Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (40 page)

I sat there in silence for a moment, not sure what to say. Was he really hearing his dead buddy? Or was it the emotional trauma of losing him? They’d been best friends; either would make sense. I wasn’t sure which was worse: the fear that came with the idea that there were actually ghosts in the world or the pain of thinking about Ryan suffering like that with...what? Post-traumatic stress disorder?

“Did they offer you counseling?” I asked gently. “After it happened?”

Ryan stared at me. “You think that’s what it is? It’s all in my head?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve got no idea.”

He took a deep breath. “I went to see some psychotherapist. She was okay. She meant well. But I told her everything was fine—” He cut off abruptly.

“But everything isn’t fine,” I said. “Is it?”

He stared at the table for a long time. Took a drink of wine.

“I get angry,” he said at last. “I mean, I guess I always did. But it’s different, since Hux. I can’t control it.”

I nodded, but it didn’t make sense to me. Back at the screen test, he’d seemed different. But since we’d been around each other, he hadn’t lost his temper.

Something must have showed in my expression because he shook his head. “It doesn’t happen when I’m with you,” he said. “You’re like...a safety valve, I guess. Being around you makes everything better.”

A little explosion went off in my chest, a silent burst of heat and light. I’d known the way he made me feel: the warmth and the security that went along with that deep, animal lust I had for him. But it hadn’t occurred to me that it worked both ways. He was the normal one, the solid one, and I was a mess. How could I be calming to anyone? And yet that’s what he was telling me. That he needed me.

I’d never been
needed
before. Not like that. I met his eyes and we just stared at one another across the table.

“Anyway,” he said slowly. “That’s where I’m at. You want to run away?”

I shook my head. He’d opened up completely to me and all it had made me do was love him more.

“What about you?” he asked gently.

And there it was. The invitation to open myself, to tell him about Emma and my dad and the two worst nights of my life.

I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Being honest with him would mean losing him because, once he knew the truth, he’d hate me. I’d told him that I’d stop acting and I had...mostly. But telling him about my past….

I chose my words very carefully. “You’ve already figured out that someone hurt me,” I said. “It’s in the past. I think it should stay there.”

He stared at me. “That woman I talked to—the therapist—she said that bottling things up, carrying them around with you, will eventually eat you up. You have to let them out.”

“
You
didn’t,” I said.

“And look what happened to me. I got kicked off the force, pretty much. I hear a dead guy’s voice.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to wind up like me, Jasmine.”

Emma. My name is Emma.

Just for a second, that’s what I thought. It took me totally by surprise, as if someone sitting next to me had said it. For the first time, I’d slipped into being Emma without conscious effort and that scared the hell out of me. My defenses slammed back up. I gathered Jasmine around me and pulled her back into place, like wrapping myself up in a blanket.

He didn’t realize that I already was living with someone in my head- that I was far, far more messed up than he could ever dream of. Everything he knew about me, everything he liked about me, was a lie.

“I know,” I said, just as the comforting shell closed around me, pushing everything back to a safe distance, numbing me. “Give me time.”

He nodded and stood to clear the bowls away. And then he turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder, so big and solid that I felt better just from it being there. “Take time,” he said softly, his tone sounding all the more gentle because it came from someone so big. “You take as much time as you need. I’ll be here waiting for you.”

I couldn’t respond. My throat was closing up and I felt such a deep swell of emotion that I knew I’d just descend into sobs if I tried to speak. Even nodding was almost too much.

This guy was perfect.

He carried the bowls away, which was a good thing because it gave me a chance to stare very fixedly at a candle and will myself not to cry. I felt like my heart was going to burst with how kind he was being to me and I wasn’t sure I deserved any of it.

For the first time, I really let myself believe that maybe,
maybe
this could work. If I could keep him away from my past, if I could just let Emma out a stage at a time, maintaining control….

He brought over the main course. Coq au vin with creamy mashed potato. “Where did you learn to cook French stuff?” I asked.

“My dad. And he got it from my mom.” He sat down. “Her family’s from France.”

“You ever see her?” I dug in. “God, this is amazing!”

He shook his head. “She remarried. I guess I could look her up, but...I’ve always been closer to my dad. It broke his heart, when she left, and I kind of sided with him.”

I nodded and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a dad like that. A dad you weren’t terrified of.

“You think they’ll pick it up?” he asked.

“What?”

He smirked. “The series.”

I realized I’d stopped thinking about it. The most important thing to happen in my career, and it had gone right out of my head. I’d been entirely focused on Ryan and me...and on the other Fenbrook girls. “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But, I mean....it’s going well for you, right? I mean, you’re playing nice with everybody. You’re not getting these anger outbursts—”

“Around you.”

“OK, you’re not getting them
around me,
but that’s got to be a start. You think your captain will let you back onto the force?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “He might. I’d probably have to drive a desk for a while.”

I smiled a tiny, nervous smile. “I like that idea. I wouldn’t be so worried about you.”

He leaned across the table. “You worry about me?”

My heart gave a heavy, loud thump in my chest. “I’ve always worried about you. Even before...you know. Hux. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

We just sat there for a moment. The tension built and built, crackling in the air between us. I had to say something else, or I was going to grab him and kiss him and then we’d wind up in bed and I didn’t want that. Not yet.

“What if we do get picked up for a series?” I asked. “Would you stick with it? Play Tony every week?”

