Malibu Betrayals Read Online Free PDF Page A

him. A quick glance back across the table showed Sam busy, scrolling through her phone. “Yeah, well, she hasn’t been mad at you for the last two years.”
    “There’s no time like the present to start.”
    Gage dipped his chin in a nod. “Sure. The start of what exactly?”
    “Hell if I know, boy, but you’ll figure it out.”
    Martin had a look in his eye Gage couldn’t place, but he let it go. His stomach rumbled, and the lunch couldn’t be over soon enough—his beer was calling him.
    Martin left him to go chat up the rest of the crew, and Gage continued to watch Sam. It was something, anyway, her admitting to a connection. She could have denied it. Doing so would have shut him down completely. He narrowed his eyes. There might be something more still between them, something she didn’t want to or couldn’t completely let go of.
    He made his way around the table.
    Sliding into the chair at her left, he took a casual sip from the water glass, using all his control not to laugh as she snapped her head around, eyes wide at the sight of him.
    “Good evening, Sam.”
    “Hey.” Her voice was a bit breathless, and her eyes darted everywhere around the room but his face.
    He leaned back in the chair and settled his hands in his lap, calm and relaxed. At least that’s what she’d see. She had no reason to know his heart pounded in his chest, or controlling his breathing took a lot of effort.
    One of the biggest things he’d been learning was to quit looking back, and to move forward. There was no changing what had happened or hadn’t happened between them, but he was very interested in seeing what could happen.
    The crew filled in the rest of the seats and lunch turned into a low hum of conversation and clanking silverware. The crew got to know one another, the individual teams bolder with each other than they were with him or the leading lady. As a matter of fact, Gage’s eyes settled a time or two on Martin’s new assistant, Dani, finding her studying him so thoroughly she didn’t seem to notice that he’d noticed until he’d wave. She’d tense in her seat and then returned the wave with a grimace, turning her attention back to her dinner. He understood how it was, because he felt the same way when he’d first started out, finding himself star-struck more than once.
    Settling in to having Sam next to him, he devoured the food on his plate, very aware that she merely moved the food around hers. Why’d he find that so interesting?
    “You’ve been keeping busy.” Her soft voice raced shivers down his spine, and he gripped his napkin in his fist.
    “How do you mean?”
    “Your movies, what’s it been? Two a year?”
    He eyed her, not answering right away. So, she’d been paying attention. He swallowed his smug smile with another bite of food and then washed it down with water. “Give or take.” Though, not every film was truly blockbuster status, they’d still made the list simply because he was in them. A few disappointments for him, but the best way to succeed was to fail, so he’d take the good with the bad and consider it all success. In this industry, his sordid past put butts in the seats, and that was all the studios cared about.
    With a jerk of his chin, he nudged her. “So which ones have you seen?”
    She grabbed her water glass and gulped back half of it. “All of them.”
    Barely able to hear her mumble over the din of the crowd, he leaned forward. He’d heard her, but not only did he want to make sure, he wanted to hear it again. “What was that?”
    Her face flushed red to her hairline, and his gut tightened in response. She was embarrassed. He chuckled, a self-satisfied sound that would annoy her for sure. “All of them?”
    “I work in the industry. Of course I watched all of them,” she whispered.
    He grinned. “Of course. The industry.”
    She stared at him. He’d give a year’s salary to know what was going on in that beautiful head of hers. She had the darkest eyes.