Exposed to You (One Night of Passion 2)

“I did. I moved here last winter.”

“Well, how come you’re not coming to the premiere? It seems a shame, since you worked on the movie and all. Can’t your uncle get tickets? Why don’t you ask her, Everett?” Katie said, sipping her coffee and glancing at her brother casually.

Joy’s cheeks went from hot to scalding. “Oh no, that’s not it—”

“Do you have other plans?” Everett asked.

“No, I just hadn’t planned to go.”

“Well, why don’t you? We can all sit together,” Katie said.

“Katie,” Everett warned under his breath.

“Well, I just meant—”

Everett jerked his arm abruptly, waving toward an empty corner of the café. “Can I talk to you for a second? In private?” Everett asked Joy pointedly.

A bomb going off would have startled Joy less. Four sets of eyes pinned her to the spot.

“I . . . well, yes, of course.”

Sarah shot out of the booth, making way for her. Joy stood and glanced at Everett warily. He gestured for her to pass in front of him. She led him to an empty corner and turned to face him, her forearms crossed beneath her breasts, and stared at the second button on his shirt. Her heart began to beat uncomfortably.

“You cut your hair. I like it.”

She blinked and glanced up into his face. This close, she could make out the bluish-green color of his eyes beneath the shadow of the bill of his cap.

“Thank you,” sh

e murmured, studying his shirt again.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he said.

“It’s okay. You’re not making me uncomfortable.”

He gave a soft bark of sarcastic laughter. Her gaze shot up to meet his, and this time it stuck. No wonder he was a movie star. Those eyes were like sensual laser beams.

“When you didn’t come to the statue after that . . . that time, I asked your uncle for your phone number. Seth and I always got along pretty well, but after that day, he got pretty tight-mouthed when it came to you. I guess I shouldn’t have bothered him about it. You must have told him not to tell me anything about you.”

“I never said anything to Seth about it,” she blurted out. Tell her uncle she’d impulsively gone down on a stranger? Not likely. But that wasn’t the most significant thing Everett had said. “And I did go to the statue,” she said, anger filtering into her voice for the first time. How dare he claim she’d stood him up, when it happened the other way around?

His expression shifted. “I waited for hours and hours for you by the statue after the shoot. I thought maybe you were held up, helping Seth, but when I went back inside, the studio was empty. Everyone, including Seth, was gone.”

“That’s not true,” she said, irritation melting away the haze of mortification and shock that had settled on her since Everett had greeted her like an old friend earlier. “Why would you bother to say that when you know perfectly well that I’ll know you’re lying?”

His expression stiffened. “Yeah, why would I? It would be stupid to lie about it. I was at that statue.”

“I was at that statue.”

Something flickered across his face. “How long were you there?”

“More than an hour,” she muttered after a pause, hating to have to admit the truth to him. “I thought maybe you’d been held up.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious. Why would I lie about . . .” She faded off as something struck her. “The statue of the seven muses, right? At the entrance of the studio?”

He shook his head mutely.