Free The Curvy Voice Coach and the Billionaire Actor (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) by Victoria Wessex Page B

actress, making sure they were just public enough to be photographed, while still trying to look as if they were hiding.
    I was still turning it over and over in my mind. Another horrible possibility had occurred to me. What if Tanner had been making a pass at me, but it was just that— a pass. It didn’t matter that he’d compared me to Annabel. Whatever he’d said may have just been to get me into bed. For all I knew, he did this with all the women who worked for him. That was his reputation, and he’d been drunk…maybe he’d come home drunk and horny and thought he’d try his luck with the big girl sleeping in his mansion. He must have been stunned when I turned him down, I thought bitterly. I’d probably bruised his ego.
    What if that was the case...would it have been so bad? Just before he’d called my name, I’d been fantasizing about fucking him. Would a one night stand really be the worst thing in the world? Sex with a gorgeous billionaire?
    I already knew the answer. I didn’t want that because, hot as the fantasy was, in reality I didn’t want to be treated like that. I didn’t want it to just be a one night thing, and have to go back to work in the morning and pretend it hadn’t happened. I wanted something real.
     
    ***
     
    Tanner was as quick as he’d promised. Only an hour after he left, he was back. “Okay,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s get back to it.”
    I stared at him.
    “What?” he asked.
    I kept staring. The polished black shoes were normal Tanner. The sharp suit with the white shirt and expensive red tie was normal Tanner. But perched on top of his head was a tiny cone of cardboard, secured under his chin by an elastic loop. A party hat. A kid’s party hat.
    He followed my gaze and looked up, then smirked. “I promised I wouldn’t take it off,” he said. “For at least an hour. Sorry. You’ll have to live with it. I keep my promises.”
    I blinked. “Who did you—”
    “Sam. My nephew. I was at his birthday party.”
    I looked at him, amazed. “You have—”
    “People do have brothers and sisters, y’know. And they have kids. So, yeah. Nephew.”
    “I just thought—”
    “You thought I spent my life rolling from bar to strip club to casino to starlet’s hotel room?”
    “No! Yes. I mean, I get that it’s exaggerated for the press, but...you do still do that stuff, right?”
    He looked at me seriously. “Apart from the dating. I haven’t been on a real date in a long time.” He stared at me as he said it.
    I gulped. “But you do the rest. The drinking and the gambling and—”
    “I never claimed to be a saint, Charlotte.”
    “No! I know! That’s my point. I know you’re not a saint. That’s why I didn’t picture you as an uncle. Not one who goes to birthday parties.”
    He moved a little closer and I felt something inside me crackle and surge, energy shooting all the way down to my toes. “You said my life didn’t leave time for anything real. I guess this is a substitute.”
    I frowned, amazed. “You want kids?!”
    “Is that bad?”
    “No! It’s just not…bad boy.”
    He laughed. “Bad boy? So because I have a good time, I can’t want to be a dad?” He studied me. “You like to put everyone in boxes, don’t you?”
    I flushed. “No!” Yes. “I just couldn’t see you as being all...white picket fence in the suburbs.”
    He shrugged. “Neither could I. But a big place in the country, maybe somewhere with a slower pace...I could see that.”
    “Who with? I mean, where does all the fake stuff lead?” I swallowed. “Does Maury eventually matchmake you with another star and you have kids with her?”
    “No.” He looked at me, suddenly serious. “It’d be with someone real.”
    There was silence for a second. Then he smiled ruefully and turned away, and I suddenly realized that had been my chance to say something and I’d blown it.
    “I’m thinking Apollo for the first one, if it’s a boy, and Tinkerbell if