America’s Geekheart

by Grant, Pippa

  But Beck’s enthusiasm apparently seems genuine enough to pass the Dad test. He grunts and nods. “Aftermarket.”

  “Nice. I had turtle slippers that sang when we were on tour. Drove Cash nuts when I’d set them off on the bus. He used to threaten to toss them to the crowd every night.”

  “Turtle fucker,” Dad growls.

  “Dad! Gah. What are you doing here? Why’s Mom sleeping in my bed? What about the hotel?”

  “Didn’t trust this good-for-nothing nudist to not take advantage of you.”

  “I think I can handle him.”

  “That’s my girl. Still don’t trust him.”

  “Dad. It’s bedtime.”

  “It’s past bedtime.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hotel’s overrun with spies. The Euranians are invading downtown. Need to get to safety.”

  “Dad.”

  “Sarah.” Beck puts a hand to my shoulder and squeezes, and awareness floods my skin and makes my breath catch. “He’s right. The Euranians are dangerous.”

  “Do not encourage him,” I warn.

  “Take cover,” Dad growls. “The basement. Go.”

  “I am not—”

  But Beck’s scooping up Cupcake, who’s still ramming into things blindly, in one arm while tugging my hand. “I’ve got her, sir. I won’t let the Euranians get her. You better check on your wife.”

  “My wife is dead, you bastard.”

  Beck deposits Cupcake in the pig bed by the no-longer-functional radiator in the kitchen and pulls me to the basement door. Meda slinks in with us.

  “He used to have fun roles,” I sigh as I reluctantly let myself get shoved down the stairs. “But the Euranians? Really?”

  “Could be worse. He could be building a ghostbusting machine in the backyard.”

  He’s not wrong, but I don’t know how he knew Dad did that for his role in that alien movie, and yes, I said build a ghostbusting machine for an alien movie. That never made the tabloids. And if Mom’s sleep-walking, she’s probably on a bad mix of herbs and supplements.

  “Fuck, I’m full. You got a couch down here I could crash on for a few?”

  “Uh…no.”

  I flip the basement lights, and Meda darts into the shadows. There are boxes piled all over, plus a shipping crate that we barely got down here, and shelves crammed with my childhood astronomy books.

  “Whoa.”

  “Good whoa or bad whoa?” I ask him.

  He slumps against the only stretch of wall open and rubs his stomach. “Is that the Serenity? The actual ship?”

  I glance at the movie prop, still half-concealed in a wooden shipping crate amidst other boxes, and I nod. “Dad knew somebody who knew somebody on set when they were taking everything down. They’d been storing this for me for years, though I didn’t know it. So when I told them I bought a house, they shipped it to me.”

  He starts to grin. “You have the fucking Serenity.”

  “You really watched Firefly?”

  “On repeat for hours on the tour bus. We’d act out the scenes when we were really bored. Always made Davis play Kaylee.”

  “And you were Jayne.”

  He laughs. “Nah, I let Levi have Jayne so I could play with Wash’s dinosaurs. Can I take a picture? The guys are gonna shit when they see this. Levi’s been trying for years to find this thing.”

  I don’t answer right away.

  It’s not that I don’t trust him—he seems genuine enough, and I’ve spent enough time with him now that I’d like to think I can trust my judgment about whether he can be trusted—but I’ve trusted people before.

  And while I’m pretty sure he gets it, I’m still working past old habits.

  “Or maybe later,” he says quickly. He shoves off the wall and grimaces.

  “Still full?”

  “I’d do it all over again. That tea was amazing.”

  He’s so enthusiastic about everything. Not just food. But movie props. Playing a role with my dad. Unicorn slippers.

  “Do you ever get tired of being happy?” I ask him.

  He barks out a laugh. “No way. Why would I? Being happy’s the best.”

  “Are you ever unhappy?”

  He heaves a happy sigh. “Yeah. Time to time. It sucks. But the world’s a pretty fucking awesome place. I mean, it would’ve been cool to live with the dinosaurs, but they probably would’ve just eaten us, and we’d be extinct now too, so I guess I’ll take having the internet and being able to fly to anywhere in the world and meet new people and try all the food.”

