“I fell in love with you but you’re a lot and I’m not a good fit with your life. There are things I want to do.” To love him without losing herself she had to love her own life. She had to be her own shining star alongside his.
“Your business.”
“I need a partner who understands I love my job and I have plans, and I wouldn’t want you giving up on being you to fit with me.”
“Australian quarantine is tough on dogs, but we’ll manage. I can live anywhere if you can cope with me leaving for work?”
He knew about quarantine. “Leaving but coming back?”
“That would be the idea. And when we can, leaving and taking you with me.”
He’d had his vasectomy reversed. He’d move for her. She rested her hand on his chest. “You and me, huh. I’m not Hollywood ready. I’m not sure I’ll ever want to be. How would that work?”
“My people would be your people.” He took her hand and placed it right over his heart. “They’ll work out a deal with the press. You don’t need to be in the spotlight unless you want to be.”
Haydn’s heart was strong, steady under her hand. Could they be the same together? “I’m punching above my weight.”
“Who told you that?” he snapped.
“Your net worth and property portfolio.”
“Never think that. I sold shoes before I got lucky. I could never have had the smarts to start a business from scratch. I just proved that by shutting down the set and flying halfway around the world because I needed to tell you I love you. I’m the impatient one. I’m an industrial and environmental hazard. My co-star is shitty with me. The director hates me. The producer will never work with me again. My agent is livid, and Rick thinks he broke me with too much lifting. I’m not a prize, my darling. I’m a work in progress who has a lot of baggage.”
My darling, my darling. Nothing that she couldn’t work with so far. “What if I want kids?”
“As it turns out, I can help with that. They’d have their own security detail and grow up with funny hybrid accents and a love of dogs.”
He took her face in his hands. Rain pelted hard on the roof of the car. She could drown in the love in his eyes; in the tropical storm buffeting her body, drenching her senses in the wonder of him, the possibility of them.
“I don’t know what to say.” Inside she was chanting, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. “Not in my wildest dreams.”
“Say you’ll take a chance on being the secret weapon to the rest of my life, Teela.”
Once she said it, she was never taking it back. “That’s not a line you’re using because you want to get in my pants?”
He groaned. “No pants-off action for me for a few weeks yet. I’m very much outside my comfort zone, not a prepared line in sight, asking if you’ll take a chance on a happy ending with me.”
To think she’d almost missed out on meeting him. To think it took an accident to end up in his path again. This wasn’t a fantasy. Not a figment of her imagination.
She pressed her lips to his and whispered, “We were meant to be.”
He kissed her softly, hesitance and wonder and banked passion. “My leading lady for life.”
Not a one-night stand, not a dirty weekend, the promise of a lifetime of loving each other. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Yes.” Not the world’s Sexiest Man Alive, but her lover and partner, her man with mission, her celluloid hero and everyday star. “Yes.” To have and to hold, to grin and bear being photographed beside, to grow in the shelter of each other’s arms. “Yes.
“It was lovely to meet you and now you’re mine forever, Teela Carpenter.”
It was almost a Hollywood cliché when the sun broke through the clouds. Not that they paid it any attention, they were busy making original and inspired use of the back seat of a parked limo.
And there was no accident at all about that.
I hope you enjoyed One Night with the Sexiest Man Alive.
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The other books in The One series are:
One Kiss from the King of Rock