One More Time(39)

And it was sexy and hot and fun that she was.

It wasn’t like there was any real reason she should be upset. I didn’t have eyes for Amber in the first place, but now Jenna has destroyed any possibility of me ever looking at Amber again without picturing Jenna’s bare ass over my knee and the taste of strawberries in my tequila. She knows it, too.

So jealousy can’t really be the problem.

Maybe she’s still worried about being seen together. I understand, I sold it to her as a private event, and then when we got there it was an industry free-for-all, with columnists everywhere.

I’m not going to look online, I know better than to ever Google my own name, but there’s simply no way no one talked about us. And as close as we were sitting…

I’ll pretend she was sick last night, and I brought her home, but how does that serve me? No, squelching these rumors only allows the distance between us to grow exponentially.

Then it hits like a bolt of lightning—what we need to do is manage them.

I race over to my phone. “Hi, it’s Tanner James. Can you put me through to Angela, please? No, she’s not expecting my call, but she’ll speak to me.”

It only takes a few minutes to arrange things, then I have the pleasure of reliving last night in the shower. If I don’t jerk off in there this morning, being around her will be absolutely unbearable. Once I’m clean, shaved, tousled, and aftershaved, I select my clothes.

Like most guys, I secretly enjoy fashion a bit more than I pretend to, but also like most guys, I don’t know nearly as much about it as I ought to. But I sure as hell know what Jenna likes. So I toss on some ripped jeans, not tight, but not baggy, the kind that make it very clear that I do work out—a lot. Then a button-down shirt, white with the palest gray pinstripe. After rolling the sleeves up to my elbows, I top it off with a darker gray vest.

I know I made the right choice when Jenna opens her door and visibly sweeps her eyes up and down my body—twice.

“You have a key,” she grumbles, turning to walk back in, but leaving the door open for me.

“I do. But I sort of thought that was to be used at a more late-night hour. For a more late-night situation.” I follow her in, watching her nostrils flare slightly as she breathes in my cologne. I wonder if she remembers that it’s the same brand she brought me back from a shoot she did in Barcelona a decade ago, made in a tiny couture house that’s existed for two hundred years, mostly catering to royalty before reluctantly opening their doors to the nouveau riche of Europe.

It’s the only kind I’ve worn since.

“I’m not really up for a booty call right now, Tanner,” she says.

“And I’m not here for one. Have you eaten?”

“I’m not up for a buffet, either. Thanks for the invite though.”

“Look, Jenna, I just got off the phone with Angela—yes, I know, before you even start in. But here’s the thing. We pretty clearly left together last night. So right now, everyone’s making speculations about what’s going on between us. The paparazzi are going to be talking about us, whether we’re on a closed set or not. Now that there’s a whiff of smoke, those telephoto lenses will be looking for fire.”

“Shit,” she mumbles, her shoulders drooping. “We made a mistake last night.”

“We did not,” I say firmly. I reach out to take her face in both hands, tilt it up to me. It’s a deliberate reminder of what Richard Thurgood did, but also a reminder that I have been nothing but gentle with her—minus the spanking, of course, but she wanted that.

“You were upset. I was upset. We needed to leave. Leaving last night was the right decision, but now we need to decide where to lead the press. Because at this point, we’re still in charge. We get to write our story. TMI can’t make this what it isn’t.”

It’s as close as I’ve come to telling her about the video, but if some part of me was hoping she would read between the lines, I’m disappointed. Because she doesn’t.

“Okay,” she says, nodding. “This makes sense. So…how do you propose we write our story?”

“If the gossip rags think we’re hiding a secret sex thing,” I raise a brow at her until she blushes, “they’ll never let go. But if we go out on a very public date, tipping them off where they can find us, the whole thing will smack of a publicity stunt. And no one cares about fake relationships. Just look at what’s his name—the British guy and the pop star, you know who I mean.”

Jenna’s starting to grin. “Everyone hated them! You’re right!”

“So we just go out and do Vancouver together, me and you, all day, in public. Let them take their photos. The world will be yawning by supper, and we’ll have our privacy back.”

“Plus, IK PR can’t say we didn’t do our part in being visible. This is brilliant. You’re brilliant!” She pops up on her tiptoes to kiss me reflexively. She freezes as soon as she realizes what she’s doing—rewarding me with real affection for finding a way to make our non-relationship look fake. I laugh softly against her mouth to let her know I’m in on the joke, and she smiles too.

For a second we stay like that, faces together, sharing breath, happy and excited, and it feels like we really are Janner again.

Too soon, the moment’s over, but I don’t stay upset about it for long. Her delightful immodesty surfaces as she tosses her robe on the floor, revealing that she’s nude beneath, and she bends over to rummage around in the pile of designer clothes strewn over the chair by the window. I don’t even tempt myself by walking closer, knowing that she probably won’t welcome any advances right this second.