Free The Morning After by Sally Clements Page A

him. He was so gallant he’d probably have kissed her too, rather than tell her the truth.
    Cara picked her bag off the floor, and made a pretense of searching inside, just so he wouldn’t see her lip quivering.
    “I can’t wait for the film to be over,” Ethan continued, staring straight ahead. “I want to move all my stuff out to the beach house. I hate living with half my things in each place. I always want something that’s in the other house.”
    “There must be advantages to filming?” Cara asked. “I mean, you love the acting, right?”
    “This is my last Crash Carrigan movie,” Ethan said, with a note of finality in his tone. “I don’t want to be typecast. As a character, he’s sort of one-dimensional. I need more of a challenge.”
    “Is a different actress playing your love interest?”
    She knew the answer, but couldn’t resist digging for information about his latest leading lady, a leggy glamazon who, by all accounts, in life had just as voracious an appetite as the characters she portrayed on screen.
    “Dee Macey’s in this one. She’s a good actress.” His mouth compressed into a tight line.
    “And she’s gorgeous,” Cara added.
    “She knows it too,” Ethan said. “But believe me, it’s hard work lying on top of her all day.”
    “Ethan!” Cara’s voice came out as a squeak. “I can’t believe you said that.”
    “It’s just fact. I spent the last day on set lying in bed with her.”
    “Kissing?” She tried to keep her mouth from drooping at the corners, rolled her lips in, as her stomach clenched at the thought of Ethan and the glamazon in a clinch.
    Ethan puffed out air. “Kissing, pretending to make love, the whole thing.” He looked decidedly unhappy about it. “We have lousy chemistry, and it shows. Take after take. It was a nightmare.”
    A smile warmed her heart, heated her throat, and finally tilted her lips. “Aw. Hard day at the office?”
    “Decidedly not hard.” Ethan grinned. “Definitely limp.”
    “You, Ethan Quinn, are a naughty boy.”
    Ethan slid a warm hand over her knee. “Damn right.”
     

Chapter Nine
     
    They drove for miles along the wide highway, beside the azure ocean. Cara cracked the window open, and a warm sea breeze lifted her hair. She could taste a trace of salt on her lips. Being here felt like a new beginning. A new chapter in her life, unopened, unexplored. Unexpected.
    The silver Aston-Martin slowed, and the indicator’s tick punctuated the silence. As the powerful car turned, ornate silver gates swung open automatically between high stone walls topped with iron railings.
    “Home,” Ethan murmured as a house came into view.
    In this obviously wealthy neighborhood, she’d somehow expected a mansion, but her heart fluttered and soared at the simple wooden beach house surrounded by a romantically overgrown garden. She pulled in a lungful of air. “It’s beautiful.”
    The car slowed, then stopped. In moments, Ethan was at her side, opening the door wide. “Come and look at the other side.” His mouth curved in that grin that melted women’s hearts, world over. He reached for her hand and tugged.
    Bleached wooden steps led from the front of the house steeply down through a swathe of terraces filled with cascading greenery and large succulents. The wooden handrail was hot to Cara’s touch, and she concentrated carefully on the way down, as the soft swoosh of the ocean grew louder. Soon, she was standing on a silver beach. The sea lapped against the shoreline, lacy sea-foam caps on the waves breaking up as they sank into the sand.
    “Wow.” Cara slipped off her shoes and picked them up. The hot sand felt like powdered sugar beneath her soles. Pure, clean, fabulous .
    “Come on.” Ethan walked along the beach behind the beach house.
    “It’s on stilts,” Cara said with wonder in her tone.
    “We keep the Zodiak here.” Ethan pointed to a launch ramp built in under the house. “I use it sometimes for fishing.