Hidden with you, p.4
Hidden With You, page 4
I want the excitement. The release.
I want the danger.
I want what I want, and then I want it to be over. Itch scratched. Time to move on.
That oh-so-common story, and one I seem to write over and over in the novel of my life. People leave. That’s just the truth of it. They bring me joy, then take what they want. They suck me dry, then they leave.
Better to expect it. To relish the part that I want, then forget the part that I don’t.
To not get close so as to not get hurt.
Even better, be the taker. Be the leaver. Because there’s a hell of a lot less heartache that way.
Do it, I tell myself. And then, before I change my mind, I put one hand on his, then ease his fingers up under my skirt. “Higher,” I whisper as I cup my other hand around his neck, then pull his mouth down to mine. He doesn’t resist. On the contrary, he makes this kiss his, claiming me with his mouth even as his fingers tease the inside of my thigh, so close to heaven, but still so far.
I want to beg, but his kiss is too deep, his hold on my head too tight. I squirm, silently begging for more, but even as I do, he’s lifting me by the waist and settling me on his lap. The dress rides up, leaving my ass exposed, and he cups my butt cheek with one hand while his other hand fists my shoulder-length hair. It’s wild and intense, and exactly what I need. Heat and lust and a pleasure so intense it will drown out everything else.
“Please,” I murmur against his mouth. I rock my hips, feeling his erection through his jeans as my fingers go to the button of his fly. “Please.”
He squeezes my ass, then twists the band of my thong, pulling it up from the back and making the material rub against my clit. I grind against him, wanting more, wanting to feel him inside me. Knowing this is too fast, and not caring in the least. He captured me from the first moment I saw him, and everything about this evening has been leading up to this connection, this building passion, this—
“No.”
The vile word is a whisper against my lips, then he pulls back, breathing hard. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “But no.”
I try to grasp hold of reality, certain I understood him wrong. “You want this,” I say, certain of the desire I see in his eyes. “We both do.”
“Desperately.”
“Then why?”
“Zelda.” He says my name flatly, as if the answer was obvious. But, of course, it’s not.
Then it hits me. “No. No, that’s bullshit.”
“I’m forty-four. What is that? Twice your age?”
“Not even,” I say. Technically true, but I’m staying silent about the fact that I’m not quite twenty-four. “What does that matter? It’s sex, not a relationship. And I am not my age.”
He winces but otherwise keeps it together. “Maybe not. But I’m mine.”
He slides me off his lap and onto the bench, then stands. I stay sitting, too angry to trust my legs to support me. Angry and frustrated and defeated. Because seriously What. The. Fuck?
I shove all my anger into my legs, forcing them to do their job as I stand, adjust my dress, and then march over to him.
“You think I’m some naïve college-kid? You have no idea. I’ve lived a full life and then some. I’ve seen things—done things—experienced things that—”
I cut myself off with a shake of my head. My personal traumas are not stories I wield to get a man in bed, and why it matters that this man knows me, I really have no clue. Because knowing is dangerous.
I’m not a girl who wants to get to know a guy. I just want the moment. The adrenaline. That sense of not being alone even when I am alone.
Which begs the question of why I’m fighting so hard for a fuck. Do I really care that much that he pushed me away?
Is my ego really that fragile?
Yeah. Apparently it is.
“You don’t know me,” I repeat.
“No,” he says. “But I know me. And as much as I want this—and trust me, I do want it—it’s not going to happen. I really am sorry.”
Then he leaves. He just turns and walks out of the atrium, leaving me pissed and horny and angry.
And wanting him even more.
Chapter Five
I tell myself I shouldn’t care, but when I return to the party and don’t see him, disappointment settles over me like a gray fog. I turn slowly, looking for Jamie, because I think this is my cue to leave, too. I came here tonight in the role of the peppy and perky author, giddy about having her book adapted into a Major Motion Picture—the kind of deal wherein those words should be spoken by that guy who narrates movie trailers, then underscored with a drumroll and a cymbal crash.
