Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (4 page)

I swallowed. All I had to do was keep quiet and he’d be gone in a minute.

“Paramedics are right behind us,” said Ryan. “Who was here? Who saw it?” He stopped beside Clarissa and Natasha. “Were you here?”

“No,” they both said in unison.

“I was here,” I heard myself say. And then wondered what the hell I was doing.

He came closer, and his size was even more formidable close up. I could feel my breathing notching faster and faster. The attraction was coming from somewhere deep inside me, deeper than even my own thoughts and feelings probed, down in the dark waters beneath Jasmine. What the hell?!
No guy
had ever made me feel like this! I was aware that he was staring at me, and in a very un-cop-like way. What was worrying was that I was staring back just as hard, my eyes flicking between those eyes, that mouth, that broad, curving chest—

“Okay,” he said. “I have a couple of questions, while it’s still fresh in your mind.” I had time to focus on his voice, this time. How low it was, and how serious. A voice you listened to, if you knew what was good for you. One of those guys who speaks quietly, because he doesn’t have to shout. His voice just carried, and every word made my whole body hum and sing like a plucked string.

The paramedics arrived and started checking Dan. Ryan moved a step closer and, even though he was a cop, I didn’t take an instinctive step back. I felt as if I was frozen in place, pinned.

“So you were walking together when it happened?” he asked.

He was keeping his gaze resolutely on my face, which was more than most men would manage given the dress I was wearing. But I could feel the heat pulsing down through my body just the same. He was looking at me in a way I’d never been looked at before, seeing beyond all the surface sparkle and perfume I used to distract other men. And that was very, very dangerous, given what lurked inside me. But I couldn’t look away. It was difficult just forming words, with those eyes on me.
Control yourself! He’s a cop!

I forced myself to answer him. “I was sort of leading the way,” I said. “He was checking his wallet, to see if he had enough money. I think that’s why he got jumped.”

Ryan looked at Dan. “And I’m right in thinking he’s not your husband or boyfriend?”

The words were coming easier, now. He didn’t seem cruel or cold, like the other cops I’d met. I smirked at his question—Dan had a boyfriend himself. “That’s right.”

“Okay. So the two of you were just about to, ah…”

I looked at him blankly. God, he was almost painfully gorgeous. He reminded me more of a medieval knight, ready to take off someone’s head with a sword. Noble, and yet with that edge to him. The dark knight of the round table. For the first time, I saw him glance down at my pale cleavage, at my long lengths of thigh exposed by the dress. It was like being lit up by a laser, the heat throbbing and pulsing, flowing inward to my core.
He’s a cop! Remember he’s a cop!

He tried again. “You were—you know—just about to…” He sounded almost embarrassed.

I frowned. I still had no idea what he was trying to hint at.

Ryan sighed. “He was jumped as the two of you were about to complete your business?”

I was lost in his eyes, so it took a few seconds for it to register. “WHAT?!” I asked, horrified.

He didn’t even flinch. “It’s okay, miss—you’re not my concern tonight. Some other night, I might have to run you in, but right now I’m just trying to establish what happened.”

I gave two little disbelieving huffs of air and then my voice went so high with anger that it was almost ultrasonic. “I AM NOT A HOOKER!” I screeched. “Why would you think—” I looked down and saw my tiny dress and long fur coat. “I’m an
actress!”

Ryan just looked at me. “Uh-huh.”

Karen butted in. “Um, she actually
is
an actress,” she said, stepping forward.

Ryan looked at her, then looked at Nat and Clarissa. “And I suppose they’re actresses, too?”

“Oh, no,” Karen told him. “They’re ballerinas.”

The anger flared up hot and bright inside me…but, as it reached my brain, it started to sink back down again. Now that I replayed my words in my head, coupled with being in the alley and the ridiculous outfit I was wearing, I couldn’t really blame the guy. And he was so insanely hot that even him mistaking me for a hooker was sort of hot, in a twisted way. So I wasn’t
actually
mad, once the initial outrage had died away.

But the anger had done something important. It had snapped me out of my daydreaming about him. It had reminded me that he was a cop and I flushed with shame at how stupid I’d been. What the hell had I been thinking?! That I’d give him my phone number? That we’d somehow wind up dating?
A cop?!

So I glared at him and let him think I was furious. I could see he was sorry for his mistake. He even tried to apologize, as I got into the ambulance with Dan and Karen, but I didn’t let him. I spent the next week telling Karen and Nat and Clarissa over and over how annoyed I was.

But at night, Ryan haunted my dreams.

***

I saw him again when Connor had gotten into a fight to protect Karen from some creep who’d groped her. Ryan and Hux showed up to break it up and managed to keep Connor out of jail. I stayed back as much as possible, avoiding looking at him. Trying to will my heart to slow down every time I felt him looking at me.

And then, when I’d watched Connor kiss Karen for the first time and
aww-
ed along with Nat and Clarissa, I went home, I slammed the door behind me and, without even taking off my clothes, I leaned my back against the door, shoved my hand up under dress and brought myself to a breathless, shuddering orgasm thinking of him. The guy I wanted. The guy I could never have.

Part of the attraction was that he was just so...
physical.
Yes, there was the muscle and the fact I wanted to run my hands over every damn part of him, but it went beyond that. He was big and solid. Real. The opposite of being an actress who spends most of her time in her own head. And he wasn’t all talk, talk, talk. In fact, he didn’t say much at all—he was kind of silent and gruff. When he did say something, it was in that gorgeous, heart-stopping deep voice, but mainly he seemed like the sort of guy who’d forget the platitudes and just wrap his arms around you. After dealing with over-thinking, chattering actors all day, that sounded like heaven.

