“Good night,” Hannah said warmly, going up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “What kind of music day did you have?”
He let out a breath, happy to be back on familiar ground. “Coming home after four days on the water? Mmm. Something about home.”
“‘Home.’ By Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.”
He barely kept his hand from lifting to brush back her hair. “I don’t know that one,” he managed.
“I’ll text it to you before I go to sleep. It’s perfect.”
Fox nodded. “You?”
She waggled her eyebrows and backed away. “‘Just One Kiss’ by the Cure.”
“Cute.”
Watching her cross the apartment in her short red dress, smiling knowingly at him over her bare shoulder before disappearing into the guest room, Fox started to wonder if living with Hannah could be dangerous in more ways than one.
Put yourself in the wheelhouse and imagine yourself enjoying it. The crew thinks of you as a good time, but there is a time for fun and a time for responsibility. They see that you recognize the difference.
Hannah thought if she dug around a little, she’d find something interesting or worthwhile under his surface? She’d find his long-buried ambition?
Maybe he should show her exactly what he did best.
He could blur every thought in her beautiful head, leaving only the certainty that he lived up to the hype. That he was only good for one thing.
Fox pictured Hannah on the other side of the wall, that red dress slipping down to her ankles. How her skin would flush if he walked through the door.
Just one kiss, he’d say, exhaling against the nape of her neck. Let’s see about that.
Don’t. Don’t fuck this up.
And he would. In a heartbeat. When the truth was . . . for the first time in a long, long time, he didn’t want a girl thinking he was only good for one thing. Hannah was like a leaf blower aimed right at his undisturbed pile of possibilities, and damn, the hope felt kind of good. At the same time, he wanted them stuffed back under the tarp. Protected.
Fox took a step in the direction of her room, replaying that kiss, imagining the bump of the bed and her cries filling the apartment. It was only by the grace of God that he made it into his room without knocking on her door. But hell if he didn’t spend the whole night thinking about it.
Chapter Eight
There was no filming on Saturday and most of the cast and crew headed to Seattle to take advantage of the time off. Hannah received a text from Christian at ten in the morning that read, You coming to Seattle, yes or no? I don’t care either way. And while it was incredibly hard to pass up such a kind and generous invitation, Hannah was anxious to get some sister time with Piper. With Brendan back on terra firma to entertain his parents, the captain very wisely handed Piper his credit card, grunted at her to be careful, kissed her like the sky was falling, and nudged a dazed Piper toward Hannah, who waited in the driveway pretending to get sick over the public display of affection.
“Okay, but seriously,” Hannah said, climbing into the passenger side of Brendan’s truck, which they were borrowing for the day. “Does your vagina ever get tired?”
Piper snorted. “Sometimes I swear it is, but that’s just my cue to hydrate.” Hannah fell sideways onto the seat laughing, her sister ruffling her hair with an indulgent smile. “When he’s doing it right, it never gets old.” Piper checked her makeup in the rearview, smacked her lips together, and started the truck. “Someday you’ll have a reason to agree.”
Hannah didn’t like where her mind went—and it went there immediately.
The way Fox stared at her last night as she’d walked into her bedroom.
He must not have expected her to glance back over her shoulder or he wouldn’t have had that look in his eye. Honestly, the word “seductive” normally sounded ridiculous to her. A word that reminded her of old Sharon Stone movie trailers. Or maybe she’d hear it once in a while flipping through cable where the coffee commercials lived.
Seductive blends. Seductive aroma.
She’d never really considered the true meaning of the word until now. Fox was attractive. Like, insanely so. That was a given. But last night, that look in his eye had accidentally given her a peek behind the curtain, and it was like setting foot in a new country with a different currency and climate. She would even venture to call his expression smoldering. He’d been thinking about sex—no mistaking it. And while she’d be lying to say there wasn’t always a current of physical tension running between them, she’d always assumed Fox just gave it off all by himself. It came with the territory of being in his vicinity.
Last night was different.
Last night, for that brief moment, all of that potent sexual energy had been concentrated on her, and she’d heated like an oven, the knobs on her awareness turned to the highest setting. Did he want to sleep with her? The fact that he’d given her advice on how to capture Sergei’s attention made the possibility seem remote. But the mere thought of Fox wanting her was like skydiving. A free-falling, leave-her-stomach-in-the-air event.
At UCLA, she’d dated one of her fellow music history majors, that relationship lasting just over a year. It was serious enough to introduce him to her parents and take a vacation together in Maui. But her interest in him had mainly been based on convenience, since they had classes together, and he didn’t make a fuss when Hannah retreated into her headphones. He’d just hop on the Xbox and zone out, too. After a while, the relationship turned into a competition of finding ways to ignore each other—definitely no reason to use the word “seductive.”
Even while nursing her crush on Sergei, she’d dated. An extra she’d met on set, fresh from a farm in Illinois, following his dream in Los Angeles. A stunt coordinator who spent the entire date hitting her with classic movie trivia, which she didn’t technically mind—they were social media friends now—but there’d been no viable connection.
In other words, she’d been playing in the minor leagues.
If that kiss at the party was any indication, Fox was in a major league all his own when it came to intimacy. Sure, she’d known that. In theory. He was a certified Casanova and didn’t even bother trying to deny it. Experiencing those skills last night, putting that knowledge into practice, had been eye-opening to say the least.
She was pretty sure her brain and ovaries had briefly swapped locations during that kiss.
If he wanted to sleep with her—and come on, it was entirely possible she’d misread him—what would she do with all of that . . . seductive smolder? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about it now? How he would move. How he would groan when the relief hit. What the fronts of his muscular thighs would feel like against the backs of hers.
He would do it right.
He’d dehydrate the shit out of her.
“Hannah.”
“What?” she shouted.
Piper squeaked and swerved the truck, shooting Hannah a wide-eyed look. “I asked if you wanted to stop for coffee.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Was she sweating? “Of course I do.”
Hannah shook herself, focused on counting the white lines painted in the middle of the road. Guilt settled into her stomach like sediment in a wineglass. No more thinking about Fox in those terms. Sex terms. The kiss, followed by that hungry look, had just thrown her for a loop. Now she needed to get back on track. Back to batting in the minors. Back to her harmless crush on the director. She’d probably misread Fox, anyway.