Love in the Limelight Volume Two: Seduced on the Red CarpetLovers Premiere

by Ann Christopher

  “Ouch,” she murmured. “Too hard. Take it easy on the girls, okay? You wore them out last night.”

  “How’s this?” Trying to be gentler, he traced circles around her areola with his tongue. “That better?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Her head fell back—God, she was flexible—and she moaned and laughed in the most delicious combination his ears had ever heard.

  Which was all well and good, but there was creamy white honey between her thighs—he could see it glisten and smell its musk—and he was dying here. Desperation making his movements choppy, he fished a condom out of his wallet and ripped it open with his teeth. He hated those little bastards, hated that there was a layer of anything between his flesh and hers, but he knew that wearing them was the right thing to do and—

  “Wait,” she said, slipping off his lap and to her knees on the floor in front of him. “Not so fast.”

  “Don’t.” Down to the last fumes of his control now, he couldn’t possibly—

  Too late.

  Those dewy lips of hers slid down his length and sucked him inside, to the farthest, hottest part of her slick mouth, and he gasped with the unbearable pleasure. Damn near passed out.

  “Livia,” he croaked as his head fell back against the seat and his eyes rolled closed. “You have to stop.” But the vibrating hum in her throat sounded suspiciously like smothered amusement and his hands were already twining into her damp hair to keep her bobbing head in place. “You have to…to…”

  At that point he just shut the hell up. It was hard to launch a decent protest when you couldn’t maintain blood flow to your brain. Limp and boneless except for his hands, which had curled into a death grip against her warm scalp, he accepted her gift until he absolutely couldn’t take it another second.

  “Come here.”

  She straddled his lap again and he rolled the condom on with lightning speed. The next thing he knew, he was buried to the base inside her, her frantically flexing ass was in his hands and her tongue was in his mouth.

  At least for a few more thrusts, until the orgasm roared through her and she had to pull back and open her mouth to a high-pitched cry that was the world’s best music. The sound of it, naturally, drove him over the edge, and he pumped and shouted until there was nothing left inside him except for his growing feelings for this woman.

  Spent, they laid across the seat with her sprawled atop him like a rag doll.

  After enough time had passed for them to catch their breath, she raised her head and gave him a kiss that was sweet and lingering.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He grinned. “Hi.”

  “How was your day?”

  As if she didn’t know. “My day was excellent. Yours?”

  “Oh, I’m having a great day. But I have a question for you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” This sounded like it could be serious, so he made a pillow by stacking his palms beneath his head. “What’s that?”

  “Are you ashamed of me?”

  This was so unexpected that he couldn’t stop a disbelieving snort. “What? No!”

  “Have I embarrassed you?”

  “No. Why would you ask—”

  Sudden unhappiness darkened her eyes, turning the hazel muddy. “Because you haven’t had me around your parents again and I’m getting the feeling you don’t want me spending too much time with Kendra.”

  “Oh,” he said, stunned and absolutely incapable of forming a decent answer. And then, because that wasn’t lame enough, he said “Oh” again.

  Silence, unless you counted her now red-hot cheeks, which all but sizzled with growing humiliation.

  “Sorry,” she backtracked, sitting up and grabbing her clothes. “I don’t want to put you on the spot—”

  “Livia.”

  His body protested the loss of her even as his floundering brain struggled for something acceptable to say. Options? Well, there was “I don’t want you breaking my vulnerable daughter’s heart when you go back to L.A.,” but that sounded too much like “I don’t want you breaking my vulnerable heart when you go back to L.A.,” and that, in turn, was too close to “Please don’t ever leave me and go back to L.A.,” and he wasn’t ready to say that yet.

  Hell, maybe he was only fooling himself. Maybe he’d been ready to say it since he’d laid eyes on her. But that didn’t mean she was ready to scale back her career and the thrilling single life of fun and travel in favor of his cozy little ready-made family here in the country. And it also didn’t mean that Kendra was ready for a new mommy.

