The Sweetest Taboo

by Alison Kent

  The mess he’d made with his newest Raleigh Slater story proved even recreational involvement with Erin was out of the question. She had too much impact on his state of mind when he needed complete clarity of thought. He couldn’t afford the risk to his career. A career that was his entire life, his safety, sustenance and support.

  His agent had been only marginally more tolerant of Sebastian’s new project idea than had his editor. And understandably so. They both liked the guaranteed gravy of his Raleigh Slater series. Hell, he was partial to the stuff himself. His muse was another matter. She’d demanded he take up her gauntlet and give this new project his undivided attention—the very reason he had to cut himself off from Erin. From the little interaction he had with Cali and Will as well.

  His success had come at a high price, but relying on self and self alone had taken him to the top. He hit the New York Times bestseller list with every new hardback release, and then again with the mass market printing a year or so later. He’d done it all on his own. And taking his career in a new and risky direction doubled the necessity of cutting off contact with the world outside the one in his mind.

  He didn’t expect Erin to understand. And the explanation he’d have to give her wouldn’t satisfy her right to know or excuse his actions. But he had to do what he had to do without worrying about Erin being hurt.

  He was having a hard enough time dealing with the strangling ache near his heart.

  “OH MY G OD. O H MY G OD. Oh, Erin. Oh, God.”

  Erin hurriedly swiped the half-melted ice cube from the bar into her free hand and tossed both the ice and the rag into the bin beneath the bar. Ryder Falco. He was here. He was here. Oh, God. He was here. She sounded as hysterical as Cali.

  She smoothed down her flowing scarves, a ridiculous effort that defeated the costume’s entire purpose. “Do I look okay? First impressions are everything, you know.”

  Cali worked so hard at swallowing, Erin worried her friend would choke. “Cali? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  Having scooted behind the bar and up to Erin’s side, Cali grabbed Erin’s upper arms and held tight. “Forget the first impressions. Just promise me one thing.”

  Erin frowned down at her friend’s viselike hold. “Uh, Cali? Can this wait for a better time?”

  Cali shook her head. “No. It can’t. Now, promise me that, well, that…just promise me that you won’t flip out or anything.”

  “Why would I flip out or anything?” Erin asked.

  “Promise?” Cali’s eyes both went wide. “I mean, this is important, Erin. This party is going to go a long way toward making sure you don’t lose the bar. That’s all that matters here, okay? You have to remember that.”

  Okay. This was getting weird. “What is it? The cops? The alcoholic beverage commission? Little green men?” When Cali didn’t even crack a smile, Erin began to get nervous. She pried her arms free and said, “No flipping out. Or anything. I promise.”

  “If you do, I’m dragging you out of here. I swear.” Cali made a spinning motion with one finger.

  “No flipping out. I promise,” Erin said then turned to face the grotto—and immediately forgot how to breathe.

  Ryder Falco stood behind the grotto table, hands at his hips, the long tails of his black duster caught back like flared batwings. His black bad-guy hat was pulled low on his forehead; his black bad-guy bandanna was pulled high on the bridge of his nose. Only his eyes remained visible.

  His eyes were all Erin needed to see to know who he really was. To remember the way he’d looked at her from across the bar the first night he’d come into Paddington’s. To relive the moments he’d watched her only hours later as she’d walked into his home and shared his shower. Except suddenly his eyes seemed to be that of a stranger. She felt as if she didn’t know him, had never known him, at all.

  A man she assumed was his publicist stood at Sebastian’s side, talking to the member of the caterer’s staff responsible for the Falco book display. Yet, for all Sebastian’s appearance of listening, Erin knew he wasn’t. His attention was on her and no place else. They could easily have been the only two people in the room.

  She loved a man who had lied to her, she realized, even as another painful truth struck. She had been equally dishonest with him—about the truth of her feelings, about the shallow and selfish reasons she’d invited him into her life. Still, her sin of omission hovered in the realm of petty. And, according to the weighted fist crushing her heart, Sebastian’s ranked above the seven deadly.

  And, now that she’d finally begun breathing again, she wanted to kill him almost as much as she wanted to do herself in. When had she become so blind? So gullible? And where could she get her hands on a weapon to slash his heart into shreds resembling hers?

  How in the hell did he plan to justify his deception? Anger quickly followed denial. This she could not wait to hear.

  Erin took a deep breath and the first long step toward the grotto. Sebastian’s gaze followed her the entire way. She kept her head up, her mouth set, her eyes focused straight ahead. Let him wonder. Let him squirm. She refused to give away an inkling of what she felt and held tightly to the power of that advantage.

  Once she reached him, she pasted on a smile and extended her hand. “Mr. Falco?

  I’m Erin Thatcher. It’s an honor to meet you. I owe you an amazing debt of gratitude and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to properly thank you.”

