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

of me! I could feel the panic rising inside me. A big part of me wanted to tell him to forget the whole thing. But I still needed the money. I took a deep breath. “Alright, Mr. Cole,” I said stiffly. “Let’s discuss the matter in hand.”
    He burst out laughing. “ Mr. Cole? That’s kinda formal. Especially after I’ve already….” He trailed off and I saw his eyes flick down my thankfully now-covered body. “Call me Tanner,” he said at last.
    I could feel my cheeks burning hot. “Mr. Cole is fine. Will your agent be joining us?”
    “Nah. I sent Maury away.” He smiled and something like a hot wave crashed through me. ”It’s me who needs to talk to you anyway.”
    For some reason, I was grateful for that. Which was weird because it was Tanner who was the billionaire, Tanner who should have been the intimidating one—and he was, in a way, with those muscles and those eyes and that smile that kept flustering me. But something about his agent made me uneasy. I was glad he wasn’t there.
    “Fine,” I said, and crossed my legs, trying to look business-like. Then I uncrossed them because I was wearing pants and it looked stupid. Then I changed my mind and re-crossed them, and now it looked like I was bursting for the toilet or something. Argh! “What is it you need?” I asked.
    “There’s this part I want to go for. Serious stuff. Weepy. Costume drama. But I gotta sound like...you know. Like you.” His mouth twisted into a smirk. “ Proper.”
    “A gentleman?” I said disbelievingly. Tanner’s movies normally involved explosions or monsters. The close he’d gotten to something “serious” was playing a blue collar boxer from Detroit. Teaching him a British accent was one thing, but I’d assumed he’d be playing a London gangster or something. Making him sound posh as well as British…that was going to take some doing. “When do you need to, um, audition?”
    “A week’s time,” he told me, and his tone had changed. He’d dropped the jokey attitude. He seemed… focused. Which was weird because, with his fame, it was hard to think of him having to audition for anything. Yet he seemed to be chasing after this part. Why?
    I thought about it and nodded. “That might be possible,” I said without much confidence. “We’d have to work pretty hard, though. A lot of hours each day.”
    “I can work hard,” he said, staring straight into my eyes.
    I gulped. It was a perfectly innocent statement, but an explosion of raw heat went off right in my core. I had a sudden vision of him tangled in sheets on a bed, thrusting into some starlet and—
    Just for an instant, the starlet had my face.
    I tore my gaze from his and stared at the corner of the room, willing my face to cool down. “Okay. When are you flying to England?”
    “Oh, I’m not coming to England. You’re coming here.”
    My eyes snapped back to the screen. “ What?”
    “The audition’s here in LA. They’ll shoot the movie in Britain, but it’s a Hollywood studio. I’ll fly you over.”
    I blinked a few times. “What? I can’t just fly off to LA!”
    He frowned. “Why?” As if he jumped on flights ever day. He probably does.
    He had a point. I didn’t have anyone depending on me in London. I could reschedule the few jobs I had lined up that week. I didn’t have a pet to feed. So why not go?
    Oh yeah. The part about being completely, utterly out of my depth. I coached businessmen and TV actors, not billionaire movie stars! And me, in LA? Land of the thin and beautiful? I hadn’t been out of London in months. I’d barely been out of my apartment in weeks—my clients always came to me.
    “I’ll pay for everything,” Tanner said. “A place to stay, food, flights. How much do you charge for training?”
    This was all getting very real, very fast. “A thousand pounds,” I said automatically.
    He nodded. “A thousand pounds a day is fine. I’ll get you booked on a flight tomorrow—that okay?”
    A thousand