Love, Chloe (15 page)

You just made my day. This has been haunting me.

I typed back
. No problem. I thought of u when they started yelling. It’s not really her fault. Joey’s been an ass.

Well … she can be a diva. Thanks for putting up w/ her. How’s ur week going?

I smiled. Wondered how much to share.
It’s good. Exciting. I like being on set. Are u going to come by?

I stared at my words, the dots indicating his response pending. Why had I asked that? It was a horrible idea to put in his head. Then again, it
would
be helpful to know if he was going to come on set. Make sure that Nicole and Paulo weren’t humping in the bushes when he strolled in. I smiled at the image, a bit of wicked glee at the idea of her getting caught.

The dots stopped. Then restarted. I imagined him biting his lip, thinking over the response. When it finally came I sighed in relief.

Probably not. I’ll let my girl work in peace.

A good response. One that a trusting and loving husband would make. My girl. So freaking sweet. I locked my phone and tucked it underneath my legs.

My girl.

It bothered me, a pang of sadness hitting hard at the endearment. I must be lonelier than I realized. Single didn’t sit well with me, not in this big city, not in my empty apartment.

I scrolled through the texts and deleted them all, including the video I had sent to him. There hadn’t been anything wrong with the communication … but still. Something about the whole thing felt tainted. The video. The lies.
My girl.

I confirmed the deletion and wondered how this would all implode, and when.

Shit
. One of the lids was coming off. The lid was on one of the two cups of coffee between my elbow and my body, one decaf and one regular because I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember which one Nicole had requested. I also carried two plates, one of fruit and one of sushi, the queen’s breakfast of choice, a banana jostling close to one edge. Eyeing it, I rounded the corner of the props warehouse, hugging the edge in case anyone was coming in the opposite direction.

Someone was. Someone in a white oxford and slacks, his head down, phone out. I tried to dart left, tried to call out a warning, and didn’t manage either before BLAM.
Impact
with the beautiful Joey Plazen.

I’d never heard such a sexy curse in my life. He spoke Italian in some part of it, a rough accent coming into his voice as he stepped back, coffee going EVERYWHERE, a California roll sticking on his shoulder. I gasped, covering my mouth, which was convenient, because the next sound that spilled out of me was a laugh. A
laugh
. I had no earthly idea where it came from. Or why it came out. It was a disaster, coming out around my hand, and his head snapped up when he heard it, his eyes locking on mine with murderous intent. I shouldn’t have laughed. It wasn’t funny, and he was probably due on set, but coffee was dripping from his chin, and a piece of mango was sliding down his arm, and I was so horrified by the entire thing that a laugh was the only thing my body knew to produce. So I laughed. And then, to make matters worse, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t stop when he shook out his hands. When he flicked the California roll and the mango off his previously crisp shirt. I didn’t even stop when he stepped closer and pushed me back against the wall, his warm hand covering my mouth.

“Stop laughing,” he gritted.

I couldn’t. My body was shaking I was laughing so hard.

I finally did stop. I stopped when he moved his hand and silenced me with his lips.

My last kiss had been outside a club, in the snow, with an asshole. This kiss was with a different asshole, against a wall, on a movie set. Unlike the other asshole, this asshole … God, he knew how to kiss.

I was laughing when his lips pressed into mine, a hard and insistent *shut the hell up* move that instantly worked, my laughter halting, his body pushing against mine. His coffee-soaked shirt was cold and wet against my Vince sweater, but I didn’t care. The hard press of his lips lifted then immediately came back down, this time softer and sweeter, my mouth opening, our kiss deepening. I gripped at the wall behind me, fought the urge to reach for his head, dig through that hair, and I almost moaned when I felt his hand wrap around my waist and pull me away from the wall and into his body. He tasted like coffee and sugar, and his fingers bit into my waist in the moment before his mouth ripped from mine. He let go and stepped back, leaving me panting against the wall, my glazed vision fighting to find its focus.

“Huh.” He let out a puff of air and twisted his mouth. “I thought that would be better.”

His expression was almost wistful in its confusion, his words without any sarcasm. My ego took a nosedive, and he shrugged, glancing down at his outfit.

“Shit. Get me a change of clothes.” His words were dismissive, an order handed out with absolute certainty of being obeyed. He gave me a parting wink then strode off. God, he was an ass. An ass that made Vic look positively gentlemanly. I pushed off the wall and looked down at my cream sweater, now ruined. The coffee was a lost cause, and Nicole’s sushi … I looked at the few pieces still stuck to the plate and wondered if they were salvageable.

Get me a change of clothes
. I was, apparently, the only one with shaky legs and a raging libido.
I thought that would be better.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and pulled out my cell. Sent Hannah a text that the asshole she called a boss needed new clothes. I ignored the colorfully grouchy emoticons she sent back in response, too busy trying to clean up the mess.
I thought that would be better.
Ouch.

First kisses could tell you a lot. Ours told me that his sex appeal wasn’t limited to his looks. Ours told me that any attraction I felt for Joey Plazen wasn’t returned.

First kisses were often last kisses also.

I used to think that I was hot. Nabbing one of New York’s most eligible bachelors did that to a girl’s ego. But then Vic cheated on me. And my track record ever since had sucked. Between the thousand-dollar asshole and Joey’s reaction to our kiss—paired with zero date invites in the last year—I was failing terribly as a single in New York.

Nothing was going right.

“Hey, Nicole’s girl.”

The first time he’d spoken to me since our disastrous kiss, and
that
was how Joey Plazen summoned me. By command, one step above him slapping his knee and whistling at me like I was a dog.

I ignored him and kept walking, a juice in one hand, new shooting schedule in the other. Two weeks wasn’t long enough to heal the sting of
that
snub.

“Hey!” I zagged right and heard him curse as he jumped over a mass of cords and tried to catch up. I swallowed a smirk, speeding up a little. “Chloe.”

I stopped, spinning around and raising my eyebrows, his arms coming out as he reached me. I took a casual sip of the juice and winced, too much ginger in the blend.

“Where are you going?” He tucked both hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

An unexpected question. I stared, taking me a minute to remember where I had been going. Oh, right. To pick up Nicole’s cardigan. “Wardrobe.” I managed the word and took another sip. Waited for him to say something—anything—and when he stayed silent, his eyes roaming over the concrete between us, I turned to leave.

“Chloe.” My name was a puff on his lips, and I heard the scrape of his shoes when he lunged after me, his hand closing on my shoulder, a gentle pull that I ignored.

“What do you want, Joey?” Because that’s what it was. He wanted something. If I’d learned anything from two months of being on set with Joey, it was that every smile was a bribe, every flirt was a favor, and our kiss against the wall … that was just entertainment. Benta had more properly defined it as him trying to put me in my place. It had certainly, if anything, put my ego in check and killed any fantasies of a future between us.

“You know, for an assistant, you sure do walk around with a stick up your ass.”

WOW. Whatever he was chasing me down for just moved a
lot
further out of his reach. I kept walking.

“Chloe…” When he closed his hand on my shoulder a second time, it was harder, his fingers biting in and holding on, his pull forcing me to stop. I looked down at his hand.