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raising her sister’s eyebrows, Smith couldn’t force away his desire for her...or the memory of just how good it had felt to hold her in his arms in front of the fire, his heart beating against their linked hands.

Chapter Five
     
    Holding her cell phone up to her ear as she rang her sister’s agent, Valentina looked out the small window in her trailer-slash-office on the Gravity set. She’d expected winter in San Francisco to be cold, but from the way the heat of the sun was eating up the morning fog, it looked like it was going to be another perfect day outside.
    She was hit with the urge to forget about work for a few hours and get out on the water in a kayak, or up in the mountains on foot to enjoy looking out over the gorgeous city they were working in. Over the past few years, Tatiana had taken acting jobs in beautiful cities all over the world, but Valentina had never considered moving to any of them. Until now. It helped, of course, that the house they were temporarily renting in the Noe Valley was incredibly cute. Regardless of how early she headed to the set, or how late she returned from it, someone was always out walking a dog or riding a bike. For a big city, San Francisco managed to be a perfect combination of the cosmopolitan and small town.
    George Kauffman picked up. “Val, great to hear from you. Fill me in on everything. Especially the incomparable Smith Sullivan. Because if he’s as gorgeous as he was the last time I saw him, I honestly don’t know how anyone is getting a damn thing done on set.”
    Valentina liked Tatiana’s agent a great deal. While he was incredibly slick when he needed to be, and was a master of negotiation, he didn’t feel compelled to wear his agent hat all the time. More than once the two of them had gotten a little tipsy celebrating one of Tatiana’s successes. The fact that he was gay helped, too, if only because Valentina knew she’d never need to worry about whether her sister was safe with him. It was a large part of why she herself had let her guard down with him several years back.
    Unlike, she thought with a twist of her lips, the way she constantly felt she had to add new layers of bricks to her walls whenever Smith was near.
    Valentina was as sensual as the next woman, and certainly enjoyed sex when she found the time and the right man to have it with, but she’d never brought her sensuality into the workplace. Ever. Only, it seemed that whenever she and Smith were in the same room, no matter how hard she tried to focus on business, she couldn’t stop the heightened awareness that took her over one cell at a time, from her heart that beat too fast to the tips of the toes that curled in her shoes every time he so much as said her name.
    “Filming is going fantastically well,” she told him. “And Smith has been a dream for Tatiana to work with.”
    George made a sound of approval over the line. “Of course he has. That man is a dream, period. You know,” George added in a thoughtful voice, “he wouldn’t be a bad choice.”
    “For what?”
    “To break your extremely unfortunate dry spell.”
    The phone almost dropped from her hand. “You’re crazy.”
    But she’d said it too quickly, too forcefully. She who doth protest too much, and all that.
    She could all but see George’s smile as he said, “He’s always had good taste in women. Unfortunate for me,” he said with a playful grumble at Smith’s sexual orientation, “but good for you. And from what I remember about our casting meeting, his eyes kept circling back to you. ”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said in as light a voice as she could manage, as if they were joking about something that would never, ever happen in a million years.
    “Well,” George said after a pause that was just a little too long for her comfort, “I think we both know that if the beautiful and talented and filthy rich Smith Sullivan is smart enough to try to stick his hands up your skirt, you won’t stand a