Page 25 of The Encore Effect

“I’m more of a behind-the-scenes kind of girl.”

“Forget behind-the-scenes. Kat, you’re about to be the whole damn scene.”

Somehow that didn’t reassure her.

“You’ll be fine. Trust me. You are going to look so hot in the dress I picked out for you,” Jo said.

Kat eyed the garment bags hanging in the hotel room closet. She hadn’t had the courage to open hers yet. It had taken her thirty-three years to learn how to dress her plus-size figure, to find fabrics that would skim over the parts of her body she wanted to hide but that also wouldn’t show sweat or chafe when her skin rubbed against her clothing. She had no doubt that Jo could pick out a gorgeous dress—she had worked in the fashion industry, after all—but that was exactly the problem. Jo was an actual, literal model with a tiny waist and a flat stomach and a real-life thigh gap and Kat… wasn’t.

The lock on the door whirred and Beckett hesitated in the doorway as though he was waiting for an invitation to enter his own room—their room. Kat beckoned him in and looked away, swallowing around the ball of anxiety that formed in her throat out of nowhere.

“I have to go,” she said into the phone. “Becks just got back and we—”

She could hear the smile in Jo’s voice when she replied, “Say no more. Get your gorgeous ass glammed up and I’ll let you know when I get the pictures back. And Kat? Try to have a little fun.”

Kat hung up and gestured lamely to her phone. “That was Jo.”

Beckett nodded, his eyes dancing around the hotel room, pausing on their suitcases side by side on the luggage racks in the corner. The silence in the room scraped along Kat’s skin, a stinging sort of itch that felt all wrong. Once upon a time, they’d lived for the moments they could be alone, the privacy of a hotel room. Back then, the silence had felt like a blanket, soft and welcoming and safe, their own private cocoon. Now it was suffocating, heavy with all the things they didn’t say.

“She sent over our clothes for the photo shoot.” Kat tilted her chin towards the closet. “We should probably get ready. The photographer is meeting us in the lobby in a half hour.”

His eyes swung to the garment bags in the closet, then back to Kat. “Did you eat yet?” Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Dinner. Did you eat dinner?”

“Oh, no, not yet.”

“I made reservations.”

She blinked as her brain struggled to make sense of this new information. “You— what?”

“For after.” He grabbed his garment bag and ducked into the bathroom, the door closing softly behind him as Kat tried to figure out how this publicity stunt had turned into something that sounded an awful lot like a date.

But if she didn’t want Beckett walking out of the bathroom while she was still in her shapewear and granny panties, she had better get a move on and deal with the confusing flutter in her stomach later.

The dress was stunning, a floor-length, A-line in an oversized floral print of rich purples and greens with a slit up one side and a structural bodice. The gathered fabric at the bust plunged to a deep V-neck that made it impossible to wear one of her usual bras, though Jo seemed to have anticipated that issue given the small package of pasties that fell out of the garment bag. The dress moved like water, billowing out from the gathered empire waist when she walked. It was the most beautiful thing Kat had ever worn.

And then there were the accessories. A pair of simple nude heeled sandals. A small gold beaded clutch. A cluster of freshwater pearls on a long, thin gold chain, the pearls resting against her sternum and tickling the tops of her breasts. A tube of crimson lipstick.

She was just finishing applying the lipstick when the bathroom door swung open. Beckett’s eyes latched onto Kat, trailing slowly down the length of her body in a look so intense she could feel it move over her. Not that she wasn’t busy doing the exact same thing.

Beckett’s form-fitting black jeans clung to his muscular thighs, the charcoal gray vest he wore highlighting his trim waist and somehow emphasizing the broad set of his shoulders. He wore a green button down beneath the vest in the same shade as the leaves on her dress, the top two buttons un-done, drawing attention to the roses that climbed the column of his throat. He slid on his leather jacket and, at last, finished his perusal of her, his eyes lingering on the necklace before meeting hers again.

She looked away as her stomach flipped, some long-dormant, quiet part of her recognizing the heat in his eyes. They’d definitely need rules. Lots of rules. Rules they could decide on over dinner, which definitely wasn’t a date.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

He frowned and his eyes swept the hotel room again, finally landing on the bedside table where Kat had left her watch and day-to-day jewelry. He strode across the room and scooped up her earrings. Coming behind her in the mirror, he pressed the delicate jewelry into the palm of her hand, the brush of his fingertips over her wrist sending a shiver down her spine.

His palms settled, heavy and warm, on her hips, his hands gently tracing the hills of her body as he’d done so many times before. She watched him behind her in the mirror as she slid the gold posts through her earlobes, the concentration furrowing his brow, the heat of him at her back, his hands making their maddeningly slow circuit from her waist to the top of her thighs and back.

When the last earring was in place, he met her eyes in the mirror, one corner of his mouth quirking up in the kind of half smile that used to bring her to her knees. But not anymore. Now she was completely unaffected by his stupid handsome face and his perfect pouty lips. It was just the air conditioning kicking on that raised goosebumps along her arms, not the way his lip twitched, giving her a glimpse of the man he’d been. Before.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” he murmured.

Nope, she wasn’t affected at all by that gravelly voice, the ghost of his breath on her cheek, the memory of the last time he’d said those words to her. Not even the tiniest bit.

As if he could hear her thoughts, his grin widened, straight white teeth gleaming back at her like the big bad wolf. “Now we’re ready.”

Chapter Ten