He's So Fine by Jill Shalvis Page B

distracted by the feel of the hard pecs beneath her hand. He looked so deceptively normal in his clothes that she forgot that beneath he was anything but. She’d seen that for herself, every single perfectly sculpted inch.
    And a certain number of those inches? Mouthwatering.
    She’d been wondering about him over the past few days. The town had gotten it in its collective head that they were seeing each other, and she’d been fending off the “So you and Cole?” question at least once a day.
    At night she had only her own questions to fend off…
    “Better?” he asked, still holding her hand to his chest.
    She thought of his reaction to her peeking beneath the blankets at him and smiled in spite of herself.
    “Yeah,” he said, watching her face carefully. “Better.”
    Good thing he didn’t know why.
    His gaze never left hers, and his mouth twitched. “Care to share?” he asked.
    “Expectations.” She breathed some more and stared out as they—finally!—began their slow descent back to earth, the cool, salty ocean air blowing in her face. “You said it was hard to live up to the expectations you had of your business.” Her entire life had been nothing but one long expectation. ”I know how that feels.”
    “You don’t say much about yourself,” he said after a moment. “When did you leave home?”
    “You never really leave, do you?” she said.
    “You mean you can take the girl out of Kentucky, but you can’t take Kentucky out of the girl?”
    She laughed. “Something like that.”
    “You said you didn’t miss it, but I’m getting the feeling you do. At least on some level.”
    She stared out at the black sea. Did she miss Hollywood? That was the place she really considered home. Not Kentucky.
    Never Kentucky.
    “I miss the people,” she finally said. God’s honest truth. She missed her director, and the producer. She missed the caterer, the wardrobe people…her agent. He’d been like a father to her. In fact, she’d often pretended he was her father, which was better than the truth—that she’d been conceived during a one-night stand at a party and Tamilyn had never named the guy.
    Olivia had found her real family on set. The wardrobe lady had been the grandma she’d never had, since her mother had been estranged from her own family for decades. The set director had been like an uncle. The other kids on the set were her siblings. It’d been a dysfunctional family, but still a family, and she missed the close camaraderie. “I miss the people a lot.”
    “You were close.”
    They’d been lucky. Their cast had been a large, young, boisterous, happy one. After spending the first seven years of her life poorer than dirt, life on that set had been a dream come true. Food tables, constantly filled. Games, toys, books, whatever she’d wanted. “Extremely,” she said, knowing damn well that he thought they were talking about her real family. But these people had been her family, for all intents and purposes.
    Until, of course, she’d hit puberty and the show had been canceled. Her identity had, poof , vanished, and the people she’d cared about had all moved on, leaving her alone, confused, and more than a little frightened at the easy abandonment.
    As an adult, she’d come to realize it hadn’t been anything personal. It’d simply been the way of the industry. The way of the world, in fact.
    Didn’t make it hurt any less.
    “How about you?” she asked. “You’re close to your family.”
    He laughed and rubbed his jaw. He had at least a day’s worth of growth there, and the scraping sound it made against his palm activated the butterfly colony living in her belly.
    “My dad’s gone now,” he said, “but both he and my mom grew up here, and they never left. Raised all four of us here, and yeah, we’re close. Though I think nosy ’s a better word. We’re all up in each other’s business a lot.”
    “And you all stuck in Lucky Harbor?” she marveled, unable to fathom