God, what could she do but put her arm around Tatiana, smile as if it were no big deal, and say, “Of course it will. You’re two professionals doing your job. You know everyone always says that filming a love scene is not that different from filming a fight scene. One arm here. One leg there.”
“You’ll be there the whole time, right?”
The set was the very last place in the world Valentina wanted to be today. Just the thought of Smith’s mouth, his hands on her sister, had her stomach on the verge of emptying out the nothing she’d eaten. It was a closed set, and only the most essential members of the cast and crew would be there.
“Of course I will,” she promised. “And I won’t move an inch until you’re done.” But when she could see that her sister still wasn’t totally at ease, she said, “I’m sure it will be just like Smith said—you’ll probably feel like all you’re doing is playing Twister together.” Valentina made herself joke, “Little does he know how cutthroat us Landons are about our Twister games.”
When Tatiana laughed and grabbed her script to sit down with it for a few more minutes, Valentina breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Now all she needed to do was figure out a way to believe her Twister comment was true as well. Valentina had been trying to pretend this day wouldn’t come. But ignoring it hadn’t made it go away.
When Tatiana had first wanted to be an actress, Valentina had made her sister agree to one hard and fast rule: no matter how big the incentive from a studio or producer, she would never film any sex scenes as a minor. If she couldn’t legally drink, she wouldn’t take her clothes off in front of a set full of strangers and roll around naked on a huge screen for millions of viewers to salivate over.
Valentina didn’t expect—or even want—her sister to be a little girl forever. On the contrary, she celebrated what an incredibly lovely young woman she had become, despite the pressures from Hollywood to turn her into a carbon copy of every other actress out there.
The only problem with the fact that Tatiana could now order a glass of wine at a restaurant was the fact that sex scenes were no longer off the list.
Valentina also recognized that no one would ever call the sex scene in Smith’s movie gratuitous. Rather, it was a crucial part of the plot and character development for Jo and Graham as they moved from friends to lovers.
Still, she had no idea how she was going to deal with watching him make love to her sister. And worse still, considering it had to be one of the most terrifying moments of her sister’s career so far, how could Valentina ever forgive herself for caring more about her own feelings than Tatiana’s?
When the production assistant came to get Tatiana, thankfully, her sister looked as relaxed as if she were about to film a toothpaste commercial.
Whereas Valentina knew she must look like she was heading in for a root canal...without anesthesia.
* * *
Smith still remembered the first sex scene he’d ever shot. He’d been cast as a bitter son who seduced his father’s new wife for revenge. The actress had been ten years older than he and he’d been nervous, yet desperate not to show it. Fortunately, his co-star had been as kind as she was beautiful. Not to mention happily married.
She’d made the experience so easy for him that he’d gone out of his way to make it easy on the co-stars he’d had over the years. Not all of them had wanted to keep things strictly professional, and he hadn’t exactly complained during the projects where going from his co-star’s screen bed into her real one had been the natural progression of things.
But Tatiana was different. For all of the intense onscreen attraction that they were both manufacturing for their roles, in real life he couldn’t imagine actually making love to her. There was less than no chance that anything they portrayed today for the cameras would ever actually happen. It was all fantasy. Nothing more than make believe.
From a screenwriting and directing standpoint, the sex scene was simply part of the story being told. Still, he understood how difficult it was for actors of both sexes to open themselves up in such a physically intimate way in front of a dozen crew members and cameras that picked up