“Your fans come out in masses! Thanks for stopping by here tonight. How have you been?” Jimmy asked Ryan, trying to proceed with the interview. The studio audience finally simmered down just barely enough for us to hear them speak to each other.

“Good! Real good, thanks!” Ryan replied. “Thanks for having me.”

“You know, you’re not the only one who can make women scream like that,” Jimmy teased. “Now if I could just get the women to stop screaming obscenities at me, I’d have this thing set!”

The crowd laughed at his joke.

Ryan snickered uncomfortably and took a sip from the cup they had setting there for him. “Sometimes they scream obscenities at me, too,” he admitted.

“I heard you had quite a reception by one of the fans when you arrived here,” Jimmy prompted.

“Yeah, I had just gotten out of the car and I was signing a few pictures and whatnot and I looked up and this girl lifted her shirt and flashed her . . . at me.” Ryan motioned, appearing both excited and appalled at the same time.

I gasped slightly at hearing the news that some girl showed her breasts to my fiancé.

“Did she want you to sign them?” Jimmy repeated Ryan’s motion.

“I honestly don’t know if she said anything at all. She was jumping up and down and screaming.” He laughed. “It was hard to hold a conversation with things, um, bouncing like that.”

Jimmy laughed and continued on. “That’s funny! So how are things? I think the last time you were here was about six months ago and we were talking about Seaside.”

The women in the audience went berserk from hearing that word.

Ryan looked out at the audience, shaking his head in amazement at their devotion.

“And I can see that the fan reaction has tripled since then. Wow!” Jimmy rubbed his ear. “It’s like pressing a hot button. Anytime I want to get my wife in the mood, I just burst into the bedroom and yell ‘Seaside’ and she instantly starts tearing her clothes off.”

Ryan laughed uncomfortably. “Glad to hear it works for you.”

“Of course it helps when I’m wearing my ‘Charles’ mask. I mean you and I are built so much alike that she can hardly tell the difference,” Jimmy joked, noticeably rolling his eyes to get a laugh out of the crowd.

“So how’s life been treating you?” Jimmy asked.

“Things are great. Really great! I just came from Miami, where I’ve been shooting a movie called Thousand Miles. It’s a bit of a thriller.”

That’s it, honey, pitch your movies. Keep the tempo going.

“And in like another two weeks I’ll be back on set in Vancouver for my next project,” Ryan said, nervously scratching his neck.

“And what’s that?” Jimmy asked.

“It’s a film called Slipknot. Jonathan Follweiler is directing it. This will be my first time working on a project with him, which is very exciting. And I get to do a little rock climbing, which I’m really looking forward to trying. It’s something that I’ve never done before. A little danger.”

“I hear you’ve been practicing for it, though. Climbing on tables and stuff?” Jimmy goaded Ryan with his comment, raising his eyebrows and tapping the note cards he held in his hand on the desk to get a rise out of the audience.

Laughter exploded all around us. I watched to see if Ryan’s expression would change, and sure enough, he flushed with embarrassment.

Jimmy quickly fired off his next question. “Now is the second Seaside finished or are you still working on that, too?”

Ryan fidgeted, adjusted his posture in the chair. “No, we’re finished. We wrapped in December.”

As if on cue, the audience screamed again.

“And where did you film that?”

“We filmed this one in a little town called Seaport in Rhode Island. It’s a beautiful place right on the coast.”

My breath hitched.

“And . . . what did you do while you were there? Meet anyone special?” Jimmy asked with the inflection of a nosey mother.

Ryan’s mouth opened and closed a few times; he appeared at a loss for words as he nervously scratched his forehead and squirmed in his chair.

Like a flash, in fast-forward I envisioned Ryan saying nine different answers, one right after the other.

My hopes rested on the one where he points at me and tells the world that he’s madly in love.

“We met a lot of nice people there,” he admitted slyly, smiling out at the audience when they screamed their excitement again. Ryan glanced over in my direction and, for a brief moment, I think our eyes met. “Everyone was great to us.”

I smiled proudly at my future husband.

“So, Ryan, you know everyone wants to know so I’m just going to ask. There are all these rumors flying around and pictures of you climbing on tables. So please—put these poor women out of their misery already and tell us. Are you an engaged man now?”

My fingers reflexively clenched the armrest as I held every bit of oxygen in my lungs, waiting . . .

anticipating. Jimmy had defied the interview agreements and put Ryan on the spot.

Ryan smirked, looking bashful and guilty, and for a moment I thought he was just going to blurt it out, as if the news he held so privately would just gush from his lips.

As quickly as it came, I saw the exact moment when it left.

“When aren’t I engaged?” Ryan bantered, trying to be funny. “Let’s just say I’m very, very happy and in a very good place in my life.”

The audience responded with a few outbursts and claps, but that was that—a fleeting moment—gone.

Not one mention about his personal life or the woman he pledged his undying love to from the top of a barroom table in front of his parents, my friends, and a crowd of strangers.

Physical disappointment pricked like a thousand needles into my arms, my chest, finally forcing my reluctant lungs to exhale.

Why didn’t he just . . . ?

Janelle looked at me with apologetic eyes, apparently feeling sorry for me. I slid my eyes away, refraining from engaging her pity.

After all this time, after all the reports and press, after the printed speculation of our engagement, I was still a part of his life to be publicly disavowed.

Chapter 3

Atonement

“Wow,” Ryan breathed out, setting his dark gray suit coat down over the chair when I came out of the bedroom.

“What?” I asked reflexively. I wasn’t sure if he liked what he saw or not, considering I had just spent the last two hours being painted, brushed, curled, and sprayed. I felt like an overdone walking makeup ad.

I smoothed my hands across the bodice of my strapless gown to assure that everything was in place.

The wardrobe stylist had selected a black satin and chiffon sheath, overlaid with fine silver lace by Versace. It had a high slit to show a little thigh and flowed like water over my curves. A teardrop diamond pendant and matching earrings finished off the look.

“You are absolutely stunning,” he continued breathlessly, pacing each word as if to give it proper emphasis. His swagger and smoldering eyes told me that I wasn’t the only one having naughty thoughts about stripping each other bare. He was absolutely beautiful dressed up. My desire to rend the shirt right off his back and roll my tongue around on his muscular chest had me hungry and blushing.

“What do you think?” He seemed unsure of his attire, tugging at his vest to straighten it. “Does this look okay?”

It wasn’t the first time I had seen him in a suit, but tonight in a three-piece, custom-tailored, charcoal-gray Armani he looked devastatingly handsome. I nodded emphatically, distracted by thoughts of him wearing nothing but that white dress shirt at some point in the very near future. Opened instead of buttoned to display every hard line of his chest and abs. I straightened the knot of his black-patterned necktie and smiled. “I think you look like a gorgeous movie star.”