*
“She’s here! She’s here! Miss Livia’s here!”
Livia, who was used to creating a stir when she entered a room and had stepped out of more limos, walked more red carpets and runways and stared into the flashing lights of more paparazzi cameras than she could possibly count or remember, paused at the corner of the Chambers family’s private terrace, Willard on her heels, feeling a) humbled by Kendra’s exuberant greeting and b) nervous.
Really nervous.
She hesitated, taking in the sweeping valley view, the planters overflowing with greenery, the wrought-iron table with market umbrella, the flickering white candles, a pair of older adults and…oh, God, there he was, over in the bar area opening a bottle of wine and studying her with those unreadable eyes.
Hunter Chambers, the man who’d planted such a fine kiss on her that her lips were still tingling hours later. Okay, girl. Pull it together and don’t stare unless you want his family to think you’re a complete and unmitigated flake. Hoping for the best, she opened her mouth and prayed that her voice cooperated.
“Hi, sweetie!” Bending just in time to catch the girl as she hurled herself at Livia’s legs, Livia took a moment to wonder if she’d worn the right outfit. “It’s good to see you!”
Over in the four-star restaurant on the main terrace, the female diners were wearing a lot of black. Black dresses, black slacks, black pumps—black, black, black, black…and, yes, black. But she’d only brought the one LBD (little black dress), and it was too much for a small dinner that included a child wearing—she glanced down at Kendra for a closer look—a T-shirt with several colorful dinosaurs on it, including a T. rex, some terrible flying thing with teeth, a triceratops and a legend that read It’s More Fun in the Cretaceous Period.
Yeah. If there were kids in T-shirts, she didn’t need to be wearing Chanel. So she’d scrounged around in her suitcase and produced a crocheted blue sweater, which she’d thrown over the off-white sundress she’d be wearing for the rest of the trip. It would have to do.
And, oh, man, was she crazy, or was there something special about this little girl who was so sturdy and strong and smelled so sweetly of baby lotion and fruity shampoo? Planting a kiss atop the snarled curls of her little head, Livia pulled her closer and went ahead and wished it—that she had one at home just like this. Yes, she did. In fact, she’d give back a good portion of the millions she’d made last year if only she had a little balance in her life, a little more peaceful quiet and a lot more hugs just like this one.
Without warning, it was over. Having had enough affection even if Livia wasn’t quite ready to let go yet, Kendra pulled free and yanked on Livia’s hand, towing her to the table. “You can sit right there by me, okay? See the place card? I made it. So that’s your seat.”
Livia peered at the place card in question. Kendra had clearly used every crayon in the box producing this one, which had surprisingly good flowers on it and her tragically misspelled name in neat green letters: Leviah.
Livia stifled a delighted laugh.
“And I brought my dinosaur encyclopedia and some other books and you can see—” Mrs. Chambers stepped forward, put an indulgent hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder and steered her a few steps away from Livia. She made a discreet face that Kendra wasn’t able to see.
“You probably won’t believe this, Livia, but I swear we only gave this child one pot of coffee today.”
“I don’t mind,” Livia said, laughing and accepting Mrs. Chambers’s kiss on the cheek. “I love to talk dinosaurs. And thank you for having me for dinner.”
“Thank you for coming.” Mrs. Chambers held her arm wide, drawing her husband into the conversation. He was tall and handsome, like his son, and wore rimless glasses along with a white dress shirt and dark pants that made him seem like a charming college professor. “Livia Blake, this is my husband, Hunter.”
Mr. Chambers took one game step forward, held his hand out and then lapsed into what appeared to be dumbstruck paralysis. His unblinking and wide-eyed gaze latched on to Livia’s face and wouldn’t, Livia suspected, let go even if a flying saucer buzzed by overhead.
“I…” he said, and then apparently lost his train of thought.
Livia waited a beat to give him the chance to recover, but…nothing.
There was no helping it; she laughed. It’d been a while since she’d had quite this effect on someone and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t make her feel good. Grabbing his hand, she shook it.
