He knew Valentina trusted him with her sister...but still, the bigger questions remained: not only how to get her to trust him with her own heart, but also how to make her believe that between the two of them they could figure out a way around the spotlights.

“I like Val,” Lori said. “A lot. So much, in fact, that I wouldn’t mind hanging with her at family functions for the next forty or fifty years.” His sister pinned him with a razor-sharp look. “Which is why I seriously hope you have a better plan than just more of that.” She gestured to his desk again with another disappointed shake of her head.

He pulled off the tie his character Graham always wore and scowled at himself in the mirror. He hated that there was so much wisdom in what Lori was saying, in forcing himself to keep his hands off Valentina until he convinced her to actually date him with everything out in the open, rather than the two of them skulking around the set in a clandestine affair.

But as he threw his character’s suit jacket over his office chair, he absolutely refused to give up those precious moments when Valentina let down her walls and let herself be open and connected to him. Just as he’d told her that afternoon, he wasn’t giving up on finding that still-hidden pathway to her heart.

Lori moved behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Trust me,” she said with a commiserating sigh, “if anyone knows how you’re feeling, I do. Love sucks, doesn’t it?”

“No,” he told the little sister for whom he wanted nothing but the best, “love’s the good part.”

Somehow he’d figure out a way to deal with the rest of it.

* * *

It was dark and stormy in the city by the time Smith left his final meeting. The battery on his phone had died a couple of hours ago and although he figured there had to be a couple dozen messages and emails waiting for him, he headed neither for his office, nor his house, to recharge it.

Instead, he drove the dozen blocks to the rental home Tatiana and Valentina were sharing.

All afternoon, his talk with Lori had grated on him. She was right about him playing things wrong with Valentina. Increasingly, as the days turned into weeks, he’d grown more and more frustrated.

Idiot.

That’s what he was for not knowing she would be stronger than any of his attempts to woo her. After all, her strength was one of the things he’d fallen for, right from that day when she’d all but skewered him with the message that he’d better treat Tatiana right, or else.

Each sexual encounter he and Valentina had was hugely physically satisfying, but they weren’t getting him much closer to stripping away her other layers. Not when what he wanted for both of them ran so much deeper than just desire.

Sure, any number of women would have fallen at his feet. But he wanted her.

And she was worth however hard he had to work to get her.

As he rang her doorbell, the hard rain splattered his clothes and shoes. He couldn’t fight the rush of disappointment when Tatiana opened the door instead of her older sister.

“Great, you got my message,” Tatiana said with a wide grin as she stepped aside to let him in. “I’m pretty sure Valentina’s about to roll up the script and start hitting me over the head with it.”

Looking past Tatiana, he caught the quick flash of pleasure—and desire—in Valentina’s eyes at seeing him in her house before she quickly masked it with a polite hello.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” Valentina asked him.

“Sure, water’s good.”

When she moved past him into the kitchen, it took every ounce of control he had not to pull her against him and breathe her in. She smelled exactly the way she had when he’d taken her on his desk, like lavender shampoo and sex and her own intoxicating scent that had always driven him crazy. He hadn’t come here for a friendly drink with two co-workers or to make more progress on the movie with her sister, but Valentina quickly cut off any advance he might have made.

“Thanks for coming to work with Tatiana tonight. I know how much she appreciates it. Especially,” she said in a low voice that only he could hear, “when you’re filming such a difficult scene tomorrow.”

Damn it, he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten what was coming tomorrow. The sex scene between Graham and Jo. More than ever, he needed to stay tonight and make sure Valentina understood that he and Tatiana were just going to be actors tomorrow when they had their hands and mouths on each other in front of the cameras.

“Valentina—”

She shoved a bottle of water from the fridge at him and said, “I’m going to turn in early,” to cut him off.

But before she could walk away from him yet one more time, he blocked her sister’s view with his body and took Valentina’s free hand in his. She sucked in her surprised gasp just before it left her lips, her eyes wide and full of the passion she never managed to conceal when she looked up at him.

He stroked his thumb along the inside of her wrist and felt her breath go in a soft whoosh. “Actually,” he said loud enough for Tatiana to hear, too, “with Nicola and Marcus crashing at my house tonight instead of heading back to Napa in the storm, would either of you have a problem with me staying here tonight so I can let the two lovebirds have some privacy?”

The flash of fire in Valentina’s eyes at how easily he’d trapped her had him grinning, even as Tatiana said, “You’re always welcome here, isn’t he, Val?”

Her “of course” came from between gritted teeth at the same time as she yanked her hand from his.

“Sweet dreams, Valentina.”

* * *

Valentina was nearly surly enough to lock her bedroom door. But she refused to give Smith the satisfaction of hearing her make a lame attempt to keep him out of her bed. How sad would it be if she needed a padlock to keep her legs shut around him?

If he dared come to her tonight, he’d find that she was strong enough to turn him away, to tell him that it simply wasn’t appropriate for the two of them to continue their secret tryst while her sister was only across the hall.

She decided to fight the chill of the rain pouring down outside by running a bath. Oh yes, she would very much enjoy the fact that Smith would have to listen to the water running and know she was naked and wet—with only her rubber ducky for company—while he sweated out the final mechanics of tomorrow’s scene with her sister.

Her gut clenched tight as she thought about what tomorrow would bring. Not just more of the gentle kisses Jo and Graham’s scene had ended on today, not just the adoring looks they’d had to give each other while in character during the photo shoot earlier in the week, but—