  I gape at him, and that’s when I realize what’s going on.

  He’s a robot.

  “Take your shirt off,” I tell him.

  His brows lift, but his lips spread into that slow smolder, and he does as asked, slowly undoing the buttons one at a time. “Like this?”

  “Faster.”

  The jerk slows down. My nipples go hard. My tongue goes dry. And he slowly peels the shirt off his shoulders in a striptease that’s making me both horny as hell and blotchier than my mom that time she let me put sunscreen on her when I was three.

  I swallow hard and twirl a finger in the air. “Turn around. I need to find your off switch.”

  “My…off switch?”

  “Yep. I know when I’ve been sent a Beck-bot. Where’s the real Beck Ryder? He’s in hiding in Egypt or Australia or somewhere, isn’t he?”

  He turns, letting me inspect his back, including that birthmark that really does look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but—to quote a certain underwear model—whoa.

  Real skin.

  It even pebbles into goosebumps under my fingers as I poke and prod him, looking for evidence I’ve been punked, even though I’m entirely too rational to fully believe he could be a robot.

  “Do you really think I’m a robot, or are you just copping a feel? I’m good with either one. Just curious.”

  I don’t know what I am, but I know that now that I’m touching the smooth skin of his back, tracing the lean planes of muscle and hard knobs of his ribs, I don’t want to stop.

  I haven’t slept with anyone since Trent.

  Kinda lost its appeal when I realized I would never be able to put my full self into the emotional component of sex.

  “Sarah?” he says, his voice going gruff.

  “I’m thinking,” I whisper.

  My fingers trail lower to the twin dimples above his waistline.

  “I didn’t try to kiss you for the cameras,” he says quietly, something in his voice making me think the confession is just as hard for him as it would be for me. “I just wanted to kiss you.”

  “Our relationship is just for show,” I reply, equally hoarse, because my pulse is ramping into dangerous territory and I’m getting a drunken buzz in my nether regions, which are solidly in favor of seeing if he’s even half as good with his equipment as Trent was. “Not for real.”

  His ribs are expanding and contracting rapidly. “I had a lot of fun with you tonight.”

  “You’d have fun with a professional fun-killer.” Why can’t I stop touching him?

  “I want to kiss you again.”

  “That’s a bad idea.”

  “Says the woman who’s stroking me.”

  “Your robot pheromones are hypnotizing me.”

  “Sarah.”

  Oh, crap, he’s using my name against me now too.

  But he’s funny. And he’s sweet. And there’s literally not one thing about him—beyond how we met and the fact that he’s a celebrity—that I can find fault with.

  He’s apologized profusely.

  He adores his mom.

  He loses video games to his nephew. On purpose.

  And I just like him.

  What’s the harm in kissing?

  I miss kissing.

  And I’ve never kissed a man who knew all of who I was. About my parents. About the Hagrid incident. I’ve never even told a boyfriend about my year in Morocco.

  “T
here’s no off-button back here,” I tell him.

  But there is a very shapely ass clad in RYDE-brand denim that I could squeeze, if I was the bold type.

  He turns, and I drop my fingers and look down, but my eye catches on the bulge in his jeans, and there’s no freaking way Beck Ryder’s turned on because of me.

  Is there?

  I go out of my way to not look sexy.

  But if he’s stuffing his briefs, he wasn’t earlier, which suggests he’s either turned on by me, or he was thinking about internet porn.

  He hooks a finger under my chin and lifts my face so I’m looking up at him.

  So tall. So tall, and lean, but also wrapped in a layer of sinewy muscle that I want to trace.

  And lick.

  I am in so much trouble.

  “I like you, Sarah Dempsey,” he whispers.

  And those blue eyes aren’t lying. They’re not overflowing with confidence or ego or self-importance.

  They’re cautious. Searching. Like he knows he’s sneaking out on a limb that might or might not hold his weight, but that apple at the end is worth the risk.

  I’m his apple.