In other words, hyper-celebratory.
Right now, I’m just feeling let down. Which is ridiculous, since I don’t know anything about that guy other than that he was chatting with some of the men who work with Jamie’s husband. I mean, hell, I never even learned his name.
I consider asking Jamie but decide against it. Jamie is wired to interfere. She gets even a whiff of a hint that I’m interested in a guy—even if only in a FWB kinda way—and she’ll dive into matchmaker mode. Worse, she’ll tell Ryan, and it’ll probably get back to Mystery Man, and god only knows what kind of nightmarish web I’ll end up entangled in.
Better to ask Leah. She’s much more likely to keep a secret. She’s a spy, after all. More or less, anyway.
Twelve years older than me, Leah Ramirez is the aunt to my elementary school bestie, Camille, who moved to Ohio with her mom the summer after seventh grade, and with whom I communicated in only monosyllables and grunts at brunch. But I’ve kept up with Leah, who spent many an evening and weekend babysitting both of us, and even stayed in my house for two months back when she was between apartments and my parents were out of town.
I’d been fifteen and hadn’t wanted them to hire back my childhood nanny. Apparently in their mind, Leah made a good substitute, and after Leah moved out, neither my mom nor my stepfather, Carter, seemed to notice that I had the run of the house unsupervised except for the live-in housekeeper, Tricia, and other transient staff.
Leah and I keep in touch, though I’m sure she’s probably just in the habit of checking on me. Everyone older than me has always checked on me, the poor little rich girl raised by the staff because her parents were too lame to hang around.
I grimace, irritated at the way my mind has spun off topic. Bottom line is that if I want to know about Mystery Guy without word getting back to him, then Leah is a good place to start.
Unfortunately, even though she works at Stark Security, Leah isn’t at the party. I try to remember where she is—she’d gone out of town for work—but damned if I can recall where. Phoenix, maybe. Or Albuquerque. I remember thinking dry and dusty when she told me, but I wasn’t paying too much attention.
Still, she has her cell, and I’ll give her a call as soon as I get home. So long as it’s before two, I know Leah will answer.
Then again, maybe I won’t call at all. Maybe it’s better I don’t know the guy’s name. Better I just let this infatuation go. Tonight, I’ll write out in my journal the way I’d hoped the evening would go, full of every wild fantasy and erotic detail that comes to mind. Then I’ll turn the page and move on with the rest of my life, same as I’d do with any other guy.
“You’re leaving already?” Jamie asks when I finally track her down. She and Nikki Stark, along with my agent, Evelyn Dodge, have gone down to the beach, and now they’re shoeless and chasing the waves, which cracks me up since Nikki and Evelyn are both the pulled-together type. Shoeless Jamie doesn’t surprise me at all. Frankly, Naked Jamie wouldn’t shock me.
“Come join us,” Nikki says.
I start to decline, then decide what the hell. I kick off my shoes and race in, almost knocking Evelyn over in the process. “Whoa there, girl. I want to splash, not take a bath.”
“Sorry.” I adore Evelyn, especially since she took me on when I was just fourteen and a production company had come knocking, wanting to buy the film rights for Twisted Destiny, the serialized young adult fantasy I was writing that had generated a scarily huge number of fans. Even being raised the way I was—as in, surrounded by money and all it could buy—I’d been intimidated by the process. And since my mom and stepfather were both useless and absent, she stepped in to help with the process, even going so far as to get their power of attorney so that she could legally sign on behalf of Minor Me.
“I didn’t see you up there,” I tell Evelyn, nodding toward the decking and the house.
“I saw you,” she says. “You and Jamie. You both looked good.”
“I hate that part,” I admit.
