Stunt Doubled: A Movie Star Standalone

Her eyes flew open. “Why? I want to kiss you.”

“No you don’t. You want to kiss Tanner.”

“Tanner’s not here. Not sure why that’s a fact you’re having so much trouble grasping that fact,” she huffed.

“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’ve been ordered to pretend to be him. That’s clearly what you want, too. You never wanted to kiss me.” I was repeating myself, but I was too angry to care.

Ronnie was pissed, too. “Then why did I kiss the hell out of you during the sex scene rehearsal?”

Shock filled me. The answer was obvious—did she really think I didn’t know? “You did that to help Sierra.”

“Sierra knows how to kiss. She didn’t need a ten-minute demo.”

I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with that assessment, but I let it pass. “Well, why do you think I kissed you for that long?”

“To help Sierra,” she responded.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “What a selfless pair we are, doing something so distasteful for the sake of that young woman.”

Ronnie refused to look at me. “Distasteful isn’t the term I’d use.”

“What term would you use instead?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. I glared at her. She was trying to rewrite history, to pretend that that kiss had meant something to her when it hadn’t. I wasn’t going to let her get away with that. “You were just turned on that night. Not because of me—it could’ve been anyone with his hands on you and you would’ve been just as aroused.”

“That’s me, a helpless female who’s a slave to her hormones.”

God, when she said things like that, she was frustrating as hell to argue with. “Are you seriously trying to tell me you wouldn’t have kissed Tanner and Ford that way if they’d been the ones doing the scene with you?” I could remember every second of that kiss. How passionate she’d been. How responsive to my touch.

“No,” she said.

“Then that proves my point. You would’ve been like that with anyone.”

“Also no.”

What did that mean? That she only got like that with the three of us? “You’re a bad liar, Ronnie. If that kiss had meant anything to you, you wouldn’t have spent the rest of the week ignoring me yet drooling over them.”

Heat flared in her eyes as she whipped her head around to glare at me. For a moment, I thought she was going to take a swing at me, but instead she attacked verbally. “For someone who seems to spend a shit ton of time keeping track of what I’m doing, you seem to have gotten a lot of it wrong.”

“Like what?”

“I wasn’t ignoring you last week. I was busy getting kicked in the head, which somehow earned me the wrath of both Ford and Mac. And I had to fight to keep my nonexistent job, and I went to Mexico, and you weren’t around either—yet you don’t hear me accusing you of ignoring me.” She was silent for a moment and then added. “Although that’s what you did.”

“Also not true. In case you haven’t noticed, things have gotten pretty tense with the end of the shooting approaching, and that tends to affect the leading man which, oh yeah, is me. So sorry if I didn’t bring you flowers the day after the sex scene rehearsal.”

“You forgot about me the second Sierra took my place.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” There was no way I’d ever forget the way Ronnie had responded to me. The way she’d moved under me. She’d almost made me believe it was me she wanted. Suddenly, the absurdity of the situation leaked its way through. “So let me get this straight—we shared an epic kiss but you walked away from it thinking I wanted Sierra, and I walked away from it thinking you wanted Ford or Tanner.”

“I suppose.”

“And did it ever occur to you that I was ready to have Sierra kicked off the production before you intervened and somehow got me to help her?”

“So? She’s a beautiful young woman.”

So was Ronnie, but this wasn’t the time to say it. “Looks aren’t everything. If they were, you’d like me as much as you do Tanner.”

“Tanner’s nice. He doesn’t bite my head off all the time,” she snapped.

“And for that he gets a pass, right? He’s Mac’s stepson, one of the men you vowed to hate, but he’s nice. He opens your door. He gives you a shy smile when you touch his arm. Therefore, you’re past all that ugliness with him. With Ford, too, even though he’s an honorary stepson of Mac’s. You’ve forgiven them for the hurt and pain you went through, but apparently, I’m still on the hook for it.”

Ronnie was silent for a long moment. Just when I thought she wasn’t going to answer, she said, “Tanner thinks that maybe you remind me of Mac.”