That sent him exactly nowhere.
“No.” She glared at him heatedly. “But nice try, cowboy.”
He reluctantly let her go and stepped back, his own temper flaring. “Then maybe you should rethink this plan you and my mom cooked up. Because I’m not the guy who’s going to treat you with kid gloves, darlin’.” And he was pretty sure, at the end of the day, that was what Sara wanted.
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t want you to treat me with kid gloves.”
He came back to her, took her in his arms again and lowered his lips, just above hers.
Damn, if she didn’t make him feel ornery.
He smiled as she caught her breath. “Sure about that?” He rubbed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip.
Her brows furrowed as she began to see where this standoff between them was likely headed. “Yes,” she said, stubborn as ever, trembling even as she held her ground.
Loving the delicate feel of her body so close to his, he asked, “Really sure?”
“Completely sure,” she taunted right back. “In fact, cowboy,” she went on to dare in spunky delight, “you could kiss me and—”
The gauntlet had been thrown down between them.
Matt never gave her a chance to blurt out the rest.
His mouth touched hers, laying claim to every sweet soft inch. Only, the indignant slap he expected—the one that would have heralded his immediate gentlemanly release of her, and her quick, fiery exit—never came.
* * *
Sara told herself to resist the sensual feel of his lips moving over hers. But her body refused to listen to the wary dictates of her heart. She had been numb inside for so long. Responsive only to the needs of her adorable infant son.
Now, suddenly, she was alive in a way she had never expected to be again. The yearning to be touched, held, appreciated for the woman she was came roaring back. Made her tingle all over. Opening her lips to his, she pressed closer to the unyielding hardness of his chest, and, lower still, felt his undeniable heat and building desire. With a low moan of surrender, she went up on tiptoe, wreathed her arms about his neck and tilted her head to give him deeper access. He uttered a low moan of approval. His tongue twined with hers. He brought her nearer still, delivering a kiss that scored her soul. Left her limp with longing and trembling with acquiescence. Her middle fluttering, she melted against him. And then all was lost, as she experienced the masculine force that was Matt. For the first time in her life, she was with a man who didn’t hesitate to give her the complete physicality she craved and had always longed to explore. Excitement roaring through her, she reveled in the thrill of his commanding embrace. The hard, insistent pressure of his kiss, and the tantalizing sweep of his tongue; for the very first time in her life, she experienced the temptation to surrender herself completely. Forget her worries about the future. Live only in the moment she was in.
Had her life not already been so complicated—full of the grief and guilt she still felt for not doing as much as she could have, or should have, when she’d still had the chance—and had she not intuited that Matt’s own private world was much the same as hers and her husband’s had once been, who knew what might have happened had their make-out session continued on this brisk and sunny spring day?
But they did both harbor secrets and heartache.
And combining the two would only risk further hurt. For her, for him, for her baby boy.
So she did what she should have done all along, and finally put her hand on the center of his chest and tore her lips from his.
Just that quickly, Matt let her go.
They stared at each other, breathing hard. To her surprise, he looked every bit as shaken as she felt.
Compelled to save them both and downplay this, however, she took another step back. Gave a hapless shrug, looked into his eyes and said, “Just so you know, cowboy, you’re not the first man who’s made a move on me since Anthony died.”
He was the first one who’d made her feel something, though. Too much, actually. Way too much.
Emotion warred with the skepticism in his eyes. “Trying to make me feel competitive?”
No! Heck, no! Sara thought, chagrined. “I’m just saying,” she returned as calmly as possible, “I wasn’t interested then. And I’m not interested now.”
The corners of his lips turned up as his gaze raked her luxuriantly, head to toe. “Your kisses just said otherwise, darlin’.”
Once again, she shook her head. Embarrassed. Humiliated. And worst of all, still wildy turned on. Swallowing around the ache in her throat, she held his eyes deliberately and corrected him. “My kisses said I’m human, Matt.” Human and oh so lonely, deep down. So ready to get out of my own misery and help someone else in need. Like you, Matt. And how crazy is that?
