Falling for the Star: A Steamy Older Man Younger Woman Romance Read online

  Now he cleared the log and for the first time, the director didn’t yell cut, so Grayson stepped up and pretended to punch the bad guy. But the actor dodged his fist and pretended to punch Grayson in the stomach. Grayson doubled over, but his foot shot out, sweeping the legs out from under Bad Guy #3 as tiny chimes played in the background.

  Wait a second—what was that noise? There hadn’t been any sound or music up until this point. All that stuff was added later.

  I looked around. So did everyone else. The noise was coming from a small, lit screen on the bottom step of a trailer. The trailer I’d just been sitting at. Crap.

  Dashing across the compound, I grabbed my phone and shut off the ringer, holding it to my chest for good measure. I’d thought it was off. I’d checked it before. But somehow—it had been on.

  Hesitantly, I looked up. All eyes were on me. Impatient eyes. Angry eyes. Grayson’s eyes.

  Oh god. He looked so angry. The man of my dreams was looking at me for the first time and it was with disappointment. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  “Reset,” someone called, and Grayson stared at me for a minute before he moved back to his original position. And I moved, too. Away from the filming. Off the set. Down the gravel road to where the lesser staff had to park. And then back to the tiny, cramped apartment I was sharing for the summer to cry it out.

  If it hadn’t been such a long drive back to Nebraska, I think I would have driven home that night.

  Skye

  Friday

  “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

  “It was. It was awful.” The phone was smashed against my ear as I huddled in my bed, whispering so as not to wake Angel. Dad was an early riser anyway, and he seemed to have forgotten that it was two hours earlier in Los Angeles than Lincoln.

  “So what? You made a mistake. Big deal. Those movie folks don’t know how lucky they are to have you. Don’t you have the highest grade point average in your class?”

  “Second highest,” I said. But I didn’t want to think about college right now or I’d feel worse than I already did. In a few months I’d be starting my junior year, and I still hadn’t declared a major. That meant it was costing dad extra while I took a large variety of classes, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. We weren’t exactly poor, but Dad didn’t have endless amounts of money.

  “You can do this, hon. You know what I always say… the Skye’s the limit. Sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.”

  Groaning at that old play on words, I squeezed my eyes shut. It had just been my dad and me since my mom passed away, and he was the most important person in the world to me. His confidence was a gift but also sometimes felt like a curse. Sometimes I wished I believed in myself as much as he believed in me. “I just don’t—I don’t know how I can show my face there again. Even… even Mr. James was mad.”

  “Don’t worry about Gray. He’s screwed up plenty of times. Just remind him of the time he challenged a guy in our frat to see who could eat the most hot dogs, only he thought the hot dogs were precooked, and they weren’t, and then—actually, that story has a not so great ending. Maybe don’t bring it up.”

  He said that like Grayson James and I were hanging out on the set chatting all the time. But in his mind, this internship was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I’d thought so too once I found out who the lead actor was. “Okay, Dad, I won’t. Thanks for listening. I guess—I guess I’m just feeling a bit homesick is all.”

  His voice softened. “I miss you too, Skye. But you show those Hollywood types what you’re worth.”

  “Will do,” I said softly before hanging up with a sigh. Showing them what I was worth seemed like a pretty tall goal. I’d settle for not ruining, breaking, or flat out destroying something for one day. Just one. And if I did—then maybe it was time to go home. The last thing I wanted to do was to mess things up more for Grayson and the cast and crew.

  So I’d go once more and pray for a day without incident. Surely the universe could grant me that?

  “Nice to meet you, Skye.” An attractive, forty-something woman with her hair in an artful bun held out a hand to me. “I’m Janice.”

  Gaping, I shook her hand. “But… aren’t you the script supervisor?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But after what happened yesterday… are you sure they want me anywhere near the shooting today? Or ever again?”

  “Yes,” she said again. “But it wouldn't hurt to triple check that your phone’s off.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled sheepishly and followed her as she picked her way past cables, cords, and other assorted movie equipment.

