opportunity had never come up. Or to be more precise, he’d never met a woman he liked enough to live with, let alone marry. He loved women, with the emphasis on the plural. But settling down with just one? She’d have to be something really special for him to give up all the others.
He shrugged. “Some place like this, I guess. Some place special, where we can be alone. Shall we take a walk?”
They dumped the paper bag in a garbage can and walked along the beach, sipping their sodas. The tide crept in, filling up the tidal pools.
Nina walked with her arms wrapped around herself, his jacket incongruously large on her, dwarfing her curves. He didn’t need to see them to remember those voluptuous curves. He’d spent the handful of weeks they’d worked together admiring them.
She’d gone out of her way to tempt him with them too, not that it had taken much effort. With her throaty, sexy voice, full, red lips and big, dark eyes that could go from a dangerous glint to wide and innocent in a moment, she was temptation personified.
But contrary to popular opinion, he was able to control his impulses. Nina was different from the other women he met. Though she batted her eyelashes at him, same as every other woman, she didn’t look at him like he was an object. And if he was honest with himself, it terrified him.
He was okay with being objectified. He didn’t mind that most women only wanted him for his body. Their low expectations were easy to satisfy.
He wasn’t sure Nina would be satisfied.
They strolled in silence and he left her alone with her thoughts as he enjoyed the stillness and the soothing tumble of the breakers on the shore.
One thing in Nina’s favor: she didn’t feel the incessant need to talk. With most women in Hollywood there was only one thing that made them stop talking. Admittedly, then they were usually moaning his name instead.
They reached the end of the long curve of beach and paused.
“You know, I’ve never been to the beach in LA,” Nina said. She wrapped her arms around her chest, hugging herself as if she was cold. But she wasn’t cold. She looked almost haunted.
“You should make more effort. We have some great beaches. Some excellent surfing, too.”
She shuddered. “No thanks. I don’t like the sea.”
And there was his deal-breaker. He loved the sea and spent every spare moment at the beach. He lived within a stone’s throw of the ocean just so it would be the first thing he saw every morning.
They meandered back the way they’d come, Dom splashing through the shallows, Nina keeping as far away from the lapping edge as she could. He watched her out the corner of his eye.
In public she always appeared so confident, so sparky, but here, alone in the dark with no one to primp and pose for, she seemed a different person, vulnerable, lost. It tugged at him.
As he’d told Graydon, he was a sucker for a damsel in distress.
He paused to look out across the restless ocean.
He’d heard of the Revelations project somewhere, and that it was in pre-production. He didn’t know much, but he’d heard enough to know that it was very different from any movie Nina had done before. It wasn’t surprising she was a long shot for the role, but if she wanted it enough, he had no doubt she could do it. He’d watched her perform opposite his friend Christian in Pirate’s Revenge and he knew she was worth more than the roles she usually played.
He could help her. Unconsciously he rubbed the constant ache in his hip again. Why was he even considering it? He wasn’t in any shape to conduct an actress boot camp.
He could find someone else to train her… He discarded the idea as quickly it came. Perhaps it was the arrogance of professional pride, but the thought of her spending all her time the next few weeks working with someone other than him made his stomach revolt.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered beside him. She’d ventured into the shallows, tentatively letting the waves bury her bare feet in the sand.
Though she didn’t like the sea, she’d faced its challenge. He liked that in a woman.
Nina was just as obsessed with how she looked and what people thought as every other actress he knew, and she probably lived on a diet of grated carrots and lettuce leaves most of the time, but she had potential. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d have a hissy fit if she broke a nail working out.
“Why me?” he asked. “Why not book yourself into a boot camp or hire a personal trainer?”
She shook her head. “Anyone can do that. I need to be better. To win this role I’m going to need to do a lot more than just run on a treadmill or do Pilates classes. I don’t only need to get physically fit, I also need to get into Sonia’s headspace. I need someone to push me, to challenge me. I need to be able to walk and talk like her. Now when I walk into a room, people see the girl next door, maybe a little sassy, a little outspoken, a bit of a klutz, but no one would think of me as a badass. I want to be able to walk into the casting director’s office and have her think Lara Croft just walked in.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And you think I’m going to be able to teach you all that?”
She grinned, expression cheeky. “You’re the most badass person I know.”
“I’m not badass. I live in the suburbs and drink green tea.”
