Michael didn’t like strawberries. Or rich chocolate. He’d said once that one of his fondest memories as a kid was a family trip to the East Coast and a tour of the Hershey factory.
The marshmallows were because she knew she could have fun with them. Just because she’d never been sexually adventurous didn’t mean she was ignorant. In her crowd she’d heard it all.
Wine and goodies in hands, she turned, ready to tempt Michael out of his pants, only to find him gone.
With her sweats still hanging baggily from her hips, her hands full, she went to find him.
He was in the living room. He’d turned on some music and was looking at her collection of movies.
“You never told me you liked Don Knotts,” he said. “And Martin Lewis, too.” Another of his favorites.
“I met Martin Lewis when I was a kid.” Feeling a little awkward, standing there exposed, plate and wine bottle in hand, playing the seductress while he was having a normal conversation, Kacey wished she hadn’t vacated her T-shirt quite so quickly.
“Of course you did.” He shot her a grin, turned back to the movies and froze.
Setting down the bottle and plate with too little finesse, Kacey made a dash for the kitchen and her T-shirt, calling out, “Lacey and I were in a tap number with him on his show,” she said. “We were about four and could barely do a shuffle-ball-change, but we were front and center in this group of really good teenage tap dancers. Martin tapped, too. And at the end of the number, Lacey and I had to run up and hug him, with all of the other kids following behind us so there was like this big ball of kids with their arms around each other with him in the center.”
“Sounds like you would have been crushed.” His gaze grew curious as she came back fully clothed.
She hoped she hadn’t already mucked up his fantasy. Timing was everything.
“No, the worst was the body odor.” So many sweaty teens...
Michael’s laugh set her at ease. Even if she disappointed him sexually, things would still be okay.
“Let’s sit,” he said.
She’d grabbed wineglasses on her way back from the kitchen, thinking she needed a tall glass, and he twisted the cap off the bottle. She still hadn’t gotten used to that—fine California vintages coming with the twist-off cap that used to designate cheap wine.
Because they were going to have sex, Kacey sat next to him, rather than taking that end of the couch as she had the previous week.
He poured and held up his glass. She followed suit. And had no idea what to say. Here’s to great sex between friends?
“To a friendship set in stone,” he said. She clinked her glass to his and tried not to cry. The man was an enigma. And the best thing that had ever, ever come into her life.
* * *
“WE DON’T HAVE to do this, you know.” Kacey was nervous. His toast had nearly made her cry. Her appearing in that bra had nearly knocked him out of his briefs, but it had also bothered him in an entirely different way. She was pushing too hard.
If she had to force things, it wasn’t going to happen.
“You don’t want to?”
They’d promised honesty. It was the only way. “I am not going to touch you if it makes you nervous,” he told her.
“Your touch doesn’t make me nervous.”
“Something’s going on.”
She looked down at the wine in her glass. Took a sip. And he had a really strong feeling it was for courage.
Setting his glass on the table, he turned to her, ran a hand down her exquisitely perfect face. A symbol of the dichotomy between them. If they ever were together for life, he’d be waking to that face every single morning. And she’d be waking to half a ghoul.
“I want to have sex with you.”
She was pushing again.
“I mean it, Michael.” The look in her eyes, hungry and filled with warmth, confused him.
“Then what’s going on?”
She took another sip of wine. And he thought he knew.
“Your mind wants you to have sex with me,” he said. “Because you know I’m safe and you so badly want to recover from what happened on the beach. You’re using me to get yourself back. I’m going into this with eyes wide-open. But it’s not going to work if you aren’t ready, Kace. We have to wait until your body wants it, too. Or at least is tempted to want it.”
Her eyes flooded with tears this time.
“Oh, Michael, I really do love you.”
As a friend. He knew and believed that. But he also knew she was in recovery mode. He knew it well. He’d lived in it himself for more than three years. Through surgery after surgery. And then following the breakup with Susan.
“And sometimes you make me nuts,” she continued.
He didn’t get that.
“I am so wet with wanting you right now, I can hardly believe it. I’ve never felt anything like it...”
Oh, God. Man, oh, man. She was throwing him a curveball and he was only human...
But he hadn’t imagined the shaking hands. The pushing.
And she was a consummate actress. He’d seen her show. More times than he cared to admit even to her.
“Kace...”
She took another sip of wine, a big sip, and opened the bag of marshmallows, popping one into his mouth and then one into hers.
“It’s not me I’m worried about, Michael,” she said, the words slightly garbled as she spoke around her marshmallow. He was on fire, watching that. Needing to kiss her. To lose himself in her.
Even knowing that once he did, he’d never fully get himself back.
But she acknowledged worry. They were getting somewhere.
He finished chewing before he said, “What are you worried about?”