  “So, do you know what a script supervisor does?”

  “The script supervisor is in charge of continuity between takes. He or she makes sure that the actor’s movements, wardrobe, props, sets, and more are consistent between shots.” I said, quoting something I’d read when my dad first told me about the internship.

  “Wow, not bad. Most interns think a script supervisor is a writer. You have a good memory—that’ll come in handy.”

  And it did. As the morning progressed, I helped Janice take scrupulous notes about every conceivable detail during takes. The morning scene was a funny one with Tessa, the less-than-gracious actress I’d met the other day, filming a cute scene in which she was startled by a raccoon. Okay, so, the scene was pretty sexist, but I’d be the first to admit that if I’d just woken up after spending the night in the woods and came face-to-face with a critter like that, I’d scream, too.

  In the afternoon, Grayson was part of the shoot. At first, I tried to keep my distance given how I’d embarrassed myself in front of him yesterday, but Janice wouldn’t let me. She made me join her in between takes in jotting everything down—even if that meant getting up close to the actors to do so.

  “Ready on the set,” an assistant director called at the start of a new scene.

  “Just a moment,” Janice said, hurrying toward Grayson. “Come on, Skye,” she whispered when I couldn’t seem to get my feet to move.

  “What is it?” the director said.

  “Something’s not right with Grayson’s shirt.”

  My face was beet red as I stood a foot or two behind Janice. She was showing no qualms at tugging at the gorgeous star’s flannel shirt, trying to make it look the same as the previous take. “Show me the picture again,” Janice said.

  Self-consciously, I stepped forward, holding out a tablet. My god. I was two feet away from Grayson James. He was right there. From this close up, I could smell the spicy, woodsy scent of his cologne. See the muscles bulging under his shirt. My mind couldn’t quite take it in. I was standing right next to Grayson James.

  Now he was looking at the tablet too. “See?” Janice was saying. “The gash in your sleeve that got torn in the scene before looks different now.” She examined his sleeve and I was temporarily mesmerized by the fact that she was touching his arm. Someone I knew was touching the skin of the most handsome man in the world. But then suddenly, my brain kicked in.

  “It’s the wrong shirt.”

  Both Janice and Grayson stared at me, which was nearly enough to make my brain shut down again. I directed my words toward Janice because it gave me a better chance of formulating a coherent sentence. “I think this is a shirt from a later scene. There are dozens of these shirts in wardrobe. I think this one is from after the fight where the Gambinos hold his arm over the campfire. See? There’s a singe right here.” I reached out but couldn’t quite bring myself to touch him—I was afraid that if I did it once, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Janice checked her notes and then looked at a tag in the back of Grayson’s shirt. “She’s right, this is the wrong shirt. Wardrobe!”

  While we waited, Grayson peeled off the shirt in question. My jaw dropped as his sculpted biceps were revealed. And the smooth expanse of his pecs under the white undershirt. And then he handed me his shirt.

  Holy hell. His actual shirt. W
ith a shaky hand, I took it. In my hand was a shirt that Grayson James had been wearing seconds before. Unbelievable. The flannel fabric that had adorned his jacked body was in my hands. Resisting the urge to bring it to my face to smell his scent, I stared at it. And then looked up to find him arching one masculine eyebrow at me. “It goes back to wardrobe,” he said, as if knowing that I wanted to take it home and sleep with it under my pillow. And/or attempt to clone him from any skin cells that may have been residing on it.

  My mouth opened but no words came out. Not when Grayson James was so close. And looking at me. God, his eyes. On the movie screen, and I’d seen all his movies at least twice, they were the most electric green imaginable. Up close, in the sunlight, they were even brighter.

  Blushing, I realized that I was staring, so I turned to go.

  “Hey, Ponytail.”

  Freezing mid-stride at the sexy sound behind me, I weighed my options. Turn around in case he was talking to me? Keep going to save my pride in case he didn’t? Or melt into a puddle of lust at the sound of his smooth-as-liquid-chocolate voice?

