“Oh, yeah, loads. This is the most fun I’ve had in ages.” Actually, he was having fun in a perverse way. Nothing was going to happen with VJ—nothing he couldn’t handle anyway.
They stopped at the zenith of the Ferris wheel. The vista was stunning—mountains, heat shimmers, vast blue...and VJ. Without thinking, he said, “Here’s a romantic proposal spot.”
She glared at him. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Not at all.” Since their earlier conversation, the perfect proposal had been brewing in the back of his mind. He’d directed one in his third movie, and the scene had been flat. Faulty acting, he’d assumed. “But seriously. No guy spends more than five minutes on how to propose. She’s going to say yes or no regardless of how you ask, right?”
“Do you practice being that cynical or does it come naturally?”
“Both. Come on.” He nudged her with his elbow. “You know I’m right. If you were really, really in love with a guy and he got down on one knee in your living room after dinner, would you refuse because he asked without fanfare?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been really, really in love. Have you?” she asked, arms crossed and a defiant sparkle flushing her cheeks. God, she was beautiful.
“Hold on. You’ve never been in love but you’re presuming to teach me about it?”
“Wow. The master of deflection, that’s you. I’m not presuming to teach you anything. I am teaching you.” She nodded to his hand, which rested unobtrusively, comfortably, on her knee. “Wasn’t your last movie called Twilight Murders?”
“So?”
“How many murders have you committed, Mr. Big Shot Director?”
The grin cracked before he could check it. “You’re amazing. Will you have my children?”
Frozen, she stared at him. “Do you take any of this seriously or am I wasting my time?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged and set the car in motion. “What are you trying to accomplish? We blew past simple education a long time ago. What’s the real goal here?”
She inspected the chipped paint on the safety bar, flicking off a small bit before answering. “To prove you suppress your passionate side.”
He laughed. “You’re going to fail miserably at that before you even start. You’ve got me cast in your head as the real-world equivalent of your Duke Whoeverwood, but I’m just Kris. A guy who wants to make movies.”
The catch in his throat shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t have the urge to tell her she was right, or how so much of his soul ended up on the screen because it was the only place he could express himself without fear of turning into something monstrous. Like his father. “What you see is what you get. I’m not hiding or suppressing anything.”
“You’ve got so much pent-up, seething passion inside, you can barely sit still.”
“That’s the sway of gravity against this monstrous Ferris wheel, babe.” He crossed his arms to keep his hands where they belonged—off her.
Her teeth gleamed when she bared them. “And I disagree. Strongly.”
Man, she pushed his buttons. Every single one. What was he supposed to do with her? What could he do?
Nothing.
The film was too important to jeopardize over an alluring mirage, no matter how concrete she became.
Her eyelids drifted closed and then opened in a slow blink. Instantly, the atmosphere turned sensual. She studied him, an allover perusal loaded with hot appreciation. “This shirt is soaked.”
She bunched the cotton up between her breasts, baring her midriff, and with the other hand, fanned her face. That swatch of glistening skin below her shirt drew his eye magnetically. The tiniest sliver of the underside of her breast peeked out from the cotton.
He hardened in an instant. Did she have a clue what she was doing?
“Seems like we’ve been stuck here for an hour,” he said hoarsely in an attempt to dial down the heat. “Wonder why we’re not moving?”
“I paid the operator to take a break once we got to the top,” she said. “You didn’t notice. It’ll be a while till we’re on the ground. So here we are, me and you. And no prying eyes.”
“Why’d you do that?”
She pierced him again with her know-all, see-all gaze. “The view.”
“You’re not even looking at it.”
“Yeah, Kristian, I am.”
His name rolled off her tongue like molasses-coated barbed wire. Except for the media, nobody called him Kristian. And nobody ever would again, not like that. He yearned to sink into her and never come up for air.