Dirty Sexy Alphas (Twenty Book Box Set) - Hannah Ford Page 0,239

and shots of his heavenly blue eyes looking down at me flashed across my mind. I shook my head. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Crush magazine—and you—are going up against the head of Epix Studios,” she said, as if it was the most ridiculous concept in history. “Don’t lead this guy on, Sophie. You’ll regret it.” The warning in her voice, the look on her face that told me she’d seen more than I could ever imagine in this town, made my stomach do a backwards somersault.

“Everything’s under control,” I said as I felt myself tremble.

Ava Marie leaned back over her knee, going back to her stretching. “This can only end in disaster,” she said, and ominous was not a strong enough word for how she said it.

My perfect weekend was officially over.

That spilled over into Monday, with Kait hovering in my cubicle, once again asking about Leo. I realized it was the only time she spoke to me—in drive-by fashion asking about Leo.

“I need more,” she said, when I told her lamely that the great Leo Armstrong didn’t watch classic movies. “Something real. Do you want to write or not? Don’t give me this baby crap you’ve been feeding me. We need more. We need real. We need dirt. It exists on this guy. Don’t tell me you can’t find it.”

It wasn’t just all that had happened over the weekend—and a lot of good stuff had happened—in the living room, the bedroom, the shower, the kitchen, a little on the deck... And it wasn’t just the way he’d looked at me in all those moments, like he was really seeing me and connecting to me. I shuddered thinking about his eyes on me as he caressed my face making love to me. It wasn’t just that. It was all that was said. He was so honest with me, telling me about his family, sharing details about his grandmother, not to mention the secret screenplay. I felt that he had truly let me in.

But then I remembered what he’d told me about having false expectations about what our relationship was really about, and I felt sick all over again. I really shouldn’t have fooled myself, thinking Leo Armstrong made love to me. He fucked me. Just like he did other girls. Right?

“I got his phone number,” I told Kait. “He said he hadn’t meant to keep it from me, just that his assistant set up the phone.”

“Right,” she scoffed. “Have you tried the number yet? Probably won’t go through. I bet he accidentally gave you the wrong number, and it’ll be another week before he tries again, and then there’ll be another excuse and then he’ll be done with you. He’ll be on to the next piece before you ever get his real number. That’s how these guys operate, Sophie.”

I looked down at my phone resting on my desk, and wondered.

Kait let out a deep, annoyed sigh. “What else?”

My brain didn’t know which way to go. I didn’t know what to believe. Before I’d walked into my apartment last night I had believed that I’d just had the best weekend of my life. Now I didn’t know what to believe. Was I being played? The worst of it, I realized, was that Leo couldn't play me because he’d already laid out his rules for me, for us. I didn’t get a say in it. What about how I felt?

“He told me,” I began. I rubbed my hand across my forehead.

“Yeah, what?” Kait pressed, her nails clicking on the top of my cubicle wall.

“He told me that he’d never get married or be in a serious relationship because his parents have gone through so many marriages that he thinks it’s meaningless.” It wasn’t verbatim, but Kait was making me sweat.

“A mommy complex, huh?” she said, and I didn’t correct her. “Nice, I like it. That’s something we can probably use. Make sure you stay on him, okay? Get all you can before he gets bored of you.”

“Maybe I’ll take him to the drive-in, for my other piece,” I said, kind of thinking—dreaming—out loud.

“Don’t get the two confused, Sophie,” Kait warned me before walking away.

I wanted to text Leo right then and prove Kait wrong, that it really was his phone number, and he had made an innocent mistake in not giving it to me. It wasn’t about control, not like that, anyway.

I sat back in my chair, feeling nauseous about what I’d just told Kait about Leo’s family. It’s not like he’d