He was like a rock I wanted to cling to but, instead, I had to push him away.

***

And then he started to drive past Fenbrook every Thursday lunchtime.

Sometimes I’d dare to glance around and see him, and sometimes I’d let him drive past and then try to glimpse his face in the driver-side mirror. Always distant. Because that’s how it had to be.

Except this time, as I heard the car speed toward me, the siren wailed, and immediately every muscle tensed because for years, that noise meant
run.

Chapter 4

Jasmine

Now

I spun around and saw him staring at me through the windshield.

“Ryan?!”
I asked.

“Yeah.” I felt that warning flicker in my chest. He’d gone tense, and I knew what that meant. I wasn’t Karen, sitting in a practice room with a guy who was clearly crazy about her for months on end, flatly denying it. I
knew
he liked me. But he didn’t like the real me. He liked the fantasy woman I’d constructed.

I had to give him that—give him his fantasy woman—or he’d know something was wrong. But just a little taste. Keep him at arm’s length, tongue-tied and off balance. That was the only safe place for him.

“Did I do something wrong?” I gave it just a hint of sexy innuendo, enough that he’d wonder if he was imagining it. I wanted him uncertain. If I vamped it up too much, he might do something crazy like ask me out, and I didn’t want to have to turn him down. But too little and he might see through Jasmine, see through to—

We locked eyes and, just for a second, it got out. That painful, desperate need for him, the need to be loved, to be held—hell, to be fucked.

It hit me, for the first time, that while it was Jasmine who was sensibly keeping him at a distance, my feelings for him were coming from right down deep. From the old me. From Emma. A ripple went through my entire body, starting at my helplessly locked-on eyes and going all the way down to my toes. My breathing sped up. My eyes went wide—

Stop it!

And, like a curtain coming down, Jasmine was back. The flirty one. The confident one. The screen siren. Ryan was talking and I tried to focus on something other than how kissable his lips looked.

“Nope,” he said, “I was just—”

I smiled and he lost his thread. God, this felt so cruel! I didn’t want to be toying with the guy’s feelings! But what was I meant to do: yell at him? Tell him I had a boyfriend, or was a lesbian?

“He just wanted to say ‘hi’,” his partner, Hux, said.

I glanced at him. I’d always liked Hux. I didn’t like to think of Ryan out there on his own, on the streets. Knowing that Hux had his back was reassuring.

Stop it!
I told myself again.
You act like Ryan’s your boyfriend but you barely know him!

I had to bring this to a close. Gently push him away by overloading him. I leaned down so that I could look into the car, fully aware of the view this gave Ryan.

“I heard that song on the radio,” he said, his eyes glued to my boobs. “Karen and Connor.”

“I
know!”
I couldn’t stop myself grinning. “They’re doing
great!”
Karen had really come out of her shell since she got together with Connor. In fact, I mentally referred to it as
BC
and
AC,
now: Before Connor and After Connor. And the money they were making from that track was enough that Connor didn’t have to feel like the scruffy urchin to Karen’s privileged princess anymore.

“So,” said Ryan. And then silence. And more silence. And more. Oh God. Was he going to ask me out?
Please don’t let him ask me out. Please, please, please. Because if he does then I’m going to have to say no, and if there’s one person on this earth whose heart I don’t want to break, it’s his. He deserves a real person, not a fake one.

Chapter 5

Ryan

To my relief, the radio blared into life. “
All units, all units, report of a break-in at 412 Brybecker—”

I grabbed at the mic like it was a life preserver. “Four seven, we’re close. We’ll take it.”

Hux gave me a look. “We’re not
that
close.”

“Sorry,” I said to Jasmine, and I really was. Sorry I was just some schmuck in a patrol car when I needed to be a young George Clooney, or maybe a musician, or just a goddamn millionaire, like that one who’d wooed her friend Natasha. “We have to take this.”

“We don’t
have
to—” said Hux.

I silenced him by hitting the lights and siren. Jasmine jerked upright, taking her hands from the roof, and I floored it.

I could feel Hux’s eyes on me as we screamed down the street. “Brybecker is nowhere near us.”

I shrugged.

“You just didn’t want to have to talk to her,” Hux told me.

“Let it go.”

Hux chuckled, but not unkindly. “You’ve already humiliated yourself with her. How much worse could it get?”

I wanted to close my eyes tight in embarrassment. That freezing cold night when I’d first met her, in the alley. I’d assumed she was a hooker. Unsurprisingly, she’d gotten mad.

“Anyone could’ve got that wrong,” I said tightly.

“No,” said Hux. Even now, the memory of it made him rock with laughter. “Just you.”

We blasted through an intersection. I eased off on the gas a little, because it wasn’t like there was any real emergency. It would be thirty minutes of nodding sympathetically to the poor guy who’d had his place ransacked and then telling him to keep an eye on the pawnshops.

“I just don’t get it,” Hux said, for about the five hundredth time that summer. “I mean, I know she’s smokin’ hot. If I was twenty years younger—”

“You’re
not
twenty years younger,” I said pointedly. Hux—Pete Huxington, but everyone called him Hux—was old enough, wise enough and annoying enough to be my dad. And, okay, warm and generous enough, too. But not right at that precise moment.

“Hell, even so,” said Hux. “
I’d
sure like to make a movie with her.”

“Hux!”

“What? I’m just sayin’, some Hollywood heartthrob’s gonna get to do a bedroom scene with her. What’s that Italian guy’s name? Favio-something. Him. And everyone’ll be like, ‘Oh, are they acting or is it real?’ Then she’ll marry him and get one of those combo-names, like Brangelina.” He paused and took a bite of a donut. “No, wait. Not with Favio. She’d be ‘Famine’.”