Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (25 page)

When I finally made it back to her eyes, she had a questioning look on her face. I flushed. She’d probably been watching my gaze the entire time, amused at my lack of control.
This is why I shouldn’t be playing Tony,
I thought.
He’s meant to be ice-cold. Tony would never get caught staring like that.

And then I caught myself. Had I really just compared myself to my character? Maybe some of Jasmine’s teaching was actually rubbing off on me.

“It smells amazing,” I said, because I realized I’d been just standing there looking at her for way too long. “I didn’t know you cooked.”

“I don’t,” she said. “
He
does. Meet Nick, my brother.”

I spun around. Walking toward me was a lean guy with a strung-out look. Not super-thin, but sort of
gristly.
As if he’d been thin too many times, and had never really put the meat back on. The family resemblance was definitely there. I could see it in his jaw line and cheekbones, although the two of them didn’t look as similar as most brothers and sisters I’d met.

I held out a hand. The guy gave me a smile, but he had a jumpy, twitchy look I recognized all too well.

He’s using.

I was sure of it. I didn’t know what that meant. Maybe he was the disappointment of the family, or had fallen on hard times or something, and Jasmine had taken him in. Maybe he was bleeding money from her for drugs and that explained the low-rent apartment. I could totally see Jasmine being suckered in, when it was family. She was so innocent—drugs were probably far outside her experience. What if she didn’t know? Should I tell her?

Stop being a cop, you idiot,
said Hux.

I gave him a grin, instead, and shook his hand. “Thanks for cooking. Smells great. Wish I could cook.”

He shrugged and almost blushed. “Y’know...it’s not that hard. And I kinda like it. And I wanted to help out, while I was here.”

I picked up on that. “You don’t live here?”

“I do right now. I’m crashing for a while.”

I could feel the anger and distrust stirring in me, like someone was poking at a fire’s embers. How
dare
he come into her life and mess it up with his drugs and his loser life. She was untouched by the whole shitty world I had to walk through every day, out on patrol, and I wanted it to stay that way.

“You brought
wine!”
shrieked Jasmine, sounding delighted. She whipped the bottle out of my hand. “I’ll put it in the refrigerator. Unless you want a glass now. We’ll have a glass now. Nick, you want a glass too? Let’s all have a glass.”

Within the space of ten seconds I had a glass of wine in my hand and was standing in her living room, and I got the impression I’d been...
handled.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that...but if she was embarrassed by her brother, I could sort of understand it.

“So,” said Jasmine, directing me to the couch and taking a seat on a beanbag in front of me. “Did you learn the script?”

As she said it, she curled up with her legs hooked underneath her. Her legs were demurely together but her skirt rode up a few inches and between her bare thighs and the fact I was now looking down at her cleavage, it was suddenly very difficult to think. “Yes,” I managed.

She gave me one of those knockout smiles and brushed her hair back over one shoulder, leaving it bare and very...exposed.

It’s just a shoulder, you idiot! Control yourself!
But it didn’t matter. That bare shoulder was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
I have completely fallen for this woman.

“Ask me out,” said Jasmine.

Time stood still.

“Page ten,” she added helpfully. “Maybe from, ‘
You don’t date other cops, do you?’”

Tony, you idiot. Tony, asking Isabel out.
Amazingly, I actually remembered that line. “You don’t date other cops, do you?” I said. “That’s a good policy. Sensible. What’s it going to take to stop you being sensible?”

She blinked a couple of times and then smiled. “That was
good!”
She sounded pleasantly surprised.

I found myself smiling. Did I actually get something right? All I’d done was say it how I figured Tony would say it—I knew what it was like, to be desperate to be with her.

We worked on the script for another half hour or so, sipping wine. I’d never been much of a wine drinker. Tony, though,
he’d
drink wine. He’d probably figure out what was good so that he could sound smooth and knowledgeable—

I stopped. Had I just thought of Tony as an actual person?

Nick brought the food through and it was fantastic—hunks of chicken seared with a Chinese glaze and then drowned in a thick sauce, with string beans and brown rice.

“So, where are you guys from, originally?” I asked.

Jasmine looked across at her brother. Only a half-second’s hesitation—probably nothing. Probably just that she wanted to check who was going to answer, so she didn’t interrupt him.

So why was my cop alarm going off?

“Chicago,” said Nick. ”Jaz came here to be an actress. I followed a while afterward.” He shrugged. “Felt like a change.”

Jaz?
I’d never heard any of Jasmine’s friends call her that. But then brothers and sisters have all sorts of pet names for each other.

“You visit much?” I asked.

“No,” said Jasmine, a beat too quickly. “Both our parents are dead, so….”

I nodded solemnly. Something was off. All of the answers sounded reasonable—it was the way they were coming out that was wrong. Why did I feel like I was interrogating a couple of suspects? Was that just me, being me, unable to switch off the cop part of me?

Nick cleared the plates. “I’m going to head out for a while,” he told us. “So that you guys can...you know—”

“Rehearse,” said Jasmine sharply. And looked at me. God, I didn’t care that I could see the doubt in her eyes, or that she just wanted to run lines all night. I’d have happily sat there playing Scrabble if it meant being close to her.

“Let’s move onto the kiss,” said Jasmine, standing up.

I swallowed and stood up. That left her looking up into my eyes and that made it difficult to breathe. God, she was beautiful.

