Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy

by Amalie Berlin

  “Well, you shaved my leg before, so that should help.”

  Was he still talking in code?

  “Right. Not going to rip hair out.” She twisted to snatch her phone off the counter and turned it on, checked texts and messages, then stashed it in her pocket. “I’ll be careful, Liam. I have no desire to hurt you.”

  “Me either,” he said, both hands lifting to rub over his face.

  “You want me to leave you alone to soak in it?”

  He dropped his hands heavily in his lap, finally looking her in the eye.

  She saw regret there, matching what his voice told her. But Grace knew how terrible her instincts were with regard to this man. “All right.”

  A quick detour and she retrieved a remote control to give to him, pointing out a sticker on the back with the Wi-Fi password on it. “For your amusement in the meanwhile. I’ll be back in twenty, and we’ll roll the wax off and check your range of motion, then go through the exercises you’re to do today and tomorrow. I don’t need to see you tomorrow, but I will check in. And you can call if you have trouble. It’s only a few gentle exercises today and tomorrow, mostly just about keeping the joint working without interfering with the healing. I’ll go over the instructions when I get back. And bring in a package prepared for you to take with you with a moist heat pack and sheet with exercises in little pictures.”

  Liam took what she handed him and let it drop to his lap. “Thanks, Grace. I...I owe you.”

  “No, you don’t. You pay me to do this, just like all the double time you’re being billed for travel and round-the-clock care.”

  She wanted more, she knew that now, but she had absolutely no idea how to go about turning this mess into something more. Or even if she should try. The only thing she knew she had to do was try to keep things going, get through this, and see what happened.

  That’s what she always did.

  Since her accident the only risks she’d taken had been with regard to Liam. All the rest of her life was Safety First. But in his presence? She kept throwing caution to the wind. Which should probably tell her something.

  She stepped out of the room, set the timer on her phone, and headed back to the office. If he was going to be in therapy for the next two weeks, she should probably invest in some kind of wall padding or helmet for all the beating her head against the wall she’d no doubt be doing.

  Once in the office, she closed the door and called her brother back.

  She loved Nick. She really did. She knew he wanted the best for her, and he probably felt compelled to protect her.

  But she was a big girl, and it was past time he figured that out.

  * * *

  Grace had RSVP’d Freya Rothsberg and Zack Carlton’s wedding weeks ago. She even had a dress and new strappy sandals picked out. What she didn’t have was a date.

  Today she’d begun to feel the pressure of that. She’d blame Liam. How in the world was she supposed to find a date for a wedding when she had movie stars in her eyes?

  The problem with having stupid squishy feelings for a celebrity patient was not just knowing that she shouldn’t—ethics got involved because he was her patient. She could hold out and feign something professional for the few hours a week that they spent on his rehab, which should have made things easier, but it hadn’t.

  But the ethics mattered to the clinic, even in their case where their history was so deep and complicated that it made the ethics question reach new depths of murkiness.

  This morning’s early visit would involve time in the water to get him walking in a near-weightless environment.

  Which meant it was time for her to change into her bathing suit.

  Normally, she’d use the one-piece that came with shorts and really concealed her assets. But due to a series of phone meetings today Liam was coming in a good two hours before they usually started seeing patients.

  And she was going to make the most out of that situation because, murky ethics or not, she did want more from him. She just had to start laying the groundwork now even if she couldn’t act on it while he was her patient, and also because her grand gestures to seduce the man had never seemed to work out the way she’d envisioned.

  She was going to wear her black bikini, the one she kept for swimming when no one else was in the pool. The one she’d been wearing that first day when he’d stumbled over her.

  Because in the four days since she’d seen him, Grace had come to some realizations.

  She could deal with humiliation, but she couldn’t handle not knowing what it would be like to be with him.

  Liam got under her skin more than anyone ever had, and if that never happened again, she’d regret not experiencing it.

  Yes, anything to do with him made her completely unable to predict how it was going to go—she couldn’t make a safe play because she didn’t know what was safe when it came to Liam. Not trying and going another five, or fifteen, or fifty years wondering what if? Or living with the humiliation she’d become so accustomed to if he turned her down?

  Knowing he wanted her made that at least easier to stomach.

  It wasn’t a great plan, but she’d lived a safe life too long. She needed some risk. Liam wouldn’t be the death of her, and if she was lucky, it would give her the kind of symmetry that her heart needed. Finish something that had started back then.

  She went to change.

  And if this bikini didn’t work, that was okay: it was stage one. She had something much flimsier to try if she had to break out bigger ammunition for stage two.

  Maybe she should convince him to go for a house call. His pool or the one at her place. There were pools to be had in LA where she could lure him with privacy and tempt him with tiny bikinis.

  Not a great plan, but it was better than the trench coat. At least in theory.

