She looked down at their hands entwined together, and knew he already held so much more of her than she thought she’d ever be able to give him.

Now—finally—she wanted to give him even more.

She looked up into his dark eyes, so beautiful, and so full of love. For her. “I don’t want to be a mystery anymore. Not with you.”

His hands didn’t tighten on hers. Instead, his thumbs stroked over her palms, sending both warmth and shivers through her at the same time.

“I’m here, Valentina. Now and always.” He continued to stroke over her skin, slowly, surely, steadily. “All you have to do is let me in.”

He made it sound so simple.

And then, suddenly, she realized it was.

“My mother was different when my father was alive.” As she began to speak, he pulled her closer, so that her legs came over his and she could feel his heart beating from where he was holding her hands against his chest. “She was always beautiful, but she was warm, too. It wasn’t until my father died that I realized just how much of that warmth had come through him.” She made herself keep thinking back to those first months after her father had died. “And after he was gone, it was like she crumbled away, one layer at a time, until she was gone, too.”

“You lost them both.”

Smith’s gentle words surprised her, then a moment later, resonated, even as she said, “She was still there, just—” She took a shaky breath. “The first actor she dated was barely a few years older than me. That was weird enough, but then one time when she was taking a long time getting ready, he—”

She stopped and shuddered as Smith scowled.

“What did he do? Who is he?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. And no one. He was all talk, innuendo. But I think if I had been willing...” Disgust came at her now just as hard and fast as it had those times her mother’s too-young actor boyfriends had come on to her.

“Did you tell your mother what he said? What he tried to take from you?”

“No,” she said softly, “I couldn’t figure out how or what I would have said. And I didn’t want her to feel bad, not when she was just doing her best to deal with her own grief. It was easier—” She paused for a moment, hating to have to use that word, but she wouldn’t hide the truth from Smith anymore, not even for pride’s sake. “—easier just to pull back. And to focus on my worries about Tatiana, about all those strange men my mother was dating coming in and out of the house. My sister was so pretty even then, and so innocent, that it was a relief to leave school and the dorms to move back in with them and take over managing her business affairs so that I could get her to all of her auditions and jobs.” She reassured Smith, “No one ever tried anything with Tatiana. Honestly, the only reason I think they ever came on to me was because I was their age.”

“You know that’s not the only reason, Valentina. You told me once that I could have any woman in the world.” He stared into her eyes with such intensity that she couldn’t possibly look away. “I want you.”

Valentina couldn’t have possibly held back the words, “I want you, too. I just wish—”

Again, she knew it would be easier not to say any of this to Smith, but painful experience with her mother had taught her that easier wasn’t better. All trying to avoid pain in the short run did was make everything hurt worse later...and become pretty much impossible to fix.

Only, while her mother had flitted around her and her sister’s lives, Smith was right here, holding her hand, letting Valentina spill everything out.

“I would never ask you to change what you do, or who you are,” she told him. “I love you too much to even think of stopping you from sharing your incredible gifts with the world. But I’ve been on plenty of sets over the past ten years. And I’ve seen what happens, how inevitable it all seems when men and women who’ve professed their love to other people end up falling for their co-stars, how marriages happen too fast and then end even quicker once they move on to other projects on other sides of the world.”

“You’re right, my work is important to me,” he told her. “So are you. So important that I don’t want to make big life and career decisions all alone anymore. From here on out, I want to make them with you.”

Even as his words had warmth filling her from head to toe, she had to tell him, “But it scares me that we met on a film set. And that it all happened so fast. It’s so hard to keep a normal relationship together. I don’t know how many Hollywood relationships have ever really worked apart from Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe he could want her. She could no longer deny his desire for her, or hers for him. No, she was simply trying to make sure that both of them went into this relationship with their eyes wide open.

“The first couple of years after my breakout movie were difficult to adjust to,” Smith told her. “Really difficult. I loved acting, and I knew if I was really good at it I’d become famous, but I had no idea what it would actually be like to lose my privacy. To have the press calling up my family and friends to ask them questions about me. I’m not going to lie to you and say that we won’t have more hurdles, that there won’t be a thousand other journalists and photographers trying to make a buck by sticking their noses into our relationship.” Determination held ground with love on Smith’s face as his voice remained as steady as hers had been shaky. “But I’ve waited my whole life for somebody like you, for a woman I wanted to be with forever, and I refuse to give you up. I was afraid you’d never come, that there’d never be a woman who didn’t want me because of who I am, what I have, who I know. Until you.”

He lifted her hands to his mouth and gently pressed his lips to each of them before saying, “Tell me what love means to you, Valentina.”

She didn’t have to think. “You.”

