Page 10 of Beach Reads
And I get that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but if he snatches his hands off me like he’s touching a dead fish one more time, I’ll toss a clump of seaweed in his eye.
“Okay, reset,” Franklin calls from where he’s collapsed into his folding chair for once. His assistant waves her clipboard, fanning my uncle’s ruddy cheeks.
Jesse turns on his heel and marches across the beach without a word. I cap my water bottle and hurry to catch up, my stomach churning.
“You don’t have to be like this, you know.”
Jesse glances back at me, startled. His blue eyes narrow as he slows. “What?”
I nearly trip over a ditch in the sand, but I draw level with him. “You don’t have to be a huge, massivejerk.”
Jesse rears back, his shoulders bunched round his ears. There are muscles on this man that I’ve never seen before.
No wonder he lifts me so easily. No wonder he doesn’t even seem tired.
That was comforting, for exactly one take.
“I’m—what?”
I beat Jesse to the marked spot fueled entirely by my anger. It means I’m red-faced and out of breath when I get there, but it still counts. And I’m too mad at him to even care about peeling the towel off and tossing it to one side, his eyes bouncing down the length of my body then back up to my eyes.
His towel follows mine onto the ground. I drop to my knees, then lay in the sand.
“Ten inches to the left,” someone calls. We wriggle and huff, getting back into the right position.
“The sun will have moved anyway,” I grumble. “It’s not like we’rethataccurate.”
Jesse’s mouth twitches, but then he’s stone-faced again. He kneels beside my body in his kiss-of-life pose, strong fingers already knotted together. “What did you mean back there?”
Imogen comes over. Brushes us both with powder, spritzes our hair with water, and gives me a hideously obvious wink. Jesse ignores it. “Darla?”
There’s a shell or a rock digging into my back. I wriggle, then gust out a long breath.
“I could just do without the blatant revulsion, that’s all. You’re never like this with the other extras, and you know what? It’s rude.You’rerude.”
I swallow hard, my throat suddenly tight. Because I thought so much better of him—not that he’d throw a party or whatever because he’s doing a scene with me, but that he’d at least treat me the same as everyone else.
Jesse stares down at me, eyes wide with horror.
“Do you have heatstroke?” I snap.
And just like that, he’s back to life. He leans forward, one hand braced against the sand by my cheek, and ducks down to murmur where only I can hear.
Crew members mill all around us, speaking into headsets and swigging from water bottles. A couple even send us curious glances. It probably looks like we’re whispering together about the scene; like we’re in cahoots.
“I’m not repulsed,” Jesse says urgently, his lips close to my ear. “Darla, I swear.”
“Then why—”
“I’m trying to focus, okay?” He straightens back up, wincing. Those muscles, man. So many pretty muscles. “I’m trying not to gettoointo it.”
Oh.
Oh.
…No. No way.
I drag in a shaky breath. “I swear to god, if you’re making fun of me—”
