as you think. I bet you just have really high standards for the place, because it was your hero’s.”
One corner of his mouth twists up. “Could be. All I know is, never saw myself running a whole business on my own. What the fuck do I know about that? Nothing.”
I drain my glass of wine. “You know more than you give yourself credit for.”
“Nah. You give me too much credit. I’m not smart. I don’t know a hell of a lot about anything. I didn’t even know what this competition was. I don’t watch reality television—didn’t even know what the hell this show was.”
“I don’t either. I’m so in debt with my college loans, mostly because I’m too afraid to enter the real world. I just kept burying my head in the sand, not wanting to face it. So when I found out about the show from my friend, I decided it might be my chance to get out of the hole I’m in. It was like fate, you know?”
“Yeah. I never would’ve even known about it if it weren’t for Jimmy.”
“Jimmy?”
“James Rowan? YouTube sensation? He’s my closest bud. Kind of like my brother. You saw him at the auditions. Remember?”
“Yes. But I am not that familiar with YouTube,” I confess. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a YouTube star.”
A slow smile spreads over his face. “Goddamn, girl, you’re like a blank slate. There is so much I could teach you.”
I’m thinking a thousand and one thoughts, many of them surprisingly dirty. Whatever a YouTube star is doesn’t even make the list. “I’m willing.”
“There’s way more you could teach me. All those sexy words in French you can say.”
My mind’s never in the gutter. I’m usually the last one to get a dirty joke, and even then, it has to be explained to me. But it’s the way Luke’s looking at me, with that devilish glint in his eye, that has the strangest effect on me. I’m a total gutter rat where he’s concerned. “Oh. Like, Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”
He doesn’t get it. “Yeah. Like, whatever that means. What does that mean?”
I raise my eyebrows.
He narrows his eyes. “Are you shittin’ me? So you won’t talk dirty in your native language, but you have no trouble talking dirty in French?”
I shrug innocently. “It’s easier when you have no idea what I’m saying.”
“So. You gonna tell me what you just said, or am I gonna have to guess?”
I wink at him. “We should probably go up to our room. Maybe I’ll tell you there.”
I don’t have to suggest it twice. He doesn’t hold my hand, doesn’t put a hand at the small of my back to guide me, because cameras are capturing our every move on the way to the elevator. He’s protecting me. Us.
As the elevator rises, I tamp down any nervousness inside me. I’ve made the decision. I’m doing this. I’ve spent twenty-five years of my life afraid. So tonight, I’m telling everyone and everything in my life to go to hell, and I’m giving myself to the only man who has ever made me feel anything.
We go inside our room, and I expect him to pin me against the door like he did before. But he slowly walks to the end of the bed, ripping the T-shirt over his head. “What side do you want?”
I gaze at his beautifully muscled frame, so warm in the low light, at his new haircut that I’ve already begun to get used to. I’m so ready for him I think I might burst. I need him to bridge the distance and take me. But when I don’t answer and he doesn’t look at me, I know something’s wrong.
“Did I do something wrong?” I ask, my voice fragile because I swear, if I did, I might kill myself.
He sits on the edge of the bed and starts to unbuckle his pants. “No, sweetheart. But we’d better get to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be tough if we want to keep our lead.”
“No,” I tell him, gathering my courage. “I’m not tired.”
So I take a step forward. Then another. And when I am right in front of him, his knees touching my quaking thighs, I lift off my shirt, freeing my hair from it and tossing it to the side.
He gazes at me in my bra top, his eyes hot with desire. I see it. I feel it. But something is holding him back. I want him to touch