“So they’re—um—in the police station,” Jasmine said. “And Isabel is still upset about the captain bawling her out. And Tony has followed her into the women’s locker room—which, luckily for them, is deserted. And he says—”

“You don’t need to worry about what the captain thinks, Isabel,” I said. The lines were etched into my memory now from pure rote recital in front of the mirror.

I could actually see the moment Jasmine slid into her character. Suddenly, she really did seem different: a touch younger, scared and distrusting. Emotionally vulnerable. Completely unlike the bouncy, confident woman I knew—

And yet, weirdly, familiar. Isabel kind of reminded me of the Jasmine I’d glimpsed a few times, in the patrol car and at the gym.

Jasmine shook her head. “I’m no good at this. I can’t be a cop. I don’t have what you have.” She turned away from me, stalking off across the room.

I could see the words in my head.
Tony grabs her and pushes her up against a locker.
Did she want me to do that? I could suddenly feel my heart slamming into my chest like a sledgehammer. I put my hand on Jasmine’s bare shoulder, skin on skin, and spun her around to face me, pushing her back against the wall.

She turned her head away from me. I put my finger under her chin and tried to turn it back toward me, but she resisted. “Look at me, Isabel!” I snapped. She stared determinedly off into the distance and—
God, is that a tear in her eye? Should I stop?
“Look at me!”

She jerked her head around and stared into my eyes. Her expression stole the last of my breath from my chest: she was so open and so scared, so
real.
“You have what it takes,” I told her. “You have it
here.”
I pushed my finger into her chest, right between those magnificent boobs. “You think you can’t cut it because you’re finding it hard? It
is
hard. Every day, it’s hard. And no one’s going to tell you you’re doing a good job. But it’s what you were born to do, just like the rest of us, and if you fight it, you’ll never be happy.”

She shook her head viciously. “You heard the captain. I’m not fit to wear the uniform.”

“Yes you are. And you look pretty damn good in it.”

She blushed—actually blushed. How did she do that?! She looked away as if embarrassed but, just as quickly, looked back to see if I was for real.

I was. I mean, Tony was. I looked down at her with absolute conviction, and then her eyes were closing and her face was tilting up to meet mine, our lips drawing closer and closer—

Chapter 29

Jasmine

“Wait,” I said suddenly.

He froze. I could see him think,
that’s not in the script.
I opened my eyes and, for a second, we just stared at each other from super-close range. Because we’d been just about to kiss, there were only a few inches between our faces. I’d never seen his eyes that close before and they were so blue, so pure and unsullied, that I wanted to just melt. I could feel my heart thumping, hear my breathing, labored and throaty in my chest. My boobs must have been heaving like one of the heroines in Karen’s bodice rippers, but his eyes didn’t flick down to them, not for a second.

“This is just a screen kiss,” I said in a kind of strangled gasp. “You know that, right?”

He just stared at me. I could feel every defense I had crumbling away. A big part of me was screaming at myself to
shut up! shut up!
But I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t let him kiss me and think we were—

Then why are you even rehearsing this scene? Why did you choose to rehearse this with him now, with the two of you alone in your apartment, with the bedroom just down the hall, after most of a bottle of wine?

I didn’t have a good answer to that. I pressed on regardless. “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “It’s not us kissing. It’s Tony and Isabel. Okay?”

He looked at me for a second longer and part of me wanted to scream at him to
say something, say something!
And part of me wanted him to just shut the hell up and kiss me, because then it really
would
be our kiss and I’d lose any last chance at staying away from him and I’d be doomed, but it’d be so damn worth it.

But then he nodded and said, “Sure.”

And he’d bought it. The gorgeous giant had bought that this was just a rehearsal, just as I must have wanted, and now I’d get to kiss him without the risk of getting involved with him—because that’s where my subconscious must have been going with this whole thing, right? Or had I just been looking at him all evening in that crisp gray shirt and black pants and his hair all tousled and just finally gone insane? Had I just said
the hell with it
and picked this scene hoping he damn well
would
just kiss me and end the whole pretense?

I honestly didn’t know any more. And now the decision had been taken away from me because now it’d just be a screen kiss. All I had to do was not let the disappointment show.

His mouth came down again and I closed my eyes, waiting for the brush of his lips on mine.

It didn’t come.

I realized he was hovering there, a millimeter from contact, just savoring being near me. Wanting it to last. I could feel the throb of warmth from him, the press of his thickly-muscled leg against mine. I could feel the very faintest stir of air against my lips—he must have been almost holding his breath.

And then his lips came down on mine and everything ended.

I wasn’t prepared for it. I’d thought I was. In my new-found optimism I’d somehow got it into my head that we could go on something that wasn’t quite a date and enjoy something that wasn’t quite a kiss, tease myself just as I’d teased myself with my Ryan Moments.

I’d completely underestimated my feelings for him. I’d thought about it all, so many times, that the whole problem had been reduced in my mind to simple logic:
I want him but I can’t have him.
I wasn’t ready for the outpouring of raw need that overtook me as our lips met.

It exploded up from inside me. Every time I’d seen him since that night in the alley, every time I’d thought about him. I’d been aware of it building, slowly, but it’s amazing the lies you can tell yourself, day after day. Like:
I can control it.

I couldn’t.

I panted, once, into his open mouth and then his lips were teasing, pressing, his tongue licking at my upper lip and I
moaned.
It rattled from me like a death wail, announcing the collapse of the very last of my defenses. His lips were just as I’d dreamt—firm and yet soft, the kiss harsh and dominant even as it was gentle. I parted my lips—