Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (46 page)

I reached up and smoothed a lock of Jasmine’s hair from her face.
It’s all going to be okay,
I told myself, and I almost believed it.

And then I looked up and saw Dixon watching us from the doorway.

***

I told Jasmine to go ahead and get changed into her street clothes while I talked to Dixon. When she saw the worried expression on his face, she understood.

I walked over to him and he silently led me somewhere we could talk—the evidence lock-up, down in the basement.

Dixon leaned against the metal fence that separated the lock-up part from the rest of the room. “I took a chance on you, big guy,” he said.

“I know.” I looked down at my bruised fist.

“Your captain tried to warn me. Told me you had anger issues, since the death of your buddy. I’m sorry.” He sighed again. “You’ve done a good job. A
great
job.”

I nodded. I knew what this was leading up to.

“But between the....
tension
between you and Tyler, and now this...I’m worried I can’t rely on you for the series, if it does go ahead. Once you’re written into the first episode, it becomes very hard to extract you if things go south. What if you smash up the set on the first day of filming? Or hit another actor?”

“I get it,” I said. “The pilot was my audition. I failed.” Funny—back at the screen test, I’d thought the whole idea of me acting was crazy. I’d only cared about making it through the pilot. Now, the idea of never doing this again stung. And the truth was, he was right. Sure, I’d just patched things up with Jasmine, but I still couldn’t control my anger. I knew the same thing was going to happen the next time I saw her and Tyler together. The guy was just so obviously lusting after her, even when the cameras weren’t rolling, and the anger was always crackling and pulsing inside me, ready to explode. It was a lethal combination.

Dixon slapped me on the shoulder, which was almost comical with me being so much bigger than him. “I’m sorry. I
like
you, Ryan. I like the way you work with Jasmine. And you two are cute together.”

I blinked.

“Oh, come on, like we don’t all know!” He punched me playfully in the arm.

I looked at my feet. “We were trying to be...discreet.”

“Oh, hell, I don’t
mind!
Chemistry’s always better when the love interests are seeing each other. I was just worried you were going to break up and not be able to even look at each other.” He tilted his head to the side. “Ryan, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I can send a glowing report back to your captain, tell him how calm and easy to work with you’ve been….”

I heard it in his voice. “...
but?”

“But I don’t think it’s going to make any difference. I can help you get back on the force, but until you get rid of this thing that’s eating away at you inside, you’re going to keep getting angry. You need to beat this thing, once and for all.”

With a last slap on the back, he headed upstairs. I was left in the evidence room, surrounded by packets of fake cocaine and rows of fake handguns. My last glimpse of fake cop life, before I went back to the real thing.

I wasn’t ready.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want it. The need to be back on the streets was like a physical ache. But I knew Dixon was right. I couldn’t handle it.

Jasmine had conquered her demons but I hadn’t conquered mine.

Chapter 53

Jasmine

When I got back to my apartment, I started getting ready for the wrap party...and for what would follow it.

I’d already decided that tonight was going to be the night. The bath had been fun and it had shown me a whole different side to a relationship that I’d been missing, trusting and gentle and loving. The time at his apartment, when we’d danced, had shown me that he’d wait as long as I needed him to...but I wanted him
now.

I slipped into the new dress Nat had bought me and put my hair into a mass of pre-Raphaelite curls. For my make-up, I went for heavy, smoky eye shadow and wet-look, blood-red lips—very femme fatale. I put on black hold-ups and it was while I was smoothing the nylon up my legs that it hit me that I felt like Jasmine again. I’d slipped out of Emma and back into her.

Her?
I mean
me.

It was starting to get confusing. Neither one of them felt exactly like
me,
anymore. They were both vying for control. But tonight, I’d definitely become Jasmine again.

Well, that was okay, right? No guy complains that his girl is too sexy or too confident in bed. Sex was Jasmine’s thing. The thought of Ryan and me together in my bed, my legs winding around him, made me go weak. And I wasn’t just horny, I was excited about showing him something I did really well. It was going to be perfect. After everything we’d been through to get to this point, he deserved something amazing. Sex was what I did. He deserved the full Jasmine Experience.

There was a dark cloud hanging over everything, though. Nick wasn’t home, and there was no sign he’d been home since he’d stormed out of the apartment the night before. I knew that if I went searching for him, my chances of finding him were approximately nil. This time, he wouldn’t want to be found. I checked my phone, but he hadn’t replied to any of my messages. I left more.

The guilt clawed away at me from the inside, but all I could do was wait and pray he came back so that I could repair the damage. I called a cab. With luck, Nick would be home when we got back.

***

I glimpsed him through the window of the bar and ran the rest of the way, which meant that I was just a little breathless and giggly when I swung the door wide. God, he looked good enough to gobble down whole. Soft, dark hair a little tousled, blue eyes almost seeming to glow in the bar’s dim light. He had on a white shirt and a pair of jeans so dark blue they were almost black.

He looked up, saw me..., and gawped. So I leaned against the door frame and let him. A good gawp from someone you like can be better than any compliment. I let my body press against the frame just-so, my boobs bulging a little at the top of my dress. I tilted my head to the side, my hair cushioning me against the frame, and smiled at him.

I was secretly delighted when his gawp got even wider.

I walked in and he held his hands out to take mine, spinning me around in the center of the room as he looked at me. His eyes tried to follow my ass, then got distracted by my boobs, then went to my face, then got caught up on my hips. Seeing such a huge bear of a man reduced to helplessness by lust was hugely gratifying.

