Read Online How to Sleep with a Movie Star by Kristin Harmel - Free Book Online

Donatelli, who had set up this meeting, but I was put through directly to her voice mail. Apparently, she wasn’t up either.
    Five minutes later, after I’d grumpily waved away yet another attempt by the obsequious waiter to bring me another cappuccino, my cell phone rang. The caller ID said “Unavailable.” I was sure it was Ivana calling back.
    “Hello?” I snapped, knowing that my voice must have sounded almost as peeved as I was beginning to feel.
    “Claire?” The male voice wasn’t the one I was expecting, but it sounded vaguely familiar all the same. It was far too deep and husky to belong to Tom. But there was something about the way he softened the
r
sound in “Claire” that rang a bell.
    “Yes . . .” I said slowly, still trying to place the somehow familiar intonation.
    “It’s Cole.” He cleared his throat, and I could feel my eyebrows arch upward in surprise. “Um, Cole Brannon,” he clarified, as if I might be receiving calls from another man named Cole. Well, this is a first, I thought huffily, squaring my shoulders in annoyance. I’d never actually had a celebrity call me
himself
to cancel, or blow me off, or whatever it was he was about to do.
    “Hi,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say other than
Where the hell are you?
But that wouldn’t be appropriate, now would it? So I bit my tongue and waited.
    “Are you here? At the restaurant, I mean?” His voice sounded just as sexy as it always did through the Dolby Surround Sound of theaters, but it wasn’t softening me up much.
    “Yes, at Atelier,” I said grumpily. “I’m at a table near the door.
By myself
.” I stressed the last part. “Where are
you
?” Just because he was a gorgeous movie star, it didn’t mean he could stand me up.
    “Oh my God.” Cole Brannon started to laugh. Despite myself, the deep, resonating chuckle made me relax a bit. “You’ve been here for over an hour!”
    “Yes, I have,” I said rather sternly, hating that I loved his deep voice. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be annoyed at him. Then it hit me. “Wait, how did you know that?”
    “Because I’ve been sitting two tables over from you the whole time!”
    To my horror, I suddenly realized that the laughing wasn’t coming just from the phone but from a man in a baseball cap, also sitting alone at a table several feet behind me. The cap was pulled low over his eyes, and I hadn’t given him a second glance when I’d arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes early. Celebrities were
never
early, so I was sure I’d beaten Cole that morning. I hadn’t given the restaurant more than a cursory glance.
    “Hang on, I’m coming over,” Cole said quietly, and I heard my cell phone click off. For a second I couldn’t move, and I continued to hold my silent phone to my ear, frozen in embarrassment. By now, my cheeks were fully ablaze, and I wondered if I’d ever felt dumber. (The answer was no, in case you were wondering. This was pretty much the height of my stupidity track record.)
    I’d kept the hottest star in Hollywood waiting for more than an hour because I hadn’t noticed him. This was a new low in brainlessness, even for me. This definitely topped the sexy-heel-caught-in-the-subway-grate fiasco.
    “Hello there,” Cole Brannon said cheerfully, arriving at my side. I looked up warily. For the first time I noticed his brilliant blue eyes and strands of his legendary tousled brown hair peeking out from under his Red Sox cap. In person, his face looked even more perfect than it did on the big screen or in the magazine spreads he’d been featured in. Corny as it sounds, he truly looked like he’d been chiseled by Michelangelo himself.
    There was a deep dimple in his chin, and when he smiled, adorable dimples appeared in his perfectly tanned cheeks, too. I usually hated sideburns, but I suddenly loved the way his zigzagged down his jawline, ending evenly at the bottom of his earlobes, in closely trimmed perfection. He