by Meg Cabot
Eleanor could not help laughing a little as she pictured this.
“Yes,” she said. “That does sound like Jack.”
“Am I right?” Frank said. “Or am I right? Now you get yourself to bed and grab some shut-eye. By morning, you can bet they’ll have pinned down those kids’ location, and the two of ’em’ll be joining us for breakfast.”
“Not, hopefully, at that unfortunate establishment downstairs,” Eleanor said, dashing a tear from the corner of her eye.
“Are you kidding me?” Frank said. “I had to down half a bottle of Mylanta after that sirloin. I don’t know how you can ruin a steak, but that place managed. We’ll find a nice mom-and-pop operation downtown somewhere, and have some real food for breakfast. How does that strike you?”
“That strikes me just fine,” Eleanor said. And then, impulsively, she stood on her toes, and pressed a quick kiss to Frank Calabrese’s cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.
To her surprise, Frank turned a rather startling shade of pink. It took Eleanor a second or two to realize that he was not having a heart attack but blushing. It had been so long since she’d last seen anyone blush that she was completely unable to keep herself from blurting, “Why, Frank! You’re blushing!” even though Eleanor thought personal remarks the height of rudeness.
After she said it, she flung a hand over her mouth and looked up at him guiltily. To her dismay, he only turned a deeper color of burgundy.
“I know,” he said miserably. “It’s a family curse. We all do it.”
Eleanor brought her hand away from her mouth and said, taking his arm, and giving it a little squeeze, “Well, I think it’s delightful.”
Frank looked pleased, but a little disbelieving. “Really?”
“Absolutely,” Eleanor said, firmly. “It’s refreshing, actually. Sometimes it seems to me as if nobody gets embarrassed anymore…especially the people who have the most to be embarrassed about.”
“I feel exactly the same way,” Frank said, smiling broadly. “Isn’t that funny?”
Eleanor felt a curious tug from within—almost the way it felt when Alessandro tugged on his leash because he wanted to conduct a closer inspection of something. Only this time, the tug wasn’t on her arm, but—and she was quite certain of this—on her heart, instead.
This was startling, because Eleanor could not remember having felt such a sensation before, except possibly the first time she’d seen Gilbert, at Maude Gross-Dunleavy’s cotillion, so many years ago….
Good heavens. Was that what was happening here?
“Well,” Frank said, his face having gone back to its normal, still somewhat ruddy shade. “Goodnight, Eleanor.”
“Goodnight, Frank,” Eleanor said, and she hurried Alessandro into their room and closed the door, before he could notice that it was her own face that had now gone up in flames.
19
Lou speared a piece of venison with her fork. The meat was delicious as was the creamed spinach but she was not about to let Jack Townsend have the satisfaction of knowing she thought so.
Although the fact that her plate was very nearly empty, as she’d devoured most of what was on it, might possibly give her away.
“Let me get this straight,” she said, though the warm, full feeling in her stomach was making staying angry at Jack Townsend very difficult. “You think that because I’ve only been with—and I use been with in its biblical sense, of course—one person, that I am a virgin?”
He looked uncomfortable. But then, he’d been looking uncomfortable ever since the word virgin had first slipped from his lips.
“Look,” he said. “Can we just drop it?”
“No,” Lou said, “we cannot just drop it. I want to know what you meant by that. Because I am hardly a virgin, Townsend. I mean, I lived with a guy for six years. Six years.” And he still wouldn’t freaking propose, she added…but not out loud, of course.
“Look, Lou,” Jack said, laying down his fork. “I’m not making any judgments, or anything. It’s just that…well, you have to admit. It’s a little rare these days.”
“What is?” She blinked at him where he sat across the table—the rough, uneven table that she had set with the mismatched cutlery from Donald’s silverware drawer. It was the least she could do, she figured, since Jack had made the meal.
Now, however, it occurred to her that she oughtn’t have bothered. Jack’s opinion of her was obviously pretty well determined.
“Are you talking about monogamy?” she asked, a little incredulously.
