Calling His Bluff Read Free Page B

the counter, she flipped off the light and
     padded back to the couch in her bare feet. She twisted one hand in the loose waistband
     of the silky running shorts and used the other to yank the wide neck of one of J.D.’s
     old baseball T-shirts back up her shoulder.
    He was still sitting on the couch, two glasses of deep red wine on the table at his
     knees, watching her walk toward him. Her own gaze bounced around the room so she wouldn’t
     have to look directly at him. Even though only her legs and arms were bare, she felt
     like she was naked and under a spotlight. She was extraordinarily self-conscious about
     wearing his clothes, the scent of his laundry detergent rising all around her, the
     slippery nylon sliding between her bare thighs.
    “That’s a nice look for you, Sarah Bearah.”
    The childhood nickname had an unfortunate effect on her maturity level. She stuck
     out her tongue at him.
    That’s twice now. What are you, twelve?
    When she reached the couch, he patted the cushion next to him.
    She didn’t even need her mind to protest,
“Bad idea!”
She was already sinking to the floor next to the couch. She patted the cushion herself.
     “Throw your gimpy leg on up there. You know you want to.” With a groan, he stretched
     out, leaving her face a less-than-comfortable twelve inches from his lap. She scooted
     a little closer to the head of the couch, and he pulled a pillow from beneath his
     head and tossed it to her.
    “You’re so right. Sit on this.”
    “Thanks.” She scooched the pillow under her butt and propped her arm on the couch.
     Manageable. Closer to his face, which was distracting, but much less so than his crotch,
     which would have made coherent, non-blushing, non-stammering conversation absolutely
     impossible. “Your ex-wife’s lost where?”
    He grimaced as he handed one of the glasses of wine to her.
    “She’s not lost. In fact, I guess you’d say she found herself.” He took a swallow
     of his wine and stared at the glass. “What I said was that
I
lost
her
in the Amazon. That’s where we broke up. She was filming, of course, and I was working
     on the scrapbook for the movie.”
    Sarah snorted into her own glass at his use of the casual term. J.D.’s “scrapbooks”
     as he called them had started out as a private project and become all the rage, first
     with the filmmakers in Hollywood and then with the general public. The first scrapbook
     had been a gift for his friend, Ben, the director of a small but beautiful documentary
     about a Hollywood legend’s relationship with his daughter, who directed him in her
     first independent film. The documentary had explored the intense relationship between
     father and daughter, actor and director, during the shooting of the film. J.D.’s photos
     had captured slivers of private time away from the cameras, intimate moments with
     the cast and crew that made you feel like you’d been allowed to peek through a window
     on the set.
    “I love that you call them scrapbooks,” she admitted and looked up at him. He had
     his head propped on one hand and was staring at her with unwavering dark eyes. “That
     makes it sound a little less like celebrity gawking when I buy one.”
    His grin and chuckle had her stomach doing tiny flip-flops. Her cheeks felt like they
     were on fire, though she decided she’d blame that one on the heat of the room.
    “It was pure hero worship for me when I did that first one. I don’t think I’d ever
     admitted to anyone, myself included, that I wanted to be a photographer until I started
     working on that documentary, even though I made my parents pay for all those classes
     when I was a kid. But I’d been watching him in the movies my whole life.” He rolled
     his shoulders back and looked up at the ceiling. “He was always the good guy, you
     know? Even when he was playing an outlaw.” She saw his cheeks lift in a faint smile
     at the old memories. “I asked his permission the first time I