Page 7

After two weeks at Colt and Isabella’s place, I’d settled in enough that I even mentally referred to them by their first names.

On that day, I’d taken my own role in the exact same scene I’d walked into that first time – Jamison swam in the pool while Tiana reclined on a chair with me lounging beside her, both of us holding novels while we talked about boys.

“You do know that’s weird, right?” she said. “You should have a boyfriend by now.” She lowered her glasses to look over them. “Do you like girls? It’s okay if you do. We’ve got friends with two dads, friends with two moms, friends with two of each, even, all living together. It’s Hollywood.”

I chuckled. By now, I was past the point of being surprised by this ten-year-old girl.

She’d been raised in a world where kids didn’t stay kids for long, no matter how much their parents tried to shelter them.

Part of this was an act, too – Tiana was playing the world-weary ingenue to impress me.

Or shock me. If she hoped to do that with her talk of same-sex and polyamorous couples, she was barking up the wrong tree. I was a musician.

“I like boys, and I have dated,” I said. “I didn’t have a highschool boyfriend because I didn’t want anything keeping me in Albany after graduation. Now that I’m at Juilliard, I don’t have time to date.”

“Have you had sex?”

“Your parents would love it if I answered that.”

“Actually, they’d be fine with it. You’re a role model, and I have important life questions that require serious answers.”

I snorted.

She grumbled. After a moment, she said, her voice quieter, “How did you know you liked boys?”

Resisting the urge to look over at her, I talked about my first crush – a bass player named Samson – and the telenovela stars whose posters decorated my wall, the boys I dreamed of kissing.

“Did you have any posters of my dad?”

“Nope.”

“Did you ever dream of kissing him ?”

Now I did look over, my nose wrinkling. “Eww, no. He’s old .”

She giggled, a true child’s giggle, sputtering and snickering.

“What’s so funny?” a voice asked, making me jump.

Colt strode off the patio. I’d come to realize that Colt Gordon did not “walk” anywhere. He strolled; he ambled; he sprinted. He was an actor – every movement and expression had to be imbued with meaning.

Today, he wore athletic shorts and nothing else. Well, I presume underwear, but trust me, I wasn’t thinking about what Colt Gordon wore under his shorts.

I hadn’t been lying when I told Tiana her dad was too old for my girlish fantasies. He was good looking. Criminally good looking, as Nylah would say. I could appreciate that, but it came with the mental amendment of for his age .

For his part, Colt never spared me more than a friendly smile.

There’d been some initial discomfort, where he’d almost seemed to go out of his way to avoid me.

I understood t hat. Every time he had lunch with a female co-star, the tabloids screamed that he was having a fling.

People might say they love happy Hollywood marriages, but scandal is so much more delicious.

So Colt had been careful, and I made sure I didn’t give off any flirty vibes myself.

I must have passed that test with flying colors because he no longer walked out of a room if he found me alone in it.

I didn’t feel obligated to look away when he was dressed like this, either, which was good because he was almost always dressed like this.

When he repeated, “What’s so funny?” Tiana glanced at me, her dark eyes twinkling. She opened her mouth, and I fairly leapt across the space between us. She rolled off the other way, giggling so hard she was snorting.

She looked at her dad. “Lucy said you’re–”

I sprang at her again, half in mortification, half in jest, and she took off, grinning over her shoulder at me as she dove into the pool. I followed, and we horsed around for a few minutes before she swam to the edge and hoisted herself up in front of Colt, glancing back at me with a teasing grin.

“Lucy said–” she began.

“She said you’re nicer than she expected,” Jamison cut in. He’d been ignoring us, swimming laps, and I’d thought he hadn’t heard anything. “You’re scary in your movies, so she was worried. But she says you’re pretty nice.”

“Pretty nice?” Colt’s brows shot up.

“Better than nice and pretty,” Tiana said.

“Mmm, I don’t know about that. I’m fine with pretty. I’ve been called worse.” He looked at me, eyes twinkling exactly like his daughter’s as he winked. A friendly wink, nothing more. Then he plunked into a chair. Tiana gave him a look, rolled her eyes at me, and we continued swimming.