The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) (6 page)

I managed to hold it for the entire morning. Then, when we were eating a very good salad Edgar had left us, I snapped.

“That’s not going to do,” I told him, as he picked up his fork in his right hand.

Luckily, he looked more shocked than annoyed. “…what?”

I sighed. “Nothing. Ignore me. Sorry.”

He frowned. “No, tell me. What?”

I bit my lip. He stared at me with those gray eyes, pinning me with his gaze. “It’s…If you really want this part….”

“I do,” he said firmly. Again, I was surprised by how serious he sounded about it.

“If you want it,” I said slowly, “you’re going to need to change more than your voice.”

He looked at me and then down at his fork. “Like how I use a fork?”

“Well, for a start you should be using a knife with it. But it’s how you hold it, how you eat—” I sighed. “Are you sure you want to get into this?”

He put the fork down. “Yeah.”

I thought through what I was going to say. “You’re very…I mean, I can see how the audience connects with you because you’re an everyman. You’re like them.”

He smirked. “You mean I’m from the wrong side of the tracks?”

I flushed.

“It’s okay. I
am
from the wrong side of the tracks. My dad worked construction. My mom mopped floors.”

I hadn’t known that. I’d kind of assumed that the roughness was at least partially put on. “Oh.”

“So be honest. If there’s a problem, I want to know.”

I took a deep breath. “I think…if you’re going to play a lord…people are going to want you to be different to them. More…refined.”

He raised one eyebrow. “You’re saying I’m unrefined?” His voice was a low rumble.

I swallowed.

“Relax. I get it. I’m more like a Mustang, or a Dodge Charger, right? All brute power. And I need to be more like a Jaguar,”—he pronounced it
Jag-wah—
“more…controlled.”

“It’s maybe not the analogy I would have picked,” I said slowly. “But yes. More controlled.”

He slowly picked up his fork and started to eat again, this time using his knife, too.

“Don’t attack the food,” I told him. “You look like a famer.”

He burst out laughing. “You got a problem with farmers?”

I colored. “I didn’t mean—I just mean that for the movie, it’s inappropriate.”

He nodded. “I get it, I get it. It’s just funny. Go on, my Ladyship. Tell me how I should be doing it.”

The
my ladyship
thing sent a sort of quiver through me and I wasn’t sure why. “The food is not the enemy,” I told him. “Don’t hack at it. I shouldn’t hear the knife on the plate. The blade should never touch the china except to softly caress it.”

Tanner stared at me.

“It’s what it said in an old manners book I read,” I told him.

“They don’t just teach you all this, in Britain?” he asked.

“No. I…read it.” I looked down at my plate, hoping he didn’t ask
why
I’d read it.

“Well, I’m glad you did,” said Tanner. “I want to get this right.” He looked down at his hands. “Like this?” he asked, slicing a cube of feta cheese in half.

I bit my lip. Was he for real, or just trying to make me feel better? “Not…quite,” I said. “But, you know, it’s probably fine. It probably doesn’t matter
that
much—”

He leaned forward and I was struck again by how big he was, like a bear looming over me. It should have been intimidating, but somehow it wasn’t. My eyes were drawn to the triangle of tan skin revealed by the collar of his polo shirt. I could see the tops of his pecs there, smooth and deliciously big. “You remember that movie I did, with a car chase through three states?”

I nodded. “
Hard and Dangerous.
”

“Well, when they cast me for that movie, I could barely drive. I mean, I could drive down the highway, but I couldn’t drive fast, you know? And they said that’s fine, we got stunt drivers and people to do all that.”

I leaned closer. “Okay….”

“But I wanted to get it right, you know? Like, how they do the gear changes really fast. How they hold the wheel in a skid. So I went and found this gang of real-life street racers. Met up with them every week for a month, paying to ride shotgun while they raced. We nearly got caught by the cops about a million times, but it was worth it. It meant I got it right.”

My eyes were wide. “Really? You really did that?”

“Oh yeah. Nice bunch of people. Lori, the one I drove with was called. And there was another one they called Princess, and a big guy called ‘B’.” He looked at me seriously. “So when I say I want to get it right...I want to get it right. This stuff matters to me.”

I nodded dumbly.

“Come around behind me and show me.”

I slowly got up and walked around to stand behind his chair. Then I leaned forward and took his hands in mine.
Oh God!
His hands were so warm! Not hot and sweaty—warm and dry and somehow very solid. My own hands looked tiny by comparison. “Slowly,” I told him. “Patiently. You’re a rich lord. You have all the time in the world. Savor the food.” I guided his hands and he let them move under my control. I sliced into a tomato, the juice squirting and oozing. “Move the knife...
languidly.
Like you’re playing an instrument.”

He nodded.

“And small bites,” I told him. “Morsels.”

“How big?” he wanted to know. “Show me.” He turned his head to the side so that he could look at me.

My heart was thumping faster. I sawed off a small piece of roasted pepper and raised the fork to show him.

“Go on,” he said, his voice a rumble that passed right through me, leaving me trembling.

I had to lean forward to see what I was doing. I knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t have any choice. I felt the loose blouse I was wearing touch his back first, and then the warmth of him was touching the twin peaks of my nipples and I could hear my heart pounding. I leaned closer still, and my breasts started to pillow against his back. I swallowed. We were as close as lovers, now, and I knew he must be able to feel how hard my heart was beating.

I lifted the forkful of pepper to his mouth and he accepted it, chewed and swallowed. His eyes never left mine for a second.

