To Catch a Star by Romy Sommer Page A

aware of the static hum between their bodies. For once he didn’t move away, didn’t send her off on some stupid errand just to create a space between them. “If you were the one asking the questions, what would you ask?”
    The corner of her mouth kicked up into a smile. “Before or after you kick me out?”
    “What if I said I wouldn’t kick you out?”
    She held his gaze for a moment. God, but she had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, bluer than any sea or sky, with tiny silver flecks that could turn her gaze to ice in a heartbeat.
    “Ask me anything,” he teased, at his most persuasive.
    “Do you know who your father is?”
    “Anything else.”
    She smiled, a slow, playful smile that did something to him he had never experienced before. It took his breath away.
    “Why do you flirt with them all? Surely you know it raises their expectations?”
    “Does it raise yours?”
    She pursed her lips, and the smile was gone. “What’s in it for you?”
    It gave him grim satisfaction that she hadn’t answered. “It gets me fans.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the four business cards that had been slipped to him. One with a heart scrawled on it, another with a handwritten mobile number, the last with a lipstick mark in scarlet, the exact shade worn by Susanne. “And I’ll never be lonely. But that question was way too easy. Try something harder.”
    Her gaze dropped to the cards in his hands. He fanned them out on the counter and set his hand a fraction of an inch away from hers, deliberately provoking her. He only wished he was still shirtless. The effect of bare male chest on her was priceless, almost as if she’d never seen one before.
    But since stripping off would be too obvious, he settled for the next best thing. He leaned closer, invading her space. With any other woman, the lean-in would have been as natural as breathing. With Teresa, the temperature seemed to go up a few degrees and her breath stuttered. She leaned away, but in the tiny kitchenette there was no place for her to go.
    Her long eyelashes fluttered and slowly her gaze lifted to meet his.
    Though she stood straight, though her expression remained cool and self-possessed, up this close she couldn’t conceal what she was feeling.
    He’d shaken her composure at last. As she shook his.
    “Your time’s nearly up. You get one more question.”
    Her gaze didn’t waver. “Who are you really, Christian Taylor?”
    I am whoever you want me to be.
The flippant answer hovered on his tongue, but he held it back. He was tired of trying to be all people to everyone. For just this one moment, he wanted to be honest with someone. He thought for a long moment before he answered.
    “I’m a chancer. I’ll take every opportunity that’s offered to me and I’ll do anything if it benefits me.”
    He’d admitted as much the night they met. Then he’d said it to provoke her. Now he said it because he meant it.
    This time there was no accusation in her expression, no judgment. She let out a sigh, as if disappointed in him. “Why?”
    “Because I’m never going back to the boy I was.”
    She didn’t push for more. She didn’t need to. Her gaze pierced right through him, through all the defensive layers, the layers of deception he’d lived with for so long that even he didn’t know where the truth ended and the lies began. She saw straight through him to the hurt and bullied little boy who had brought nothing but heartache to everyone he loved.
    But he wasn’t the first one to look away.
    “You have a date tonight. I’ll call for Frank to bring the car around.”
    To hell with his date. She’d laid him bare to his core, and now she expected him to entertain and amuse some starlet he had no interest in?
    “Cancel it.”
    Her eyes widened, but she didn’t argue. She slipped away from him, though she had to brush against him to get past, and pulled her phone from the bag.
    He didn’t listen as she made the calls for his