He waved his hand in dismissal. “I never expected that you’d tell me anyway. I know I’m not a virgin, so that’s out the window.” His blue eyes twinkled devilishly and Portia wasn’t sure whether he was making fun of himself or flirting with her, or perhaps both.
But she did know a slow heat seeped through her at the visual supplied by her recently activated imagination—O’Malley naked, thrusting between a woman’s naked thighs. “I’m sure. Many times over.”
O’Malley shrugged. “Many is a relative term. I’m not a player. And I can only hope you don’t slip in a transvestite like on that other show.” He grinned, and Portia smiled in return. Most drop-dead gorgeous men took themselves far more seriously than O’Malley.
“No surprises there.” The production crew had managed to save that show, but afterward the executive director, Burt Mueller, threatened to can the entire screening crew if another transvestite revealed him- or herself on one of his shows. In typical Burt Mueller fashion, he’d declared he wouldn’t become known as the Transvestite Forum Network. She reassured Rourke again. “They’re all real women.”
“For certain?”
“For certain.”
“That’s good to know,” he said.
She bet it was. Portia’d seen a few looks pass between some of the male crew that clearly said they didn’t want to think about the point when a guy might figure out the “woman” carried the same equipment they did.
“You still haven’t answered my question. Why don’t you like me?” Despite his easy smile, his eyes were serious.
“I don’t dislike you.” And she didn’t. Not exactly. She was wary. When he’d been on the set of The Last Virgin, she’d dismissed him, categorizing him the way she did all narcissistic men. But O’Malley refused to be dismissed or categorized and that wasn’t a good thing. His low-key charm and good looks raised Portia’s red flags. It was akin to instinctively knowing a pretty red berry you found in the woods might look good and taste good but wasn’t necessarily good for you. However, she was supposed to be working with him and keeping him happy. She reiterated her earlier assertion. “I don’t dislike you at all.”
“I think you’re splitting hairs.”
O’Malley was more discerning than she’d given him credit. “I have a job to do. I can’t allow myself to get too close to our cast members.”
“I just feel like you know everything about me and I know nothing about you.”
She shook her head. “Contestants pretty much agree to open their lives up to the public. It’s the price of celebrity. But there’s the difference. You’re a participant. I’m behind the scenes. And I like it that way.” She personally thought anyone who agreed to come on to one of these shows wasn’t dealing with a full deck anyway, which was statistically frightening when you considered the staggering number of applicants flooding the screening sites. Andrea and Zach from The Last Virgin had been exceptions. She’d heard through the studio grapevine that Sarah Donovan and Luke Richards from Surviving Sarah and Charlie Cuesta and Sam Ryan from The Great Chase weren’t flakes either. Thank goodness, though, for all those other quirky people in the world because it meant she had a job.
“You’re here for a love fest. I’m here to make sure it goes well for you. End of story.” She smiled, but they both knew she meant it.
Honestly, if she hadn’t known better, she’d swear hurt flashed in his eyes before he answered her smile with his own. “You’re absolutely right. I apologize for overstepping boundaries.”
Now she felt even more awkward, as if she’d extracted an apology that wasn’t owed. “Don’t worry about it.” She checked her watch, relieved to see it was time to end this. “Okay, I should let you get back to your room to shower and change.”
How many times had she said that to a man in similar circumstances and never thought a thing about it? What was wrong with her that she suddenly had a disturbingly erotic image of O’Malley naked, dripping wet, surrounded by a thick cloud of steam? And found it totally, inappropriately arousing.
She glanced back down at the clipboard in her hands, not because there was anything important there, but because it gave her somewhere to look other than at him. “Wardrobe will be along to your room in an hour or so. And I’ll meet you there in an hour and a half to go over any last-minute questions.”
O’Malley’s smile held an edge. “Ah, yes, so you can expertly orchestrate my—what was it?—love fest.” He gave her a nod of dismissal and walked away.
Portia stood in the middle of the room and watched his broad-shouldered retreat, until the door closed behind him.
“So, are you the newest member of the fan club, Portia?” Terry called from across the room, his voice teasing.
Startled, she almost dropped her clipboard. Damn, she’d been so caught up in watching him walk across the room, she’d forgotten about Terry and Jeff.
“You boys know better than that. I don’t do fan clubs.”
Bottom line. She orchestrated. He participated. And that was that.
“HOLD STILL for one more second…” Cindy from wardrobe tugged his black tie into place. She stepped back and surveyed him with a critical eye. A knock sounded on his bedroom door.
“Come in,” he called over his shoulder. Portia had said she’d arrive in an hour and a half. She was punctual. Behind him, his bedroom door opened and closed.
He knew without turning that it was Portia. Yeah, she was scheduled to be here, but he could feel her. Tiny hairs stood up on the back of his neck and adrenaline surged through him.
Cindy tweaked his tux jacket and smiled. “Your mama will be proud and those women don’t stand a chance.” Cindy, with her cheerful attitude and nonstop chatter, rather reminded him of his mother. “Honey, you are yum-my.” She winked outrageously at him and looked over his shoulder. “Makes you wish you had a spoon so you could eat him up doesn’t it?”
Laughing—how could you not laugh at such outrageous hyperbole—and she was obviously teasing him rather than flirting—he turned to face Portia.
Her answering smile struck him as a bit forced. “He’s lucky I left my spoon in my room.”
Her cool gaze flickered over him, having just the opposite effect on his temperature. Forget a spoon, he mentally urged her. His body tightened and his heart pounded at the thought of her mouth against his skin, her scent mingling with his. What was it about her that drew him to her? She wasn’t beautiful in the accepted sense of the word, but she was arresting, exotic, intriguing, frustrating—and she got under his skin.
Cindy’s two-way radio went off. Tamsin, the lead makeup artist, came across after the initial squawk. “Cindy, Ms. Freeman needs you ASAP.”
Rourke had skimmed through the dossiers again, after his shower and before Cindy arrived. Lissa Freeman was heiress to a mind-boggling real-estate fortune, who’d spent the last year hanging out in Europe. What the dossier didn’t include, but the media had more than adequately covered, was the havoc Lissa had wrecked along the way. She was a dark-haired, petulant time bomb given to explosions when things didn’t go her way. Of course, he as well as anyone knew you couldn’t and shouldn’t believe all the media hype.
The radio clicked again. “I don’t need you ASAP, I needed you five minutes ago.”
Okay. Maybe you could believe the media. That peremptory tone