Page 34 of Snow Balled

“The press tour starts in a few weeks.”

“You’re famous,” Drew said, sounding awestruck.

I sighed. “Not really. Had you heard of me before today?”

“No,” Drew said. “But still, you worked with Aiden Hunt.”

“She did more than work with him,” Carter said darkly.

Tristan got to his feet with a speed that made me jump. “I think it’s time for us to retire upstairs.” He looked directly at Carter.

Carter raised his hands in surrender, and then got up as well. “You two kids have fun,” he said, disappearing with Tristan into the hallway.

They left Drew and me on the couch. I gathered up the blanket and repositioned it on my legs, edging toward the side of the sofa that Tristan had just abandoned.

After a few moments of awkward silence, I looked over at him. He was staring at me as if he’d never seen me before.

Crap.

14

DREW

Holy shit. It still didn’t seem possible that the shy, unassuming young woman at the opposite end of the couch was a genuine movie star. She didn’t act like a movie star. She was so… well, shy and unassuming.

Then again, she was beautiful enough to be an actress. There was no doubt about that. But still, the way she was slouched down, all but buried in those oversized clothes with a blanket on top, she wasn’t exactly the picture of Hollywood glamor.

They were, in fact, my clothes, I realized. Or at least the sweatpants were. Shit, that meant a Hollywood actress had gotten in my pants. It was a juvenile thought, but one that was amusing, nonetheless.

“What?” Sierra asked. I’d thought her attention was on the movie on the screen. Tristan and Carter had gone upstairs about ten minutes ago, after some subtle nudging on Tristan’s part. He probably thought Sierra needed space. I agreed, but I had no room to retreat to. Besides, she didn’t seem in any hurry to rush off to the bedroom.

“I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around it. I don’t usually encounter genuine celebrities trapped under a tree.”

She raised an eyebrow in a way I found sexy as hell. “It’s not your traditional Hollywood meet-cute, I’ll give you that.”

But shewascute. In addition to being gorgeous, of course, but with her knees pulled up to her chest and the blanket covering everything but her face, she looked adorable. The ponytail made her look more like a college student than an actress. All she needed was glasses to complete the look. “I’ve seen the movies, you know. The first three.”

“You have? You don’t seem the type for car chases and fight scenes.”

I grinned. “I may have grown up as a computer nerd, but I’m still a man. We like that stuff.”

I didn’t mention I also liked seeing the hero get the girl—especially since it was a different one each movie. That had never struck me as incredibly sexist until just now.

Sierra was the star of the upcoming one, but there was no way she’d be in the next one. Chase Cooper, Aiden Hunt’s character, would move on and Sierra’s character would never be mentioned again. I wondered if that bothered her.

Sierra seemed interested in what I’d just said. “Did you get teased as a kid?”

“Big time. I had glasses. I was in the A/V club and the debate team. And, I didn’t even break a hundred pounds until a growth spurt near the end of high school.”

“Not even a hundred pounds,” she mused. “Funny how that’s a bad thing for a guy and a good thing for a girl.”

“Yeah.” That was another thing I hadn’t spent much time thinking about. “Since you were a child star, and a female at that, did you have to watch what you ate?” I’d taken a peek at an online bio of her when she’d slipped into the bathroom before.

“No,” she said, surprising me. “I didn’t watch what I ate, everyone else did it for me. My mother, my agent, the director, male costars… I don’t think I had an unsupervised bite throughout my first decade in the industry.”

“I hope you indulged while you were at the cabin. I would’ve pigged out with no witnesses around.”

“It was tempting, but I have to look good for the upcoming publicity and the premiere.” Her voice was bitter.

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