In the sunshine, her hair resembled a flame, and Marcus couldn’t resist huddling closer to the heat. He shifted until they sat hip to hip on the wooden bench. As she watched him, brown eyes intent behind her glasses, he stroked his thumb along her plush lower lip to tease free those clinging crystals.
Her neck arched, just a little.
Without breaking eye contact, he licked the sugar from his thumb, and she took a shuddering breath.
No. He wasn’t going to kiss her actual mouth for the first time on a park bench in public, not where everyone could see and document the occasion. Again.
After a fraught moment, he managed to look away. Clearing his throat, he fumbled with the paper menu he’d grabbed inside the shop and took his time reading aloud the description of the item she’d just finished.
“The coco—” He sighed. “Shit, this one is hard. Okay, let me try it again. The cocroffinut—”
She clapped. “Well done.”
“Save your applause until we find out whether I can do it twice.” One syllable at a time. “The cocroffinut, the world’s first and most delicious coffee/croissant/muffin/doughnut hybrid, contains the caffeine equivalent of four espressos.”
She glanced down at the empty box on her lap. “Damn. Four espressos?”
He reread the description. “Yup. Well, that would explain your newfound sensitivity to orbiting electrons.”
Getting to her feet, she rolled her eyes. “Hipsters, man. Hipsters.”
He grinned up at her. “You said it was delicious.”
“It was,” she agreed, gathering their trash. “I also thought the glazed doughnut we shared at our last place, the one the size of my head, was delicious, and it cost approximately one-tenth as much as the croco—”
“Cocro—” he corrected automatically.
“—muffinut or whatever the hell I just finished eating. It also didn’t leave me in possible need of a defibrillator.” Once she’d thrown their trash in the nearest recycling and waste bins, she laid a palm over her chest. “I think my heart is doing the jitterbug in there, even though I actually have no idea what the jitterbug entails.”
He sat straighter. “If you need to see a doctor, I can take you.”
“Nah. I’m just being overly dramatic, probably because of all the caffeine.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t mind me.”
Whew. He’d really prefer their third date not necessitate medical intervention, if at all possible. Especially since he had hopes for the evening.
High hopes. Turgid hopes, to use one of TopMeAeneas’s favorite adjectives.
“Being a drama queen is my job, lady. Hands off.” Leaning back again, he rested his arms along the top of the bench. “Speaking of my job, I actually learned how to jitterbug for a historical miniseries. I could show you.”
Lindy Hope, the inspirational—if entirely fictional—story of how swing dancing turned the tide of one World War II battle, hadn’t exactly broken viewing-audience records, but at least he’d gotten some decent moves and a decent paycheck out of it.
“Why don’t we walk while you tell me more?” She held out a hand. “I’m too caffeinated to sit still.”
He accepted her hand and got to his feet, interlacing their fingers as they headed toward the water. “Um . . . what do you want to know?”
Normally, he’d steer the topic toward hair care or workouts, or mention only the most superficial things he’d learned over the years. Before showing up at their first doughnut shack a couple of hours ago, though, he’d already disposed of that particular shield.
She was meeting him as he really was today, like it or not.
The possibility that she might not like it had his own heart skittering a bit. As did the possibility that he was tossing his reputation into the garbage alongside their cocroffinut detritus, because if she ever revealed him as a faker to the world before he was ready, before he could explain—
She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. He trusted her that far, and he trusted his own ability to do sufficient damage control if she proved him naive.
His fanfic alter ego, though . . . no amount of PR and damage control could stop the knowledge of that from destroying his career.
Eventually, maybe he could tell her he was Book!AeneasWouldNever.
Not now. Not yet.
“Okay, fun stuff first.” She was swinging their hands in a huge, swift, jerky arc, and yes, he could definitely tell she’d had more than her usual share of caffeine. It was fucking adorable. “What’s the most memorable movie you’ve ever been part of?”
He snorted. “That’s a tougher question than you might think. I’ve been acting for over twenty years now. There are lots of possibilities to consider.”
For some reason, the bad roles were so much easier to remember than the movies whose premieres he’d attended with sincere pride. Probably more entertaining to hear about too.
Her stride was becoming an uncharacteristic sort of half jog, half skip, her hair swinging around her shoulders with each hyperactive, bouncing step. “Then tell me all of them.”
