No More Sweet Surrender by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews [Crews, Caitlin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Contemporary Romance, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780373238880
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

“ARE you ready?” Ivan asked when it was finally time. When the long queue of cars they waited in to take their turn at the red carpet finally delivered them to the arrival point.

Miranda had the sudden, intense urge to say that no, she wasn’t. To call the whole exercise off. As if it hadn’t already gone too far. As if there was any hope of saving herself.

“Of course,” she lied.

His black eyes gleamed with something that looked a great deal like compassion, but couldn’t be. Her throat went dry.

“My first red carpet appearance made me much more nervous than my first title fight,” he said then. A quiet confession. Another voluntary bit of himself, and she held on to it with a grip that should have scared her. It did. “I knew how to hit, not pose. But you won’t be alone.”

Miranda swallowed. “No,” she agreed. “I won’t.”

Her reward was a smile—and not, she registered, stunned, that public one she’d grown so used to seeing over the past days.

This one was private. It was his. It was slightly crooked and not at all practiced. It was real. She knew it was real. She felt it kick hard inside of her, then send out echoes.

It made her want to look at nothing else, for hours. Days. Longer.

But then the car door was opening and Miranda had no choice but to be swept out along with him, into the baying crowd.

A roar went up when they saw Ivan. It was a wall of people—reporters and fans, the steady stream of celebrities and all of their handlers, everyone channeled down the red carpet gauntlet. Ivan’s publicist took charge of them immediately. He directed Ivan to this reporter, then that one. He ended interviews that went too long or veered into areas he didn’t like. He told them where to look, when to wave, when to amp up the smiles.

And they did exactly what they were told.

It was one more thing, Miranda thought when Ivan led her up the famous red-carpeted stairs, that looked effortlessly glamorous on television and, as she’d discovered herself while filming news segments, was a significantly harder task than it seemed.

“You survived,” Ivan said, gazing down at her. He’d pulled her to one side, out of the pack.

“I’m not at all sure about that.” Something about the oddness of the whole evening had her smiling up at him. Spontaneous. Unguarded. As real as his smile had been earlier.

He looked startled. Something moved through his dark gaze then that she would have called regret, if that had made any sense at all.

“Milaya,” he murmured, so soft it was almost a whisper. So soft it sounded almost like an apology, but that was impossible.

And then he slid his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her just that crucial bit closer to him with that bone-melting certainty and smooth male grace that was only his, and fit his mouth to hers.

Miranda felt as if she’d fainted. Or simply burst apart into a shower of tiny pieces.

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