“Had. A fiancée, actually.”
“Had,” I repeat.
He lifts his eyes, but not his head, peering at me out from under some of the longest lashes I’ve ever seen. “She left me standing at the altar a few weeks ago.”
His aloof confidence is gone, replaced by a vulnerability I never would have guessed at. But instead of making him pathetic, it makes him so much sexier. There’s at least twenty seconds where I forget how to breathe. I can’t imagine what kind of person would leave this—one of the most perfect examples of the male species I’ve ever seen—standing at the altar.
“Wow. Sorry.”
He shrugs, trying to play it off, but he can’t totally hide how deep it cuts. “Shit happens.”
“Tell me about her.”
He sinks back into the cushions. “You really want to talk about this?”
I get up and turn down the music. “Yeah.”
“I have to say, this is the last thing I expected when I walked in here.”
I settle onto the sofa, closer than I was before. “What did you expect?”
There’s an amused glint in his eyes. “Me. A private room. The most devastatingly gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen. That doesn’t seem like a recipe for pouring my heart out about my ex.”
Electricity ripples under my skin. I shudder, and hope he doesn’t notice. What I really want to say is, “You think I’m devastatingly gorgeous?” But what I say instead is, “You don’t have to talk about it if it makes you uncomfortable.”
He leans in a little, and I wish it was more. “I get the feeling you’re a good listener.”
“I am.” I could listen to that lazy drawl all day.
That almost-smile curves his lips again, but this time it’s shyer. “You seriously want to hear this?”
Maybe my motives aren’t exactly pure, because I really want to know what type of woman it takes to snare this guy’s heart, but I do. “Yeah.”
He looks at me a moment longer, then blows out a breath and rubs his neck again. “I’ve loved her forever.”
“How long is forever?”
His eyes lift to mine. “We met freshman year at UCLA, so eight years.”
“That is forever.”
“We had statistics together and the prof put us in the same group for our midterm project.” His mouth pulls into the hint of a smirk, and it’s a totally sexy look on his strong face. “She was a math geek, which was just so damn hot.”
Well, that’s a first.
“One thing led to another and we’ve been together ever since.” He shakes his head as his jaw clenches. “I just never thought . . .”
I shift closer. “So . . . what happened?”
He drapes his arms over the back of the sofa and his fingers brush my shoulder, sending my heart beating just a little bit faster. “She said I was married to my job and she wanted someone who would put her first.”
I swing sideways and tuck my knees up in front of me, pressing my shoulder into the back of the sofa, just an inch from his hand. “What is this job you’re supposedly married to?”
He hesitates, his gaze flickering over my costume and lingering on the deep V of my neckline. “I do set locations for a movie production company. There’s a lot of travel,” he adds, waving an arm at the room.
My heart kicks. “Seriously?”
He nods.
“I’m a film and media major at UC Santa Cruz . . . or I was, anyway. Who do you work for?”
There’s a second where he just stares at me, but then he flashes me that smug smile. “An indie production company. No one you would have heard of. What do you mean, you were a film a media major?”
Am I ready to tell this person who I hardly know what a fuck-up I am? But then I realize if I’m never going to see him again, who better?
“I flunked out last quarter, which sucked because I’d finally found a major I liked.”
His eyes widen slightly. “How many majors did you have?”
“Three.” I tip my head into my hand and rub the pink out of my cheeks. “I was asked to leave two others. But that wasn’t really a bad thing, you know? I started in math because that was always my strongest subject in high school and Greg, my stepdad, said there’d be lots of employment opportunities.”
“Math,” he says pensively.
He reaches for a lock of my hair with the hand that’s still on the back of the sofa and rubs it between his thumb and index finger. I try to pretend like the gentle tickle on my scalp isn’t doing things to totally unrelated parts of my anatomy. When my eyes find his face, there’s something reflective in his expression, and that’s when I remember that he just said how hot his fiancée being a math geek was.
“Math,” I answer, even though it wasn’t a question. “But I missed a lot of class first quarter. I ended up on probation and never really got off.”
“Why did you miss so much class?” he asks, still playing with my hair, and I decide, as long as his fingers stay on the technically dead parts of me, we’re really not breaking Ben’s rules.
But it’s super distracting. “What?”
“You said you didn’t go to classes first quarter,” he reminds me, his gaze becoming deeper and more liquid.
“Um . . . I guess I sort of partied a lot. My parents are kind of control freaks. Mom especially. She micromanages my entire life and second-guesses every decision I make. All we ever do is fight, so . . .”
“So, when you were out from under her, you did what you wanted for a change,” he finishes for me.
I nod. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Understandable, but not terribly forward thinking.”
I narrow my eyes at him, but I don’t pull away, because more of his fingers are playing with my hair now, and I don’t want him to stop. “I went to class after that . . . mostly.”
“Then why did you fail out?”
“My boyfriend broke up with me and . . . I guess I started partying harder and forgot to go to class again.” I cringe as it’s coming out of my mouth. I know it’s lame to blame Trent. “So, you’re not from around here?” I add to change the subject.
His fingers stall in my hair. “I’m on a location scout. I volunteered because I needed to get the hell out of L.A. for a few days.”
“L.A. . . . that’s where you live?”
He nods. “Santa Monica.”
“But you’re not from there originally.”
He looks a question at me. “How would you know that?”
“Your accent.”
His mouth pulls into half a smile. “Thought I’d shaken that.”
“So, where are you really from?”
“I grew up in Texas.”
“That explains it,” I say. What I don’t say is how hot it is . . . the way certain words take their time sliding off his tongue. It makes me want to sit and just stare at his lips as he tells me all his secrets. “How long are you here?” It comes out a little desperate, which is stupid, because it doesn’t matter whether he says a day or a month. I’m never going to see him again after tonight.
“Just a few days. I leave Saturday morning.” He lowers his gaze. “My ex is coming for her stuff this week. She’ll have moved out by the time I get back.”
“I’m really sorry.” The sudden urge to make him forget all about the woman who broke his heart is overpowering. I want to crawl into his lap and run my fingers over that beautiful face. I want to kiss away his hurt. Hurt I understand.
As if he read my mind, his fingers tighten in my hair . . . a gentle tug that becomes more insistent as he pulls me closer. My heart beats hard against my ribs and my breathing goes a little shaky as I realize what he’s preparing to do.
It’s crazy, but I want to let him do it. I met him less that thirty minutes ago but I want so much to kiss him. We’re just inches apart and our breath mingles, sending a shudder through me to my core. I lick my lips and tip my face up, and my heart stalls when his fingers thread through my hair and cup the back of my head, drawing me closer.