Ryan turned to face me with his fists on his hips, looking like a life-sized, naked Ken doll with obscured genitalia. “So, what do you think?”

He was so adorable, smirkin’ in his merkin.

“And it’s not even my birthday!” I laughed. “I’m wondering how painful it will be when you have to take that thing off.”

“Just like a Band-Aid,” Buckley mumbled.

“Grit and pull.”

Ryan blew out a tense breath and slipped a gray flannel robe on, tying the belt securely like a boxer headed for a fight.

It was time for him to go pretend with another woman below him and I was going to watch.

Chapter 10

React

“Cut. Ryan, you need to drop your arm a bit.

You’re casting a shadow on Nicole,” Jonathan instructed, sounding irritated. “No, that’s still not working. We need to adjust the lighting. She’s got a dark shadow running right across her face.”

I watched the gaffer make a slight adjustment to one of the towering lights near the large bed, and was thankful for the momentary reprieve.

An hour ago, that naked body was between my thighs, loving me. Now Ryan was carefully seated between Nicole’s bare legs, nothing but flesh-toned merkins keeping their bodies from actually touching.

Ryan and Nicole were holding light conversation while the lights were adjusted around them, but the sight of him lying on top of her was almost too much for me to take in. Like a sick, masochistic voyeur, I stood there, watching. Watching my fiancé slip his lips over another woman’s body every time the director called “Action!” I knew it was fake, completely staged, but still.

Ryan pressed Nicole’s hair back from her face, gazing at her before crushing his lips down on hers. She gasped and the sheet that barely covered them rose and fell with the roll of his hips.

Slight tremors vibrated up through my shoulders. Instantly I was torn from the spot and pulled back in time, recalling every ounce of pain I felt when I walked in on my ex-fiancé, Thomas, grinding his naked ass into that emaciated slut, Cheryl Regan, with painful clarity. The overwhelming anguish blasted uncontrollably like lightning into my chest.

I had sworn to myself that day I had caught Thomas, made the most sacred of vows to the sanctity of my own soul, that I would never, ever allow myself to be hurt like that again. To step anywhere near a man who was capable of eviscerating my heart.

Loving someone should never end in all-consuming devastation.

But time and time again I set myself up to be ripped to shreds. And here I stood, torturing myself all over again watching this charade.

Certain moments were tolerable: those when filming had halted and Ryan and Nicole weren’t all over each other. But the moment the cameras were rolling, my hands tightened into fists and I wanted to puke craziness.

I knew Ryan was uncomfortable with my presence, peering at me through worried eyes every spare moment when his pretend make-out session wasn’t being carefully or-chestrated. Still, it wasn’t enough to end this insanity.

I don’t care how other women would handle watching their man fake sex with another woman; I twitched when Jonathan yelled “Action!” yet again.

Ryan’s mouth on her jaw, her lips, grinding her into the bed like he was actually fucking her looked so real that the heartache seared its way up my throat.

It’s pretend. It’s fake.

The sheet covering them slipped and a good sliver of Ryan’s ass was now in full view. No matter how many times I repeated my mantra it still didn’t keep the bile from rising up.

I could see Ryan desperately trying to reach that detached mental space he needed to go to to pull this off. He needed to be “in the zone,” so to speak, where he wasn’t Ryan Christensen anymore. The place where his character persona, Chase Sheffield, took over and deviant actions became inconsequential.

God, could I do this again? Could I actually be secure enough in my heart and mind to deal with the knowledge that there would be more times like this in my future? More fake love scenes and more intimate touches shared between my lover, my husband-to-be, and random sculpted actresses? Would my eventual marriage become yet another Hollywood divorce?

It’s one thing to be married and trust that your spouse never cheats on you. It’s another when scripted fake make-out sessions are part of his career, and you know with absolute certainty that moments like this will reoccur.

For a brief time I carried this man’s baby in my womb. If we ever have children, I’m not going to be able to stand here and su-pervise his pretend sex each and every time.

Knowing how easily a moment like this could get way out of hand, leading to a connection with another woman.

One day I’ll be pregnant—large and round, uncomfortable. One day sex won’t be a priority; feeding and caring for an innocent infant will be. Staying home to raise a family with some sense of normalcy will be.

Will Ryan be able to control himself and know in no uncertain terms where the lines of acting and cheating are firmly drawn? So many unanswered questions.

Ryan clasped hands with Nicole, raising their entwined fingers over her head—a move that I thought was reserved for our lovemaking sessions only. The sense of betrayal that came from it pierced into my heart like a hot knife and I had to consciously stop the whimper from breaking free.

Jonathan had called “Cut!” and Ryan and Nicole were listening to him intently. I couldn’t look at Ryan anymore—not in the eyes, anyway. My focus landed on everything else—the towering lights, the black cords snaking across the floor, the black screen blocking shadows from forming, the khaki cargo shorts the boom operator was wearing.

Thousands of movies, thousands of onscreen kisses. Jake Gyllenhaal’s kissed a lot of girls. I love his movies. When he filmed with Anne Hathaway—that sex looked real.

They both were this naked, too. And that girl in Prince of Persia —Princess what the hell was her name? Jake kissed Heath Ledger, too. Several times. Damn, that was hot. But they were acting. Making a movie for our enjoyment just like this. I wonder if these things are why he split from Reese Witherspoon all those years ago? And after all of this time, he’s still single. Maybe he wanted to—

A firm hand clasped my shoulder, startling me.

“You okay?” Mike asked quietly. His worried expression wasn’t helping.

Damn, how I wished my defiant bottom lip would keep from quivering. I gave him a noncommittal shrug.

“He loves you, you know.”

I bit that traitorous bottom lip of mine hard, trying to find that place in my brain where I could be nonchalant, cool and so whatever—it’s just another day in the office for him—no biggie with all of this.