  After a long moment, I turned around. He was staring right at me. Nervously, I raised my hand to the back of my head and smoothed back the high ponytail that he’d taken notice of.

  “Are you Derrick’s kid?” he asked.

  Was I? It was hard to think when he was looking at me like that. But yeah—Derrick. I think that was Dad’s name. Though with Grayson James’s eyes on me, I wasn’t entirely sure of my own name. “Yes.”

  “Good to know,” he said, and he turned back to his colleagues. To his world of gorgeous, famous people and big budget movie-making.

  What the hell was I even doing on the fringes of that world? But one thing was clear. Now that I’d seen him. Touched him. Even talked to him—briefly. No way in hell I was quitting now.

  Even if I knocked over enough things to bring the entire production to its knees.

  Grayson

  It didn’t matter what the job was. Whether you were pecking away at a computer at an office or making a blockbuster—Mondays sucked. Still, at least there’d been a weekend. It was still early enough in filming that we weren’t hopelessly behind. Yet.

  So I’d had a pretty normal weekend for me. Working out. Going to a club. Partying a bit too much. Drinking a bit too much. At my age, I could still get away with that shit, but the writing was on the wall. Forty was looming, and while that age wasn’t an automatic write-off for male actors the way it was for many females, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant thought. More like a fucking depressing one.

  Most men my age had families. Spouses. Children. Not managers, agents, and handlers. They spent time with people they cared about, not people they needed something from. Squinting in the bright sunlight, I thought about the last time I’d spent a weekend with someone. It hadn’t been that long ago—maybe a month. It was that blonde who was on that TV show. Crap, what was the name of it? For that matter, what was her name? I couldn’t fucking think of it, and that wasn’t good. I was too young to be getting senile, right?

  Screw it. Monday was the time for coffee, not deep thoughts. And for figuring out what the hell the delay was this time. The sun was out. The lighting was good. The makeup people had done something magical so my eyes weren’t bloodshot anymore. So let’s get this goddamn show on the row.

  “Did you have a nice weekend?”

  My young co-star apparently didn’t share the same aversion to Mondays as I did. Tessa had been bouncing around the set all morning in her cut-off jeans, crop top, and sandals. She looked much too clean for a character who supposedly spent the night in the woods, but she squawked every time the director called for her to get mussed up a little. I pitied the man who tried to bed a girl who didn’t ever want to get dirty.

  “It was okay,” I said with a noncommittal grunt.

  “Mine too!” she squealed as if I’d just revealed that we shared a birthday and were in fact long-lost twins. She launched into a recitation—one that sounded suspiciously like she’d prepared it beforehand—of what an exciting weekend she’d had. The parties she’d been to. The celebrities she’d hung with. The men she’d fucked. Wait—she thought that was the way to get my attention? This girl needed a crash course in flirting, and then she needed to go practice on someone else.

  “Coffee!” I called out, and thirty seconds later, I had a fresh cup. Some parts of my job weren’t bad at all.

  Tessa prattled on, and I looked around, scanning the cast and crew.

  And there she was. Ms. Ponytail. Hard to believe she was related to Derrick. In college, he’d been more than a frat brother to me. Closer to an actual brother. But he was an ugly son of a bitch. I’d get chicks by being hot—he’d get them by being funny. Until he settled down. I’d known his late wife. Nice girl. She’d been attractive, but she had nothing on her daughter.

  Ponytail was a knockout. And apparently fucking clueless about it. If she lived out here year-round, she would have been offered any number of modeling contracts for her fresh face and pure, wholesome look. Agents just loved to take a pure-looking girl and remake her as a sultry minx. But apparently out in Kansas or wherever Derrick lived, girls like that grew up to be accountants. Or doctors. Or teachers.

  She was a skittish thing. Tall and leggy, like a colt. Fitting, since she kept her hair in a ponytail. Since the first time I’d seen her last week, I’d wanted to untie her hair and let her chestnut locks free—which was an odd impulse because I’d also fantasized about tying up the rest of her.