She waited a moment to let her words sink in. Then said, “As are we all.”
It didn’t mean she had to be a fool for a second time.
And especially not with the far too irresistible Matt McCabe.
Copyright © 2019 by Cathy Gillen Thacker
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker.
Coming soon from Carina Press and Lucy Parker,
Lucy Parker presents opposites attract, as she brings the West End to the English countryside via a Jane Austen–themed whodunit.
Read on for a sneak preview of
The Austen Playbook,
The next book in Lucy Parker’s
London Celebrities Series.
The Austen Playbook
by Lucy Parker
Chapter One
A year ago
After twelve years of performing in the West End, Freddy Carlton had racked up her fair share of unfortunate experiences. Bitchy co-stars. Costume malfunctions. Having to stage-snog people with whom she’d had bad dates and even worse sex.
She’d never forgotten her lines during a public performance.
“Peanut, it wasn’t that bad.” Crossing her long legs, her older sister Sabrina pushed the basket of hot chips across the table. She’d been trying to stuff food down Freddy’s throat for the past half hour. The conviction that most ills could be assuaged with carbs ran deep in their family. “You covered really well. Barely a pause.”
Freddy put down her sangria and rubbed her eyes. “Yes. It really saved the day when I quoted a Bruce Springsteen song in the middle of a play set in 1945.”
In the instant under the lights when her mind had just...blanked, and her stomach had dropped to her shoes, some safety valve in her brain had stepped in and supplied a line. Unfortunately, it had fixed on the last song she’d been listening to in her dressing room to wind down before curtain.
She supposed she should be thankful she hadn’t trotted out a line from the second-to-last song the radio had infiltrated into her subconscious. She might have responded to her soldier lover’s romantic declaration with an obscene rap.
“Oh my God.” She pushed aside her glass and briefly dropped her forehead to the table. “Press night. I quoted Springsteen in front of a thousand people on press night.”
She’d never really screwed up on stage before. Certainly never so bizarrely. She usually confined any major hiccups to rehearsal. She had a reputation for reliability. Affability. Just tell Freddy where to go, what to do, who to be, and she’ll do it. She’d even throw in a smile.
Generally, the smile was genuine. She loved the stage, she loved her family, and she loved life. With the glaring exception of tonight’s debacle, her career was on the up. She ought to be skipping through the streets.
Not lying awake at night, not partying too much in the extremely brief gaps between productions, and not feeling physically sick before auditions.
“People may not even have noticed.” Sabrina pushed back a strand of wildly curling hair. They’d both inherited their fathe
r’s ringlets, but where Freddy was dark brown, like every Carlton in recent memory, Sabs had popped out a bright redhead. An early beginning on her lifelong tendency to stand out in the crowd. “And given how shite the actual dialogue was, I thought your improvisation was a massive improvement.”
“Sabrina,” Akiko protested from the other side of the booth, her heavy silver jewellery glinting in the light as she shifted. Her makeup was equally sparkly, the smooth bob that curved under her chin was currently dyed cobalt blue, and she looked more like a rock star than an academic. She’d been Sabrina’s best mate for over two decades, and Freddy literally couldn’t remember life before her comforting presence. “I thought the script was very good.” Akiko ran her fingers over the tines of her fork. She always fiddled when she was blatantly lying.
“Akiko, I love that you’re a nicer person than I am, but there’s politeness and there’s absolute bollocks.” Sabrina patted Freddy’s arm. “I’m assuming that—Jesus, I can’t even remember the name of tonight’s play, and it was only an hour ago. Seriously, kiddo, stop beating yourself up. A forgotten line is the least of that script’s worries.”
“You’re not being very respectful about your late grandmother’s work,” Akiko said, and Sabrina wrinkled her nose.