“What can I say? I don’t get out much.” She cast him a sideways glance, all but batting those too-long fake lashes of hers. “Besides, you wouldn’t really want me to go hang out in some biker bar to learn to be badass, would you?”
He frowned. Not that he believed she would, but even the mere thought of Nina in a bar full of drunken men was enough to make his fists clench. “It takes most people a lifetime to become badass. How much time do you have?”
“Six weeks. But I’m an actress. With the right training, I can fake it.”
He looked at her, saying nothing, and she hurried on, “There are so many things I haven’t yet done in my life that Sonia would know how to do. That’s all I’m asking, is for you to help me do a few of those things.”
“Things like?”
“Load and fire a gun, be able to hold my own in a stage fight, take a fall.” She grinned. “Ride on a motorcycle and walk on a beach at night.”
“There are stunt schools that teach those sorts of things.”
She shook her head. “And have a whole bunch of people watch as I make a fool of myself? No thanks! I trust you.”
He ignored the obvious flattery. “A stunt school would be more all-rounded. You need trainers who can do vehicular stunts and pyrotechnics and weapons training. I’m a martial artist with a specialty in falls.” And he wasn’t even good at those these days. He flinched at the memory of his last fall, from a Paris hotel balcony to a snow-covered lawn. Without the luxury of airbags or protective clothing. It had been one jolt too many for his already- damaged body.
“But you have the connections,” she persisted. She made her eyes big and round. “Please?”
He did have the connections. And he could do this. The risk was minimal. But whether he should was another matter entirely.
Mistaking his hesitance for reluctance, her face clouded over. “I’ll pay you well.”
He shook his head. “It’s not about money.”
“You already have plans for the next few weeks?”
He looked away. “I haven’t got any work booked in.” And he’d love an excuse to postpone the surgery. “Why do you want this role so much? Tell me about this script and what you need to learn and I’ll consider working with you.”
The radiance in her face was enough to take his breath away. He’d be the first to admit his ego needed stroking a little now and then, too, and when a woman looked at him like that it made him feel like a hero. He needed that feeling more than ever these days, now that he’d been forced to face his own mortality.
They strolled back the way they’d come, and as they walked, she talked about the role. Here in the quiet of the beach, with no one else around, her voice washed over him, slow and sensual and mesmerizing. But was that a soft, Southern accent creeping in? He’d been sure she was from somewhere in the Midwest.
He shook his head. Perhaps he’d imagined it.
What was certainly not his imagination was the passion she felt for this script. More than simple admiration for the role, it was as if she wanted to be Sonia.
“This story really means something to you.” He sat down on a sandy spot high up the beach and patted the ground beside him.
Nina sat beside him, pulling her knees to her chest, and looked up at the sky, not answering him for a long moment. “I read the books at a very hard time in my life. Sonia’s story helped me through it. They took me very far away from what I was going through.”
He watched her face, the moonlight turning her expression stark.
She sucked in her lower lip. “I’ve always been the odd one out in my family. For the Alexanders, duty and service to others have always been more important than personal happiness. I’m not like that. Playing Sonia is the closest I’ll ever get to saving the world single-handed.”
That was a hell of a lot of pressure to put on oneself. What kind of superhero family did she come from? Probably cops or military. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know. He never asked women about their families. Because when you asked those kinds of questions you jumped straight into ‘complications’ territory.
He stretched out on his side, cushioning his head with his arms, and a moment later she lay beside him, not close enough to touch, but close enough that he could feel the rise and fall of her breathing.
Their gazes held and desire sizzled through him. He’d wanted her from the first time he’d seen her, and the temptation now to take what he wanted was almost more than he could stand. So why didn’t he? It wouldn’t take much to close the distance between them, to lose himself in those full, pink lips.
He rolled away to lie on his back and look up at the clear, night sky.
He had very few scruples when it came to women. As long as it was consensual and legal, she was fair game.
But somehow with Nina he couldn’t bring himself to make a move. Perhaps because she deserved so much better than him. She deserved better than Paul de Angelo, too.
She most definitely deserved better than casual sex or a one-night stand, which was all he was looking for.
She was so quiet he wondered if she dozed. He wouldn’t be surprised after the day she must have had. The preparations for Oscar night were almost as grueling as the event itself. Not unlike the rush of working on a film set: exciting, challenging, invigorating, and exhausting all in one.
But when he turned his head to look at her, she was awake, watching him through half-lidded eyes. With a small smile she crept closer and laid her head on his chest. He let her.