  * * *

  “This exercise is not as advertised,” Liam said, sliding into the hotel’s rooftop pool he’d rented for the evening and had closed an hour early for his therapy with Grace, watching her across the pool where she stood in a black bikini so small only microkini enthusiasts would say it wasn’t revealing enough.

  The woman’s bathing suits just kept getting smaller.

  She dropped the towels she’d been carrying at the edge and slid into the water.

  “It’s water. We’re going to be walking and swimming tonight, working the joint in three different ways.”

  “And we could have done this at the clinic. I know what you’re up to, Watson.”

  Driving me crazy.

  The use of her last name got her attention and Grace swam to his side of the pool, no doubt because it was faster than walking, even though the water wasn’t more than waist deep on him. She stopped and stood in front of him, the water sluicing down her body, rippling over that soft, golden skin. He sighed and leaned back against the side.

  True to her guarantees, his ankle improved a little every day. But his willpower? That was now limping along.

  What came next? Topless pool therapy day?

  Having a private pool suddenly seemed like a really legit reason for investing in real estate.

  If he were into one-night stands, he’d find some woman to get naked with just to relieve the stress that spending every day with Grace in progressively smaller bathing suits was putting on his libido control.

  “Not going to deny it?”

  “Deny that I’m up to something?” The smile she gave him flashed so wickedly that he had to look anywhere but at her.

  She maneuvered until she was beside him, facing in the same direction, and murmured, “You need to go a little deeper.”

  Deeper. Yes. Really...deep.

  “Quit that,” he bit out. “Just tell me what to do.”

  “Quit what?”

  Like she d
idn’t know what she was doing. “Don’t play innocent with me. I’m onto you. Don’t do that...provocative...well, it wasn’t exactly dirty talk but you know we do that. Sexy double talk.”

  She pointed across his chest to the deeper end of the pool. “So you knew what I meant. Good. Move a little that way. The water should come up to your ribs. We’re going to do some walking in the water. Back and forth here for a warm-up and then each time we’ll move a little farther up the pool to progressively shallower water, so you’ll be taking more weight on it each time. See how far you can go up. Then the same thing tomorrow.”

  “Is this the new measurement system?”

  “Yes. Your range of motion is greatly improved so now we’re working on slowly increasing strength.”

  “And are you going to admit what you’re up to?” He asked the question but started walking in that slow, mostly submerged, bouncy fashion across the short length of the pool, staying in the same water depth.

  She stayed beside him as he did as instructed, like he needed help or a safety net. Would it be better or worse if she were out of the pool and he got a view of her skimpy bikini every time he came toward her?

  “You want a confession?”

  “Yes.” He stopped at the other side of the pool and turned around to start the return trip.

  “I thought you didn’t want to know all the details of what’s going on in my head.”

  Frustration reaching snapping point, Liam paused long enough to brace his good leg against the bottom of the pool for support.

  Grace stopped and looked at him, concern in her eyes.

  Before she could say anything, he grabbed her by the waist, jumped as high as he could, and chucked her a few feet away from him in the water. He’d thrown that woman in the pool more times than he could count as teenagers. Usually in more shallow water, or from the side of the pool, where he could really get a good fling on her and send her flying. The ribs-deep water made that harder, but she still went under with a satisfying splash.

  When she came up sputtering and laughing, he nodded and continued walking. “I don’t. But apparently it’s the only way through this. So out with it.”

  “I’m done playing it safe,” Grace said, still smiling from the reminder of their old, more innocent games, as she approached him again to resume walking.

  “That means what?”

  “That means that I’ve realized that just because I’m afraid of losing again it doesn’t mean that I can live with myself if I don’t try.”

  “You should be able to.” God help him, he wasn’t going to make this easy on her. She had to get the idea to stop. “It isn’t going to work. No matter how nice it might be. It can’t.”

  * * *

  Grace took a deep breath and as they reached the edge of the pool, ushered him about a foot higher, into somewhat more shallow water. “Again,” she said, dealing with the therapy first while working out what she wanted to say. Considering the way they’d been circling one another for days, she hadn’t expected him to approach this head-on. He wanted it all out in the open again, or so he claimed. No matter how badly that had gone last time. And she was completely out of instincts on it. It had all boiled down to simple facts: he enjoyed kissing her. He’d wanted her then, he still did now. That wasn’t going to change because she found her spine again and tried to convince him.

  “I’ve spent years wanting that night to have gone differently and I want to know. I want my night. With you.”

  “Grace—”

  “Just wait. I know what you’re going to say. We can’t because of Nick, who I’m sure is putting just as much—if not more—pressure on you than he has been on me to stay apart. He said you’re a player and I will just get hurt. Just like your last girlfriend was.”

  “He’s right. About us. You’re built for forever, and I won’t ever marry. It’s not for me. So you would get hurt.”

