Page 27 of Fool Me

“That mud wrestling was pretty fun,” she said before popping a second California roll into her mouth.

He smiled so deeply it coaxed a dimple into one cheek. “It was! Even better than playing dodgeball with cow patties.”

He leaned back on the blanket, facing her, his muscled legs stretched toward the sea and his upper body propped on his left elbow. She’d been grateful his eyes were shut when she’d spotted him leaning against that rock at the South entrance, because she’d taken a cartoon-worthy double-take at the sight of him. In his swim shorts and with the sun highlighting every curve of his toned chest and runner’s calves, his boy-next-door charm turned into testosterone-oozing hotness. She’d had to forcibly keep herself from cat whistling him. Now, thank goodness, she could pretend to be mesmerized by the waves while actually enjoying a close-up view of his chiseledness.

“So, you really grew up on a farm? With cows?” she asked him.

“Really did,” Grant said, with a cowboy wink that highlighted the plush thickness of his eyelashes. “Why is that so impossible for anyone from LA to understand? Didn’t you take field trips to farms as kids?”

“They took us to museums and construction sites. Basically…I thought bread loaves grew on trees.”

He shook his head but let out a laugh. “My parents grow corn, wheat, and soybeans.”

“But farming isn’t for you?”

He crunched quietly on an ice cube for a few seconds. “I like the work, but the daily routine is too predictable for me. I can’t see spending fifty years doing the same things day after day. I don’t know if you remember, but I started off as a business major.”

“I remember,” she said, selecting her next California roll and slathering it with extra wasabi.

“I was going to go into banking, hoping I could help small farmers, but then I saw the stage performances you were in at Cal U, and my mind was blown. My high school had eighty students total. We didn’t have a theater program.”

A faint voice at the back of Sadie’s brain suggested that she be annoyed by the direction of this conversation, but the wasabi chose that moment to light up her sinuses with searing pain. “Ah!” she said, waving her hands over her face in a thoroughly futile gesture at dousing the heat.

He sat up, his tone soaked with concern. “Need some water?”

She blew out a relieved breath as the pain eased. “Not unless I pour it up my nose. Wasabi heat is different.” She looked at the roll in his hand to find it conspicuously wasabi-free. “Haven’t you tried it?”

He slid a doubt-filled glance toward the little pile of pastel green paste at the center of the tray. “Ummmm…no.”

She gave him a playful squeeze. His arm felt solid and warm and fuzzy like a summer peach, and she fought the urge to squeeze it again, a little longer and harder this time. “C’mon. Take a little. You’ll never understand the phrase ‘mind blown’ till you’ve had wasabi.” She leaned forward and opened her mouth, motioning for him to do the same.

The request had felt innocent enough, but as they each leaned in close, his scent enveloped her—fresh cut grass and a musky spice. She thought at first that the umbrella fabric must be magnifying his heartbeat too, then realized that insistent chest thumping was her own. The space under the umbrella shrank to become her world, and him the only thing in it. Warm light filtered through the umbrella fabric, highlighting the silvery flecks swimming in the sea of his eyes. By the time she placed the California roll onto his waiting tongue, the nerve endings all over her body were igniting. Their gazes tangled and held as he slowly closed his mouth around the bite and chewed.

“Hawwwwww!” Grant rocketed up from the blanket and disappeared from sight.

Sadie, startled from her reverie, barked out a laugh that was part genuine humor, part relief. She laughed harder still as he twice circled their umbrella at a run, his screams and grunts giving away his position in the loop.

“Whew!” he said, crashing back onto the blanket, his face aglow with sweat and wasabi warmth.

“Surest way to clear the sinuses,” she said, her side aching from laughter.

“You eat that voluntarily? That’s the meanest thing anyone’s ever done to me.”

Sadie’s laughter died in her throat. She, of all people, knew exactly how false that statement was. She had been attempting to torpedo his career for weeks now. She mustered a flaccid smile. “Some of us are masochists.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s a requirement for becoming an actor,” Grant said.

“Then I’m pretty sure I’ve met that requirement!”

“Oh, c’mon, were our fake datesthatbad?” Grant said.

Sadie startled anew. She’d been referring to the unpleasantness of her work at the studio deli, not the dates. The dates hadn’t been that bad. The Indian festival, the wrestling, and now their romantic beach hideaway complete with her favorite foods? She hated to admit it, but these dates had been the most fun she’d had since…since…

She lost track of time until Grant grimaced and said, softly, “I guess they were that bad.”

She reached out and touched his shoulder. “No, no. The fake dates have been fine, really. I meant my job at the deli. It seemed like a good way for me to get noticed, but instead I became invisible. Some days, I’m ready to give up.”

Grant’s eyebrows hitched up. “Are you kidding? You’re the most talented actress I’ve ever seen, let alone known.”

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