Hot damn if he didn’t want to kiss her beautiful mouth as she lifted her chin and her eyes flashed at him one more time.
“I don’t need anybody to protect me.”
She walked out of his trailer without a backward glance.
* * *
“Val, there you are!”
Valentina could see that Tatiana was still glowing from both her excellent performance and Smith’s praise, but she was also clearly concerned about why her business-manager sister had yanked the executive producer and directing star of her new movie into his trailer after the first big take.
“You were fabulous,” Valentina said as she put her arms around her younger sister.
Where she was lean, her sister was curvy. While she was tall, her sister was small. She’d never been the beauty that Tatiana was, but Valentina had never wanted that. Not when she knew just how much responsibility came with great beauty—and how much pressure shone down through every spotlight.
“Do you need anything before you do close-ups?”
“No, I feel great,” Tatiana said, before adding, “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.” Valentina smiled. “Better than okay.”
And it was, at least where Smith’s designs on her sister were concerned. The last thing she wanted for her sister was to end up in a Hollywood relationship. Miraculously so far, it hadn’t been a problem with any of the men Tatiana had worked with, but Smith was at least a thousand times more charismatic than any of her other co-stars.
Still, for all his charm and good looks and power, Valentina had believed him when he’d said he wasn’t going to seduce her sister. Yes, he was an amazing actor, but every instinct she had told her he hadn’t been acting when he’d said that.
Unfortunately, those instincts also told her other things.
Like how merely standing in the same room made her heart leap around in her chest as if she was a crushed-out teenager.
And how just the sound of her full name on his lips—everyone else called her Val, why did he have to be the one person on earth who always said Valentina?—made her long to hear him whisper it against the curve of her neck right before he kissed the sensitive skin there.
Valentina wasn’t angry with him for those things. How could she be? But she was angry with herself for being so much weaker than she’d ever thought she was. Because when she’d moved close to him in his trailer and made the mistake of looking into his eyes, she’d been hit with such a hard rush of desire it actually stole her breath away.
Smith Sullivan looked great on screen, but in person, he was even more arresting. She could have been blindfolded and known that he was in the room. He had that much presence.
There was inherent sensuality in every look, every movement. Smith didn’t try to attract people. He just did. Everything from the masculine shape of his jawline to the way the cords in his neck moved as he turned his head made him, hands down, a shockingly beautiful man.
At the same time, she wasn’t foolish enough to just write him off as a pretty face who’d been lucky. No question, he was a natural actor. And yet, she’d seen again and again throughout rehearsals just how hard he worked to get every nuance of a scene just right.
Clearly relieved by her response that everything was fine, Tatiana looped an arm through hers as they walked back over to the set. Smith was already there, discussing something with the Director of Photography.
“Did you know that before we started shooting this morning, he told me again how excited he is to work with me?” Tatiana asked. “And that if there’s ever anything I’m uncomfortable with, I should tell him right away.”
“That’s great.” And far kinder than any other actor or director her sister had worked with before now.
More than once over the years, Valentina had asked her sister to explain why she wanted to be an actress. Each time, the reasons Tatiana gave—she loved to entertain and make people happy and forget about their lives for a while—made intellectual sense, and yet Valentina still couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to live their life under a microscope. Because when Tatiana became a really big star like Smith, that’s exactly how her life would be: every move would be made in the spotlight, captured by thousands of cameras, and detailed in newspapers, magazines, and blogs.
Just the thought of living a life like that made Valentina shiver in horror.
Tatiana gave a sigh that bordered on worship. “He’s amazing, isn’t he? I still can’t believe I get to work with him.”
Valentina tried to read whether there was anything more than professional appreciation beneath her sister’s simple statement. Because, really, how could there not be? Smith was gorgeous, talented, kind—
She cut herself off at kind. It was one thing to acknowledge his looks and acting skills. It was another entirely to start rhapsodizing about what a fantastic person he was when she barely knew him.
Fortunately, her sister didn’t have time to wait for her reply regarding how amazing Smith was or wasn’t, because she was called back in front of the cameras.
For the next few hours, Valentina watched her sister do her job with a deep sense of pride. Valentina had not only never let an actor emotionally hurt her sister, she had also made it a point never to let people treat Tatiana like a pretty airhead. It was a large part of the reason they picked her roles so carefully, rather than always just taking the highest financial offers.
Perception, Valentina knew, was everything in Hollywood. And no one would ever have a chance to whisper that the Landon women were easy or bubbleheaded.
At least, not the current generation, she thought as her cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she looked down at the screen to see that her mother was calling. She’d been wondering when Ava Landon was going to request a visit to the set.
Or, more to the point, to meet Smith Sullivan.
Valentina sighed as she pushed the phone back into her fitted jacket pocket. Her mother wasn’t a bad person, she just had a weakness for good looking, famous men who made their living in front of cameras.
Valentina may have shared her mother’s love of chocolate ice cream, sunsets on the beach, and fifties singers...but she absolutely refused to let genetics pull her down the same path with men.
One day, when Tatiana’s career was a bit more on autopilot, Valentina planned to meet a nice man and fall in love. He would be good looking, intelligent, with strong hands and a ready smile.
And he’d have absolutely, positively nothing to do with the entertainment business. Popcorn and Red Vines on a Saturday night would be as close to the movies as her future husband would ever come.