I walked him through the steaming process, and he successfully frothed the milk on the fourth try. Together, we fixed two cups of regular coffee and two lattes while Ethan dished scrambled eggs and bacon onto plates.
The last up was Foster. To say that he wasn't a morning person was an understatement. Usually, he was so groomed and precise, but I'd found that he didn't get that way until after a cup of coffee or two.
He shuffled into the kitchen, blond hair still stuck up in every direction.Adorable, I thought. Without a word, I handed him a cup of black coffee. He would switch to something lighter and sweeter in a bit, but the first cup, according to Foster,hadto be black so that the caffeine could actually hit his system and wake him up.
“Thank you,” he mumbled and sipped at the mug.
I kissed his cheek. “Anytime, handsome.”
Of all of my men, Foster was an enigma. We had kissed, and he had been in control of someveryhot moments in the car on the drive to and from the studio, directing either Ethan or Callan in different ways to make me come, but he hadn’t shared my bed yet. Every touch between us was affectionate, but chaste. It was driving mecrazy.
We gathered around my breakfast table, and for the first few minutes, the only sound was the clink of plates and silverware. I kept sneaking glances at the men around me, trying to bite back the smile that kept trying to spread across my face.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” Ethan asked.
I thought about the day ahead. “I’m meeting my co-star today,” I said. “Ryan Jacobs. He’s finally through shooting that thriller in Vancouver.”
“Is he the love interest?” Callan looked to Ethan. “What’s his name? The bird doctor guy?”
Ethan knew way more about the Falconi comics than any of us... which was sad, considering that I was playing one of the leads. “Dr. Harris Rutledge,” Ethan said. “He’s a love interest who becomes a bad guy, and it’s their love that heals him.”
Callan wrinkled his nose. “That seems like poor writing.”
“Hush,” I said.
“Shut up, Cal,” Ethan said at the same time. “Their love story is what pushes her to become a hero,” he explained. “Without Rutledge, she wouldn’t have pursued trying to actually use her powers. Her need to rescue him formed the rest of her character arc.”
I was smiling before he even stopped talking. “You are a gigantic comic book nerd,” I told him. I reached over and put my hand on his. “But you are anexcellentresource for an actress who has very little interest in actually reading the comics for myself.”
He snorted. “That’s absolutely blasphemous.”
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, I've never met Ryan before, but Lee wants our first scene that we shoot to be the big love scene so we can 'get it out of the way'.”
Foster frowned. “You're supposed to go from meeting him to being in love with him in a matter of hours?” They were his first words of the day.
I shrugged as an answer. I wasn't unfamiliar with love scenes, but it was a little weird for me to not have any rapport with my co-star beforehand.
But I'd never worked with Lee Wynne before, either, and he was a very particular man. “Lee is bringing in an intimacy coordinator to help us lay out the scene more ‘realistically’.” Both Ethan and Callan laughed, and it was an entirely male sound, like they both were absolutely sure of something. “What? What's so funny?”
Ethan shook his head. “Sorry, Princess,” he said and didn't sound sorry in the least. “Just the idea thatyouneed help laying out a believable sex scene is kind of laughable.”
“It's a sex scene?” Foster asked. “Your big love scene?”
I looked at him. “Yeah, it happens right before I have the 'big transformation' into the superhero for the first time. It's supposed to juxtapose that event.” Foster's nose wrinkled.What's he so upset for? Callan and Ethan certainly don't mind. “It's a PG-13 movie. I'm not getting naked on the screen or anything.”Not that it should matter, I thought.I'm entitled to show my body however I want to.
He seemed to sense where my head was at... it was a super power of his. “I'm not concerned about your being naked, not in a movie,” he said. “But you haven't even met this Jacobs guy yet. How do we clear him if you're going to be rolling around with him on day one?”
“Clear him?” I asked. Foster glanced at Ethan, who seemed determined not to look at me. “What does that mean?”
“We’re supposed to make sure that you’re safe at work,” Foster said.
“Okay?”
Callan stepped in. He did that a lot when it came to softening what Foster or Ethan was trying to say. “We’ve looked into the people you’re working with,” he said. “Not to a creepy extent or anything, but enough to know that you’re safe with those people.”
I let his words settle and tried to decide whether I was angry about it. A part of me felt like it was a violation... but I hired them for the express purpose of protecting me. I knew that the studio had turned over the names of everyone on the project to them after they’d spoken to the execs about my stalker. It would be dumb to think that they were doing that just because I was sleeping with them.
“Why couldn’t you clear Ryan before? He’s on the cast list that the studio sent to you.”