“I think enough people fawn over our infamous granny, don’t you? Dad’s one step away from erecting a ten-foot solid-gold statue of her on his balcony. And based on the script tonight, I’m baffled by the accolades. The ‘greatest British playwright of the twentieth century’? What, were the only other plays between 1900 and 1999 written by the typewriting monkey at the zoo?”
“The play I stuttered my way through tonight is Masquerade.” Freddy took a chip from the bowl Sabrina was waving in front of her again and bit it in half. They were venturing into territory that made boulders appear in her stomach, so she might as well pile some greasy spuds on top. “It’s one of the earliest Henrietta Carlton scripts.”
Their grandmother had written Masquerade at the age of twenty, several years before she’d hit the big time as both a playwright and an actor.
“Her writing inexperience shows in Masquerade. Hugely. It’s nothing like The Velvet Room.” The script that had catapulted Henrietta into the history books. “Which I assume you’ve still never read.” Freddy swallowed down another chip with a mouthful of sangria. The director of Masquerade wanted his cast to follow a healthy diet during the run. Nailing it.
“You should read it.” Akiko swirled the melting ice in her own drink. “I’m not that keen on just paging through a script like it’s a novel, but The Velvet Room is so poignant you forget you’re reading stage directions. Your grandmother grew into a cracker of a writer.”
Sabrina lifted finely threaded brows. “All that, and a brilliant actress, too. Almost seems too much talent for one person, doesn’t it?” She tweaked one of Freddy’s fluffing curls. “Thank God our little Frederica came along to keep the end up for this generation. Four centuries of thespians in the family, with X-factor spilling out of their Shakespearean ruffs, and it almost ended with—”
“A very talented journalist,” Akiko said loyally.
“Some drunk ginger floozy from the telly?” Freddy suggested at the same time, in a tongue-in-cheek attempt to divert the stream of the conversation.
Sabrina lifted her nose. “Excuse me, baby sister. I am perfectly sober. I can hold a cocktail.”
“You can hold about six in each hand at the TV Awards every year.”
“Entirely different situation.” Sabrina grinned. “Despite that piece of cheek, you wee shite, and even with a spot of Springsteen thrown in, I’m incredibly proud of what you can do. And I’ll even bone up on The Velvet Room, so I’m all set for your star turn in the West End revival next year.”
Freddy felt her smile fade from the inside out. Her heart gave a hard thump of trepidation and shrivelled, and the shadow probably spread to her face. “There’s no guarantee I’ll get a role in it.”
“Of course you will,” Sabrina said, and added with sisterly affection and zero tact, “Talent aside, you’re Henrietta’s granddaughter. Think of the marketing opportunities. Dad’s always got his eye on his investments, and this’ll be a triple coup. A performance royalty from the theatre, commission from your salary, and all the media appearances he’ll be able to milk out of you appearing in Grandma’s tour de force.” Her vivacious features slipped into that barbed wall of sarcasm that usually emerged when they were discussing their father. “Thanks to the offspring who isn’t a massive disappointment, Scrooge McDuck can pour another bucket of gold coins into that vault of millions he’s hoarding.”
Freddy felt a tinge of colour rush into her cheeks, and that knot in her chest twisted. She put down the rest of the chip in her hand.
Akiko folded her hands on the tabletop, studying Freddy with uncomfortably shrewd dark eyes. “You do want a role in The Velvet Room, Freddy?”
“What, Henrietta’s masterpiece? The Carltons’ biggest claim to fame?” Sabrina waved at someone who’d just come into the pub. “Freddy’s always banged on about what a good script it is. She’s almost as bad as Dad on that subject. Although at least she likes it for its artistic merit, not the rewards it generates.”
Akiko was still looking at Freddy.
She weighed her words. “It’s an excellent play. It really does deserve all the accolades.” She hadn’t actually answered Akiko’s question, and from her expression, it hadn’t gone unnoticed. Freddy appreciated the genius of The Velvet Room—but did she really, honestly, want to act in it?
