Page 29 of One Life to Loathe

She did as she was instructed and when our gazes met, the sparks doubled in size and scope. They were accompanied by something wiggly that decided to crawl through my stomach and up to my chest, where it firmly wrapped around my heart, which was pounding.

She was beautiful. More than that, she was sweet. There was no guile behind her smile. She was struggling as much as me—We don’t have to know each other—but she was pushing through because she was a professional. That’s what I needed to do.

I ignored the sparks. I pretended I wasn’t feeling sick to my stomach. That was certainly the breakfast and not her proximity. I kept telling myself that anyway.

We stared into each other’s eyes, the rest of the world ceasing to exist, and vaguely in the back of my mind I could hear the camera working. It fell into tandem with my heart.

Looking at this woman, this ridiculously nice and caring woman, all I could think as we posed for photos that would haunt me until the day I died was this.

You don’t like her.

You don’t want her.

You have to get her out of your head.

I wasn’t certain I believed any of it except for the last part. I had to do something to get Sam out of my head. We were both going to be in a world of hurt—so much trouble—if I didn’t rein in my emotions.

What exactly was happening to me here?

9

NINE

Imet with Levi and Daisy in the hotel bar once I’d changed my clothes—what was up with that corset top anyway?—and scrubbed the makeup from my face. I moisturized and opted to leave it at that because filming started the next day. I would be caked up with heavy makeup for the foreseeable future and I wanted to let my skin breathe.

“I saw you guys shooting photos over in the Common,” Levi said as he handed me an iced tea. “That looked like fun.”

“Oh, it’s nice that it looked like fun from a distance,” I drawled. The iced tea was good, but I could’ve used something stronger. Time spent with Leo made me want to drink…and not because he was being a jerk for a change. No, this time there had been something else happening.

I’d felt like a sparkler in his arms. That was the only way I could describe what had happened. Every nerve ending was on fire, and there was energy flying this way and that in every direction. Looking into his eyes had caused my skin to catch fire, and I’d never been more uncomfortable in my entire life.

That’s what that feeling had been, right? It was discomfort. I had nothing to compare it to, so I wasn’t certain either way.My head kept telling me I was uncomfortable. The rest of me, though, disagreed. I’d wanted to curl up in his arms and take a nap.

Okay, maybe I’d wanted to do something else before the nap.

What in the ever-loving hell was wrong with me? I had never—not once!—felt anything like that on a set before. Maybe I was going into early menopause. That made people hot, right?

“Is something wrong?” Daisy asked.

I jerked my eyes to her and realized she and Levi had kept talking. I’d been focused on the busy thoughts buzzing through my head—and other parts of me—and they’d been discussing something. What had we been talking about again?

Daisy’s eyes were lit with amusement as she sipped a Shirley Temple. It was full of glitter and made my teeth hurt just looking at it. She seemed happy, though. “How was Leo?” she asked.

“How should I know?” The question came out a lot shriller than I was expecting.

Daisy didn’t take my tone to heart. She just continued to smile. “Weren’t you posing with him?”

“We had to pose together,” I replied. “We’re the main couple. I mean … there will be other couples. The whole show isn’t about us. How boring would that be? We’re the two most boring people in the world when we’re together.” I tried to pretend I wasn’t babbling and that all of that made perfect sense.

“Uh-huh.” Daisy tapped her fingers on the bar. “That’s exactly what I think when I see the two of you together.Man, are they boring. It’s like watching paint dry.”

I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t recognize sarcasm when I heard it. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m suggesting that perhaps your problems with Leo stem from the fact that you like him.”

That was the most absurd thing I’d ever heard. “I don’t like him.”

“Are you sure?”

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