  How had they managed to duck and dodge the issue of the future of their relationship this whole time? And why couldn’t he get a couple of words unstuck from his mouth before he completely blew it?

  By the time he’d finished hemming and hawing, she had her clothes back on and her hurt face firmly in place. He may not have all the answers—yet—but he knew he’d sell his soul to the nearest passing demon to get her to smile again.

  So he cupped her face and smoothed her silky cheek with his thumb.

  “Hey,” he said.

  It took her a minute to flick her sulky gaze up to his. She raised a brow.

  “Why don’t you come for dinner at the big house with us tonight?”

  “You don’t want me.”

  “The hell I don’t.”

  Thank God. For once he got something right; maybe it was the vehemence in his voice that did it. Whatever it was, she dimpled in the beginnings of a smile.

  “We’ll see,” she told him. “I’ll check my calendar and get back to you.”

  *

  “Can you help me with my homework, Livia?” asked Kendra.

  “Miss Livia,” Hunter corrected.

  Kendra, catching Livia’s gaze, gave her an eye roll of utmost disgust. Livia, who was trying not to laugh and trying harder not to let Hunter see what she was doing, winked at the girl. Kendra laughed. And Hunter looked over from the kitchen counter, where he was pouring coffee with his mother, and frowned.

  “What’re you two females giggling about over there?”

  “Nothing,” answered Livia and Kendra together, doing a poor job of stifling more giggles. Hunter gave the two of them an exaggerated glare and then returned to what he’d been doing.

  Livia couldn’t stop grinning. The Chambers household was warm, loving and fun, and she’d enjoyed every minute of tonight’s dinner there, even if she had put Hunter on the spot and basically forced him to invite her. What was a little lost pride when a night like this was at stake?

  After welcoming her with smiles, hugs and mutterings about taking so long between visits, Mr. and Mrs. Chambers had treated her to flavorful beef stew, homemade biscuits and apple pie. Livia, feeling it was only polite, had eaten second helpings of everything, and was now stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey. If there was a better way to spend a cool fall night, God hadn’t invented it yet.

  Now she sat in the leather chair closest to the great room fire, curled her legs under her and held her arms open for Kendra. The girl scrambled into her lap, bringing a hefty book with her, and settled in as though they’d spent a thousand other nights in this chair together. For extra coziness, Kendra pulled a fringed blanket off the back of the chair and spread it over their laps.

  “There,” she said, smoothing a last wrinkle and tucking one edge under Livia’s thigh. “So you won’t get cold.”

  “Thank you.” Livia kissed the girl’s cheek and took the book. “So what’s the homework? I didn’t even know first-graders had homework.”

  “I have to read for fifteen minutes.” Kendra produced a small kitchen timer and set it. “You can listen.”

  “Okay. What’re we reading? Oh, wait. Dumb question.” She checked the book’s spine and the tiny print. “The Mammoth Book of Dinosaurs, Volume II. Just a little light reading for a six-year-old, eh?”

  The sarcasm went right over Kendra’s head. “It’s my favorite. I’m on page three-twelve.”

  “I hope you’ll explain all the big w
ords to me, girl,” Livia said.

  Livia flipped to the right page, glanced at Hunter to see how he was coming along with her after-dinner coffee and got an unpleasant shock. On his way from the kitchen, with two steaming mugs in his hand, he’d paused to stare at a framed photograph that was at eye level on the bookshelf. The expression on his face was so rapt…so bleak…so lost…that she felt her heart contract in response.

  Trying to pretend she didn’t know what he was doing or that she’d never seen the picture didn’t work. She’d seen it. It was a casual shot taken at his wedding to his dead wife, Annette. Wow. Even the other woman’s name made her heart ache. Annette, Mrs. Chambers had told her. His wife’s name was Annette. The name of Kendra’s mother was Annette.

  Annette.