  How am I his apple?

  “I’m trying really hard not to like you.”

  His eyes crinkle when he smiles, like he knows I’m lying and that I’m not trying very hard at all, and I do like him, and I am so done for.

  There aren’t any cameras down here. No prying eyes. No reason for him to pretend he likes me when we have a contract that very specifically spells out that this is a bad, bad idea.

  But my lips are tingling and my lady bits are stirring and his skin is so warm and soft over rigid muscle right there at his waist where my hand has accidentally fallen, and when he lowers his lips to mine, I don’t fight it.

  Because I want to know.

  I want to know if this is all a fluke, or if it’s the mint tea talking, or if it’s the weird circumstances, or if he’s secretly that turned on by the fact that I have a replica of the Serenity starship.

  “You have the prettiest eyes,” he murmurs against my mouth, his lips teasing mine, his breath warm and sweet.

  I’m going to do this.

  I’m going to kiss Beck Ryder.

  Right—

  “Coast is clear!” my dad bellows. The basement door hits the wall with a crash. “Go! Go now, before the Euranians come back!”

  We leap apart as his footsteps thunder down the steps. Beck snags his shirt, and he’s still buttoning it when Dad reaches us.

  I dive into digging through a box of comic books, because it’s the closest thing I have.

  Dad looks between us. I don’t have to look up to know he’s threatening to murder Beck with his eyeballs.

  “Were you compromising my daughter?” he growls.

  “I was trying to figure out what the birthmark on his shoulder reminds me of,” I say desperately as I lift a comic. “I’m positive I’ve seen it in this—erm—Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic.”

  “Whoa, holy shit, you have—ah, yeah. Birthmark. Buffy. Like one of the monsters or something,” Beck says.

  I glance at him.

  He’s ogling the box of Buffy comics I was just riffling through.

  Which shouldn’t be a surprise. If he likes Firefly, it stands to reason that he likes Buffy too.

  “You have three minutes to get your sorry ass out of my house,” Dad tells Beck.

  “Dad. It’s my house.”

  “I’ve commandeered it for the mission. And the mission is getting this nudist out of here. He has his own playbook. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

  “It was an honor to take your daughter to a ball game, sir,” Beck says.

  “You’re damn fucking right it was,” Dad growls.

  Thank you, I mouth to Beck through a smile, because I don’t know what else to say.

  He grins back, and the wings flying my heart into my breastbone slow their flutter. “I’ll call you later,” he says.

  Like we’re teenagers who just got caught making out in the parents’ basement.

  “You’ll call me first,” Dad growls.

  “Gotta go,” Beck replies. “Before those Euranians get back.”

  He flashes me a lopsided smile that seems to be equal parts amused and frustrated, and he slips up the steps.

  “Dad,” I say.

  He, too, grins at me, dark brown eyes twinkling merrily. “You should’ve dated more in high school,” he growls. “This is fun.”

  My life, ladies and gentlemen.

  This is my life.

  Twenty

  Beck

  Tuesday morning, I’m in the middle of a virtual staff meeting on the floor below my penthouse and I’m losing my fucking mind.

  “Crawford might be placated for now with all those pictures from last night and public opinion swaying back your way, but there’s no telling if he’ll stay that way for long,” my manager, Bruce, is saying from his over-decorated office in LA. “You need to get caught buying the frumpy girl flowers. And can you get her to brush her hair?”

  “Her name,” I say distinctly, “is Sarah.”

  “Right, right. What are her parents saying? You’ve met them, right? Judson fucking Clarke. If we could get him to vouch for you, all of this would go away.”

  Charlie rolls her eyes. She and Bruce often butt heads, but it’s getting worse. “You want a man to speak up about another man making his daughter’s uterus into public fodder?”

  “She’s right, Bruce.” Hestia, my PR team lead is also rolling her eyes. “Now, if we could get Sunny Darling to join us all on Ellen, that would help. Although, rumor has it she’s in need of rehab.”