  Sebastian held on to her hand longer than required of a simple handshake. His eyes sparked and the bandanna barely muffled his voice. “No additional thanks are necessary, Ms. Thatcher. And the pleasure is all mine.” Propriety finally demanded he release her. “This is my publicist, Calvin Shaw.”

  “Mr. Shaw. My thanks to you, as well.” She shook the other man’s hand, giving him her full attention while feeling Sebastian’s devouring gaze. “I have no idea how you managed to convince Mr. Falco to leave his lair, but I’m incredibly glad that you did. You may have just saved the day.”

  Calvin Shaw crossed his arms over his chest and inclined his head toward Sebastian. “I’m the one glad to see Ryder here in the flesh. We get together so rarely that I’ve started to wonder if he’s the fictional character instead of Raleigh Slater.”

  Erin forced an appreciative laugh when truly she felt like she might vomit. “Well, he looks like the real thing to me. Living, breathing. Totally three-dimensional. Not a work of fiction at all.”

  She returned her gaze to Sebastian, watched his eyes express all the things he was unable to say. She imagined the vein pulsing at his temple, the hard grinding tic in his jaw, the fullness of his lower lip pressed tight to his upper, all hidden behind his bandanna.

  It was a small victory, but it was enough to know he couldn’t say a word without giving away the whole gig. “I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding us. I know the construction has been terrible and we’re not exactly one of the city’s better known hot spots.”

  “No. No trouble at all,” Calvin said, slapping a palm to Sebastian’s back. “Ryder knew exactly where to find you.”

  “Really? That surprises me.” She narrowed an eye in speculation. “Unless, of course, you’ve been here before. You should’ve introduced yourself. Your secret would’ve been safe with me.”

  “He claims the risk to his anonymity is too great. Or at least that’s the excuse he gives me every time I try to book him a signing,” Calvin said.

  Erin was still waiting for Sebastian to answer. She wasn’t leaving the grotto until he did, until he gave her a hint of an explanation for what felt like an unforgivable deception. If he thought she was putting him on the spot, all the better. Look what he was doing to her!

  He pulled the brim of his hat even lower. “I have a couple of friends who live here in town. They love this place and wanted to help you out of your jam. Plus I knew it would get Cal off my back for a while.”

  “So a little bit of the goodness of your heart and a little bit of a peace offeri
ng?”

  Her grin grew brittle. “Your friends are lucky to have you. You’ve been extremely generous.”

  “I try to be. At least when it comes to the people I care about.” He was good, way too good.

  She wanted him to hurt like she did and resented his effortless cool. “Your friends are lucky to have you.”

  “I think I’m more lucky to have them.” He offered a one-shouldered shrug—one almost apologetic, self-deprecating even. “Helps keep me sane in my isolation, knowing they’re out there.”

  Erin fought back what felt too much like sympathy. He had done this to himself. She was not about to offer him her open arms. “Well, maybe now that you’ve seen how friendly we are, and that we’re not out to devour hapless authors, you’ll stop back by whenever you’re in town.”

  Calvin rearranged a stack of books for maximum impact. “I’m hoping he’ll see that getting out does not mean an automatic invasion of his privacy.”

  Sebastian might’ve smiled beneath the bandanna, but the emotion failed to reach his eyes. “Cal makes it sound like I never leave home.”

  “Do you?” she asked, willing Calvin to walk away and leave her to get the answers she wasn’t getting.

  “Sure,” Sebastian said. “I walk through my neighborhood a lot. There’s a great bar I frequent. Under the right circumstances, I can be downright sociable.”

  “Don’t let him fool you.” The table arrangement to his liking, Calvin pulled out Sebastian’s chair. “He can be downright intimidating.”

  “Let’s see.” Erin gave Sebastian—The Scary Guy—a once-over. “Big guy. Headto-toe black. Menacing eyes. Hmm. It’s not hard to imagine that he might cause a ripple of fear.” What was hard was standing here making small talk with a celebrity who had buried himself in her body as fully and completely as Sebastian had.

  She supposed she should be starstruck. She wasn’t. She was angry and hurt and beginning to shake from the emotional rush. She didn’t know how she’d managed to pull off her role of hostess this long. She needed to get out of here—and now.

  “Let me get you gentlemen a drink and then your fans can have at you. Again, thank you and enjoy the evening.” She turned without waiting for Sebastian to respond and she never once looked back.

  “DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS? That Sebastian was…that Sebastian is Ryder Falco?” Wearing black cape, mask, and gaucho-style Zorro hat, Will stood with a serving tray rather than a sword tucked beneath his arm, his gaze following the ebb and flow of the crowd while he questioned Cali.

  She might’ve been more inclined to answer had he been talking to her and not to the room. Yes, he was busy doing his job. No, he was not ignoring her. But the last few weeks had been rather tense, what with their screenplay issues, and she found herself reading too much into everything he said. And everything he didn’t say.

  Especially when what he said had no basis. Like now. “Why would you think I would be privy to something even Erin didn’t know?”