“So nice to meet you, Mr. Chambers. You have a beautiful winery.”
“I… Yes, I… Thanks, and…nice to—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Mrs. Chambers hissed. “I asked you not to embarrass the family.”
Mr. Chambers flushed, shot an abashed look at his wife and swallowed audibly. Livia had high hopes for a recovery and an actual sentence or two out of him, but when he looked her in the face again, he reassumed his deer-in-the-headlights expression.
“I—” he began again. “I—”
“Okay, Dad.” Hunter made a quiet appearance beside them. Extracting his father’s hand from Livia’s, he passed the old man off to Mrs. Chambers, who yanked him over to the side for what looked like a pretty good talking-to. “That’s enough staring at the beautiful woman for now. You can try again later if you stop drooling on your shirt.”
Livia smiled after Mr. Chambers—what a sweetheart!—at least until Hunter slid his palm against hers and twined her fingers in his strong grip. As though they’d done it multiple times daily for the last twenty years, he took her hand to lead her to the table and it felt stunning and yet absolutely natural.
Heat trickled over her face, making it hard to look at him. When she risked a sidelong glance, she discovered a wry glint in his eyes, which were like polished copper in this light.
“You have a strange effect on the males in this family, I’ve noticed.”
Oh, man. More flirting. Her foolish heart was going to give out before she even got to sample their wine. “Is that so?”
“You know it’s so.”
She paused, letting him pull out the designated chair for her before she sat. Some little devil made her glance over her shoulder and peep up at him from under her lashes.
“But you’re not kicking me out…?”
“Oh, no.” Leaning closer on the pretext of scootching her in, he let his nose skim her hair in a brushing touch that made her toes curl in her strappy sandals. “You smell way too good to kick out. Have some wine.”
He passed her a glass of something rich and red, showing no sign that he had any idea of his disturbing power over her or how he made her skin tingle with absolutely no effort on his part. She, meanwhile, wondered when this intriguing man was going to kiss her again and what she could do to speed up the process.
That was when Livia knew she was in trouble.
Deep, serious and unavoidable trouble.
Chapter 6
The edible part of dinner was wonderful, a feast of everything that was fresh, colorful and delicious: olives from the groves surrounding the grapes, salad, caviar on sourdough crostini, grilled salmon with parmesan risotto, cheeses and fruits and a chocolate torte for dessert. To Livia’s immense pleasure, she even got Kendra, who was apparently a finicky eater, to try the risotto.
“I don’t like it,” Kendra said, glaring at the single bite Livia had scooped onto the fork for her.
“You didn’t even try it. I don’t see how you can eat a hot dog and not try any of this fantastic food your grandmother cooked, Kendra,” Livia told her. “Taste one bite. It’s sort of like macaroni and cheese.”
“Well…okay.”
Around the table, there was a ripple of excitement as the girl took the bite and chewed, as though they’d all just witnessed the birth of a rare giant panda or something equally auspicious.
They waited. Kendra smiled. “Can I have some more, please?”
Everyone laughed with relief. In that delicious moment
, Livia’s gaze was drawn to Hunter’s, and when he winked and mouthed Thank you, a shivering thrill filled her heart to bursting and she had to look away on the pretext of reaching for her goblet.
And the wine…
Livia drank two glasses of zinfandel produced by vines that were, they told her, over a hundred years old, and then enjoyed a chardonnay that Hunter claimed was so creamy because it tasted of butterscotch, with scents of pear and apple.
Ambrosia. Nectar of the gods. Liquid heaven.
Thinking about her agent’s horrified reaction if she could see her eating and drinking like a starved sow at the trough, Livia shuddered. And had another slice of torte with an extra splash of raspberry sauce.
Wonderful as the food was, though, it was the company that made the dinner. As the sun settled on the horizon and Hunter watched her from across the table, the candlelight flickering against his eyes, she learned all about cooking from Mrs. Chambers and winemaking from Mr. Chambers, once he recovered his tongue and the powers of speech, and dinosaurs from Kendra.