  “You’re not a player. You’re a serial dater, but you’re not a player. You have relationships, otherwise they couldn’t end up badly and in the news. The only reason I was news was because of how recently you broke up with Simone Andre, and because now she’s in rehab.”

  One thing to be thankful for. At least Grace didn’t sound like she blamed him for Simone’s drug problem, but he didn’t want her thinking that. It didn’t have anything to do with them, but he didn’t want her to see him as recent gossip had been painting him.

  “The stuff about Simone isn’t true. I didn’t just get done with her and move on. I didn’t break her heart and turn her into an addict. I broke up with her because she was an addict. And I wanted her to get help. And she has. She’s in rehab and I’m really glad, but, like I told you before, rumors and gossip spring up about everything, even stuff that isn’t true. I don’t need to make her life worse, and she’s not the one telling people all this, so I don’t correct the idiotic stories I see that paint me as the bad guy. Right now, I’m the stronger one. I can carry this for her. I can handle lies, it’s the true stuff that hurts.”

  “You’re making assumptions about what is best for me. You and Nick both are, and I’m a big girl. I can make my own decisions. I made some admittedly stupid choices in the past, but I was a bit younger then, you know. And we’ve already talked about being young and stupid. So that argument doesn’t hold water, and you’re doing me a disservice when you act like I need to be protected from you or that it’s your job or Nick’s job to do it.”

  “Got it. You don’t need to be protected from me. But, to be clear, I would try and protect Nick from making a bad decision too if I knew in advance he was trying to make one. So I can’t get mad at him for doing the same thing with me.”

  “Because you’re about to make a bad decision with me?”

  “That’s what it looks like to Nick. I did make a bad decision in the limo.”

  “My point is, I would regret it more if I didn’t try to finish this than if we go to bed once and you never speak to me again. I’m pretty sure that you’re never going to speak to me again anyway when this is all said and done. So what would you regret more?”

  He stopped once more at the edge and gestured toward the shallow end again.

  She nodded. “One more and then maybe we’ll stay there for a couple of passes. This one worked your ankle a bit.”

  “This isn’t too bad.”

  “It sounds like you’re in pain, though.” In pain and angry. Maybe she should just let this alone. She’d made her point. She’d put herself out there, and at least she’d done it with who she was this time.

  “A little.” At least he admitted to the physical feelings, and moved another foot down and shaved another few inches off the water depth. “And all that stuff I told you about my limits because of your family and our history?”

  “I’m not going to announce it to Nick or Mom and Dad, Liam.” She kept pace with him, letting him set the speed now. “I’m not going to go whining when it ends. I know I don’t fit into your world. It’s going to be over between us when you’re recovered, one way or another. You’re going off to some film location and, sure, you might send greetings through Nick in the future or ask how I’m doing, but we’re not friends.” She touched his arm, stopping him in the middle, forcing him to look at her.

  “We’re not friends anymore, Liam. Right now, we’re pretending to be friends because if this attraction wasn’t between us, we would be friends. I genuinely like you, and I know you like me. I know you care about me, and you care about my family, and our history... But it’s never going to be what it was when we were kids. If it ever was that anyway. I can’t be friends with you without all this between us.”

  Liam watched her in a way that said her words had been in his mind before she’d said them, and she watched as he reached up to rub the back of his neck. The man shouldn’t have told her that body language tell. He
felt emotionally in danger, that’s what he’d said men did when they felt that.

  “So it’s going to end because of all the reasons we’ve talked about. Why is that going to be easier than if we’ve made one amazing memory together first?” She stepped back, one step, then another, her courage abandoning her at the end of her forward, angry confession. Now she had no choice but to flee if she wanted to keep breathing or keep from protecting her jugular notch.

  Every time he said he wanted her honesty, it went like this, with his words drying up and her left trying to fill the gap.

  “I want you to do another three passes here, back and forth. And then swim. Gently, not like you’re being chased by sharks. Kick and flex your feet separately or together like a fish, but don’t frog-kick your legs. Use your feet better, and don’t overdo it. Do the same thing three times tomorrow. Morning, afternoon, and evening.”

  “Are you leaving?” he said finally, stopping in the center of the pool where she’d left him, the water lapping at his hips.

  “Yes.” If there was any fairness in the universe, he wouldn’t hear her voice wobbling. “I’ll see you in two days at the clinic. Text me what time you want to come. Morning, I’m guessing. Which would be fine. Or night. I can come back or stay late from work. If you want to meet at night, then do the exercises that day before you come, and we’ll switch things when you get there.”

  He nodded, apparently not disagreeing with any of it.

  She turned and headed for the side of the pool where her towel was, and kicked out of it.

  The bikini business had to stop.

  If anything were going to happen between them now, it had to be his move. Her cards were on the table. So many cards. God, what was she thinking?

  Shaking the towel out, she wrapped it under her arms and clutched it there to head for the changing area.

  Dry off. Get out. Go home.