Page 48 of Shine For Me

June

“Do either of you have any questions?”

I look up at Fox, whose expression of intense concentration makes him look almost grumpy. “How many crew will be on set?” he asks.

The intimacy coordinator looks down at her notes. “I’ve requested the smallest number possible. Heads of department, of course, but most of the crew will be outside.”

Some of the nerves in my gut ease a little.

Shooting a love scene is never anything except awkward. I doubt I’ll ever get used to being half naked in front of a room full of people. My grandmother tells me that these kinds of scenes used to be even worse, before intimacy coordinators became standard in the industry. At least now we have someone who we can talk to, someone who can advocate for us with the director and crew. It helps a lot.

Or, at least, it usually helps. Today I doubt anything could make this easier.

I’m not just getting naked and touching a random co-star. I’m getting naked with Fox Ransome. And I actually think I might pass out.

From the hard set of his jaw, I doubt he’s much more comfortable with this than I am.

We’re professionals,I tell myself, for probably the tenth time today.We’ve done this before.

But none of the times we’ve shot a scene like this in the past happened forty-eight hours after one of the most meaningful, revealing conversations of my life. None of them happened after Fox listed all the ways he thinks I’m great. None of them happened after he held my hand and brushed his fingers across the skin over my heart.

Or after he pressed our foreheads together and just held me there, breathing the same air, in an act that somehow felt more intimate than anything else I’d ever done with a man.

I tighten the knot on my robe and concentrate on deep breaths while Fox goes over some of the blocking with the intimacy coordinator. I should be listening to this. Not knowing what I’m supposed to be doing will only make everything more awkward and stressful. But I can’t seem to focus on much with Fox standing here in a robe. A robe under which he is naked.

Okay, not totally naked. We’re not filming a porno. Everything is carefully orchestrated to show exactly what the director wants showing on film. The intimacy coordinator makes good use of flesh colored underwear and elaborate choreography to keep things on the up and up. But I know that Fox is at least shirtless under that layer of terrycloth. And probably wearing pretty minuscule underwear.

Stop it, stop it, stop it.

But try as I might, I haven’t been able to shake this tension simmering between us ever since that night in my suite. Every time we’re together on set, I feel the same overwhelming sense of awareness of him. I both want to be closer to him and run far away.

All because he said a few nice things and touched my forehead.

Clearly, it’s been way too long since I’ve been with a guy if hot forehead action is sending my body into overdrive.

I sneak a glance at Fox. His jaw is tight while the intimacy coordinator talks. Is he feeling the same energy between us? Or is it totally one-sided? He’s been mostly normal with me since he left my suite that night. Except there have been a few times where I’ve looked over at him only to find him looking away. Which of course sent my brain into a tizzy of wondering if he was watching me when he thought I wasn’t looking.

Apparently, I’ve reverted back to pre-teen girl behavior. Awesome.

“Is that all okay with you, Miss Cain?” the coordinator asks, and I jump a little.

“Um, yeah. Of course. Sounds good.”

Fox shoots me a weird look but then the second director is calling us over to get started. Gabe won’t be on set today. The studio thinks it’s better for PR if he doesn’t direct his own cousin in a love scene. I know he’s annoyed by it—for such a control freak, letting go of one of the most important scenes isn’t easy. And it’s not like Gabe really sees me as an actual person on set, anyhow. I swear, in his eyes, all the actors are basically puppets to be moved around at his whim.

“You okay?” Fox murmurs in my ear, and my entire body erupts in goosebumps. I think he notices, because he rubs a hand down my arm in an encouraging sort of way. “June?”

There’s no point in pretending, not with my body determined to betray me like this. “I don’t know why I’m so jumpy,” I tell him, which isn’t exactly true.He’sthe reason I’m so jumpy.

Fox stops walking, even though the second director and cinematographer are standing there waiting for us. He turns to face me, his hands coming down to rest on my shoulders. He squeezes them gently. “Everything is going to be fine,” he says. “You trust me, right?”

“Of course,” I say immediately.

His lips tug up at the corner. “Good. So all you have to do is keep your attention on me. I’ll get us through this.” I feel trapped in his blue gaze as he stares down at me. “Okay?”

Some of the tension seems to release as he squeezes my shoulders again. “Okay.”

Strangely enough, my nerves dissipate even more as we start filming. All the blocking we did with the intimacy coordinator must have turned into muscle memory, because I’m able to move without thinking much. They do three close-up shots of Fox slipping my shirt over my shoulder. It only takes ten minutes to capture the part where he pushes me to my back on the floor—often that kind of pivotal action would require shot after shot. In fact, everything we do today seems to flow fairly quickly and without much input from the people behind the camera.