After two hours of the food, wine and laughter, Livia could claim, with absolute certainty, that she wasn’t anxious to leave this enchanted valley and go back to L.A. anytime soon.
Displaying what she was beginning to think of as a delightful possessive streak, Hunter took her hand again—right in front of his parents, he took her hand!—and spoke to his daughter, who was naming the dinosaurs on her T-shirt for the second or third time that night.
“Say good-night to Miss Livia, Kendra. I’m taking her for a walk and it’s time for you to go to bed. We already talked about you sleeping in your bed here tonight.”
Kendra frowned, her pointed index finger hovering around the parasaurolophus covering her navel. “But I don’t want to go to bed.”
Hunter folded his arms across his chest, clearly girding his loins for battle but determined to be patient. “I understand that. It’s still bedtime.”
“But—” Kendra began.
“Maybe,” Livia interjected, slipping between girl and father, who were now wearing identical intransigent looks, “we could play in the dragon’s den tomorrow after school—”
Kendra began to hop from one foot to the other, glowing with supreme happiness.
“If you go to bed without giving your father a hard time,” Livia finished.
Kendra’s expression soured, and her hovering foot hit the flagstone with an annoyed stomp. “But I—”
“Take it or leave it.” A sudden spark of maternal instinct made Livia put her hands on her hips, the way her mother always did when she wanted to scare Livia and her brothers spitless, and it seemed to work. “Last chance.”
“Okay,” Kendra said in a hurry, as though she feared Livia would rescind the offer forever. “Okay, okay.” She turned to Mrs. Chambers. “Can you read me a story first, Grandma? Pleaaaaase?”
“And the stalling begins,” Hunter murmured in Livia’s ear. She stifled a grin.
“I certainly will,” Mrs. Chambers said. “Livia, you come back real soon now, you hear?”
Livia kissed her cheek. “If you feed me like that again, I’ll be here for three or four meals a day.”
“That’d be fine with us,” Mr. Chambers said eagerly, earning himself a big eye roll from his wife.
The goodbyes continued, stretching into a procedure that was beginning to remind Livia of the “Goodnight, John-Boy” portion of The Waltons. The family, especially Kendra, didn’t seem to want to let her go. She didn’t want to go. Except that she was excruciatingly aware of Hunter’s thumb stroking over the back of her hand and of the frustrated tension thrumming through his big body. Feeling the same delicious agitation herself, she recognized it for what it was: he wanted to be alone with her. Now.
Finally he lost all patience. “You will see the poor woman tomorrow, people. She’s not going to disappear overnight, okay?” He didn’t bother keeping the exasperation out of his voice. “Can you let me walk her to her cottage, please? Kendra, you have school tomorrow, so you need to get cracking.”
After a last whiny response from Kendra, he gave Livia’s hand a gentle tug and they were off, skirting the terrace wall and heading through the cooling night and into the relative darkness of the path that led to her guesthouse.
Livia was still grinning with a ridiculous amount of delight. This dinner had felt just like the ones back home in small-town Georgia, with relatives crammed around a table groaning with good food, all of them talking at once. None of the fancy-schmancy dinners at trendy L.A. restaurants she’d been to lately could top that. Please. Most of the time, those places only served half a spear of asparagus with some unidentifiable sauce in a starburst pattern on the plate and called it a meal.
Yeah. She wasn’t anxious to go back home.
“Your family is so great,” she gushed. “I wasn’t sure your father was ever going to talk to me, but when he finally—”
Midstride, and without warning, Hunter swung her around, into his arms and up against the hard length of his body. The shock rippled through her and she only had time for a quick “Oh, God,” before his mouth found hers and they were kissing—urgently, sweetly, amazingly—in the shadowed privacy of a huge tree at the edge of the grounds, where terrace and stone path gave way to hill.
Livia crooned and fell deeper into sensation, her body’s reactions so far outside her control they may as well have been operating from different time zones. He smelled like sunshine and air, earthy outdoors and fresh, clean man, and the delicious tartness of red wine in his mouth made her want to swallow him whole, right now.