His mouth found hers then, at once gentle and firm, sweet and passionate. If anyone had asked her before Smith if those contrasts could possibly coexist, she would have known the answer, been utterly certain that when she finally let herself love it would make sense...and that she would be in control of her heart, from the first beat to the last.

But every moment they’d been together, Smith confounded her expectations...and exceeded what she’d believed to be the limits of her heart.

“I know we can love each other enough to make our relationship matter more than anything else ever has,” Smith said. “Yes, Hollywood is crazy, but even though I just broke rule number one today by bashing in a photographer’s face,” he said with a slightly rueful half-grin, “I’m convinced we can transcend the pitfalls from here on out.”

He got down on his knees before her. “I want you by my side not only for red carpet events, but for the nights when we’re both exhausted from a long day on set and fall into bed, too tired to do anything but hold hands and fall asleep. I want to kiss the sugar off your lips while you’re eating sweets for breakfast. And I want you there to drag into the shower with me to make up for not having the energy to make love to you the night before.”

Nothing Smith had said was flashy. There were no big diamonds blinding her, no expensive promises or glittering, sweeping vistas before them. He wasn’t like any other man she’d ever met, and he’d definitely broken the movie-star mold by being beautiful not only on the outside, but on the inside, too. He would never hurt her or her family, just as he would never hurt his own family.

Weeks ago she’d asked him why love couldn’t just be as pure as two people who realized that they couldn’t live as well, or as happily, apart as they could together.

Now she knew it could be.

Finally finding her voice, Valentina put her hands on either side of his face and told him, “You can have it, Smith. All of it. And I want you there, too, to grill Tatiana’s new boyfriend with me. I want you to sit and read the paper with me on a Sunday morning. I want to sit with you under a blanket on the couch in front of a fire and make puzzles of every dog and cat in the family.”

And as he picked her up and carried her over to the bed, food still forgotten, they fulfilled their most important hunger of all.

For love.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Three weeks later…

Valentina stepped out of her office on the Gravity set for the last time and took a few moments to take in the activity and buildings that had ended up feeling more like a home than a temporary film set. Tomorrow morning all of the lights, temporary walls, and furniture would be emptied out, leaving the space bare for its next occupant.

Everything would change again for the cast and crew who had worked on the film. Some, like Smith, would be moving on to post-production work. Others would take a much-needed vacation. Most of the actors would go back to Hollywood to audition for their next role, or to take their place on the next set. Tatiana had just committed to star in a major historical piece set in Boston...but for the very first time in a decade, Valentina wouldn’t be going with her.

It made her chest hurt thinking about not seeing her sister every single day, even though she knew it was the right thing for both of them.

She needed to give her sister her wings. And, Valentina thought as she caught sight of Smith walking toward her smiling that devastatingly sexy smile she could never get enough of, she finally admitted to herself that she needed to give herself room to let her wings unfurl all the way, too.

Only, she hadn’t expected to see her mother beaming at her a moment later from beside Smith. Nor had she thought to still see her mother’s boyfriend, Dave, with them. Not when he was several weeks past her mother’s usual sell-by date for actor boyfriends.

“Oh honey, wasn’t it so sweet of Smith to invite us to the final day of filming?”

It was. So sweet that Valentina immediately felt ashamed for not thinking of it herself. Smith slid his fingers through hers and pulled her against him to give her a kiss, one that lingered far longer than Valentina’s previous rules of PDA dictated, but was completely irresistible all the same, even though anyone around them could snap a picture and send it off to a tabloid.

The strange truth was, however, that a part of her was glad that they’d been through the wringer with the paparazzi and the press right out of the gate when their relationship was brand new. Because even though it hadn’t been fun to watch the tabloids run pictures of her and Smith, or the way they’d tried—and failed—to make Smith look like a bad guy, she’d survived it. And knowing that she could survive it again made her bound and determined not to worry about whether one of their kisses ended up in the press.

She knew her skin was flushed, not from embarrassment but pleasure, when he finally pulled his mouth from hers.

“Can I get either of you anything?”

He had asked both her and her mother the question, but she knew from the way he squeezed her hand that he was making sure she was okay being left alone with her mother. When they told him they were fine, he lifted her hand to his mouth for one more kiss before steering Dave away with him.

Valentina and her mother watched the two men go, until they turned a corner and were out of sight.

“My friends can’t stop talking about how one of my daughters caught a movie star,” Ava Landon said on a happy little sigh. “I still can’t believe you’re dating Smith Sullivan. “

Normally, Valentina would have tried not to feel hurt by her mother’s disbelief. She would have told herself that it was better to just let it roll off. But she knew why Smith had asked her mother to come to the set today. It wasn’t just so that Ava could cheer Tatiana on the last day of filming, but because family meant the world to him.

And he loved her so much he wanted her family to be whole again.