High-Stakes Bachelor. Cindy Dees

off to who knows where, and when you’re home you practically live over at that studio of yours. You’re gone more than you’re here.”

      Ana grinned. Salty, the woman was. She officially liked Minerva back. They finished the meal with Jackson glaring at his grandmother, Minerva smiling smugly and Ana privately enjoying his discomfort. He struck her as the type who was used to always being in control, always in charge, always self-contained. It was refreshing to know he was a real man with real feelings and not some kind of robot under all that movie-star perfection.

      Rosie came out to clear the dishes and Jackson jumped up to help her. He hauled in the heavy stuff while Minerva topped off Ana’s water and refilled her own wineglass.

      As Jackson disappeared inside the house, Minerva asked, “How long have you and Jackson been together?”

      “Uh, we’re not together. We just met today at an audition.”

      Minerva looked visibly startled. Not his style to bring home his casual conquests, huh? Ana added by way of explanation, and in defense of her own morals, “I don’t think he even noticed that I’m a girl until he saw me in this awesome dress.”

      “Oh, I noticed,” Jackson groused from the doorway. “Just because I was too professional to make a pass at you when I was lying on top of you in your audition doesn’t mean I didn’t notice.”

      Ana gulped as Minerva smiled archly. “She does wear that dress rather well, doesn’t she?”

      “Yes. She does.” Jackson’s voice was low and deep. Sexy. Slid across her skin like velvet. “Would you like to see the beach, Ana?”

      “There’s a beach around here?”

      “I blasted one out of the rocks a while back.” He moved over beside her chair and held a hand down to her. “Let me show you.”

      He held out his hand to help her to her feet. She laid her palm in his and started at the heat of him. It permeated her flesh and drew her to him like a moth to a flame.

      “Have fun, you two,” Minerva said behind them, her words floating away on the muted roar of the ocean.

      “Interfering busybody,” Jackson muttered as he led her to a wooden staircase.

      “She means well.”

      “She just loves to meddle.”

      “She loves you.”

      Jackson snorted, but Ana would bet he knew she was right. Narrow steps wound down the cliff steeply. To a normal person, the descent would probably be a little alarming. But after her stunt classes, it was kind of fun to navigate.

      They got to the bottom and stepped onto a tiny, secluded beach surrounded on three sides by towering cliffs and on the fourth by the ocean. White sand the consistency of sugar buried her toes. The whole beach probably wasn’t more than fifty feet wide and maybe half that deep.

      “It’s perfect,” she breathed.

      Jackson looked over at her in the moonlight. “Yup. Perfect.”

      She got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the beach. She spoke over the ocean soundtrack. “Your grandmother seemed to think we were a couple. Do you need me to pretend that we are for a while to get her off your back?”

      “You’d do that for me?” he blurted.

      “Why not? She’s a lovely woman and it would make her happy. I’d love to repay her in some way for her hospitality.”

      Jackson frowned doubtfully. “You don’t know her. This could backfire on both of us.”

      “How?”

      “No idea. But I know my grandmother. If there’s a way to make a fake girlfriend bite me in the butt, she’ll find it.”

      Ana grinned. “It’s a good thing I’m not going to take that remark out of context, Mr. Prescott.”

      Jackson laughed and snagged her around the waist, pulling her up against his delicious body laughingly. She tensed against him, and he turned her loose instantaneously.

      He spun away, shoving a hand through his hair. “God, I’m sorry,” he mumbled over his shoulder. “You were just attacked. Of course you wouldn’t want some guy to grab you....”

      “It’s not that,” she responded quickly. It was just that he was so darned gorgeous. So out of her league. So...perfect. And she was so...not. How to put that into words that wouldn’t make her sound like a total dork? She opened her mouth, mumbled incoherently and shut it again.

      “What can I do to help?” he asked, steamrolling right over her attempt at an explanation. “Anything. Just tell me what to do. I want to help.”

      “I’m fine,” she insisted.

      “No, you’re not. You freaked out when I touched you.”

      It wasn’t quite that dramatic, but he didn’t seem interested in listening to her protests. If she were more of a shark, she would play on his sympathy and get him to woo her romantically. But lies weren’t her style. “I swear, Jackson, I’m okay. Go ahead. Put your arms around me again and let me prove it to you.”

      Very carefully, he stepped close to her.

      “How tall are you?” she muttered, craning her head back to stare up at him in the dark.

      “Six foot three.”

      “Isn’t that huge for a movie star?”

      He shrugged and rested his hands cautiously on her waist. “I guess it’s tall. I never have to worry about my female leads being taller than me.”

      She smiled a little and reciprocated by putting her hands on his waist. “See? I’m fine.”

      “So it wouldn’t bother you if I moved one of my hands up your back like this?” he murmured.

      “Uh, no.” Shivers were spreading outward from the slow glide of his fingers, threatening to shatter her into a million pieces. But other than that, everything was hunky-dory.

      “Can I cup the back of your neck like this? Your hair feels like warm silk on the back of my hand.”

      “Yeah. Sure. That’s, um, great.”

      “Do you mind me moving a little closer to you?”

      A little closer? His clothes brushed against her dress from her shoulders to her knees. Something akin to a magnetic field emanated from him and enshrouded her, energizing her from head to toe. Dang. What was that? Charisma? Raw, animal sex appeal? Whatever it was, she could see why he had become a movie star.

      He stared down at her, his eyes black pools in the shadows of his face. Even wreathed in darkness like this, he was beautiful. It just wasn’t fair. His mouth was less than a foot from hers, and she could taste the fine wine on his breath. She hadn’t been able to drink any of it because of the painkillers she’d been given, but she savored the hint of it, anyway.

      The—whatever it was—zinging between them built until she thought she was going to explode. His eyes actually glowed a little as he stared down at her.

      “Say something,” she whispered. “You’re making me nervous.” Not nervous in the way he was going to think she meant, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

      “My grandmother likes you.”

      “I like her, too. I’ll bet you I could convince her we’re dating.”

      He exhaled a gust of silent laugher. “You could convince me without too much trouble.”

      Ana blinked up at him in shock. Her? Him? Her and a movie star?

      “Talk to me, Ana.”

      Her mind was completely blank. The notion of the two of them as a couple knocked words completely out of her brain.

      She