The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) (3 page)

Tanner frowned. “Didn’t we say noon? It’s noon.”

All the frustration I’d felt before when he didn’t call came bubbling back again. Anger was good. It helped to push back a little of my humiliation and stopped me wanting to just grab a cushion to hide behind. “You’re eight hours behind us. I checked.”

Tanner smirked. “We’re eight hours behind
GMT.
But you’re one hour ahead of
that.
You’re still on daylight saving time and we’re not.”

My jaw dropped. “They—They have different dates for putting the clocks forward?! That’s just confusing!” My cheeks flared even more. So they hadn’t been being rude at all. They’d called exactly when they said they would, only to find me naked. “It’s ridiculous,” I blustered. “How can anyone be expected to—”

“Relax, Charlotte. We’re here now. No big deal.”

No big deal?! You just saw me naked! Every inch of me!
I could feel the panic rising inside me. A big part of me wanted to tell him to forget the whole thing. But I still needed the money. I took a deep breath. “Alright, Mr. Cole,” I said stiffly. “Let’s discuss the matter in hand.”

He burst out laughing. “
Mr. Cole?
That’s kinda formal. Especially after I’ve already….” He trailed off and I saw his eyes flick down my thankfully now-covered body. “Call me Tanner,” he said at last.

I could feel my cheeks burning hot. “Mr. Cole is fine. Will your agent be joining us?”

“Nah. I sent Maury away.” He smiled and something like a hot wave crashed through me. ”It’s me who needs to talk to you anyway.”

For some reason, I was grateful for that. Which was weird because it was Tanner who was the billionaire, Tanner who should have been the intimidating one—and he was, in a way, with those muscles and those eyes and that smile that kept flustering me. But something about his agent made me uneasy. I was glad he wasn’t there.

“Fine,” I said, and crossed my legs, trying to look business-like. Then I uncrossed them because I was wearing pants and it looked stupid. Then I changed my mind and re-crossed them, and now it looked like I was bursting for the toilet or something.
Argh!
“What is it you need?” I asked.

“There’s this part I want to go for. Serious stuff. Weepy. Costume drama. But I gotta sound like...you know. Like you.” His mouth twisted into a smirk. “
Proper.”

“A gentleman?” I said disbelievingly. Tanner’s movies normally involved explosions or monsters. The close he’d gotten to something “serious” was playing a blue collar boxer from Detroit. Teaching him a British accent was one thing, but I’d assumed he’d be playing a London gangster or something. Making him sound posh as well as British…that was going to take some doing. “When do you need to, um, audition?”

“A week’s time,” he told me, and his tone had changed. He’d dropped the jokey attitude. He seemed…
focused.
Which was weird because, with his fame, it was hard to think of him having to audition for anything. Yet he seemed to be chasing after this part. Why?

I thought about it and nodded. “That might be possible,” I said without much confidence. “We’d have to work pretty hard, though. A lot of hours each day.”

“I can work hard,” he said, staring straight into my eyes.

I gulped. It was a perfectly innocent statement, but an explosion of raw heat went off right in my core. I had a sudden vision of him tangled in sheets on a bed, thrusting into some starlet and—

Just for an instant, the starlet had my face.

I tore my gaze from his and stared at the corner of the room, willing my face to cool down. “Okay. When are you flying to England?”

“Oh, I’m not coming to England. You’re coming here.”

My eyes snapped back to the screen. “
What?”

“The audition’s here in LA. They’ll shoot the movie in Britain, but it’s a Hollywood studio. I’ll fly you over.”

I blinked a few times. “What? I can’t just fly off to LA!”

He frowned. “Why?” As if he jumped on flights ever day.
He probably does.

He had a point. I didn’t have anyone depending on me in London. I could reschedule the few jobs I had lined up that week. I didn’t have a pet to feed. So why not go?

Oh yeah. The part about being completely, utterly out of my depth. I coached businessmen and TV actors, not billionaire movie stars! And me, in LA? Land of the thin and beautiful? I hadn’t been out of London in months. I’d barely been out of my apartment in weeks—my clients always came to me.

“I’ll pay for everything,” Tanner said. “A place to stay, food, flights. How much do you charge for training?”

This was all getting very real, very fast. “A thousand pounds,” I said automatically.

He nodded. “A thousand pounds a day is fine. I’ll get you booked on a flight tomorrow—that okay?”

A thousand pounds a day?!
I’d meant for the whole week! “Great,” I said weakly.

“Okay. Well, I look forward to seeing you in person, Charlotte.”

Hearing him say my name made a very pleasant squirm travel the whole length of my body, and I was glad my feet weren’t in shot so he couldn’t see them twist together. “Um. Thank you. I mean, you too. Mr. Cole.”

He smiled again and ended the call. I sat there in shock staring at the screen. What had I just done?

Chapter 2

“It’s a mistake,” I told the check-in attendant politely. “Please could you check it again?”

The attendant looked like a model. It was that sort of airline. “No mistake. First class to Los Angeles.”

I looked at my worn carry-on suitcase with the wonky wheel. This was going to be...interesting.

***

First class isn’t like the rest of air travel, and first class to LA isn’t like the rest of first class.

In business class, the seats have been bought by the company. The people sitting in them might be successful, but they’re not necessarily rich. In the in-between classes, people pay extra for a bigger seat or better TV, or get upgraded because it’s their honeymoon. There’s a yawning gulf between that and first class.

In first class, people who could have bought a seat for $500 have spent $5000 dollars to get to the same place at the same time
because they can afford it.
To someone like me, someone who doesn’t often buy anything that isn’t
buy one, get one free,
that’s pretty intimidating.