***

When we went back to work—my hands still shaking—we started working through speech exercises, training him syllable-by-syllable in his new accent. I could see he was frustrated—it’s hard, saying the same thing again and again and being told it’s not quite right. It drives every one of my clients crazy, but Tanner was more patient than most. Again, not the side of him the media ever showed. Between his patience and his desire to get every detail right, I was beginning to see why he’d been so successful.

I eventually called a break because I could see his eyes beginning to glaze over. “Thanks,” he said as he made a fresh pot of coffee. “I was starting to lose it. I guess it could be worse, though. If I was a woman, I’d have to do all this
and
wear a corset.”

I burst out laughing. “You know their waists actually got smaller?” I asked. “Some women’s lung volume shrank so much, they had to shallow breathe. That’s where the whole heaving bosoms thing came from—”

I cut myself off because, just as I said
heaving bosoms,
Tanner’s gaze flicked down to my breasts.
That means nothing,
I told myself. Just a male reaction to hearing anything to do with boobs. He wasn’t looking at
my
boobs, just the nearest available pair. “Anyway,” I managed. “Yes. It was worse for women.”

“All those long skirts must have got in the way,” he said, staring right at me. “When they wanted to…y’know.”

“Oh, no,” I said without thinking. “They just lay back in the grass and hoiked their skirts up around their waists.” And then I stared at him like a bunny in the headlights, unable to believe what had just come out of my mouth.

“Did they?” he asked, smirking.

I nodded.

“You like them,” Tanner said, folding his arms.

“I—What?”

“English gentlemen, as they used to be. You like them, right?”

Hot, raw embarrassment soaked through me.
How could he know? How could he possibly know?
“I—Well, I mean—” I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Why?”

My cheeks were hot. “Because they treated women with respect.”

“Did they? Weren’t they all taking the maids in the scullery, and wasn’t it all arranged marriages and stuff?”

I hesitated. He had a point. “Well, yes. But they did things properly. There was a certain...decorum.”

“So it’s manners? You like “gentlemen” because they speak nicely and know how to tie a bowtie, even though most of them were probably—excuse my French—bastards?”

I felt irrationally annoyed with him. Everything he was saying was right, and maybe in some ways my
thing
for gentlemen was silly and outdated, but that didn’t give him any right to—

“You know what I think?” he said more gently. “I think there are good and bad people around now, and there were good and bad people around then.” He uncrossed his arms and pushed off from the counter, walking towards me.

“Really?” I asked, a little sharply. “Is that what you think?”

“Yeah.” He was still moving towards me, but I was too stubborn to move back. “Maybe you’re just looking in the wrong place.” He stopped, so close that we were practically touching, so close I had to lift my chin to look up into his eyes.

“Well,” I said tightly. “I’ll take that under advisement. Thank you.”

I stayed mildly annoyed for the rest of the day. What annoyed me most was the nagging feeling that he might be right.

Chapter 4

The next morning, I stumbled into the kitchen to find it empty. Tanner was outside on the veranda with another Tanner-sized breakfast, his back to me. He was in shorts, his legs thickly muscled beneath them. A blue t-shirt was stretched across his powerful shoulders.

On the table was a freshly-boiled kettle, a teapot, cups and saucers, a jug of milk and—I counted—sixteen different types of tea.

I poured a cup, dropped bread into the toaster and then carried my cup outside. “Thank you,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“No big deal,” Tanner said, turning to look at me. He held my gaze just a little longer than he really needed to. I felt my heart rate notch higher with each second it continued.

There was a knock at the door. Tanner ambled away to get it while I sat at the table on the veranda, suddenly a bag of nerves. He was definitely looking at me more. Was it possible that he
was
interested?

I caught the tail end of the conversation as Tanner’s agent bustled in. Maurice—Maury, as Tanner had called him—was shorter, in person—or maybe it was just because he was standing next to Tanner. His eyes were as small as I remembered them and they grew hard when they saw me.

“Maury, you remember Charlotte,” said Tanner. “Charlotte, Maury.”

Maury smiled a snake’s smile and I saw his eyes flick over me. Up until that moment, I’d been able to pretend that he hadn’t seen me naked. Now, my cheeks grew hot and what was worse was that I was pretty sure he knew how uncomfortable I was. And he kept right on staring. Tanner walked off to the other end of the kitchen to refill his coffee.

“How’s it going?” asked Maury. “You turn him into royalty, yet?”

I cleared my throat. “Well. It’s still early days, but—”

“Yeah, well. It was kind of a dumb idea to begin with,” said Maury. “Just do your best.”

I blinked. It sounded as if he had no confidence in Tanner at all—but he was his client!

Then Maury snickered. “That was quite a sight, when we Skyped you. You do all your business like that?”

And then Tanner returned and Maury was grinning again and talking about the costume drama as if it was the most awesome thing in the world. I sat there in shock, face red, running through what he’d said to me again and again. Tanner had asked me almost the same question after the call but, when he’d said it, it had been a joke. Maury had sounded downright cruel, as if he was getting off on the idea of me being shocked and embarrassed.

He stayed for a half hour, pretty much ignoring me while he tried to interest Tanner in the screenplay for a new blockbuster. “Dinosaurs invade New York!” he told him. “You’re the only one who can stop them!” Tanner promised he’d look at it and then gently showed Maury to the door.

“I love that guy,” Tanner said when he’d gone. “But in small doses.”

I nodded glumly. I’d just been starting to relax around Tanner and now I was on edge again. God, I’d actually been wondering if he might be interested in me. Maybe Maury arriving was a blessing—it had snapped me back to the reality that I was a plus-sized disaster area, before I did anything stupid.