The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) (7 page)

Tanner finished his coffee and nodded towards the gardens. “Can we work outdoors today? It’s way too hot to be indoors.”

I looked at the gardens. They really were beautiful and the Californian sun was glorious. It was just that...I’ve never really like the outdoors.

Winter is fine. In fact, I quite like winter. In winter, you can wear a long, thick coat that covers you from your ankles to your neck. Everyone looks the same, in winter.

In summer, though, the skin starts to appear. First it’s strappy tops and then skirts and shorts and then eventually we get to swimsuits and bikinis. And the more of myself I have to show, the more scared I get.

And that’s why I liked living in a country where it rained 97% of the time.

But he was my client. What could I do?

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll work outdoors.”

***

He led me down past the pool to a maze of topiary and walled gardens that could have come straight out of an English stately home. The orange grove, though, was definitely Californian. I reached up and stroked an orange in wonder. “
Really?”
I asked. “That’s so weird, to me. Oranges in your garden.”

“I juice ‘em for breakfast,” he told me. “You would have already had some, if you didn’t live on tea and toast.”

I was thinking about Maury. “Can I ask you something?

“Anything you want.”

I bit my lip. “Why do you want to do this movie so badly?”

He looked at me for a long time. The breeze blew a strand of hair across my face and he hooked it back behind my ear for me, the skin tingling where he’d touched it. “You noticed that, huh?”

I nodded.

He took a deep breath. “You know what’s coming out in two years’ time? I’m not supposed to tell you this because it hasn’t been announced yet, but:
The End of the World III.
Fifteen years after the first one. Playing off the whole anniversary thing.”

“Well…that’s good, right?”

“It is good. I’d a prick if I said it wasn’t good.” He waved his hand at the mansion. “All of this—this is from me wearing a vest and shooting guns and saving the girl. I don’t want to seem ungrateful. It’s an awesome way to make a living.”

“But?” I asked quietly.

He pressed his lips together. “I got into this because I wanted to act. To grow. To get better. I want to work hard, not just go through the motions.”

“You want people to take you seriously,” I said.

He looked, for the first time, embarrassed. But he nodded.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I said. “I admire that.”

“Maury thinks I’m a tool,” Tanner mumbled.

God, he actually felt bad about disagreeing with his agent! That was touchingly loyal, but— “What does Maury thing you should do?”

Tanner shrugged. “That thing with dinosaurs invading New York.”

I thought about it for moment. I didn’t know the intricacies of Hollywood, but I knew that agents took a percentage of what their clients made. Big, blockbuster popcorn movies meant more money for Maury. I wanted to kill the little weasel.

Tanner sighed. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I’m sorry. I just—There’s no one I can really talk to about this stuff, you know?”

“Mr. Cole—”

“Tanner.”

“
Mr. Cole…
.” My resolve was hardening. “If you want to get this part that badly, I’ll get you it. We’ll turn you into the most English flipping lord they’ve ever seen.”

He blinked at me. “
Flipping?
Is that how the British curse?”

I blushed. “It’s how
I
curse. Now do you want the part or what?”

He looked at me, a smile touching his lips. “Yes. Yes, I want the part.”

“Okay then,” I said. “Let’s start with some voice exercises. And we need to work on your walk. You walk like…well, like a bad boy. Like James Dean.”

“Charlotte?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

***

After an hour, he was improving rapidly. We’d swapped the bad boy swagger for a ramrod-straight walk that hinted at a military past. And I was about to pass out from the heat.

Tanner looked at my blouse and jeans. “Before we go any further…you have got to get changed. You’re going to get heatstroke.

I shook my head.

He tilted his head to one side as if trying to figure something out. “Let me at least get you into the shade,” he said. At the end of the orange grove, a stone bench faced back towards the mansion, and the trees behind sheltered it from the sun. Tanner pointed me to it and we sat down. I sighed quietly in relief at the cool touch of the stone.

The sunlight made dappled patterns on the ground and, looking back down the path, the white mansion was framed in front of us. The scent of oranges was thick in the air. It was movingly beautiful. And peaceful. And...secluded.

There is nothing weird about this,
I told myself.
There is nothing weird about sitting here alone, just the two of us, on a bench—

My fingers were unconsciously tracing the shape of a carving on the back of the bench. I looked. A heart.

A bench obviously meant for lovers in a very romantic spot at his private mansion.

“Could we try something else, now?” Tanner asked. “Instead of more ‘
the rain in Spain’?”

I swallowed. What was he building up to? “Go on,” I said hesitantly.

He shifted just slightly closer on the bench, turning fully to face me. He put one arm along the back and his hand brushed mine. “Just say if you’re not okay with it,” he said.

“I will,” I croaked.
Oh God...what’s he...he can’t be going to….

“Could we….”

The world held its breath.

“...read from the script?”

Everything started moving again. Relief slammed through me, quickly followed by anger at how stupid I’d been.
What did you think? That he was going to kiss you? Get real!
And on the heels of those two, a third emotion: disappointment.

“Of course,” I said without thinking. I just wanted to cover my embarrassment. “Actually, that’s a great idea.”

He beamed, and his smile made something inside me lift and soar. “Great,” he said. And passed me a script. “You get it easy. You already have the accent.”

