“You grew up here, right?”
She nodded. “Most of my immediate family is here. My grandparents on my mother’s side live in San Diego, but the Rodriguez side? They’re here. New York is home.”
“But you live in Los Angeles now.”
“It’s where the soaps film, but I dread going back.” She gave a sad little shrug. “The traffic, the stress, the fake friends . . . I don’t even know which of my so-called friends took money in exchange for giving anonymous statements to the tabloids—multiple people, I suspect, probably even some of my castmates on The Glamour Squad. How do you know who to trust after something like that?”
“No sé,” he said. “Yo sólo confío en mi familia.”
Her forehead scrunched, like she was trying to translate in her head. “I only . . . something . . . in my family. Sorry, I don’t know that word. Confío.”
He gave her hand a squeeze, then let go. “Trust,” he said. “Confiar means to trust.”
She nodded, and the hand he’d just released clenched into a fist.
“I hate LA,” Ashton said, trying to lighten the mood. He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Do I want to work in Hollywood? Absolutely. But I don’t think I could ever live there full time.”
He didn’t mention that he didn’t want his son growing up there. Or that California was too far from Puerto Rico.
He didn’t say any of that, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that he wanted to. He wanted to open up and confide in Jasmine. He suspected she’d be a good listener. But then she’d look at him with compassion in those stunning eyes of hers, and he’d be lost. And he couldn’t afford to lose himself when his whole family relied on him to stay strong.
Instead, he just said, “Let’s rehearse. And you can show all of them how wrong they are about you.”
“Thank you.” Her smile was sweet, but sad. “I mean that.”
As they returned to the treadmills and picked up their scripts, Ashton wondered what it would be like if they were two different people in a different situation. If he were just a single dad who didn’t have to worry about keeping his son’s existence a secret, and if Jasmine were just a woman who didn’t have national media attention focused on her.
What would she think if she knew about Yadiel?
But she couldn’t know. And that was that.
Chapter 17
After a few days, Jasmine worked up the nerve to ask Ashton to help her practice Spanish. She’d worked on it a little with Miriam and Peter, but asking Ashton for help seemed like a bigger deal. Not that she thought he’d say no—their rapport had improved substantially, especially after their talk at the gym—but because she still felt self-conscious about her command of the language.
She thought they’d practice in one of their dressing rooms, so she was surprised when he suggested they go to the grocery store near the hotel one evening after filming.
It was one of those Manhattan supermarkets with high shelves, narrow aisles, and fancy food. Ashton claimed he actually needed to buy groceries, but Jasmine didn’t fully believe he needed the ginger ale and peanut butter in his basket.
They were incognito, Ashton in another guayabera shirt, cargo shorts, and leather sandals, plus a Yankees hat and a pair of sunglasses he removed once they were inside. Jasmine wore yoga pants, a plain white T-shirt, and sneakers, with her hair in a messy bun. She imagined they looked like a good-looking upper-class Latinx couple, shopping for a dinner they’d cook together in their Upper East Side apartment. He was a doctor maybe, and she . . . a Pilates instructor?
Whoa, wait a second. Why couldn’t she be the doctor? And Ashton a . . . personal trainer, maybe. It was easy—and delightful—to picture him demonstrating proper exercise form.
As they strolled up and down the aisles, Jasmine tried to stop sneaking appreciative glances at him and imagining them as different characters. He was here to help her out—nothing more. Well, maybe to buy some peanut butter.
But he was just so handsome, even in his Rich Latino Dad disguise.
She shouldn’t have gone to meet him at the gym. And she definitely shouldn’t have worn her best sports bra, the one that gave lift and separation instead of uni-boob. She knew it wasn’t playing fair, but Ashton’s reaction had been worth it.
On a personal level. On a professional level, she was annoyed with herself. She wasn’t supposed to be making herself attractive for him.
