Sorry, but it hurts to find out it wasn’t.” He looked at me like I had lost my mind.

Maybe I had. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Forget it. I don’t expect you to understand.”

He groaned. I knew I was frustrating him but yeah well too bad. I had old wounds that left deep scars, too—reminding me never to be foolish with my heart again.

Ryan seized my arm when I tried to wave off the last five minutes. “You’re upset because of the way I held her hand?” I tried to shrug it off. “Whatever. Apparently it doesn’t mean anything to you, but it meant a lot to me. It’s like you make us one when we have sex. I thought it was special.” I bumped a small rock with my foot. “It’s not special anymore.”

Ryan cursed low. “Oh, babe. I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that. I didn’t realize.”

“Well, now you do,” I murmured.

He frowned at me. “Tar, despite what you think, it was physically and mentally painful for me to do that in front of you.” I could hear the sincerity in his voice. I knew he really didn’t mean to hurt me.

“I saw the look on your face,” he went on,

“and I thought to myself, what if this is the moment that breaks her. What if this is the thing that causes her to bolt. I know you keep thinking that I’m going to fall prey to the Hollywood cliché. That kissing some fucking actress is going to be the final straw that brings the house down. But babe, do you ever consider what I’m feeling? How fucking paranoid I am that the only woman I’ve ever loved is going to run screaming for the hills because of what I do for a living?”

I shook my head. “Never. You’re not the only one who pledged forever here, Ryan. I will keep on fighting for us no matter what.” I looked him right in the eye, feeling like shit for not seeing his side. “Seeing you like that with someone else made me a little crazy. I think I can handle the kissing. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can, just please give me a chance to get used to it and I . . . No, I’m positive I can deal with it, but the total nakedness and boob touching and the fake sex? I’m sorry but that—that was just too much for me.”

“I hated it, too.” He took a deep breath, and then nodded, seeming to make some silent decision. “That’s why I wanted you there, Taryn. You know it’s fake because you watched it get set up.”

Ryan pulled me into his chest and rubbed his lips over my hair. “One good thing, though, is that I know you’re truly here for me. It just confirms how right this is.”

The tip of his nose brushed against mine as his hand threaded into my hair. Ryan kissed me softly—just a few feather-light touches, before nudging my lips apart with his tongue. I could feel both our desperation and our desire, fueled by the wetness of our mouths and the necessity to convey unspoken messages.

He bit my bottom lip gently, forcing us to stop, then rested his forehead on mine, calculating his next sentence while scanning my eyes for a reaction. “In there, in front of the camera, it means nothing. This, us, this is what’s real.”

“I know,” I whispered, drifting my hand across his shoulder.

“Do you remember when I told you about the girl I used to date, Brooke—the one who came to Maine when I was filming the first Seaside?”

I remembered. The girl he told me about who wanted his agent more than him.

“I was filming a scene where I had to kiss Suzanne and instead of Brooke getting jealous or mad she actually critiqued my performance.”

“So?”

“So . . . I’m wrapped so deep in you that something like how I held Nicole’s hand hurt you. I’ll never do that again now that I know.

But I told you I would be envisioning making love to you to get into character.” I closed my eyes and felt the softness of his face on mine. “It was very convincing.” He nuzzled his face on my neck and I could feel his regret. It was almost tangible.

“It was hard. She really did taste awful. Like, I don’t know. It was just bad.” I noticed his hesitance, as if he were keeping something from me. “She’s lucky I didn’t kill her like I wanted to,” I said. “You’ll probably get her head cold now.” Ryan rolled his eyes at me but offered no more on the distaste she left behind. “I really

do like this jealous side of you. I have no doubt that your love for me is real.” I clutched his arm harder. My love for him ran bone deep.

At the end of the week, we were back at the cavernous soundstage, my initiation into a higher level of trust with my fiancé behind us.

Ryan spun on one leg and kicked with deadly accuracy, planting a heavy black boot directly into the chest of the evil villain, Victor Mordorf, sending him hurling through the air. Stunt actor Timothy Hughes landed on his back; the specially designed dining table buckled underneath his crashing weight and folded in half. And then Jonathan yelled,

“Cut!”

Next take, Ryan grabbed the front of Victor’s shirt, swinging several right-handed punches. I felt my breath hitch, my pulse quickened, as a twisted attraction in seeing my fiancé kick ass like some barbaric he-man sent intense arousal through my veins. The early morning weight training combined with his rock-climbing instruction was turning Ryan’s body into even more of a chiseled pack of muscle. And at this moment, that muscle looked very lethal—and sexy as hell.

I winced as Ryan performed his own stunt, taking a calculated fall from a return blow to his face. I was so worried about him taking these risks but at the same time I knew he was loving every minute of it.

Ryan tore the string of Christmas tree lights off the fake fireplace mantel on the set, lashing Victor Mordorf to the high-back chair in his parents’ supposed dining room.

Anger and hatred rolled and coiled off him as he tied the newly bloodied, dazed actor, wrapping the last two feet of cord around the actor’s throat. Ryan recited his lines, spitting fine mists of fake blood from his lips as he delivered his threats.

Seeing Ryan like this, full of icy hatred and raw emotion, snarling as he bound his captive securely, both fascinated and terrified me. Ryan wore a horrifying mask of bloodlust, letting go of his reserve and completely saturating himself in the role of Chase Sheffield’s tragic life of death and redemp-tion. This is what acting is all about.

It was through our role-play run-through of this same scene in our condo last night that we determined Ryan’s approach to binding someone to a chair with Christmas lights had to be executed in very specific steps. No one really considered how difficult it would be to tie a string of decorative lights into a knot. Ryan brought this up with Jonathan and the stunt coordinator, Paul Rothham, resolving the choreography before cameras started rolling.