No. She could say it silently, privately, in her own mind, but so far she hadn’t had the balls to say it aloud, even just to Sabrina.
After a moment, she lifted a shoulder. “The most likely director for the new season of The Velvet Room was in the audience tonight. This performance wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, was it?”
“You were probably just nervous,” Sabrina said, in a tone that suggested Freddy was eleven years old again and had just embarked on her first debut.
Incidentally, when she had debuted at eleven, she’d remembered every one of her lines.
“I’m sure press night is always terrifying,” Akiko said.
Yes, it was, even after all this time. Doubly so when her family were in the front rows, as well as the dozens of critics, including the dude who’d called her “duller than a pair of safety scissors” in the Westminster Post.
And the scrutiny would have been high tonight, because of the family connection. By choice, Freddy wouldn’t audition for any adaptations of her grandmother’s works. For several reasons, one being that enough of her career had been founded on nepotism. She hadn’t minded exploiting the connection in her teens, but unearned glory wore thin very quickly. With Carltons populating the theatres of London since the days of quills, bustles, and bubonic plague, she didn’t need to provide extra fodder for the critics to discuss the many and varied ways she had built a career on other people’s achievements.
However, her father was her manager, he did think it was good business sense to capitalise on the link, and when the casting call had gone out for Masquerade this season, he’d been dead set on having her in it. And she’d caved, to avoid the argument. As usual.
Akiko cleared her throat. “I’m not sure that unrelenting angst is really your thing, Freddy. I could see the natural glass-half-full sass itching to come out at every woe-laden moment.”
As usual, she’d hit the nail on the head. No, weepy philosophical introspection was not Freddy’s cup of tea, it had become increasingly apparent, and the admittedly mediocre script for Masquerade was so wreathed in despair and gloom that she’d had to listen to P. G. Wodehouse audiobooks in rehearsal downtime to keep up her spirits.
In that respect, The Velvet Room would be just as bad. It was beautifully written, but not exactly abundant with laughs.
It
would, however, very likely sweep the National Theatre Awards and look bloody great on a CV.
Which, not so long ago, she’d have jotted down as item one on the priority list. Living up to the family legacy, reaching the highest salary bracket, winning countless Leading Actress awards, crossing over into film, meriting an incredibly long and detailed entry on Wikipedia—who wouldn’t want that?
Who wouldn’t find happiness in all of that?
She smooshed another chip into a greasy pillow between her finger and thumb.
“So, how was the show?” The question came from the next booth. The Prop & Cue was always packed to the rafters, as the closest pub to four of the major theatres, and the noise level was usually a continuous loud buzz, but every so often there was an unexpected lull. She could hear the man clearly, speaking in an attractive, melodious voice. “Where does tonight’s review fall on the scale of ‘could do better’ to ‘Jesus God, pass me the brain bleach’? Which poor sod’s career is in the crapper this time?”
“It’s unfortunate in some cases, but I’ve never trashed anyone’s career.”
Freddy raised her head. She knew that second voice. It was deep, with a distinctive curt resonance to it. She’d heard it just this week through her laptop speakers, while watching a Marlowe documentary on her afternoon off.
J. Ford-Griffin. Grumpiest TV presenter in the UK. And the witty wanker behind the scathing theatre reviews in the Westminster Post.
“If they can’t pick themselves up after one person’s criticism, they don’t deserve another person’s accolades.”
She could almost see him saying it, with the same expression he wore when discussing Elizabethan tragedy. The man looked like an assassin in a war film, and would be temperamentally suited to the part.
He probably even orgasmed with a frosty stare off into the middle distance.
Although it was unfair to judge by appearances. Behind the sub-zero remarks and laser eyes, he could be a total marshmallow. Maybe he went home every night, watched Titanic for the hundredth time, and wept sensitively into his pet kitten.
The Nanny Clause (Furever Yours Book 4) Page 20