“
Wow,”
he said eventually.

I waited. “Anything else?” I said at last.

He shook his head slowly. “Can’t manage anything else. Just...
wow.”

I smiled and, to my surprise, found myself flushing a little. I hadn’t been expecting that. I’d been gawped at plenty by strangers when I wore something tight or low cut and I thought I was used to it. Then it hit me that this was
him,
and that made all the difference. I was doing my fair share of gawping back at him, too, even if I managed to be a little more subtle about it. I kept looking at his hands, big and warm and packed with strength. I imagined them holding onto my waist, lifting me, lowering me onto him. Or sliding up my body to scoop up my naked breasts. Or closing gently on my head, fixing me in place while he stared into my eyes and slowly thrust inside me—

He caught my eye and I realized I’d gone very quiet. Okay, maybe I hadn’t been as subtle as I’d thought.

To cover my embarrassment, I looked around at the place. The wrap party was at an upmarket cocktail bar in one of the trendy zip codes, all black, mirror-like table tops, recessed lighting, and soft leather seats. A banner proclaimed that this was the
Blue & Red Wrap Party
—Dixon had hired out the entire bar and invited every member of the cast and crew, all the way down to the stagehands.

And then, to my surprise, Ryan took my arm. I looked at it, then looked around fearfully.

“Dixon knows about us,” Ryan told me. “We don’t have to hide it anymore. He’s fine with it.”

“Really? That’s all he wanted, earlier?” I asked. Dixon had looked worried when I’d seen him watching from the doorway.

Ryan looked at me for a long moment. “Yeah,” he said. “That was it.”

Chapter 54

Ryan

Her smile was so bright, her eyes as beautiful as they shone with enthusiasm that I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell her the rest of what Dixon had said, and that I thought he was right about it. I grabbed a couple of glasses of champagne from a waiter who was offering them around. “To the future,” I said, and I meant it. The only thing that mattered was that
her
dreams were coming true. The pilot was wrapped and seemed to have gone well. If the show got picked up for a full season, there was no way they’d cut Jasmine’s character. Even if I never made it back onto the force, or even if the captain took me but my anger meant I couldn’t stay, at least we had that.

Now that we didn’t have to hide the fact we were seeing each other, we walked around arm-in-arm. Everyone nodded and smiled at us approvingly and no one looked the slightest bit surprised. “Were we
that
obvious?” she asked.

“Maybe we’re not as good actors as we thought,” I said.

Jasmine said goodbye, individually, to everyone in the room, Facebooking every one of them on her phone. She talked to actors about what movie or show or commercial they had planned next. I took the time to banter with the other cops about their precincts and how real life compared to playing a cop in the show. I’d been so busy, between learning lines, rehearsing, and filming that it felt as if I’d barely met half of them. And now that I had time, I was about to leave for good.

I noticed Tyler across the room, looking right at her. With me gone, they’d write him in as the main love interest. That was probably the reason they’d brought him in and started the little love triangle. Dixon had talked about options—yeah, they’d given themselves the option of getting rid of the big, stupid, blue collar lunk and replacing him with a
real
actor.

He was still looking at her. I’d felt briefly better about it, when I’d “kissed him out of her.” Now, knowing that he might well have months of filming with her, and that I wouldn’t be there...just as I’d feared, I felt the anger rising again. My hands tightened into fists and I quickly looked away before I started to lose it.

***

There were speeches from Dixon and a few of the other higher-ups. A photographer wandered the room taking photo of groups of us. It was like a graduation ball, in a lot of ways, everyone happy but tearfully saying goodbye, not sure when or if they’d see each other again. There was even dancing. We looked at the dance floor, looked at each other and both shook our heads.

I stayed away from Tyler and managed to calm down. But I knew that that problem hadn’t gone away.

As the evening went on, I noticed that Jasmine kept trying to build up to something. “Come on,” I said. “What?”

She looked up at me and bit her lip, and she looked so goddamn beautiful in that moment that I nearly scooped her up in my arms and kissed her right then. She shyly whispered, “When we’re done here...how about we head back to my place?”

I nodded, assuming she meant to talk. I was completely in the mindset that I needed to give her as much time as it took so it didn’t even occur to me that—

Then I saw the look in her eyes.

“Oh,” I said, “
Oh!
” I perked right up, grinning like a loon. “Yeah. Hell yeah!” Looking at her in that dress sent a hot throb of arousal down inside me, one that ended right between my legs. Was she really hinting that—?

She squeezed my hand and smiled.

“We could just leave now,” I said quickly. “Get a cab. Be at your place in—”

“Down, boy,” she said, laughing. “I want to see Dixon do karaoke.”

So we stayed for the singing and even a little very slow, very careful dancing with me only treading on her toes twice. Dixon handed out wrap presents for everyone—police-style leather jackets with the name of the show emblazoned on the back, together with our names. He thanked all of us and wished us all every luck in the world, both those of us possibly coming back for the series and—he looked at me—those of us moving on.

And then I couldn’t wait any longer. I took Jasmine by the hand, led her outside, and damn well stood in the center of the street until a cab stopped.

Chapter 55

Jasmine

I could barely sit still on the cab ride to my apartment. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. Should I drag him to the bedroom as soon as we got through the door? Or should I start ripping his clothes off in the hallway outside?