Come A Little Bit Closer (The Sullivans #7)(56)

Lori was right. He usually went for women who looked more like Valentina’s younger sister. Small and soft, not tall and lithe.

“There’s nothing typecast about Valentina,” he told Lori, both drawn and frustrated by that fact. “I’ve never met anyone like her before.”

As they walked into his office, Lori immediately took in the mess on his desk and the floor where the papers and stapler had fallen that morning, along with the fact that the desk was now sitting at a strange angle in the room. It couldn’t have been more clear what he and Valentina had been up to.

“First woman you’ve ever really cared about, and the best you can do is drag her in here to have a quickie on your desk?” Lori shook her head in disgust. “No wonder she’s still way up on the fence about you.”

Damn it, he hated that he had to agree with his sister’s annoying analysis of the situation.

Winning Valentina over was proving to be really, really difficult. Outside of the bedroom, anyway. It was far more tempting than it should rationally be to keep her naked and panting with him until he could get her to finally agree that they were having more than just a film-fling.

But since sex wasn’t the problem, clearly more sex wasn’t going to fix it.

He knew Valentina trusted him with her sister...but still, the bigger questions remained: not only how to get her to trust him with her own heart, but also how to make her believe that between the two of them they could figure out a way around the spotlights.

“I like Val,” Lori said. “A lot. So much, in fact, that I wouldn’t mind hanging with her at family functions for the next forty or fifty years.” His sister pinned him with a razor-sharp look. “Which is why I seriously hope you have a better plan than just more of that.” She gestured to his desk again with another disappointed shake of her head.

He pulled off the tie his character Graham always wore and scowled at himself in the mirror. He hated that there was so much wisdom in what Lori was saying, in forcing himself to keep his hands off Valentina until he convinced her to actually date him with everything out in the open, rather than the two of them skulking around the set in a clandestine affair.

But as he threw his character’s suit jacket over his office chair, he absolutely refused to give up those precious moments when Valentina let down her walls and let herself be open and connected to him. Just as he’d told her that afternoon, he wasn’t giving up on finding that still-hidden pathway to her heart.

Lori moved behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Trust me,” she said with a commiserating sigh, “if anyone knows how you’re feeling, I do. Love sucks, doesn’t it?”

“No,” he told the little sister for whom he wanted nothing but the best, “love’s the good part.”

Somehow he’d figure out a way to deal with the rest of it.

* * *

It was dark and stormy in the city by the time Smith left his final meeting. The battery on his phone had died a couple of hours ago and although he figured there had to be a couple dozen messages and emails waiting for him, he headed neither for his office, nor his house, to recharge it.

Instead, he drove the dozen blocks to the rental home Tatiana and Valentina were sharing.

All afternoon, his talk with Lori had grated on him. She was right about him playing things wrong with Valentina. Increasingly, as the days turned into weeks, he’d grown more and more frustrated.

Idiot.

That’s what he was for not knowing she would be stronger than any of his attempts to woo her. After all, her strength was one of the things he’d fallen for, right from that day when she’d all but skewered him with the message that he’d better treat Tatiana right, or else.

Each sexual encounter he and Valentina had was hugely physically satisfying, but they weren’t getting him much closer to stripping away her other layers. Not when what he wanted for both of them ran so much deeper than just desire.

Sure, any number of women would have fallen at his feet. But he wanted her.

And she was worth however hard he had to work to get her.

As he rang her doorbell, the hard rain splattered his clothes and shoes. He couldn’t fight the rush of disappointment when Tatiana opened the door instead of her older sister.

“Great, you got my message,” Tatiana said with a wide grin as she stepped aside to let him in. “I’m pretty sure Valentina’s about to roll up the script and start hitting me over the head with it.”

Looking past Tatiana, he caught the quick flash of pleasure—and desire—in Valentina’s eyes at seeing him in her house before she quickly masked it with a polite hello.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” Valentina asked him.

“Sure, water’s good.”

When she moved past him into the kitchen, it took every ounce of control he had not to pull her against him and breathe her in. She smelled exactly the way she had when he’d taken her on his desk, like lavender shampoo and sex and her own intoxicating scent that had always driven him crazy. He hadn’t come here for a friendly drink with two co-workers or to make more progress on the movie with her sister, but Valentina quickly cut off any advance he might have made.

“Thanks for coming to work with Tatiana tonight. I know how much she appreciates it. Especially,” she said in a low voice that only he could hear, “when you’re filming such a difficult scene tomorrow.”