“Disappointing you, you nut. Do you have any idea what it’s like being seen as some kind of sex fantasy? I mean, come on, how could I possibly live up to that? Unless maybe if sex was my profession, I might be able to pull it off, if I had that much training. But...”
He froze. “Wait a minute.” She had to stop talking.
“If sex were your profession, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said. “And if you think I want to have sex with a symbol, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”
“But—”
“I want you, Kace. Just you.”
“You want the me you think I am in the bedroom.”
“Until the last two days, I’ve tried my best not to think of you in the bedroom.”
“I’m not that good.”
He shook his head. Looked her straight in the eye, because he wanted there to be no mistake about what he was about to tell her. “I. Don’t. Care.” He enunciated very clearly. “I’m not here to have a good time, Kacey. I’m here to explore another facet to our relationship and only because it’s calling out to both of us. I’m not doing it for me. Or just for you, either. I’m doing it because it’s a mutual thing.”
She nodded but still looked doubtful. “It’s just... I don’t really know what to do to...please you,” she said. “And I want to. Please you. So badly.”
She wasn’t getting it. Or he wasn’t. “Being with you pleases me, Kacey.”
“I know.” She sounded more frustrated than anything. “And you are making this about as embarrassing as it gets.” She glared at him, but held his gaze, too. “I’ve only slept with two men in my entire life,” she told him. “And neither was anything to write home about. It wasn’t spectacular at all. Or anything like I pretend on television. I liked it fine. I felt some things. But...” She looked away, and then back. “Now you see the problem?”
He wanted to whoop out loud. If he’d been more like her he would have. But he was Mike Valentine. The man who’d learned self-control as a way to maintain his san
ity when the pain—both emotional and physical—had come close to being more than he could bear.
“Actually, I don’t,” he said, grinning full out. “If you think it’s a problem that I’ve had more lovers than you have, then you’re sadly misinformed,” he told her. “If I’d allowed myself to have a fantasy about you, that would pretty much be it,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “I want the real you, Kacey. This gives me a chance to meet you, before too much experience shaped you into something different.”
“You’ve had more lovers than I have.” She considered a moment. “Exactly how many are we talking about here?”
And that was what happened when he pushed forward without assessing. He ended up with both feet in his mouth.
“Not that many.” It wasn’t polite to ask, he might have pointed out. But the way she was sticking her chin out, glaring at him, was such a turn-on he couldn’t stop things now.
“How many?”
“It’s not like I keep notches on my bedpost.” And most of them had been before the accident.
“Michael?”
“I love you, Kace,” he said. As a friend. He trusted her to know that. “Can we please have sex now?” Leaning forward, he kissed her, long and slow. Softly. Tasting wine. And tongue. Tasting Kacey.
No food, ever, would top that taste.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HIS BODY WAS utter perfection. As Kacey lay beneath Michael on her bed, ready to receive him for the first time, all she could see was brightness around him. Illumination from the moonlight streaming in through the open windows.
She was so hot for him she was getting impatient. And yet loving every single moment that he drew this out.
His lips had caressed every part of her body, his fingers working their own magic. She’d been on the cusp of the most exquisite explosion on several occasions, and each time he’d brought her back from the brink. Only to drive her right back there again.
The most incredible moments came from simply touching him. Fingers were not an erogenous zone, but when she touched him between his legs, her own body flooded with excitement. With need.
As she spread her legs for him to position himself between them, she was at the point of no return.
And then he turned her over so she was on top of him.
“You’re in control, Kacey,” he told her, his voice deliciously throaty, his eyes hooded with need, but the words completely serious.
Even in his moment of release, he was thinking of her—not driving himself home.
So Kacey did it for him.
Again and again. She couldn’t be like him. Couldn’t take it slow. Or bring them almost there and make it stop.
She just moved, over and over, as hard as it took, and clasped onto his sweaty chest as both of them exploded.
* * *
“NEVER,” MIKE SAID against Kacey’s hair. He was never going to forget the sight of those blond curly strands dangling over him as she moved her body on top of his. And would gladly lie just as they were for the rest of his remembering.
Her naked body half on top of his, her head on his chest, was as good as it was ever going to get.
“Never what?” she asked, lifting up her head to look at him.
“I’ve never done that before,” he told her. “You asked how many, I’m telling you never.”
Disappointment flooded her face and she pushed up until she was sitting next to him. She didn’t cover herself.
And he didn’t hide his appreciation of what she was showing him.
“You said honesty, Michael, and if you expect me to believe that you were a virgin then...”
He pulled her back down to him, on top of him, so that her face was only an inch from his. “I’ve made love before,” he told her. “I’ve never been made love to.”
Her smile was radiant, infusing him with energy. With strength. And a will to do whatever it took to bring happiness into her world for the rest of his days.