  “Sunny Darling does not need rehab.” I’m going to pull my hair out. Fistfuls of it. And toss it all over the fucking floor. These people were so competent last week. What the fuck is going on? “And I’m not going on Ellen. We’re sticking with the plan.”

  “You’ve been uninvited from the World Music Awards.”

  I look at Charlie, because have they been listening to a word either of us has said?

  “Beck wasn’t going to the World Music Awards,” she tells the team. “He’s on vacation that week. A real vacation. Where he’s not tweeting. Or talking to people. Or doing anything else that’ll require any of us to work overtime, and he’s even going to do his own laundry and cooking.”

  I nod in vehement agreement. I didn’t know I was taking a vacation that week, but I never turn down an opportunity to hang out at home and torment my sister and remind my mom how much she misses me while I’m gone.

  Plus, there’s the Tucker factor now, and I still have other friends I haven’t caught up with in town.

  “It still looks bad that you were uninvited from one more thing,” Hestia says. “They’ll spin it.”

  “You know he’s going to look like a saint when we finally announce the FLY HYGH Foundation, so it won’t matter,” Charlie replies. “And we just threw together the mother of all black-tie dinners for Sarah’s favorite giraffe on Saturday night, and Vaughn’s tentatively on board to fly in for it too, so I don’t think anyone’s going to give two fucks if Beck doesn’t show up at an awards show two months from now that he already declined.”

  “Do you really need me here?” I ask her.

  “Shut up and sit down. This is still your fault.”

  “Fair enough,” I grumble.

  “You need to go play with animals at that shelter your sister likes,” Hestia says.

  “He needs to get Levi Wilson and Cash Rivers making more noise about him being a good guy,” Bruce replies.

  “He called in personal favors from over fifty celebrities and politicians and talked them all into buying thousand-dollar tickets for a fifty-dollar affair to raise money for the world’s most famous endangered animal, and he’s taking both his and Sarah’s entire families,” Charlie says. “You let him loose in a dog pound, he’ll crack a joke about a bitch and we’re done. You let the plan play out
as the plan is supposed to play out, and this will all be just fine.” She glares at me and makes a slashing motion across her throat.

  Right. She’s done with Bruce.

  “Got a call from a movie producer who wants to know if you want a cameo in a slasher pic,” Bruce tells me. “They’d make you look good when you die.”

  “We’re not doing cameos,” my marketing guru, Vicki, replies. “It’s starring roles or nothing.”

  “Whoa, wait, we’re not doing movies,” I say.

  My entire team shuts up and stares at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Ryder, I like you, but you’re a PR nightmare,” Bruce says. “We’re saving your ass this time, but what happens when you call one of the royal babies ugly, or get caught sticking your dick in a goat?”

  “PR nightmare? The Ryder Family Foundation gives away millions every year, and not two weeks ago I was all over the news when those cameras crashed my visit to the children’s hospital in London.”

  He shakes his head. “You need to think long-term, because sooner or later, you’re gonna blow it in business. So do a slasher pic. Not like you’re the type to write a tell-all book. Haven’t slept with enough women anyone wants the dirt on for that. And I got a guy who’s interested in buying out your DRYVE and SHYNE lines. You should take him up on it. Won’t get a better deal.”

  “Sell my lines?”

  Charlie’s not even speaking. She’s just gawking. Hestia and Vicki both clear their throats and dive for coffee and cigarettes.

  “Sell them,” Bruce repeats. “Then you need to kiss Crawford’s ass, because we all know this FLY HYGH Foundation is really just an excuse to get a partnership with him so we can branch out into footwear.”

  I stand and accidentally on purpose dump an entire coffee mug all over the computer.

  It sizzles and fries and sparks and the screen goes blank, and Charlie slumps back in her chair with a sigh. “Took you fucking long enough.”

  “Sell my lines?” I say to her.

  She rolls her eyes. “I don’t care how long he’s been your manager, you need to fire him. He’s losing his fucking mind. And he’s always been a twatwaffle. Also, I’m not replacing that computer. You can get your ass down to the Apple store yourself this time, and I don’t care how many people try to run you over on the street.”