Among the Tulips by Cheryl Wolverton

Author:Cheryl Wolverton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2004-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“You’re Jake Rivers, the actor,” Annie accused Victor before Sean was completely out of sight.

She hadn’t meant to sound angry, but she was absolutely floored, embarrassed, upset…she wasn’t sure what she was. “Why did you tell me you were Victor?”

“That’s my name. The name I act under is Jake Rivers.”

She opened her mouth to reply and paused. That made sense. But why did she feel so betrayed?

“I thought you’d recognize me at the hospital.” He shrugged. “Most people do. It was quite a blow to my ego when you didn’t, even more so when you recognized Sean just now.”

She felt her cheeks heating up in embarrassment. “You could have told me.”

“And have you looking at me the way you just did at Sean?” Victor asked and then shook his head. “You enchant me, Annie. You are such a lovely person, such a gentle person. I enjoy your company. Sean was supposed to come up the day after the wreck to rest for a few weeks before the premiere of a new movie we’re in together, but I put him off. He evidently decided to come up anyway.”

She stared at him suspiciously.

He returned her stare, his features inscrutable.

“You’re an actor. How do I know if you’re lying to me?”

“Annie, that’s not fair,” he said simply.

She rubbed her forehead. “Oh dear,” she muttered. “I can’t believe this. That’s why all of those photographers were at the hospital,” she suddenly said and gasped as she realized that was why he’d kept looking so oddly at her that day. He’d expected her to recognize him.

He held out his hands. “Just calm down.”

She swatted at them, and then realized she must be really upset to do that. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

He lifted his hands up on either side. “I wasn’t trying to do that, Annie. Look, Annie, I’m sorry. I should have simply been honest with you, but how could I do that without sounding egotistical?”

She thought about that.

“I guess you couldn’t have.”

“And we were having such a good time.”

She had to agree with that.

“Can’t we just go back to how things were?”

She paused and studied him. “You looked familiar to me when I first saw you.”

“Well that’s a relief,” he said and smiled.

She found herself smiling back. “It’s the hair and beard. You don’t wear it like that in publicity photos.”

He shrugged. “The last movie I did called for long hair. So, after the movie was over, I decided to keep it. It has some natural curl and women seem to like it.” He grinned very egotistically this time.

She swatted at him again. “I can’t compete with the crowd you run with. I don’t know that I want to. What am I even doing here?”

Okay, she sounded silly, but all of these insecurities were making themselves known. Jake Rivers was one of the biggest actors in America since his last film. No one knew a lot about him except that he was a fine actor and Storm Clouds had catapulted him into mega-famous status from simply famous.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.