“Well,” he said, taking a sip of wine. “Yeah. I sort of thought it had died out with sock hops and milkshakes down at the local drugstore.”
She continued to stare at him over the piece of venison she’d skewered.
“You do realize I’m the one with the guns, don’t you?” she asked. “I could very easily just shoot you and leave your rotting corpse here for Donald to find.”
“No judgments, I said.” He picked up the wine bottle, and refilled her glass. “I don’t know why you’re being so defensive.”
“You called me a virgin,” Lou pointed out.
“Practically,” Jack reminded her. “I said you’re practically a virgin. How’s your venison?”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Lou said, although she herself was having difficulty staying on the topic at hand. How could she be expected to, when he was sitting so close, just a tabletop away, and looking better than…well, than she felt he had a right to. He had clearly applied one of Donald’s Bic disposables to his lean, square jaw, since the razor stubble that had coated his face since yesterday morning was gone. His thick dark hair was still damp from his shower, and it stuck to the back of his neck in short, swirling curls. More dark curls—these of chest hair—peeked from the V at the opening of the flannel shirt he’d put on. Even though Lou had seen his naked chest a hundred times before—in wide-screen, even— somehow the fact that she could reach across the table and, with the undoing of a few buttons, have all that hard masculinity to herself was making her feel….
…well, a little warm.
Maybe it was the long johns. Maybe it was the roaring fire in the hearth a few feet away. Maybe it was the rich and well-cooked food sitting at the bottom of her stomach.
Or maybe it was the fact that Jack Townsend was proving to be surprisingly unactorlike, for an actor. He hadn’t uttered the word craft once, or made a single reference to his agent. What kind of actor was he, to be so lacking in self-absorption? Just the fact that he hadn’t mentioned Stanislavsky in the entire time they’d been together was enough to make Lou suspicious.
“I’m not trying to change the subject,” Jack said. “I am genuinely interested in your gastronomic experience here at Chez Donald.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “The food is delicious,” she said. “As I am sure you are well aware.”
He shrugged and picked up his wineglass. “Well, I never know. I think everything I cook is delicious. Others have been known to disagree. Interested in dessert at all?”
Lou forgot all about her annoyance with him. “Dessert?” she asked, her eyes wide. “What kind of dessert?”
“Donald’s got some Breyers in the freezer, and I noticed a bottle of Hershey’s in the fridge.”
Lou leaned across the table and plucked up his empty plate. “I’ll do the dishes,” she said. “You dish out the hot fudge.”
Only he didn’t. He just sat there looking at her as she moved around the table, stacking the dirty plates and throwing the used silverware on top.
“What?” she asked, when she finally noticed his stare. “Do I have spinach in my teeth?” She reached up to scrub them with a finger. “Where is it? Did I get it?”
“You don’t have spinach in your teeth,” Jack said, that fifteen-million-dollar grin of his at half-wattage—maybe a seven point fiver. “I’m just not used to dining with women who take such an eager interest in dessert.”
Lou snorted and started int
o the kitchen with the stack of used plates.
“Color me shocked,” she said as she started running the hot water to soak the plates in. “And I was so sure Greta Woolston carries peanut brittle around in her purse, just like me. Whatever, Townsend. Let’s just say that for the most part, your recent taste in women leaves something to be desired.”
“Oh,” Jack said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head—causing, Lou could not help but notice, his biceps to bunch up in an alarming manner beneath the flannel of his shirt, “and Barry Kimmel was such a fine choice for a life partner.”
“At least,” Lou said, squirting dishwashing liquid into the sink, “Barry’s not a walking cadaver.”
“Maybe not,” Jack said. “But you can’t tell me all that guy’s kernels are popped. And you spent what, ten years with him? At least I only wasted a couple of months on Greta.”
“Oh.” Lou flattened a sudsy hand against her chest. Donald, of course, did not seem to own dishwashing gloves. “My God. You’re right. You are so much the better person than I am.” She dropped her hand and eyed him derisively. “For your information, Townsend, I was in love with Barry. I’m not proud to admit it. But at least I was trying to have a mature, adult relationship, instead of just amassing a collection of discarded fuck bunnies.”
