Come A Little Bit Closer (The Sullivans #7)(59)

“Of course I will,” she promised. “And I won’t move an inch until you’re done.” But when she could see that her sister still wasn’t totally at ease, she said, “I’m sure it will be just like Smith said—you’ll probably feel like all you’re doing is playing Twister together.” Valentina made herself joke, “Little does he know how cutthroat us Landons are about our Twister games.”

When Tatiana laughed and grabbed her script to sit down with it for a few more minutes, Valentina breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Now all she needed to do was figure out a way to believe her Twister comment was true as well. Valentina had been trying to pretend this day wouldn’t come. But ignoring it hadn’t made it go away.

When Tatiana had first wanted to be an actress, Valentina had made her sister agree to one hard and fast rule: no matter how big the incentive from a studio or producer, she would never film any sex scenes as a minor. If she couldn’t legally drink, she wouldn’t take her clothes off in front of a set full of strangers and roll around naked on a huge screen for millions of viewers to salivate over.

Valentina didn’t expect—or even want—her sister to be a little girl forever. On the contrary, she celebrated what an incredibly lovely young woman she had become, despite the pressures from Hollywood to turn her into a carbon copy of every other actress out there.

The only problem with the fact that Tatiana could now order a glass of wine at a restaurant was the fact that sex scenes were no longer off the list.

Valentina also recognized that no one would ever call the sex scene in Smith’s movie gratuitous. Rather, it was a crucial part of the plot and character development for Jo and Graham as they moved from friends to lovers.

Still, she had no idea how she was going to deal with watching him make love to her sister. And worse still, considering it had to be one of the most terrifying moments of her sister’s career so far, how could Valentina ever forgive herself for caring more about her own feelings than Tatiana’s?

When the production assistant came to get Tatiana, thankfully, her sister looked as relaxed as if she were about to film a toothpaste commercial.

Whereas Valentina knew she must look like she was heading in for a root canal...without anesthesia.

* * *

Smith still remembered the first sex scene he’d ever shot. He’d been cast as a bitter son who seduced his father’s new wife for revenge. The actress had been ten years older than he and he’d been nervous, yet desperate not to show it. Fortunately, his co-star had been as kind as she was beautiful. Not to mention happily married.

She’d made the experience so easy for him that he’d gone out of his way to make it easy on the co-stars he’d had over the years. Not all of them had wanted to keep things strictly professional, and he hadn’t exactly complained during the projects where going from his co-star’s screen bed into her real one had been the natural progression of things.

But Tatiana was different. For all of the intense onscreen attraction that they were both manufacturing for their roles, in real life he couldn’t imagine actually making love to her. There was less than no chance that anything they portrayed today for the cameras would ever actually happen. It was all fantasy. Nothing more than make believe.

From a screenwriting and directing standpoint, the sex scene was simply part of the story being told. Still, he understood how difficult it was for actors of both sexes to open themselves up in such a physically intimate way in front of a dozen crew members and cameras that picked up even the slightest movements.

Over the past few weeks, he’d made sure to take the scene apart and look at it from every angle. He’d created a shot list that was by far the most technical of any so far. He knew exactly how the scene would play out, that the core deep sensual connection wasn’t only coming to its ultimate conclusion between Jo and Graham, but was in fact a new beginning for both of the characters as they realized just how much they needed each other to fully come back to life.

And yet, the truth was that he hadn’t been turning the scene into a technical exercise just for Tatiana’s benefit.

He’d done it for himself, too.

Sex scenes had never been an issue for him before. Until now...when he’d finally learned the true power of lovemaking in real life.

Because when he touched Valentina, when he kissed the bare skin at the curve of her shoulder, when he slid into her and felt her gasp of pleasure all the way down deep in his soul, sex became something so much bigger, so much more important than just pleasure and orgasms.

He looked up from the notes he’d made in the margins of his script just as Tatiana walked onto the set, with Valentina flanking her from behind. It was difficult to keep his focus on his co-star when his every sense came alive around the woman who had started to mean so much to him, but if there was ever a time he needed to stay completely in tune with the younger Landon sister, it was now.

“Ready for our game of Twister?”

He was glad when she grinned at him. “You bet. Let’s do this thing.”

When Tatiana went to take her place on set, Smith felt Valentina touch his arm.

“I know you can’t go easy on her today,” she said, “and that you need to film the scene exactly as you wrote it, but—”

“I’m going to make this as painless as possible,” he vowed in a soft voice. “For all of us.”