Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,204

refrigerator. He held up the bottle. “But do you think going over budget by two million dollars is worth one bottle of Italian bubbly? He could have at least sent me a case.”

“Or bought you the vineyard,” I said.

“Smart girl,” he said. The faintest stubble of beard had appeared since our meeting, giving him a more careless look, despite the sharp clothes he still wore.

He shot me a quick grin and my stomach thrilled.

I was quickly finding that it made me happy to please him and make him smile. Who wouldn’t want to see that face light up? And seeing him smile also alleviated the sensation that I was in so far over my head, I might drown.

On an oversized coffee table was a plate full of fresh fruit, cheeses and baguette slices. I thought of my chip dinner, and my stomach growled. Leo sat next to me, close enough to reach out and touch me. The feeling from the audition of being so close to him returned, and I found myself feeling jittery. He handed me the glass of processo, and our fingers brushed. I definitely needed the alcohol to calm myself down.

Leo held his glass aloft. He turned his body toward mine and looked at me in a way that felt piercing, almost intrusive. But then a little smile played on those luscious lips of his, and he said, “Here’s to nailing auditions.”

I smiled and rolled my eyes. I clinked his glass and took a drink. Once I had a little liquid courage in my belly, I felt comfortable saying, “Can we just agree that that was the worst audition you’ve ever seen?”

“The worst? Absolutely not,” he said. “You didn’t pass out. At least not that I saw.”

“People have fainted in auditions?”

“You have no idea. When we do open auditions like the one we had today—usually when we have a movie that has so many smaller roles, it’s easier to just open it up—we get lots of interesting auditions. People with one line of dialogue will come in with this whole backstory for their character, only to say the line, ‘Your car has arrived.’ Or some want feedback immediately, and sometimes the actors will throw a fit if you don’t tell them what they want to hear. So on a scale of one to crazy, yours wasn’t so bad.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t even get out a single line. I was a total idiot.”

“You were charming,” he said. “And gorgeous.”

“Stop,” I said, the heat on my face unbearable I had to cover it with my free hand. Leo reached up and took my hand, gently pulling it away. The sureness of his hand on mine felt electric, and when I looked at him his eyes danced with delight—probably knowing his words could make a silly girl like me blush so easily.

“I think I can easily guess that you’re not from around here,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “How can you tell?” Was it my dress? Or something about the way I spoke?

“You don’t have that jaded, cynical way about you like most people here,” he said. “Also, you look like a real woman, not some pin-thin, plastic Barbie doll type. You look…all natural.” His eyes scanned down me for a moment, and it was in such a sexy way, far different from the way Bethany had looked me down yesterday. “So where are you from?”

“Maine,” I said, feeling embarrassed. I’d practically gotten laughs at the editorial meeting for stating such a shameful statement.

Leo looked off and said, “I spent a fall there, up in Bar Harbor. You know it?”

“Yeah, of course,” I said, pleased that he actually knew Maine as something more as that state way up there in the corner. “It’s on Mount Desert Island.”

“Right,” he said. “Yeah. It was really a beautiful, picturesque small town. Quiet, secluded. And I know Maine is known for its lobster but I had the absolute best at this little restaurant there just off the main street.”

“I live further south from there but I’ve been on vacations up there on long weekends. It’s great.”

He asked me more about myself, like how long I’d been in L.A. and how I’d ended up here. Instead of telling him that one, and only one, magazine hired me, I said I was mostly looking for an adventure. “I just thought I’d come out here and see what happened—with the whole acting thing,” I added. “I don’t plan on living my whole life here.”

“No? Think you’ll go back