moon rose as they dug into the platter of chicken and fruit salad. The simple meal settled her stomach and made her feel better. There was just something comforting about home cooking. There hadn’t been a lot of it in her house growing up. She’d mostly fended for herself by the time she was in school full days.
A chill crept into the air, and Ana was chagrined to feel her nipples puckering beneath the thin fabric of the dress and the thinner lace of the bra. God, did she have to go and starting nipping now?
Darned if Jackson hadn’t noticed it, too. He took in the view unabashedly, and darned if Minerva didn’t take in him taking it in, as well. Ana couldn’t be sure, but she thought she caught a hint of a smirk in the older woman’s expression. Schemer.
“So, dear. Do you feel like talking about today or would you rather not?”
She shrugged at Minerva. “There’s not much to tell. I walked out to my car to meet Jackson for dinner and some guy jumped me from behind. I didn’t see his face. I fought and screamed, but he hit me in the side of the head and apparently knocked me out. Someone called the police and... I was lucky. Then Jackson came and rescued me from all those medical people and their needles in the emergency room.”
“I did not—”
She threw him a withering look. “We’ve already been over this. You rescued me. I’m grateful, and you can just get over it.”
Minerva chuckled in delight. “Oh, I like her, Jackson.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Stay here as long as you’d like, dear. It’s entirely too much house for one person to rattle around in.”
“What about me?” Jackson complained.
“You’re always haring off to who knows where, and when you’re home you practically live over at that studio of yours. You’re gone more than you’re here.”
Ana grinned. Salty, the woman was. She officially liked Minerva back. They finished the meal with Jackson glaring at his grandmother, Minerva smiling smugly and Ana privately enjoying his discomfort. He struck her as the type who was used to always being in control, always in charge, always self-contained. It was refreshing to know he was a real man with real feelings and not some kind of robot under all that movie-star perfection.
Rosie came out to clear the dishes and Jackson jumped up to help her. He hauled in the heavy stuff while Minerva topped off Ana’s water and refilled her own wineglass.
As Jackson disappeared inside the house, Minerva asked, “How long have you and Jackson been together?”
“Uh, we’re not together. We just met today at an audition.”
Minerva looked visibly startled. Not his style to bring home his casual conquests, huh? Ana added by way of explanation, and in defense of her own morals, “I don’t think he even noticed that I’m a girl until he saw me in this awesome dress.”
“Oh, I noticed,” Jackson groused from the doorway. “Just because I was too professional to make a pass at you when I was lying on top of you in your audition doesn’t mean I didn’t notice.”
Ana gulped as Minerva smiled archly. “She does wear that dress rather well, doesn’t she?”
“Yes. She does.” Jackson’s voice was low and deep. Sexy. Slid across her skin like velvet. “Would you like to see the beach, Ana?”
“There’s a beach around here?”
“I blasted one out of the rocks a while back.” He moved over beside her chair and held a hand down to her. “Let me show you.”
He held out his hand to help her to her feet. She laid her palm in his and started at the heat of him. It permeated her flesh and drew her to him like a moth to a flame.
“Have fun, you two,” Minerva said behind them, her words floating away on the muted roar of the ocean.
“Interfering busybody,” Jackson muttered as he led her to a wooden staircase.
“She means well.”
“She just loves to meddle.”
“She loves you.”
Jackson snorted, but Ana would bet he knew she was right. Narrow steps wound down the cliff steeply. To a normal person, the descent would probably be a little alarming. But after her stunt classes, it was kind of fun to navigate.
They got to the bottom and stepped onto a tiny, secluded beach surrounded on three sides by towering cliffs and on the fourth by the ocean. White sand the consistency of sugar buried her toes. The whole beach probably wasn’t more than fifty feet wide and maybe half that deep.
“It’s perfect,” she breathed.
Jackson looked over at her in the moonlight. “Yup. Perfect.”
She got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the beach. She spoke over the ocean soundtrack. “Your grandmother seemed to think we were a couple. Do you need me to pretend that we are for a while to get her off your back?”
“You’d do that for me?” he blurted.
“Why not? She’s a lovely woman and it would make her happy. I’d love to repay her in some way for her hospitality.”
Jackson frowned doubtfully. “You don’t know her. This could backfire on both of us.”
“How?”
“No idea. But I know my grandmother. If there’s a way to make a fake girlfriend bite me in the butt, she’ll find it.”
Ana grinned. “It’s a good thing I’m not going to take that remark out of context, Mr. Prescott.”
Jackson laughed and snagged her around the waist, pulling her up against his delicious body laughingly. She tensed against him, and he turned her loose instantaneously.
He spun away, shoving a hand through his hair. “God, I’m sorry,” he mumbled over his shoulder. “You were just attacked. Of course you wouldn’t want some guy to grab you....”
“It’s not that,” she responded quickly. It was just that he was so darned gorgeous. So out of her league. So...perfect. And she was so...not. How to put that into words that wouldn’t make her sound like a total dork? She opened her mouth, mumbled incoherently and shut it again.
“What can I do to help?” he asked, steamrolling right over her attempt at an explanation. “Anything. Just tell me what to do. I want to help.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“No, you’re not. You freaked out when I touched you.”
It wasn’t quite that dramatic, but he didn’t seem interested in listening to her protests. If she were more of a shark, she would play on his sympathy and get him to woo her romantically. But lies weren’t her style. “I swear, Jackson, I’m okay. Go ahead. Put your arms around me again and let me prove it to you.”
Very