“But you do it anyway, and you do it well. So good girl.” Evelyn’s in her sixties, but you’d never know it by looking. She has a timeless kind of face, both strong and kind. She always says what she thinks, and the only agenda she ever pushes is her client’s. My stepfather tries to get me to fire her every time he’s in town, telling me she gets too personal and doesn’t focus enough on the business side. But Carter’s an ass, and from where I’m standing, Evelyn has helped build my business right alongside me, which is more than I can say for either of my parents.
“Is everything okay?” she asks me now, frowning at the way I’ve stopped chasing the waves, unlike Jamie and Nikki, who are laughing like crazy a few yards down the beach.
“Sure,” I lie, because honestly, when has everything been okay?
“You were looking for me earlier. I thought maybe you needed something.”
“What? Oh, no. I wasn’t looking,” I assure her. “I just meant that I didn’t realize you were here. I was wondering about somebody I met.”
“Oh?”
“Just a guy I chatted with. No big deal.”
“Well, good for you,” she says, which makes me frown.
“I’m sorry?”
“For not leaving with him.”
“Are you kidding me?” I snap. “You’re my agent, not my mom.”
Her brows rise, and she crosses her arms. “The difference between me and your mother is that I care. Shit,” she adds. “That was completely uncalled for. Too many bourbons tonight.”
“No,” I say. “It’s fine. Hell, it’s more than fine. It’s true.” I shrug. I know she thinks her words hurt, but they didn’t. They’re just the truth. And I’ve been dealing with the truth about my life for twenty-three years.
“I just worry about you,” she says, and I sigh. She knows me better than anyone, and so she knows that I haven’t had a boyfriend since fifth grade when Tommy Dean and I went steady for all of a week. Instead, I serial date. Or, more accurately, I serial fuck. Why not? The breakup will inevitably happen, so why not enjoy the good part and avoid the bad?
“You don’t have to worry,” I assure her. “It’s all good. Haven’t you heard? I’m an international sensation. Thank you for that, by the way.”
Her mouth quirks into a half-smile. Evelyn is a shark at the negotiating table, and everything that’s gone right in the trajectory of my career is because she had my back.
But that’s my career. And while I’m grateful we’re close, at the end of the day, my personal life isn’t her business at all.
“Listen,” I say, “I’m going to head out.”
“So early?”
I shrug. “It’s after ten, and you know me. I can take a crowd for only so long.” I glance toward where Nikki and Jamie are huddled together, looking as if they’re deep in conversation. “Tell them bye for me?”
“Of course.” She pulls me into a hug. It’s awkward—I’ve never been big on the hugging thing—but it’s nice to know she cares. I mean, I get that I’m a client, but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels good.
With her final admonition to “drive safe” echoing behind me, I head back up the steps, then keep my head down as I make a beeline toward the gate that leads from the back patio to the front parking area. I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone unless it’s my Mystery Guy. I’m tempted to look for him, but I talk myself out of it. He’s the one who walked away, after all. I’m hardly going to press the issue. Because how pathetic would that be?
Apparently very pathetic, because even though I have been very firmly telling myself that I don’t want to see him again, I’m still weirdly disappointed when I don’t find him leaning against my car, like the first act turning point of a sexy rom com.
Guess that means I’m living a drama and not a comedy.
With a sigh, I slide into my Prius, telling myself that this is good. I didn’t want to see him. I don’t need to see him. There is no point in seeing him.
All of which—of course—means that I’m bummed about not seeing him.
Honestly, hormones are a bitch.
I crank up the radio to drown out my thoughts, then jam to a My Chemical Romance playlist as I race down the Coast Highway toward the 10, and then, ultimately, my house in the Platinum Triangle. Or, rather, my father’s house. He’d left it in trust for me when he died, with a proviso that my mother could live there, too. Mostly, though, she travels, which is fine by me.
Even though she’s rarely around, I don’t live in the house. As far as I’m concerned, it’s twelve thousand square feet of lonely rooms and way too many memories. Instead, I live in a guesthouse by the pool. I should probably suck it up and move into the main house—but I’m not quite ready to do that yet, so I use the living room as an office and the media room for watching movies. Tricia, the housekeeper who’s been here since before my dad died, still lives on site with her husband, who’s in charge of landscaping.