  It was one of those tight close-up shots of the two of them laughing into each other’s faces, as though they couldn’t believe their luck in finding each other and making it to such a fabulous day.

  Annette, in her cloud of white, was the kind of beautiful and glowing bride that graced the pages of all those wedding magazines and catalogs. And the expression on Hunter’s face in that frozen moment in time screamed things like love, passion and forever.

  So there it was, in Livia’s face for the first time: Hunter, the man she’d fallen in love with, had passionately loved and lost his wife, Annette. Now Annette was gone and Livia was here, and Hunter had never spoken his wife’s name to her, not even once.

  What did that mean? Nothing? Everything?

  As though he felt the weight of her gaze on him, and the hurt, Hunter chose that moment to blink and snap himself out of it, giving Livia just enough time to look away and pretend she hadn’t seen. If only it was that easy to erase the memory of his expression from her mind.

  “Hey,” he said, coming over and handing her the mug. “We didn’t have that vanilla-flavored cream that you like, but—”

  Whatever he may have said after that was lost to a wave of nausea that hit her the second that coffee smell hit her nose. It rose up out of nowhere, gagging on the back of her tongue, and for one horrified moment she saw herself spewing all that delicious food on Mrs. Chambers’s polished floor.

  Surging to her feet and unceremoniously dumping Kendra off her lap and into the chair, she hurried into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water from the sink and took a couple of tentative sips.

  “Livia?” Mr. Chambers, who’d been sweeping the floor, glanced around with concern. “You okay?”

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Mrs. Chambers hurried over and rubbed her shoulder.

  Livia looked into their worried faces and called upon all her limited acting skills to force a cough and a smile. “I just, you know—” she coughed again and took another sip of water “—got strangled.”

  Relief brightened Hunter’s face, but he kept a watchful eye on her, apparently ready to spring into some kind of action if another spell hit her. She stared into his face, wondering what the hell she’d do now because several things had just occurred to her and collectively added up to a huge issue.

  One, she hadn’t had a period in about six weeks.

  Two, her breasts were unusually tender.

  Three, the smell of coffee had just about made her vomit, and Mama always said that one of the earliest symptoms of pregnancy was an aversion to certain food smells.

  Oh, God, she thought, stunned. Oh, God.

  *

  “Thanks for bringing me,” Livia said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Take your time.”

  Hunter watched her disappear down the aisle into the depths of the pharmacy area and tried to use the time alone to collect his scattered thoughts. At some point between apple pie and this impromptu emergency trip to the twenty-four-hour drugstore for Livia to get several toiletries that she absolutely, positively had to have tonight, things had gone seriously wrong. A night that had begun so promisingly now seemed…bewildering.

  Well, why pretend? He knew when things got weird. It was when he caught that unexpected glimpse of his wedding picture and Annette’s image came back into sharp and painful focus for the first time in a while. For the first time since he’d begun falling for Livia.

  Annette had been young and exuberant, the radiant sun at the center of his universe, and on that wonderful day so long ago, when he’d promised her forever, he’d had no idea that her forever would end in a few short years, snuffed out in a smashed car on a dark road.

  Now here he was, still alive, and alive in a way he’d never been before, thanks to Livia. Was that okay? Was that fair? Was this the course his life was supposed to take?

  Guilt and loss were part of his issue tonight.

  The other part was primitive, gut-wrenching fear. It wasn’t cool, a big guy like him being scared shitless, but it was real. Spending time with Livia and his family, seeing again how effortlessly she made herself at home and won the hearts of everyone around her, watching his daughter sit on her lap and snuggle with her…it was too freaking perfect. Too much of a dream come true to be real.

  What if—and this was where the fear came in—what if it wasn’t real? Livia’s idyll here in the country with him was ending soon, and they’d managed to spend her time here making love and talking about everything in the world except where, if anywhere, this relationship was going. What if she thought it wasn’t going anywhere? He’d barely managed to scrape his ruined heart up off the floor after Annette died. He didn’t think he could do it again if Livia said goodbye and sailed back off to L.A., into the world where she belonged and he never would.