“You think it’d mean more bedroom scenes? With you?”

I swallowed. “Probably.”

He smiled at me and I swore I could feel myself getting wet, just from the way he was looking at me. Then he shook his head and laughed. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m managing, with your help...I think.”

“You are! You’re doing great!”

He looked grateful for that. “But I dunno. Being a cop... I
get
that. It makes me happy.”

I picked up my wine glass. “To being happy,” I said. We clinked.

The coq au vin was as good as the soup had been, the chicken falling off the bone and the sauce rich and thick.
I could get used to this,
I thought as we finished.
Very easily.

I could feel it beckoning to me, an idyllic life with Ryan. Him out on patrol during the day, me shooting some TV series or movie. Then a meal together and endless, sheet-clutchingly good sex. If it was anything like as good as our love scene had hinted at, it would be mind blowing.

And all I had to do was let him in. Because I knew I couldn’t have that relationship as Jasmine. I had to let him know more of the real me, the Emma I’d always hidden behind jokes and flirtation, but somehow do it without all of my past coming out. It was a balancing act that terrified me.

I wanted it to work. I needed it to work because I’d never met anyone like him before and I knew I never would again. If I missed this chance, that was
it,
for life. I couldn’t show him any more of Emma, not tonight, or I’d break down and then he’d find out too much. And yet I didn’t feel ready to move to sex. So what the hell were we going to do now that dinner was over?

I stared across the table at him, worried. My eyes flicked in the direction of the bedroom and then back to him. “Um….”

He leaned forward and rested his hands very gently on my cheeks, his fingertips brushing through my hair. “Jasmine,” he said. He spoke as if he was picking his way very carefully across boulder-strewn ground. “I know that you’re not ready to talk about some things. And I know that…” He hesitated and looked at me and I could see the pain in his eyes. The anger. “I know that you were—”

Please don’t say it. Please don’t say that word.

He must have seen it in my eyes because he stopped himself. “I know that you were...
hurt,
in ways that mean...maybe you’re not ready to….” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Shit. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this.”

I grabbed his wrist. “You’re
great
at this,” I told him in a small voice. No one else had even tried, because no one else knew.

“What I’m saying is...I don’t want you to feel under any pressure. We don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.”

My heart swelled until it felt as if it was filling my entire chest. God, he thought...he thought I didn’t want to have sex because of what had happened to me. I had to tell him that it was just because I wanted it to be right. And yet, even as I opened my mouth to say it, I knew that wasn’t true.

I’d been telling myself that. I’d been convinced that was the reason. After all, what happened in Chicago had never put me off sex before.

Me.

Jasmine.

It hit me so hard I actually stiffened in my seat. He wasn’t talking about Jasmine. He’d seen right through me, yet again. He was talking about Emma.

He wanted
Emma.
And he was dead right—
she
was traumatized by what had happened. She wasn’t ready for sex.

I nodded, my voice cracking with emotion. “Th—Thank you,” I managed. And then I just sat there, looking helplessly at him. God, he was gorgeous.
What the hell is he doing with me?!
I wanted to touch him. I wanted to hurl myself into his arms, but I didn’t want to start something I couldn’t finish because he was right: Emma wasn’t ready for sex.

And I didn’t feel like being Jasmine, tonight. I didn’t want to lie to him anymore.

“Would you like,” he said slowly, “to dance?”

I almost laughed. “You’ve never see me dance,” I said.

“You’ve never seen
me
dance. I’ll outdo you, lack-of-moves-wise. I promise you.”

He held out his hand and I took it. It felt as if I was in a dream. He led me into the middle of the kitchen floor and turned up the music just a little—some slow song about love and hope that fitted just perfectly. He put a huge, gentle hand between my shoulders and drew me to him.

I pressed myself to his body slowly, each part of me making contact in turn. Something felt different. Just the touch of my leg against his was electric. The very tips of my breasts brushed his chest and I caught my breath.
What the hell’s going on?!
I was behaving like Karen—well, Karen pre-Connor. But I wasn’t some blushing virgin. I’d done things with guys that most people only read about in books. And yet, as he began to move clumsily to the music and I rocked against him, I was almost trembling. I was—

I was Emma. I’d slipped into Emma. After three years of keeping my Jasmine mask firmly in place, with only a couple of brief slips, now I was switching to my true self without even being aware of it. And to Emma, this sort of close contact was completely new.

We began to move. It was very different to anything that Natasha or Clarissa would have done, with their lithe, elfin bodies. With my curves and his rugged, muscled form, we looked more like a couple of old-style ballroom dancers. I needed a long gown with sequins. Except—

“Wow,” I said as we turned in slow circles, both focusing intently on not treading on each other’s toes. “We really
can’t
dance.”

He grinned. “I told you.”

“Yeah, but I presumed you were being modes—OW!”

“Sorry!”

“”—modest, but
oh my God
you’re like an out of time elephant.”

In answer, he pressed me closer to him and I felt the heat throb from his body and soak into mine. I suddenly didn’t give a damn about how badly we were dancing. We slowly turned and stepped and circled around the darkened kitchen and I wanted it to go on forever. I felt...triumphant, I guess. We were finally together and nothing was ever going to split us apart. With every step, I felt the broad curve of his chest pressing into my breasts, the warmth of his palms on my back. It felt like nothing bad could ever happen, as long as I was in his arms.