Other men had tried this kind of thing with her before, most notably the arrogant rapper-turned-fashion-designer who thought that a couple of text messages, a nice dinner and a hundred-dollar bouquet of lilies entitled him to a blow job in the limo on the way home. For them, she had a verbal smack-down. For Hunter, she had a willing body and a mouth that opened eagerly to let his tongue slip inside.
God, he felt good. She wanted…
He pulled back but his hands kept their hold on her face, and his fingers relentlessly massaged her nape, driving her abso-freaking-lutely wild.
“I needed that.”
“So did I,” she breathed.
“Should I apologize?”
Huh? “For what? Being the world’s greatest kisser?”
Another little licking kiss was her reward for that compliment, and she mewled and surged up, closer, wanting more. He pulled back for a second time and studied her with a troubled gleam in his eyes.
“Is there some billionaire planning to pick you up on his private jet for a luxurious trip to Fiji I should know about?”
Was he jealous? How fun!
“Wow. That’s the longest sentence I’ve ever heard you string together.”
“Is there?”
“No.”
“Are you just killing time until one shows up?”
What? “No,” she said, starting to get annoyed.
His eyes narrowed. “Maybe you’re just killing time between parties,” he mused. “Taking a little break here in the country and gearing up for the next premiere or something?”
Okay, hold up. What was with him and the never-ending accusations of bad behavior? Were these garden-variety insecurities because she was rich and famous and he wasn’t? Or had he heard those tired rumors about her party-girl reputation?
“For your information,” she snapped, “I severely curtailed my partying several years ago, when one of my friends was injured by a drunk driver. I rarely drink. Tonight was an exception. Is there anything else you’d like to accuse me of since your opinion of me is so low? You think I’m, what—a diva, an airhead, a party girl, oh, and a dog-and child-hurter. Anything else?”
Gazes locked, they engaged in a wary stare-down for several tense beats and then some of the sudden harshness bled out of his expression. A wry smile curled one edge of his lips and, taking her hand again, he kissed it.
“Like I mentioned,
” he said by way of apology, “you do strange things to me.”
Lord, she knew that feeling, didn’t she? “I don’t believe that’s quite what you said.”
“That’s all the confession you’re getting out of me. Other than it’s hard for me to believe I’d get this lucky.”
Huh?
Mr. Presumptuous needed to be smacked back to earth, didn’t he? Arching a brow, she folded her arms across her chest. “Pardon me, but who says you’re going to get lucky? That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”
She put a lot of frost in her voice, which was pretty funny since she’d been a kiss and a rub away from orgasm mere seconds ago, and he’d accomplished that fully clothed and without a bed.
“Does it?”
Man, he was nothing but trouble, saying it without male arrogance and making it sound like genuine puzzlement. Gee, Livia, are you really so delusional that you honestly think we can keep a lid on the explosive passion we’re feeling right here? Wow, you should get that checked out by a professional.
“Yes,” she lied.
“A thousand apologies. Let me rephrase. I can’t believe I’d get lucky enough for an amazing woman like you to wander across my path, and I didn’t even have to leave home.”
Oh, man.
She wished he wouldn’t make her foolish heart skitter like that.
His cheeks dimpled with a repressed smile. “Better?”
Hitching up her chin, she tried to look haughty and no doubt failed spectacularly. “Maybe.”
He grinned and took her hand to get them started moving again. She fell into step, matching his long stride with no trouble, but sudden doubts and fears followed right behind her, bringing a chilling dose of reality with them.
“What are we doing, Hunter?”
Staring up at his profile as he studied the path ahead, she saw the subtle tightening of his jaw and knew he understood the question. Still, he chose not to answer it.
“We’re taking a walk.”
“I’m only here for a few days,” she reminded him.
“I know that.”
“I don’t do casual relationships,” she continued. “I’m past that young and stupid phase of my life, and I never handled them well, anyway.”
Love in the Limelight Volume Two: Seduced on the Red CarpetLovers Premiere Page 6