  The killer was that this whole time he hadn’t worked up the nerve to just ask her. How crazy was that? If you wanted to know what someone’s plans were, and you had a question, the normal and sane thing to do was just ask. Except there was that fear again, keeping his throat on lockdown—because what the hell would he do if she blinked up at him with those gorgeous eyes and tried to let him down gently as she told him that she’d had fun in the country, thanks, but it was time for her to get back to the glitz and glamour of her real life?

  Jesus.

  His head felt like it was seconds away from explosion. Rubbing his hands over his temples didn’t help and neither did pinching the bridge of his nose until he could all but feel the cartilage snap. Headache. He had the mother of all headaches.

  And what was the solution to that overwhelming and complex problem, genius? How about you look around, since you’re in the middle of a, you know, drugstore, and find some drugs? Didn’t they always keep those little travel packets of aspirin and whatnot next to the candy in the checkout line? Why not look?

  Abandoning his post holding up the customer-service desk—what was taking Livia so long? Had she been abducted out the back door?—he went to the nearest open checkout lane and skimmed the offerings. Candy…candy…more candy…lighters…dangling air fresheners for the car…tabloids…tissue packets…

  Wait.

  Go back.

  With dread inching up his spine and creeping across his scalp, he shifted his gaze back to the tabloids. He knew they were trash, yeah, and that he was having a vulnerable moment here and that he shouldn’t look closer. If he was smart and had a single self-protective molecule in his body, he’d just walk away and pretend he’d seen nothing.

  Only he’d never been one for being an ostrich.

  Shooting a quick glance around to make sure Livia wasn’t returning right this very second, he grabbed the ridiculous magazine with hands that were suddenly both damp and shaky and looked down into the smiling face of the woman who, it turned out, he only partially knew. And got a nice kick-in-the-gut glimpse into the other part of her life.

  There she was, at a table at one of those glittering parties, looking like a million sexy bucks, with the hair, the makeup and the skimpy little dress that tastefully hinted at one of the world’s greatest bodies. There was the obligatory champagne glass and there was the inevitable NBA MVP grinning and whispering something in her ea
r as she laughed.

  To tie the image up into a nice fat bow for him, there was the caption, which was just enough to knock the remaining wind out of his sails: “Athletes and Their Supermodels—Why These Relationships Work.”

  Chapter 13

  Pregnant. She was pregnant.

  Livia stared at the plus sign on the little pee stick thingy, trapped in a weird world between fierce joy and abject terror. She was going to be a mother. Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat, but since Hunter was on the other side of that bathroom door and she didn’t want to babble like a loon, she clapped her hand over her mouth and choked it back.

  A baby. There was a baby inside her. She’d made a baby with the man she loved.

  Did she look different? Staring hard at her reflection in the mirror, she didn’t think so. Well, except for that glowing happiness on her face. That was different, but, in fairness, Hunter had put that there long before she’d known there was a baby.

  How had this happened? They’d used condoms, all except that first time on the dock, but, as they’d taught her in health class in fifth grade, one time was all it took. What about the pill, though? She religiously took it every morning, right after she brushed her teeth and she never missed a day. Ever. So how on earth did—

  Oh, wait. Oh, God. It was the antibiotics she’d taken to get rid of that never-ending sinus infection from hell that did it. Hadn’t the doctor mentioned that she’d need to use other forms of birth control when he’d written the prescription all those weeks ago? Since she’d been celibate with no prospects at the time, the advice had gone in one ear and out the other. Too bad the doctor hadn’t had a crystal ball in his office. Then he could have warned her that she’d soon be having nonstop wild sex and needed to be more careful.

  So what did she do—

  “Livia?” Hunter called from the living room. “Did you fall in or what?”

  Peeking her head around the door, she tried to sound normal. “Sorry! I’ll be out in a second.”