I took the script and leafed through it until we got to the scene he wanted to do.
This
is
a good idea,
I told myself.
He can practice the accent
and
learn his lines at the same time.
But as I started to look at the words a sort of sick dread started to spread through me. My whole life, I’d stayed away from the stage. Voiceovers were different—no one could see you. Here, Tanner was sitting right next to me.

And he’d picked a romantic scene. He was telling the heroine how beautiful she was. I closed my eyes, trying not to panic. He couldn’t have picked anything that was less comfortable for me.

“Annabel,” he told me in his best attempt at an English accent. “I’ve thought about nothing else. I’ve neither slumbered nor eaten. You’re a beautiful, dangerous sickness in my heart, one I have no desire to cure, but you must tell me how you feel before it destroys me completely.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I knew, of course. I’m not completely stupid. I knew it was just a line from a costume drama. I knew it was aimed at Annabel, the slender, winsome young thing that Tanner’s character was in love with (even though he was meant to be marrying someone else). I knew that, but—

Just for a stupid, stupid second, it felt good. It felt really good. A gentleman was telling me he loved me. It was like all of my teenage dreams come true.

And then reality came crashing down and I coughed and said, “Good, but hit the
des
of ‘desire’ more.”

He nodded. And then he looked at me, and I realized he wanted me to read my line, too. I looked at the line. I looked at him. “Is that necessary?”

“I need it to respond to,” he said simply.

I swallowed. “Thomas,” I said haltingly. “You—You’re betrothed. Virtually a married man. We must ignore what our hearts tell us.” ANNABEL TURNS AWAY, the script said, so I turned away.

I read THOMAS MAKES HER FACE HIM at the same time Tanner grabbed my shoulder and spun me back to look at him. I found myself gaping up into his face.

“I love you, Annabel,” he told me. His eyes tracked down my body and then back up. “Your body is a thing of wonder. You are a goddess given form.”

I suddenly choked and turned away from him—for real, this time. It should have been a beautiful speech. But that part where he’d looked me up and down...it just made me feel ill inside. He was a good actor but I knew that, on the inside, he must be wincing at the mismatch between what he was saying and what he saw in front of him.

“Charlotte?”

Shit.
He knew something was wrong. And getting wronger. Suddenly, there were tears in my eyes. I tried to blink them away because the last thing I wanted was him feeling sorry for the big girl, but just thinking that nearly sent me over the edge.

“Charlotte?”

“I’m fine. I’m just—”

A hand on my shoulder, turning me around. I blinked away as many tears as I could before finally allowing him to see my face. He was watching me with genuine concern. “
Charlotte?”
he asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Sun in my eyes.”

He frowned. “Did I say something to upset you?”

“No.”

He looked at the script and then at me, his eyes narrowed with frustration. And then he looked me right in the eye and said, again, “Your body is a thing of wonder. You are a goddess given form.”

I took a shuddering breath in. “You see,” I said, “that’s not good enough. You weren’t even trying to do an English accent.”

He stared back at me and slowly nodded. “I’ll try harder next time.”

We moved on to another scene, but my mind was only half on the work. Inside, I was reeling. Had he just...had that really been about
me?!
Why? Just to make me feel better, I guessed. He couldn’t actually mean it.

***

That night, he went out. I saw him briefly, getting into a limo, in a charcoal-gray suit and white shirt, and he looked so good I wanted to yell,
Take me with you!
Which was ridiculous, of course.

I had the run of a billionaire’s mansion, which was both more interesting and weirder than you might think.

First—obviously—I hunted around for the hidden dungeon. Because, you know, billionaires. I had high hopes when I found steps leading down to a bar stone room, but it turned out to be a wine cellar. I did find a well-equipped gym and a cinema room with seating for twelve. I tried to imagine Tanner sitting there alone, watching a movie. It was a lonely image.

For all you know, he has all his buddies round,
I told myself. But it didn’t feel like a room made for a pack of guys. It felt more like a cozy place for a family.

I headed to bed early and lay there, still dressed, trying to make sense of the last few days. All the eye contact. The thing with the knife and fork. What he’d said in the orange grove.

What he’d said about my taste in men.

I flushed a little. What if he was right? What if I was searching for something I knew couldn’t be found, just so that I didn’t have to
really
look? What if I was kidding myself because I didn’t want to face the truth: that I was just too scared to put myself out there?

I lay there for hours, long past the point at which I normally would have gone to bed. Eventually, I got up and started pacing.

It had occurred to me that both times I’d found myself thinking about Tanner—as some sort of maverick, bad boy action hero and as a leather-clad gladiator—he’d been very far from a gentleman. What if that was what I really needed? Hot, steamy sex with a bad boy?

Even if that was true, though, I didn’t want that in a relationship. I could just about bring myself to admit that a guy like that might be exciting, but he’d break your heart as soon as the next woman came along. Guys like that didn’t commit, didn’t want to settle down. Everyone knew that.

For a one night stand, though...once I stopped my fierce denial and allowed myself to think about it,
yes,
Tanner Cole was hard to beat. I mean, obviously nothing would ever happen in real life, whatever he’d said in the orange grove about my body.

But...as a fantasy….

I leaned against the wall by the door, the plaster cool through my blouse. One hand was by my side, but I slowly slid it onto my leg...and then up my thigh. I found myself thinking about Tanner in his first big role, when he’d played the Special Forces soldier who’d saved the world.