Free Pretending He's Mine by Lauren Blakely Page B

serve her well right now.
    “I love that line too.”
    “Oh you do?”
    “Yes. I think it’s about the ways we have these ideals of different things and people. Don’t you? I mean, why do you love the line?”
    She loved it because it was passionate, because it was big, because it was epic. But she wasn’t prepared to say that, so she turned the question around. “Do you, Reeve? Have ideals about things and people?”
    He paused before answering, and she wondered where he was. She heard music in the background, but the kind from a stereo or iPod, not a club. He must be at home. “Yeah. Of course. I mean, I’m sure I have this ideal about acting and theater and the craft, right? I kind of have to.”
    “Why? Why do you have to?”
    “I just think you can’t do this as a career if there’s anything else you remotely can see yourself doing.”
    She nodded. “I believe that. I believe that about any type of art. Writer, painter, actor. It has to be the only thing for you.”
    “Right. And it’s like that quote. It goes beyond her, beyond everything. It becomes everything.”
    Everything. She let that word resonate in the air around her. Actors loved acting first, best and only. If she let her heart too far out of her chest then she’d have no one but herself to blame. Reeve might sound alluringly interested in this lovely getting-to-know-you phase right now, but that’s because he was throwing himself into this role—the role of the boyfriend—in the only way he knew how. Wholeheartedly, and with a creative passion.
    They were just that. A creation.
    It wasn’t kismet. It wasn’t a sign.
    This was yet another scene in the script of their relationship. And that was totally fine, right? She didn’t really feel anything for him. It’s not as if she was longing for this thing to extend beyond a week anyway. At least, that’s what she told herself.
    She yawned, big and long and exaggerated. He might have been able to tell it was a fake yawn. But she needed an out, and it was the best she could do. “I’m sleepy. I better go. I’ll see you tomorrow for a dress rehearsal, so to speak.”
    “See you tomorrow, Sutton,” he said, then paused. “I can’t wait.”
    She hung up, took a long swallow of wine, placed the drained glass on her coffee table, then made room for her main man, who curled up by her knees. She closed the novel and reached for her files, reminding herself that actors were part of her job, not part of her heart.
    Even though she couldn’t wait to see him either.

Chapter Eight
    The dinner was tomorrow. There was one more night of this pretend relationship, and Reeve wanted to have all his lines down cold. He didn’t want there to be any fuck-ups. But then, with what she’d done to him in the library and what he’d done to her in the theater, he couldn’t imagine anyone would think they weren’t a real couple. Fact was, they had chemistry in spades. There was something combustible between the two of them. It was as if he’d been given the keys to her body, and the same for her with him. The next day as he walked to her apartment on the Upper East Side, he was still thinking about the way they connected—but not just physically, because he liked talking to her too.
    More than he’d expected.
    Matter of fact, he’d never thought he’d be so into this arrangement. That he’d want more.
    He rang the buzzer.
    “Be right down,” she said, and he waited on the steps of her brownstone.
    He looked up and down her street. It was one of those quiet blocks in the seventies, not far from the park. There were trees and pretty stoops, and brick buildings and lots of families pushing strollers or holding hands with young children. It was a far cry from where he lived down in the East Village in a tiny shoebox of an apartment that he’d snagged on a sublease when an actor buddy got a touring role in the German production of Book of Mormon.
    But Sutton did well for herself, so it was no surprise