Come A Little Bit Closer (The Sullivans #7)(69)

He shook his head. “Little sisters are a pain in the butt, aren’t they? But then again, I’m sure you got her back for that, didn’t you?”

She gave him her most innocent look, before saying, “Who knew putting Vaseline on a golf ball would make it nearly impossible to hit it straight?”

“Now that I know how much the win means to you,” he said through his laughter, “I may have to do a full body search for any hidden jars of Vaseline before we start playing.”

Valentina was struck yet again that it didn’t matter where they were, on the set, in a conference room, in his living room doing a puzzle, or sitting in the middle of a golf ’n’ games arcade that hadn’t been updated—or cleaned—since the early seventies: she wanted him.

And she liked him very, very much.

“If I win,” he said in a low voice that sent shivers running over her already too-sensitive skin, “you have to hold my hand for the rest of the night.”

Tatiana’s advice from earlier came fast and furious at Valentina: What if you gave Smith a chance to love you the way you deserve to be loved? Don’t you think there’s a chance that he could be up to the challenge? And that you could be, too?

So even though Valentina’s hand was starting to shake on her lap beneath the sticky Formica tabletop, she made herself raise it. With her heart hammering so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised to see it actually pop through her ribs and skin, she reached across the table for his hand.

Valentina thought she heard Smith’s breath catch as she slowly slid her palm against his, before interlacing their fingers.

The heat of his touch immediately melted the ice that was trying to close her heart back in.

“You don’t need to win a bet to have that.”

* * *

After their game of miniature golf had ended in a perfect tie, and Valentina and Smith walked into her rental house hand in hand, they found Tatiana lying on the couch reading a book.

She smiled at them over the top of her paperback. “Are Marcus and Nicola spending the night at your house again, Smith?”

He grinned back at her. “Nope.”

Valentina had never had a man stay over before. She’d told herself it was because she hadn’t wanted to make her sister feel uncomfortable. But the truth was, she’d never wanted to give away enough of herself to a man for the intimacy of waking up together.

Now, for the first time, she wanted to give that to Smith.

“You don’t mind if my boyfriend stays over, do you, T?”

At the word boyfriend Tatiana grinned widely and said, “Nope, I’ll just make sure I’ve got my earplugs handy.”

Smiling at her sister’s sassy response, Valentina was plugging her phone into its charger when she realized she had a message waiting from George, one that must have been there all afternoon. Even though she wanted nothing more than to get into bed with Smith, she couldn’t ignore a decade of the work ethic that had her dialing her voice mail and listening to what he had to say.

When she put down the phone, her hands were shaking. She looked at the two people who meant the most to her, and was glad they were both there to hear her news.

“George says there’s a bidding war going for my screenplay.” She wondered how her voice could sound so calm, when her insides were doing cartwheels. “A big one. And he said he thinks I’m going to be really happy with the studio that’s in the clear lead.”

“Oh my God!” Tatiana jumped up off the couch and hugged her.

Smith put his hand on her chin and pulled her face up to his so that he could say, “Congratulations, Valentina,” then kiss her, before grinning even wider and teasing, “If only I’d had a chance to see your screenplay...”

She laughed as she danced around the room with her sister, pulling him in so they were a wiggling, happy threesome. “I promise you’ll be the first person to see the next one.”

Tatiana found a bottle of champagne and after they’d all toasted and finished a glass, it was the nicest, most natural thing in the world to brush her teeth with Smith standing by her side at the sink, to strip the clothes from each other, then slip between the sheets together.

Valentina had no doubt her sister would need the earplugs on other nights, but for tonight, Smith simply wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

And she held him right back.

Chapter Twenty-five

By the time Smith and Valentina made it into the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, Tatiana was already up and drinking a cup of coffee, a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal on the table in front of her. She smiled at them both when Smith said, “Good morning,” but when Valentina reached into the cupboard to grab two mugs, Tatiana mouthed to him, “We need to talk.”

“Hey, Val,” she said, “remember the earrings I loaned you last week? The ones with the rubies in them? I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find them. Would you mind checking to see if they’re in your bedroom?”

As soon as Valentina left the kitchen, Tatiana reached under the table and plopped a printout from the Internet into Smith’s hand. “Look at this.”

The page showed one of the “romantic” staged pictures of him and Tatiana that had been shot the week before to promote the movie while they were in character as Graham and Jo...and then another, slightly fuzzy picture of Smith and Valentina holding hands last night at the arcade. The headline between the photos shouted: Smith Sullivan introduces his gorgeous co-star to pleasure while having a secret affair with her older sister! All the details you need about the movie star’s torrid love triangle inside.