* * *
KACEY’S EUPHORIA LASTED until Monday morning, when, five minutes after she got to the set, she heard that there’d been another photo of her and this one looked like it was going viral. It had originally been posted to the site the first bogus photo had appeared on but had been picked up by several less reputable—but highly popular—media sources.
Kacey recognized the dress. The photo had been taken the night she and Michael had been at the awards dinner. Outside the venue. She looked like she’d been staggering, her body at a slight angle.
The caption read, “Actor Bo Williams breaks up with daytime addict, signs two movie deals with Polygraph Pictures.” The tagline read, “Actor says it was a close call to making the biggest mistake of his life, but he’s firmly on track now.”
Everyone at The Rich and Loyal was talking about it. It was clear now that someone was out to smear her.
As soon as she heard, she made a beeline to her dressing room. She had half an hour before she was due to film. And she had a phone call to make.
Waiting for Michael to pick up, she thought about the twelve hours they’d spent together in her condo that weekend. They’d been better than any scene she’d ever shot. Any part she’d ever played.
He’d had to leave early Sunday morning, but those hours...
And the good thing about the photo was that Michael hadn’t been in it. Until they found out who was sabotaging her and put a stop to it, she couldn’t be seen anywhere with him.
When he didn’t pick up, she realized that he must be on his way to take Willie to school. She had to be on set before he’d be free.
Rushing to her phone on her first break, she saw a missed call. And a voice mail. Just the sound of his voice made her insides puddle. He was following up with the original posting and with the other sites that had picked it up. He’d be working with the police and they would get to the bottom of the situation.
He promised her.
She hoped he wasn’t going to start making promises he might not be able to keep.
And kind of hoped he would, too, especially if it meant that he’d promise to be her everything forever. Because one thing was very clear to Kacey.
She’d fallen head over heels in love with her best friend.
She wanted to sleep with him every night. To wake with him every morning. To have his children. And be his everything.
She also knew that she wanted the impossible.
* * *
THAT NEXT WEEK seemed to go on forever. Mike worked. He spent time with Willie. He spent a lot of time trying to track down Kacey’s online stalker. He texted her all day long.
Spoke to her every night.
And could hardly keep himself from asking her to meet him at the motel next to Little’s for a quickie one evening. He might have actually let loose and given in to the daring, what-the-hell part of him that had been cooped up since his senior year of college, except that he knew a quickie would never be enough.
She’d told him every day that week that she was living for Friday. It had become a mantra to her. Not that they would be together Friday night. She’d be at Lacey’s. And he’d be home with Willie. But at least they’d have a chance to see each other, alone, in his office.
For an entire hour if he could work it that way.
He wouldn’t get in her pants there at the Stand—though the completely unprofessional idea was growing more appealing as the days passed—but he could look into her eyes. Touch her.
And then on Friday morning there was a lockdown at Willie’s high school—before first period. Before Mike had dropped off Willie. A threat had come by text message to several of the school board members—something that had been happening in increasingly alarming numbers across the country in recent months. In extreme precaution, all schools had been cl
osed until they could be searched.
The high school didn’t get the all clear in time for Willie’s first class. Mike texted Kacey, letting her know that he would be bringing Willie to the Stand with him. And that he’d keep her posted.
Just before her class was due to be out, Willie was still in his office, working on a computer that had been brought in for repair. It was the same make and model as Willie’s own, and he was making headway.
It just meant that Michael was not going to have time alone with Kacey. Disappointed, he texted her to let her know that they couldn’t meet. He said, once again, that he’d keep her posted.
He didn’t expect a response. She was in class and wouldn’t interrupt her time with the women to check her phone.
But he imagined her disappointment. And wondered if it would be anywhere near as acute as his.
* * *
KACEY WAS LATE finishing her class. And then later still due to a resident who’d stayed to speak with her. She’d lost track of time.
And hoped to hell that she still had a few minutes with Michael. Just long enough for one kiss. To reassure her that she hadn’t imagined the life he’d brought to her soul.
He’d texted earlier to say that his brother was already at the Stand. She hoped that meant that he’d have a little extra time to spend with her since he wouldn’t need to leave to go pick up Willie.
Grabbing her purse out of the cupboard where she kept it during class, she didn’t even bother checking messages—which showed how far gone she was, since she was never out of touch for more than an hour if she could help it—and made a dash for the computer building.
She came bearing no boxes of goodies, but if he was feeling anything like she was, the goodies he wanted wouldn’t fit in any little box she could carry.
Hurrying up to his door, she barely stopped to catch her breath. Didn’t care if she looked harried. She went right for the doorknob. Heart fluttering madly as the latch gave, she burst into the room. “Oh, good, I was afraid I’d be too late...”
She stopped. Her feet. Her words.
Her air.
Michael was there. She felt his presence. Could see him rise from behind his desk.
Her Secret Life Page 23