Something about this pronouncement seemed to cause Jack, who’d been leaning back in his chair, to tip it a little too far, until he nearly fell over. He righted himself at the last minute, but only because he leaped from the chair. When he turned around to face Lou afterwards, he wore an expression of puppy-dog hurt.
“Fuck bunnies?” he echoed.
Lou turned back to the dishes. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you implying that you’re attracted to Melanie Dupre for her intellect? What, the two of you sit around discussing Kant in her trailer? You know, somehow, I can’t seem to picture that.”
“You know something,” Jack said, in a tone of wonder. “I don’t know if it’s on account of you having all those brothers, or your dad taking you to the shooting range instead of out for ice cream when you were a kid, or what. But you are a real ball-buster.”
“Yeah?” Lou said, turning from the sink to face him. “Well, I’d rather be a ball-buster than a big good-looking wind-up toy who just walks around in front of a camera saying lines other people have written for him, and who spends all his time off camera being led around by his dick.”
“Oh,” Jack said, looming over her until her nose was level with that opening in his shirt, the one that revealed all that crisp dark chest hair. “So that’s what you screenwriters think. That without you, there’d be no movies.”
“Well,” Lou said. “Wouldn’t there?”
“You think I can’t write my own lines?” Jack demanded. “I did a pretty good job with one, didn’t I? I mean, I don’t see anybody driving around with It’s always funny until somebody gets hurt bumper stickers, do you?”
Lou inhaled sharply. She could feel herself getting red in the face, but she didn’t care. She reached up and swiped furiously at her nose with the back of a hand.
“No, thanks to you,” she spat. “Instead people are going around saying that idiotic I need a bigger gun line. You know, it’s not the size of the gun that matters, it’s the amount of fire power that the— What do you think you’re doing?”
Because Jack had reached up suddenly, and was mopping at her nose with the bottom of his shirt.
“Hold still a minute,” he said, since Lou was trying to squirm away from him. “You’ve got suds on your nose.”
Lou, alarmed to find her back up against the sink, and her front up against Jack Townsend, was not happy when her face was suddenly seized by him between both his hands.
Even more alarming than his proximity and his grip was the fact that before Jack dropped the bottom of his shirt to grab her face, Lou had been awarded a long glimpse of his hard, flat stomach. Worse, the dark strip of hair that snaked down that stomach from the broader expanse of it on his chest disappeared down the front of the jeans he was wearing like an arrow pointing to a hidden treasure. The goody trail, Vicky had always called this phenomenon.
Jack’s goody trail was something, of course, that Lou had seen before.
But never this close. Never not on a screen, and from several rows back…
Lou was apparently not the only one suddenly aware that the mood in the room had taken a sudden and dramatic shift. Jack, holding her face between both his large, darkly tanned hands, looked down at her with that same speculative expression he’d worn back when she’d tackled him in the snow…right before he’d kissed her.
Lou, feeling a spurt of something that wasn’t quite fear but wasn’t exactly excitement, either, was conscious only that her heart was slamming very hard against her ribs, and that her breath had grown a little short. In the nanosecond of time that they stood like that, with her back against the sink and Jack’s hands holding her face, she was still able to reflect that this was precisely what she hadn’t wanted to happen.
“Jack,” she said, her voice sounding strangely unsteady, even to her own ears. “Don’t even think about it. It will never work. I do not want to get involved with another self-absorbed actor.”
“You think I want to get involved with a ball-busting know-it-all like you?” he asked pointedly.
And then, with that cleared up, he kissed her, hard, on the mouth.
Lou felt that kiss, just like the first one, slam down her spine like a roller-coaster. Suddenly she was flattened against him, could feel every button of that flannel shirt through hers, was singed by the hard muscles beneath it. His heat was pouring into her like steam from a mochachino grande, curling up from her toes, in their borrowed socks, all the way up her legs, making stops along the way at all the major erotic thoroughfares. It was all she could do to keep herself from wrapping her legs around his waist and yelling, Take me, like Marlene Dietrich in….