The cabin was quiet. There were no screaming kids, no drunken bachelor parties, but it was more than that. There was a sort of reverent hush, as if I’d reached some serene oasis.

The cabin was so big and airy that I didn’t have a seatmate, as such. The nearest person was just about within touching distance if I leaned out of my seat and stretched. She was a curvaceous woman in her twenties with honey-blonde hair and a softly swollen tummy. As the plane sped along the runway, she gently caressed her bump. “Home soon, sweetie,” she said in a Californian drawl.

Pregnant. That was one word I could never imagine connecting with myself;
married
being another.
Come to think of it, I was starting to worry that even
I’m in a relationship
sounded unbelievable. What else?
I have a date tonight. I’d like to see you again. Would you like to come in for coffee? Do you have a condom?

Normal life was going on for the rest of the world and I was outside it, trapped in my little apartment. I’d been dimly aware of it, but it’s easy to slip into a sort of comfortable acceptance when every day is the same as the last. Time doesn’t really seem to be moving, so it’s okay. Unlike models who lost their looks, my voice could keep earning me money my whole life—it hadn’t felt as if there was any hurry.

Being on the plane was like being dropped into ice water. Why didn’t I get out more? Go on holiday?
Do something?!
I was only twenty-five, but my life was slipping away. What happened when I hit thirty, still single and lonely? Everyone else on board was in a couple—I could see a big shiny diamond on the finger of the blonde sitting next to me
and
she had a family on the way.

“Um…is it your first?” I suddenly blurted.

She turned and smiled at me, showing Hollywood-perfect teeth. She had the sort of warm beauty that made me wonder if she was on TV. “My second,” she said, rubbing her swollen stomach. “The first is waiting for me in the States, with his daddy.” She smiled, staring off into space for a moment in a way that made me stupidly jealous. I couldn’t remember ever being so wistful about a man. “You’re English!” she said suddenly. “I love England. My husband’s Scottish.”

We started talking. Her name was Rachel and she
was
on TV—well, she used to be. She did things on YouTube now. “If you don’t mind me asking…”—I bit my lip, staring at her stomach—“How did you know...I mean, how long were you with your husband before it was time to…”

She threw back her head and laughed. “How long was I with him before I decided I wanted him to knock me up? Less than a day.”

My eyes bulged. “You—Wait, you mean that was when you
knew?
You met him and you knew within a day that he’d make a good dad, and then, a few years later—”

But the woman was shaking her head. “Nope,” she said. “One day, from knocking on his door in a rainstorm to me on my back by the fire with him breed—making love to me.”

The plane suddenly dropped a thousand feet and I clung onto my armrests. Then I realized the plane was just fine. It was my stomach. “
Deliberately?!”
I squeaked. “I mean, you didn’t just...forget the condom?”

“Oh, no. He made it
very
clear that he wanted me to have his child, right from the start.”

“And you said yes?!” I blushed. “I’m sorry. That sounded really rude. I’m just not—I mean,
wow.”

“I said yes. Because….” She looked thoughtful. “Because he made me feel like no other man in the world had. Because he did things to me that no other man had.” She smiled, as if remembering. And then she shook her head and smirked. “Also, I think there might have been some other things going on. Pheromones, maybe. You know, animal instinct. But I don’t regret it for a second.”

I nodded dumbly and sat back in my seat. I’d always seen babies as something that happened after marriage, and that happening after a big wedding and a long engagement, and that happening after being with someone for a long time. It was like the gates you had to go through on a ski slalom, and I was stressing that I hadn’t even gone through the first one yet. Rachel, though, had just gone ahead and rearranged them all, placed them all a foot apart and then damn well skied through all of them at once. And she seemed happy.

What sort of woman would do that? Then I blushed because that sounded awful, even in the safety of my own head. I wasn’t judging Rachel—not at all. She certainly didn’t seem ditzy or flighty or...you know.
Slutty.
She seemed incredibly sharp and switched-on. But how could a smart, successful woman like her just decide to give herself to a man and let him impregnate her? It was so far outside anything I’d ever consider that I couldn’t get a handle on it.

Was it possible that this guy she’d met in Scotland, the guy who’d eventually become her husband really was that amazing? That the attraction was so overwhelming that she just knew they’d be together forever, and so getting pregnant didn’t seem crazy? I couldn’t imagine Tim or any of the other guys I’d dated ever making me feel like that. Did that mean there was something wrong with me?

I sighed. And in another eight hours, I’d have to meet Tanner Cole. A walking testosterone factory. I had no idea how to act around him.
Mr. Cole
seemed like a good start. Stay professional. Try to forget that he saw me stark naked, or that, when he saw me, I was still moist from imagining him taking me in a Tijuana hotel room.

I was just stressed, I decided. The whole crazy previous day had set me on edge and I hated travelling, even when it was as luxurious as this, and I hadn’t had sex in—
let’s not even go there!

A drink. I’d have a drink.

Luckily, drinks weren’t in short supply. First, there were flight attendants standing by to attend to our every need. So I ordered a gin and tonic because I barely drink and it was the only thing I could think of, but it was very pleasant. I could feel myself calming down instantly.
This was A Good Idea,
I told myself. So I had another one.

Then there was a meal, with actual metal cutlery, china plates and cloth napkins. And, to my surprise, a choice of wine from a wine list. It seemed rude to ask for water, so I had a glass of white with the starter and then a glass of red with the entrée.

I slipped into a pleasant haze, helped by the fact my seat was the size of a good-sized armchair and folded out into a bed at least as comfortable as my one at home. The cabin lights dimmed—or maybe it was just my eyes—and I lowered the top of the seat until it was almost like a chaise-longue, so soft and sinky and—
yawn—
warm and I was suddenly really quite tired—