“Since that could take weeks, I’ll choose a representative sampling.” Damn, he needed to hustle faster to keep up with her. “My worst film overall was probably, um . . . Hounded, I guess.”
Her brow crinkled as she thought. “You were a perfumer in that one, right? Wrongly accused of a terrible crime?”
“Yes. A master perfumer, nicknamed the Hound for my extraordinary sense of smell.” After an exaggerated inhalation through his nose, he continued, “Which I then employed to hide from the authorities while locating my wife’s real killer.”
“As one does.” Her voice was as dry as the California hills in October. “And of course his wife’s murder served as his motivation. Of course.”
“Fridging at its most banal. Eventually, I discovered that my business rivals had formed a secret cabal, hired an assassin, and framed me in hopes of removing me from the perfume industry permanently.”
“Spoiler alert,” she chided him, lips quirked.
He huffed out a laugh. “My scenes mostly involved sniffing. Turns out, it’s hard to make sniffing attractive or interesting to an audience. Which is some explanation as to why the movie flopped.” God, the reviews. Those reviews. Not to mention the phone call from his parents after they’d seen one of the sparse local showings. “It did inspire an X-rated parody, though, from what my costars told me. One with a particularly clever name.”
As they walked, he waited, confident she could come up with it.
She bit her lip for a few moments, then brightened. “Pounded!”
“Brava, April.” Lifting their joined hands above their heads in triumph, he grinned at her. “That movie apparently involved a lot of sniffing as well. Among other activities. It also made more money than its inspiration. Probably featured better acting too.”
He’d wanted her to giggle, but she didn’t. Instead, for no reason he could fathom, her eyes had turned solemn, and he shifted his shoulders under the weight of her regard.
“You’re joking about it, but you must have learned a lot about perfumery for the role,” she finally said. “I may not know you well, but I can already tell you’re a professional. You care about your craft.”
Why that twisted his heart until it ached, he couldn’t have said.
“Uh, yeah, actually.” He squinted into the distance, where the water awaited them, blue and cool and comforting. “I visited a perfumery school in France. A world-class perfumer can identify over a thousand different scents, mostly by associating smells with specific memories. I worked on that a little. Learned about the history of perfume. Watched one woman grind ambergris with a mortar and pestle too, just for kicks.”
“What is ambergris?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered.”
He smirked at her. “Hardened whale feces that washes onshore.” “You set me up for that.” Her eyes narrowed, but her mouth was twitching. “Shame on you. Now I have to go through my perfumes and find out just how much whale poop I’ve been spraying on myself for dates.”
Her perfume today smelled primarily of roses. His nose wasn’t particularly sensitive, as he’d discovered during that idyllic week in France, but he could also detect a trace of musk. And . . . other stuff, which real perfumers could no doubt pinpoint in a flash.
Where exactly she’d sprayed that perfume, he shouldn’t consider in public.
“Anyway, so that was one memorable role. The absolute worst script I ever had was probably for 1 Wheel, 2 Real.” At her confused glance, he clarified. “The uplifting coming-of-age story of a troubled unicyclist. I think it got released directly to the DVR of one guy in Tulsa.”
When she laughed, she slowed down a fraction. “Holy shit. You can unicycle?”
“Of course,” he informed her loftily, nose in the air. “Like any serious thespian.”
Well-Groomed Golden Retriever Marcus would never use that term, of course. Even as himself, it sat oddly on his tongue. Too grand. Too lofty. A thespian, as opposed to an actor, demanded respect from the world at large, not simply others within the entertainment industry. A thespian possessed talent, not merely the capacity for hard work and a pretty face.
Pulling him to the edge of the sidewalk, she came to a dead halt. “But you are a serious thespian, Marcus.”
All that caffeine had clearly gone to her head. She sounded . . . angry, almost.
He lifted a shoulder, offering her a placating smile. “I’ve tried to be. I don’t know how successful I’ve been.”
“You’ve been up for a bunch of awards. You star in the most popular television program in the world. When you left Dido behind and spotted that damn funeral pyre from your ship, I nearly required medical intervention for my weeping-related dehydration issues.”
She spoke slowly, as if to a blockheaded child, and he bristled instinctively at that familiar tone. At least until the actual meaning of her words sank in. Then he flushed hot with embarrassment and kicked at a crack in the sidewalk.