Wait. Had it been Marlene Dietrich? Oh, God, who cared?
His hands went from her face to her shoulders. Suddenly, he was pushing her away, breaking the contact between them.
“Did you use Donald’s toothbrush?” he asked her. At least she thought that’s what he’d asked her. She was in too much of a daze really to understand him properly.
“Of course,” she said. “Didn’t you?”
Then he was pulling her back towards him, this time wrapping both arms around her and pushing her back against the sink, until she heard the water in it slosh. Not that she cared. Why should she? It was hard to care about anything when she was being kissed as deeply and as intrusively as Jack was kissing her. It was impossible to believe, in fact, that he disliked her as much as he claimed to when he was kissing her the way he was.
And it was hard to remember that he was her least favorite person in the world when his kisses were making her feel the way they were…like she was the most beautiful, exotic creature that had ever walked the face of the planet. Jack wanted her. He was making that perfectly clear. Jack wanted her, Lou Calabrese, even though she hadn’t a splotch of makeup on her face and was wearing a pair of men’s long johns. And yeah, maybe she was the only woman for miles and miles, but he wanted her, and she could feel that want, pressing hard and insistent through the front of his borrowed jeans.
There was no doubt about it: Jack Townsend was warm for her form.
And she was happy to say she felt the same. Who even cared if the guy was a womanizing commitment-phobe? Look at the way he was making her feel. Look at what his tongue was doing, conducting what appeared to be, to Lou, a very thorough and entirely necessary investigation of the inside of her mouth…while at the same time, his hands had launched an investigation of their own, right up the bottom of her borrowed shirt. There was one of them now, finding a bare breast, and expertly cupping and then palming it, causing Lou’s spine, which had barely recovered from that first body-slamming kiss, to go weak. Suddenly, it seemed like her knees could no
longer support her.
But that was okay, because Jack seemed to understand. Impatient with their difference in height, he was already slipping his free hand around one of her hips and boosting her up so that she was sitting on the edge of the sink, her legs spread apart and that part of him in which she was most interested pressing solidly against her pubic bone. He had her shirt pulled up—Jack Townsend was not a man to concern himself with buttons—and happily it seemed that now that she was sitting at counter level, her nipples were within reach of his very persistent, hardworking lips.
The first burning touch of that mouth to one of Lou’s sensitive pink nipples nearly caused her to slip backwards into the sinkful of hot dishwater. Fortunately his other hand, the one not holding her shirt up, held her steady. Thank God, because the world seemed suddenly to have turned upside down. It had to have, for Lou to be doing what she was doing, which was reaching down and undoing the buttons of Jack Townsend’s button-fly jeans. Pop. Pop. Pop.
And suddenly that part of him that she’d felt so reassuringly hard and hot against her was heavy in her hand, the only part of Jack Townsend’s body that she’d never seen before, but of which she found she was able to approve most heartily, as it was everything a girl would expect from a star of the big screen, and oh so much, much more.
Jack’s goody trail, it was comforting to know, did not lead to disappointment.
The minute her hand went to grip him, Jack, as if unaccustomed to such direct attention to that area—hardly likely, considering the assiduousness of the attentions of his past paramours—inhaled sharply and buried his face against Lou’s throat. His hot breath scorched her neck. And the hand that had dipped beneath her shirt to fondle her breasts suddenly left them and dipped down, towards the sagging elastic waistband of the long johns she wore….
And then Jack’s fingers had slipped between her legs and found the hot, wet place there. Lou couldn’t stifle a moan as his lips came down over hers again, his tongue as unrelenting as his fingers. All she had to do, she realized, was put what she held in her hand in the place where his hand was, and she’d be practically a virgin no longer. The thought was immensely tempting. In fact, it was with difficulty that she kept from throwing herself against that hot thick organ, throbbing its need in her hand—
