What the hell was she doing? She would be the world’s biggest asshole if she tricked Ben into a very public and very fake relationship with her.

“My dad is doing well—Ben, wait.” He turned to her, but she couldn’t even look at him. “Hold on. I need to . . .”

She couldn’t do this to him.

They were almost at the bar. She couldn’t go in there with him. The photographer might already be there. She turned around.

“Come to my suite instead of the bar?” She gave Ben a big smile. She couldn’t let him know what she’d almost done. “I changed my mind, I’d rather hang out there. Are you hungry? We can get room service! Some champagne, to celebrate the end of the shoot?”

Ben looked confused, but he turned around immediately.

“Sure, that works for me.”

They walked back toward the elevator. Anna walked faster and faster, convinced that, at any moment, the photographer might come walking down the hall and see them and pull out his camera.

But thank God, they got in the elevator without anyone recognizing her.

Anna didn’t look at Ben on the ride back downstairs—she just wanted to not be in public and to be back in her room where she could forget she’d ever thought this idea was good and order some snacks and have sex with Ben one last time and then go back to L.A. and make up a story to tell Simon about why his plan hadn’t worked out.

When the doors opened, she swept out of the elevator and walked as fast as she could to her suite at the end of the hall. She pulled her key card out of her bag and opened the door.

“Okay, great!” She picked up the phone as soon as they got inside. “What do you want to eat? Charcuterie plate? Cheese plate? They have great wings here, too!”

Ben hardly even looked at the room service menu she thrust in front of his face.

“All of that sounds good,” he said.

She nodded.

“Great. Great.” She pressed a button on the phone. “Hi! Can I get the cheese plate, the charcuterie plate, and an order of the wings? And champagne! Yes, yes, the Moët is fine, great. Two glasses, two plates. Thank you!”

Okay. They had champagne coming, now she could just relax and have a nice night with Ben here in her suite and she would forget that she’d been about to trick him into a fake relationship with her.

She walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him.

“Hi. I’m glad I have you all to myself.”

She pulled his head down to kiss him. He kissed her back but pulled away after a little while.

“Anna. What’s wrong?”

She took a step back.

“Nothing’s wrong. Why do you think something is wrong?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“You wanted to come back to the room pretty fast, you know. And you seemed weird in the elevator. What is it?”

She reached for his shirt.

“I realized I’d rather be alone with you. I’m heading back to L.A. tomorrow night and this is our last night together.” She slipped first one button open, then another. “I just couldn’t keep my hands off you anymore.”

He leaned down to kiss her. See, there we go. That was always the way to distract a man—tell them you couldn’t wait to get into their pants.

But then he pulled away again.

“So the thing is, I know when a woman invites me back to her hotel room because she can’t stand another minute without pulling my clothes off, and whatever happened in that hallway up there was not that. I know we don’t know each other all that well, but give me a little credit. You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong if you don’t want to, but don’t lie to me.”

Anna dropped her hands to her sides.

Ben stood there and looked at her. He just waited.

Damn it. Ben was so easygoing, so charming, that she kept forgetting how well he understood her.

She cleared her throat and let out a breath.

“Okay. Okay, um . . . Can we sit down?”

Ben sat down on one of the couches, and Anna sat next to him. She tried to figure out how to say this.

After a minute of silence, Ben turned to her.

“I can just go. If that’s what you want. It’s okay. I get it.”

She shook her head hard. She suddenly knew that was the last thing she wanted.

“No. No, please don’t go. I just . . . I was trying to figure out how to say this but I think I just have to dive in. You know how my manager came in the other day? When we were having breakfast here?” Ben nodded. “Right, okay, so. Well, he knows me pretty well, and he figured out there was something going on between the two of us.”

Ben raised his eyebrows.

“And . . . he was upset about it?”

This story wasn’t going to make sense to Ben, was it?

“No, to the contrary. He thought it was great. He . . . actually he wanted me to let the world think you were my boyfriend. To get more publicity for me and my career and have people wanting to know what was next for me, and that it would get me the role I’m in the running for. The one I told you about, the one I really want.”

Ben turned his whole body to look at her, his eyes all scrunched up in that way they did when he was trying to understand.

“Wait, say that again? Explain how I come into this?”

Anna let out a breath. At least she’d started.

“You know how we talked the other day about that movie I want, the Liz Varon movie? And how the studio is the holdup?” Ben nodded. “Okay. Simon thinks if I get some good headlines it will help me get it, and that stories about me and my hot new boyfriend will be just what I need.”

He grinned when she called him hot, thank goodness. Flattery was always a good idea.

“Please thank Simon for me,” he said. “But . . . were you going to . . .”

The flattery wasn’t enough for him to miss that key point, though. She might as well confess everything.

“No. I wasn’t going to tell you,” she said. “Simon arranged for a photographer to be up in the bar tonight to get some pictures of us together, and then the plan was to get you to come to L.A. to visit me next weekend and let you think it was just because I wanted you to be my boyfriend and we could be out in public together some, even come to the Vigilantes premiere with me, and we thought that might be enough to be the career boost I need.”

Ben didn’t say anything.

She almost told him why she hadn’t planned to tell him the truth—that Simon thought he might sell the story, or blackmail her, or something. But if she said that, Ben would think she didn’t trust him. And she suddenly realized what she should have realized before: she trusted him completely.