Someday, I might move back into that monstrosity, but thinking about it makes me sad and overwhelmed. So I don’t. I live in my eleven hundred square feet, write my books, pay the bills necessary to keep a mostly empty house humming along, and try to forget about it.
Neither my home nor the main house are visible from the road, surrounded as they are by a huge row of hedges. I turn down our private drive, slow as I approach the gate, and smile at the wonders of technology as it opens just in time, triggered by the magical barcode sticker on my front windshield.
I follow the driveway around the main house, then park in the garage next to the classic Mustang convertible my dad had been rebuilding before he got so sick. It’s under a dust cover, and every time I park my car, I tell myself I’m going learn about cars and finish what he started.
It won’t happen, though. It makes me sad to let that reality settle in my brain, but I know it’s the truth. I want the car to be complete—I want to get it there to honor my father. But I know myself well enough to know that even though I can play out the scenario in my head, I’m never going to watch YouTube videos on carburetors or slide under the car to work on the chassis.
I mean, I’m not even entirely sure what the chassis is.
So my dream of completing my father’s last project is only that—a dream. Just one of the many fantasies that live in my head. That I might play out on paper but never, ever in reality.
I tell myself that’s a good thing. Those stories are my work. My purpose.
Sometimes I even believe that.
Other times, like now, I think that I’m as naïve as some of the characters I write. And why not? They’re me, too, after all.
I circle my car, then head to the garage side door. I hit the button to close the main garage door, then follow the stone path that leads to the pool, but I branch off to the right before I get to the tiled pool deck, and follow that path to my doorway.
I punch in my key code, then push open the cottage door and step into the combination entry/living/dining area. I toss my purse on the sofa. As I do, I veer to the right toward the kitchen and notice the small stack of mail on the kitchen table along with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a note that has no writing other than a smiley face.
I grin, take a cookie, and make a mental note to thank Tricia in the morning. Then I sort through my mail, most of which is either junk or bills. A letter-size envelope catches my attention, primarily because it has no postage.
I use a knife to open it, then pull out the single sheet of paper. There’s a single word on it, printed in a massive font size: YOU.
Confused, I turn it over, then drop the paper and jump backwards as if it had suddenly morphed into a snake. The paper flutters down to the tabletop as my heart bounds behind my rib cage.
I draw in a breath and force myself to look down. To really see the all-too familiar image that my brain has already processed: the cartoon-style silhouette of a girl sighted in the target of a rifle.
And underneath that, smaller but still huge and bold, are two more words: DEAD. SOON.
Chapter Six
He wasn’t supposed to be wandering these electronic paths.
Jasper glanced from the computer screen to the cavernous room filled with desks. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning, and he’d been here since five. He’d been jolted awake at the climax—literally— of a seriously delicious dream starring him and Zelda Clayton. A full-color, X-rated dream that he had tried very hard to get out of his head so he could grab a few more hours of sleep.
That, however, had proved impossible. Instead, he’d taken a freezing cold shower, grabbed a coffee from the service area by the hotel’s reception desk, and had the courtesy car drop him at the office, where he’d finally pushed Zelda out of his head by focusing on what really mattered—finding a killer.
Now, he twisted in his chair, stretching his back and looking to see who had come in while he’d been lost in his work. No one he recognized. Just a couple of guys sitting at the long tables devoted to research and analysis, and both seemed completely absorbed by their own work.
Good.
He exhaled, then turned back to his task of traipsing down the electronic paths through this government database, searching for any reference to either the bookkeeper, Raleigh, or the sadistic prick who’d actually killed his family. The Maestro.
He had to be here. A clue, a lead, something. Jasper’s off-the-books, just-might-get-him-fired-on-his-second-day-of-work search into the bowels of the Stark Security computer system couldn’t turn out to have been in vain.