  This time he did look at her, casting her a sideways glance from beneath his black mask, a glance that was just this side of a smirk. “Oh, I don’t know. Something to do with the way you wanted his input on our screenplay? No, wait. How about the way you went to him for his input? Even though you knew I didn’t give a damn what he thought?”

  The heat of anger rose in a flush. Why was Will so intent on ruining her night? He knew every reason for what she had done. Knew, as well, the validity of the arguments she had made for the changes. He was just being a hardheaded egotistical man. And she wasn’t sure she possessed the patience to put up with his crap no matter how she felt.

  “Yes. I asked him, okay?” She stopped, took a calming breath, knowing she shouldn’t have made the changes without telling Will.

  But she’d wanted him to see the alterations once they were done—not while the story structure was in a state of flux. “I had no idea who he was when I did but, now that I know? His insights make a ton of sense. He was so intuitive about what would make the idea work.”

  Will went back to checking out the crowd, turning more than a cold shoulder Cali’s way. “The changes you made might be your idea of what it needed but they sure weren’t mine. I thought and I still think that it worked just fine as it was.”

  “You haven’t even given it a chance. You haven’t even read the story through since I tweaked it. You’ve just nitpicked certain scenes. That’s hardly fair.” Cali had known that having Sebastian look over the screenplay wasn’t going to sit well with Will once he found out.

  But she’d really wanted an outside opinion, one that would confirm her instincts if possible—exactly what Sebastian’s input had done. She’d since gone through and made small and subtle changes where possible, keeping intact what she could of Will’s skeleton. No matter that his feelings were hurt, she knew the story was stronger.

  Now if she could only get him to agree. Then get him to understand why his major plot point wasn’t going to work. But when he bodily turned to face her, banged his tray on the bar top and pulled off his mask, she didn’t think much about his mood was agreeable.

  “Me not reading the changes isn’t fair but you making them without telling me is?” Without the obstruction of his glasses, Will’s eyes glittered with sparks the likes of which Cali had never seen—

  —and wasn’t sure she found the least bit attractive. Her heart pounded painfully.

  “Please read it, Will. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I’m not sure I want to read it. Or work on it.” His expression closed down. “It’s not the story I wanted to tell anymore.”

  Cali wanted to stomp her foot in frustration, but she’d sworn tonight to be on her best angelic behavior for Erin’s sake, and because she’d never make her point with Will by throwing a childish hissy.

  “I did what I felt had to do, Will. I’m sorry you don’t trust my motives or my instincts.” Probably not a fair response but she’d be damned before she backed down on this—even though she had no idea how to correct the inevitable outcome of their current collision course.

  The decibel level of the party crowd and party music rose higher, giving Will the option of shouting or of moving closer to be heard. He moved closer, offering Cali so many intimate reminders of having him near. The fight between her heart and her head and her warm and willing body grew fierce.

  Will’s expression grew fiercer. “And what exactly are your motives, Cali? To have it your way? To prove my way wrong by bringing in a celebrity author to vet your ideas?”

  Pulling her gaze from Will’s, Cali swept empty mugs into a dirty dish tub with no respect for their fragility. “You know I had no idea who Sebastian was until tonight. Erin didn’t even know. She picked him to do because of their mutual attraction, not because of any fame and fortune.”

  Will shook his head as if trying to settle a thought that didn’t sit well. Or dodge a buzzing mosquito. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, Erin picked Sebastian to do? ”

  Uh-oh.

  Way to open mouth, insert foot. The dish tub went under the counter. Cali got busy wiping condensation from the bar with the first rag she found, wishing she could wipe away the past few minutes of speaking without first gathering her thoughts. Oh, why the hell not. Honesty never killed a girl.

  She shrugged out of her angel wings and shoved them beneath the bar. “Erin went after what she wanted. An involvement with a man she found attractive. The very same thing men do all the time with women.”

  She waited for a male denial, ready to go to the mat on this one, but Will kept his mouth shut, damn it, when she was finally itching for a fight. So she tried again. “What Erin did was nothing but reversing a centuries-old dating practice. A woman picking up a man. Being gutsy enough to go against convention.”

  “Man the torpedoes, full steam ahead?”

  “Exactly.”

  And so there!

  Will took a minute to consider his reply, then came back with, “Is that the same reason yo
u came home with me?”

  “What’re you talking about?” Cali asked, recognizing that she was about to be in really big trouble. “I’ve come home with you more than a few times this semester.”

  Leaving his tray on the counter, Will walked around behind, leaning an elbow onto the bar and forcing himself into Cali’s personal space. His voice dropped to a volume meant only for her ears. “But you haven’t come into my bed until recently. Kinda convenient that we started sleeping together about the same time Erin was doing Sebastian.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re implying,” Cali went back to wiping the bar.

  “Or even that I want to know.”

  “I’d think it’s pretty obvious in context, Cali. Picking out a man you want to do?