Not that I minded.
He still looked good. Beyond good.
I laced my fingers behind my back to keep from reaching out and touching, but my imagination did not hesitate in envisioning how his skin might feel beneath my palms. Because if I was going to touch—even if it was just a fantasy—I was going to be putting my whole hands on him. Maybe my mouth too.
If I had the time, there was a long list of my body parts interested in touching his body parts.
It was completely inappropriate, but it was just in my head. What harm could there be in that?
“Sorry about that,” Gabe apologized again.
We both stood there for a moment. He made no motion to indicate he was going to put a shirt on, and I wasn’t going to prompt him to do so.
As far as I was concerned, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ogle one of the hottest up-and-coming stars of our time and I was going to ogle my brains out. Silently. Covertly.
I knew I was justifying my unprofessional thoughts, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure I could help it. He was just so handsome and my pulse was racing like I was being chased.
“Wow,” he said, almost under his breath. “Your eyes.”
I blinked.
“They’re very big,” he said.
It was the last thing I expected him to say.
And he said it as if he’d never seen eyes before. As if he might take my face in his hands and try to examine them close up, like an archeologist would with a fossil. I tilted my chin upward, my eyes—my very big eyes—meeting his straight on.
My heart felt a little like a live wire, jerking around in my chest, throwing off electrical currents. Could these currents be mutual? Did he believe the stereotype about female reporters? Did he think I was going to try to sleep with him? Did he want me to try to sleep with him?
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
Anything, I thought.
“Mmhmumph,” I said.
He tilted his head, his hair sliding across his forehead. I wanted to brush it to the side. Wanted to run my fingertips down the side of his face and trace the line of his jaw. Wanted to lick—
“Has anyone ever told you that you kind of look like one of those cat-clock things?” he asked.
When I didn’t answer, Gabe put his hands on either side of his face, opening his own eyes wide.
“You know—tick tock, tick tock?” He looked from side to side.
I knew what he was talking about—it was a decent impression—and felt a weird sort of relief at being compared to a plastic, kitschy clock. It made more sense than Gabe Parker, movie star, complimenting me. Or wanting to sleep with me.
It threw some much-needed cold water on my rampaging libido.
“How do you pronounce your name?” he asked, not waiting for a response.
I’d barely said one fully formed word since I’d arrived, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“My manager said Han-ni, but I wanted to make sure.”
My name was confusing for a lot of people. During my last interview—with a breezy starlet—she’d spent the entire time alternating between “Hannah” and “Tawney.” It made a weird sort of sense as my name was basically a combination of the two, and I hadn’t bothered correcting her.
“That’s fine,” I said.
Gabe frowned at me. “But I’m saying it wrong, aren’t I?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” I said.
“It bothers me,” he said. “It’s your name. I want to be able to say it correctly.”
Well.
“Like ‘knee,’ but with a ch. Chani,” I said, using the back of my throat to get the proper half-hacking, half-rolling sound.
As I did, a tiny bit of spit popped out of my mouth and arched in the air between us. Thankfully it fell before it came into contact with any part of Gabe’s person, and he was gracious enough not to comment on it.
I wanted to die.
“Chani,” he said. “Chani. Chani.”
He got it right on the second try, though I could have listened to him say my name all day long. Because he said it as if he was tasting it.
“My makeup artist on Tommy Jacks was named Preeti,” he said. “But everyone on the crew said Prit-ee instead of Pree-tee.”
He gave the puppy a good scratch under her chin and she snuggled up close, tucking her head against his chest. Lucky dog.
“She told me that she used to correct people but it never seemed to stick and after a while, she just got tired of trying.” Gabe shrugged. “I always think about that. How much it must suck to have your name constantly mispronounced.”