Bought For One Night: The Sheikh's Offer by Holly Rayner Read Free Book Online Page B

hearing me talk like that. “Come now, all of your work is wonderful.”
     
    “I think that’s just because you’re biased in favor of me,” I teased.
     
    He opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. “I suppose you’re right.”
     
    “Not all movies have to be ground-breaking. This one sure isn’t. But it had a lot of raw emotion, and the dialogue was such perfectly-written noir. I couldn’t pass it up.”
     
    “It’s certainly one of my favorites,” he agreed. “You’re right about the strength of the emotions. It pulls you in and holds you tight.”
     
    I smiled at him. “Thanks, that’s nice to hear.”
     
    The plot began to rev up and we fell into silence, focusing on the film. For the first few minutes, it was hard maintaining my concentration. I was still a little shell-shocked at the reveal of the movie theater. I thought for sure Zane had been about to introduce me to his bedroom and I’d be turning around for another twelve-hour flight back home—probably stuffed in the coach section of some normal airline this time. I’d been so sure that he had malicious intentions; I wasn’t sure what to do with the revelation that I had been wrong.
     
    The Sheikh, it turned out, was just a nice, lonely guy at the top of the world who wanted to watch movies with someone. He’d been a perfect gentleman every second of the day so far, and my instincts told me it would stay that way. Some men turned, sure; some were masters of the art of two-faced deception and could play the gentleman for weeks, even, before the cracks started to show, like Jack had. I had a clear head this time, however, and was determined never to be fooled by a man like that again. My gut was sure that Zane wasn’t one of those guys; he was genuinely sweet.
     
    I relaxed and sank into the comfy black leather of the chair to watch myself chase down a serial killer while I sat next to a sheikh. It was during moments like this that I wondered how I ever wound up with this crazy life.
     
    After the end of the movie, we both felt that same force boiling up in our blood, and all we wanted to do was watch more movies. Our conversation during the last one had been peppered with wonderful discussion about the craft. The Sheikh surprised me with his extensive knowledge of the industry, and spoke like a true filmmaker. Plus, he was all too happy to hear my stories from the production, including how our relatively green wunderkind director got frustrated when one of the infant actors couldn’t make it, and wanted to replace the scene with a baby doll, until I had a laughing fit when I saw how lifeless the doll looked in the scenes.
     
    “You saved the movie,” he told me as we stood up to stretch our muscles. “It would have ruined the entire tension of the climax if all the audience could focus on was a stiff plastic baby in your arms.”
     
    “I couldn’t believe he was even considering using it!” I laughed. “He just got so impatient when things went wrong. He was too young to understand that on a set, you’re lucky when things go right. It takes a lot of years and a lot of sets to finally get that through your head.”
     
    “I can imagine,” he said. “Sometimes I forget that you’ve been acting for so much of your life.”
     
    With raised eyebrows and a dramatic sigh, I nodded. “Basically half my life. I got my first TV movie when I was fifteen; I saw far more movie sets than classrooms in my teen years. But some of these new guys can just waltz right in and grab a major studio gig without any of that experience and work. The movie might turn out just fine, but they almost always get a reputation for being a dramatic baby to work with on-set. It’s a weird phenomenon.”
     
    “Because they are dramatic babies,” agreed Zane. “Too obsessed with their own vision and too inexperienced to know any better or cooperate to make it right. And then they’re handed millions of dollars to make their vision come