But then, there’d been nothing attractive about her reaction to seeing McIntyre on TV. She’d been scared to return to the Hutton Court’s fitness room, in case she’d broken it. And when she thought about how much she’d opened up to Ashton, she got a flush of embarrassment. He was a good listener, easy to talk to. So different from the character he played—Ashton was quieter and far more reserved than Victor—but there must have been some part of him that connected with Victor, because he was able to turn the sexy on like a light switch.
And he had looked so freaking hot, running hard in those clingy shorts, with his bare, muscled arms pumping. Thanks to their scenes as Carmen and Victor, she’d known he was hiding some serious muscles under his costumes, but seeing him revealed had been worth the wait.
“¿Y esto?” Ashton held up a box of saltines.
Jasmine sighed and stopped eyeing Ashton’s ass. “Galletas. I told you, I already know words for food.”
He shook the box at her and said in a patient tone, “Usa la palabra en una oración completa.”
A complete sentence. Fine. “Um . . . me gusta comer galletas con . . . queso?”
He replaced the crackers on the shelf. “Adequate, but maybe come up with a different sentence starter than ‘I like.’ So far you’ve said you like bread, wine, and now crackers with cheese.”
“I do like bread, wine, and crackers with cheese,” she grumbled, then took the box back off the shelf and put it in her basket. “Speaking of, let’s go get some cheese.”
“En español,” he reminded her in a singsong voice.
She rolled her eyes, but grinned. “Vamos a buscar el queso. Happy?”
“Claro que sí.” From under the brim of his fitted cap, he sent her a warm smile that made her toes curl in her Adidas.
On the way to the dairy section, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” came on over the grocery store’s speakers.
“Hold up. I love this song.” Jasmine stopped in the middle of the aisle and did a few dance moves as she sang along softly with Whitney Houston.
Ashton raised his eyebrows and repeated the words in Spanish, but he turned it into a question. “¿Quieres bailar con alguien?”
She sent him a cheeky grin and said, “Sí,” as if he’d actually meant to ask her to dance with him.
To her surprise, he inclined his head and said, “Bueno.” Before she knew what was happening, he took her hand, spinning her under his arm before twirling her out, then back in toward his body, where he caught her in a dance hold.
Jasmine spun to a stop, breathing hard from surprise and from being so close to him. His body was warm and hard, and he smelled delicious. His hand held hers in a solid grip, different from the way he’d gently stroked her fingers while comforting her at the gym. She wanted to keep dancing. Or undress him with her teeth. Either one would be fine.
But they were in a grocery store, so instead, she changed the subject. “You have your dance scene tomorrow, right?”
“Sí.”
“Are you nervous?” At his pointed look, she repeated the question in Spanish. “¿Estás nervioso?”
He shook his head, then looked past her, toward the end of the aisle. “No, I . . .”
When he trailed off, Jasmine followed his gaze. By the freezer section, a woman wearing an apron with the store’s name on it looked down at her phone screen, but she held it at an awkward angle, almost as if . . .
As if she were taking their picture.
Jasmine’s stomach dropped to her feet. This was truly the worst part of fame—the loss of privacy, of anonymity. She felt raw, exposed, and . . . bitter. She couldn’t even act silly in an overpriced supermarket without worrying about someone watching her.
Ashton’s jaw tightened. He released Jasmine abruptly and slipped his sunglasses back on. “We should be more careful.” Jasmine nodded. “You’re right.”
Leading Ladies only end up on magazine covers with good reason.
Galletas con queso and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” were not good reasons.
“Let’s go.” Ashton turned his back to the woman and left the aisle in the opposite direction. They paid for their items in silence and exited the store.
Back at the hotel, they didn’t speak much except to say good night, and Jasmine returned to her room alone. In the suite’s tiny kitchen, she put away her items—she’d gotten the crackers, but no cheese to go with them—and wondered what might have happened if the woman with the phone hadn’t interrupted them.
JASMINE’S NERVES ABOUT the grocery store didn’t last. As she was getting ready for bed, she received an email alerting her to some changes. Everyone had been so happy with how she and Ashton were performing together that they’d written her into the dance scenes.