He disconnected and swore as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. Rubi pressed her lips together to hold back laughter.
On the mat, Wes shook out his arms and started jumping on his toes, warming up for more work. He planted his feet wide and swung his arms across his chest. “Keaton,” he called. “Let’s go, dude. ”
“What’s going on?” Bolton asked, stopping beside Rubi, hands on his hips.
Wes waved him closer. The production staff was trickling back in, camera and sound guys messing with their equipment.
Keaton took the mat across from Wes and brought his fists up like a boxer. Wes mirrored him but spoke to Bolton quietly, with an undertone of steel. “I’m shooting your scenes today. ”
Keaton took a swing, and Wes received the hit like a pro, head whipping, body twisting, feet stumbling. Keaton came at him with an upper cut. Wes’s head snapped up, and he fell back a step.
“I’ll keep the face shots to a minimum. ” Wes and Keaton circled each other. “So get your ass home and sleep off your hangover. If you’re not sober and ready to work tomorrow, I might just take over your whole fucking role. ”
“What the hell?” Bolton sputtered, his face reddening with anger. “Who the fuck died and made you boss?”
“Chamberlin. If you have a problem, take it up with him. ”
Keaton twirled and kicked at Wes’s head. Wes ducked and moved in for a body shot. He was so smooth, so confident. And so freaking hot.
Sex when we want to fuck and friends the rest of the time.
Rubi’s hunger surged to life. How long would that kind of arrangement last? But more importantly, what would happen when it ended?
Keaton crumpled with a grunt, stumbled back, and slammed his body against the concrete. Even standing only a few yards away, knowing it was fake, Rubi’s stomach cramped with each hit.
Keaton swung his arm around Wes’s neck, his handsome face in a grimace as he pretended to choke the life from Wes.
“You want to do all the work, fine,” Bolton said. “I’m still the one who gets paid. ” He turned away from them and covered his dented ego with a superior grin and a swagger on his way out.
Rubi refocused on the mat, just as Keaton hooked his left fist at Wes. Rubi sucked in a breath, but Wes leaned back, gripped Keaton’s arm and threw him. Keaton twisted three times in the air before he hit the mat.
“Now that’s a fucking fight scene. ” Danny straightened, grinning at Rubi. “I’d better get that man a costume. Looks like we’re going to get some real filming done today. ”
Seven
“What is wrong with you?” Lexi frowned up at Rubi from where she knelt in front of her. She held straight pins between her teeth and one between her fingers poised to poke the lingerie Rubi wore. “Did you take espresso shots on your way here? If you don’t stop fidgeting, you’re going to become a pin cushion. ”
Rubi planted her hands on her hips, took a deep breath, and blew it out. That didn’t help the knot at the center of her body, but she managed to find stillness.
“Hands down,” Lexi ordered.
Rubi rolled her eyes and dropped her arms.
Lexi tugged the fabric of the panties at Rubi’s hip. Jax’s rich voice floated up to the loft from where he sat at the desk downstairs in the main studio of LaCroix Designs, Lexi’s couture wedding dress storefront, talking on the phone. Lexi took the extra fabric at Rubi’s hip between her fingers, pinned it, then measured it with the tape measure hanging around her hip and removed the pin, jotting the numbers on a tablet.
“Quarter turn,” Lexi said. “You’re going to make it to see the house day after tomorrow, right?”
Rubi crossed her arms to keep them out of Lexi’s way. “Yes. How many does this make now?”
Lexi shot her a look from her spot on the floor and muttered around the pins between her lips, “Eight. ”
Jax wanted Lexi to move in with him, but his Malibu house was too far from Lexi’s studio to be practical. He’d talked her into looking at houses with him, but the whole thing made Lexi as jittery as Wes made Rubi. In this way, they were similar. Their scare-levels of commitment might differ—for Lexi it was the financial commitment, for Rubi, the emotional commitment—but the fear was the same.
“What’s going on with you and Wes?”
Rubi’s jitters returned, and she had to fight to keep still. “I don’t know. It’s…maddening. He’s maddening. I keep pushing him away, and he finds all kinds of manipulative ways to get even closer. He’s a conniving little shit. ”
Lexi laughed as Rubi made another quarter turn and Lexi smoothed her fingers across the lace band over Rubi’s hips. “You like him. ”