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was sex on wheels.
    He whisked off his sunglasses, his trademark laser-beam blue eyes hit her full force, and before she knew what was happening, he ran straight up to her and lifted her in a bear hug. A bear hug that made her realize you really could feel the individual ridges of a six-pack even through two layers of shirt fabric, if a guy was as superhumanly toned as Jake Hultensaalt.
    Holy sweet abdominals, Batman.
    Teenage girls around the world—hell, middle-aged women and white-haired grandmas around the world—would give their eyeteeth to get this close to this man. Maybe she ought to take a cue from Nick and have herself her own little affair with one of their Hollywood stars.
    “Amber Wakeling!” said Jake in his famously deep voice with its sexy hint of
Southern drawl, as he set her back on her feet. “You have no idea how pumped I am to actually be working with you!” His smile was nearly blinding.
    Ah, yes—his famous balls-to-the-wall, all-in enthusiasm.
    “Me, too,” she said stupidly, then added, just as stupidly, “To be working with you.”
    And really, truly, she was. All that enthusiasm and charm and chiseled muscle came packaged with serious acting talent—the kind of whole-hearted, naturalistic, emotionally naked style that her films demanded. She thanked heaven once more for getting him to agree to work with her.
    “Seriously,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and staring deep into her eyes. “I felt a little shy about telling you when we had that lunch, but I basically worship your films. Nobody’s allowed to be friends with me until they watch Junkyard Baby at least twice. Fucking brilliant. That scene where they jump off the railroad bridge—that kills me every time.”
    Despite her awful mood, she felt a spark of pleasure go through her at that, even a little wave of giddiness. Jake Hultensaalt made his friends watch her first movie? Made them watch it twice ? With him laser-beaming her so sincerely and with his hands on her shoulders, she wasn’t quite sure where to look, and stuck her hands in her jeans pockets like an awkward high school freshman. “Um, thanks. You’re—you’re brilliant, too.”
    “No, you don’t understand,” he insisted. “Other guys get drunk, they get into fistfights. I get drunk, I start acting out the coffee shop scene from Buckeye , doing all the parts. Even the angry nun and the barking dog.”
    She laughed. “Really?”
    “ Really . If I start doing it while I’m here and it bothers you, just punch me in the face a couple times, and I’ll stop. Probably. Unless I’m in the middle of Joey’s monologue, because then I’m in some metaphysical transcendent space and I forget I’m even connected to the real world.”
    “Oh. Wow.” She couldn’t put together anything more coherent to say than that. Between how terrific he smelled and the effusive praise for her work, her neurons weren’t firing properly at the moment. It felt good—a little bit of a balm to the wound of Nick’s rejection. But a couple more minutes of her staring at him with her jaw hanging open and he was going to decide her past films were a fluke and she was actually mentally incompetent.
    Or maybe every woman he talked to looked as gobsmacked as she did, and he didn’t realize anything was wrong with her.
    Apparently oblivious to her brain malfunction, Jake looked around at the woods and the mountains, drawing in a deep breath of the pristine air. “Wow,” he said, “this place is beautiful. This is going to be so amazing.” The laser-beam eyes swung back to her, and her heart skipped a beat. Was this guy actually human, or the product of some crazy genetic engineering experiment gone horribly right?
    “Wild Mountain National Park,” she said, as if he didn’t already know that.
    He smiled cheerfully, gave her shoulders one last squeeze, then let them go. “Is Ruby Torres here yet?” he asked, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. Energy was