America's Geekheart (Bro Code #2)(22)

And also the fact that I’m wearing RYDE underwear again makes this entire moment way more intimate than it should be.

He’s branded my underwear.

Literally.

He stops to lean against a post in my pergola, the sun shining on his dark hair, all his model fabulousness amplified with the quaint beauty in my small backyard, blue eyes deceptively unconcerned. There’s no way a guy like this isn’t worried about all the boycotts being announced for his various fashion lines.

“You seeing somebody?” he asks.

“Why does not wanting to pretend to be your girlfriend have to immediately be followed by the assumption that it’s because I’m seeing someone?”

“Who’s Trent?”

Oh. Right. “An ex. Physics professor downtown writing computer simulations about the Big Bang. He gave me the best orgasms of my life.” Oh, shit, shut up, Sarah.

And there it goes, right on cue. The smoldery grin and schmootzy charm. “Sarah Dempsey, are you throwing down?”

“That wasn’t a challenge.”

“No? Because that sounded like a challenge.”

“You know what? Maybe it would be if you weren’t here to ask me to play your girlfriend.” There’s entirely too much truth in that statement, because even knowing that this charming, self-deprecating, food-loving man is probably playing a role, he’s still freakishly hot and funny, and I’m still a red-blooded woman.

He opens his mouth, then rubs his hand over it while he looks away.

Not at all denying that he’s here to ask me to play his girlfriend.

“So you’ve been online today,” he says.

“Sure. Let’s go with that.”

Those deep blue eyes swing back to study me, and yeah, I can see why this guy’s looks have made him a boatload of cash.

He plays the doofus well, but he can also focus very well when he has to. Like last night. On the video. And when he left.

“You know about Ellie’s accident?” he asks.

I shake my head, unsure where he’s going, because yes, I know she was in an accident, but I don’t know details. Not beyond the nuggets he gave me last night while we were making our video.

Wow, that didn’t sound right in my head.

I really wish I hadn’t grown up in Hollywood.

“Happened at Christmas,” he says, clearly missing what’s going on in my gray matter, thank god. “Year and a half ago. Crushed her left leg. Doctors didn’t think she’d walk again.”

“Oh. I—that’s awful. But I wouldn’t know by looking at her now.”

He grins wryly. “She doesn’t like to be underestimated. Clearly. Pretty sure she could fly if someone told her she couldn’t.”

“That’s technically physically impossible,” I point out.

“Dammit, Sarah, now she’s gonna have to prove you wrong.” His eyes twinkle, and it’s not some trick of a camera. But he sobers quickly with a glance next door at Ellie’s house. “I was home when we got the call, since it was the holidays. Scariest fucking days of my life. Didn’t know if she’d pull through and wake up. Then if she’d walk. And how much care she’d need. How she’d be emotionally and mentally. And I realized I’m home maybe three or four weeks a year. My parents are getting older. Ellie’s marrying my best friend. Making his kid officially my nephew. I don’t want to be gone so much. I don’t want to spend my Sundays running a PR machine when I fuck up. Family’s where it’s at, you know?”

I cringe, because I see my parents less than he sees his.

It’s not that I don’t love them.

It’s more that I don’t fit the ideal Hollywood image, and I never have.

Especially once I hit high school.

Add in all those little bits of my own taste of the level of scrutiny they live with and couldn’t always shield me from—yes, I was that Hollywood child people speculated about actually being my dad’s secret love child since there’s no way I had my mother’s beauty in me—and I haven’t actually been to their house in six or seven years.

We meet in obscure locations unlikely to have reporters lurking around when our schedules line up, and we talk on the phone or video chat a couple times a month.

“You have family?” he asks.

“It’s complicated,” I say. Lamely.

“But you’ve got Mackenzie,” he points out with a flirty grin.

“So you’re selling off your business?” I ask him, because deflection is key.

His eyes narrow. “What?”

“It’s how it works, right? You want to step back, so you have to get rid of some of your responsibilities. Unless you’re quitting modeling altogether, but you’re a package deal. You model your own stuff now. It’s not the Beck Ryder brand if some young whippersnapper comes in and tries to do your smolder for you. So you’re selling off to someone who has an up-and-coming superstar who can step into your shoes, but not if you ruin the brand first.”

“Somebody’s been doing her sleuthing.” He winks at me like it’s adorable that I care enough to look him up.

Except I didn’t look him up, because I’ve already seen a time or three how celebrities function in the fashion industry.