  But she was an infant—couldn’t be older than twenty. And Derrick’s kid. I’d never do anything to hurt my old buddy. But that didn't mean I couldn’t look.

  “Action!”

  Holding Tessa in my arms, I strode across the clearing and set her down by the makeshift tent. I bent down and kissed her nose as she got her feet under her. She trembled as she looked up at me. “It was just a snake.”

  “It almost bit me,” she whined.

  “It was three feet away. Just remember, there ain’t nothing in these woods that’s not more scared of you than you are of it.”

  “Really?” Interest blossomed in her eyes, and she took a step closer to me, our chests nearly touching. “Does that include you?”

  I barked out a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  She placed her arms around my neck. “The John Wolfe, the man who fights—who fights off the—crap. What’s the line?”

  “Cut!” the assistant director yelled.

  “Well?” Tessa said, looking furious. No actor liked forgetting their lines. Usually, someone provided the sentence right away, but no one was speaking up.

  “Where the hell is Ralph? People, there are about fifty copies of the script on set. What’s Tessa’s fucking line?” The director was getting pissed. Several crew members scrambled around, searching for a copy. Ralph, the guy whose job it was to follow along in the script, must be taking a piss.

  And then an unfamiliar voice spoke. “The John Wolfe, the man who fights off a half-dozen enemies at a time, afraid of tiny, insignificant woman like me?”

  It was a stupid fucking line, but that wasn’t why it caught my attention. Ponytail hovered at the edge of the shot, having spoken loudly and clearly. And she wasn’t even holding a script. How had she known the line?

  Tessa turned back to me, even angrier for some reason. But I was curious. “What’s after that?” I asked my old friend’s daughter.

  “Then you say, ‘Tiny, yes. Insignificant, no. I ain’t afraid of nothing. So don’t start something unless you intend to finish it.’” Again, she spoke without a script. Then she hesitated, looking up at me shyly. “And then you… you and she… you kiss.”

  Good god, was she blushing? Over saying the word kiss? Or at the thought of me kissing someone? Probably the second. When she’d helped me with my shirt on Friday, the heat from her face could have started a fire. When’s the last time I met a girl who still knew how to blush? Most of the women
I met had seen it all. And done it all. And bragged about it on Monday morning, as Tessa had.

  I stared her down for a long moment as she peered at me from under thick but bare eyelashes. For that matter, when’s the last time I’d seen a woman whose creamy skin wasn’t slathered in chemicals and paints? It had been a fucking long time.

  “Stick close until Ralph shows up,” the director said. She nodded, more confident now that she was looking away from me.

  “Let’s take it from the top,” he called out, and we did. This time Tessa delivered her lines flawlessly if a little angrily. How insecure was she that an intern feeding her the line had pissed her off? Maybe people were more sane back where Ponytail and Derrick were from. Nebraska. That was it—not Kansas. I didn’t know a whole lot about the Midwest except it took a hell of a long time to fly over it.

  We did the scene again. It went okay until it was time for the kiss. And after twenty or so takes, I was ready to call it a day. Each time, Tessa’s lips met mine eagerly. A little too eagerly. Her tongue in my mouth told me that she was more than willing to come back to my place tonight and show me exactly what that mouth could do. She was a powerful woman who knew what she wanted. Which was apparently me.

  But she was playing a role of a much more timid young woman. One who spoke off the cuff with a bravery she didn’t feel. One who was supposed to be hesitant about kissing a virtual stranger in the middle of the woods.

  I doubted Tessa had had an uncertain moment in her life. She was beautiful, popular, and well-loved by fans. And she knew it. And the audience would know it, too. She just wasn’t doing a very good job of disappearing into this role.

  Though I wasn’t the fucking director, I tried to explain it to her. “You’re not making yourself vulnerable. You’re not selling the conflict you feel.”

  She smiled. Nodded rapidly. “Got it,” she said as if I’d just told her the punchline of a joke, and then we shot the scene and she did it the same damn way. She just wasn’t as self-aware as the character was supposed to be. As self-conscious. But I knew someone who was.