by Jane Porter
She turned one corner and then another, then spotted a severe-looking door at the end of this last hallway. With a push she was through the door, out, free.
The sky above was still bright blue with warm fingers of sunlight despite the late afternoon hour. In another hour the sun would be slipping toward the ocean, but for now everything was clear and warm and sunny, a picture-perfect California day.
Alex’s fingers squeezed the wallet as her white satin heels crunched the pea gravel. An antique Rolls Royce waited, decorated with a lavish amount of white ribbon and a white floral display. The getaway car, she thought with a shudder, passing it so quickly her full starched skirts pressed against one shiny hub.
“Can I help you find something?” a dark, laconic voice drawled from behind her, and Alex stiffened, disbelief sweeping through her, turning her blood to ice.
Slowly, painfully she turned and faced Wolf where he leaned against the side of the brick building. Her throat worked. No words would come out. He was the last person she’d expected to see out here.
“Looking for a pay phone?” he asked, indicating her wallet.
She shook her head, the lace veil creeping forward to caress her cheek.
“Missing family? Your stylist? Makeup artist?” One black eyebrow arched as he supplied excuse after excuse.
She tensed, her insides already a fury of knots and misery. “I was looking for a cab.”
He said nothing for a moment, intently studying her frozen expression. “Running away, are you?”
“I never agreed to marry you. I never—”
“You didn’t deny it when I told your brothers we were engaged, that we were getting married. You told them—”
“I was scared!”
“As you should have been. In fact, you should have been scared weeks before when you agreed to sign a contract to play my lover. If you’re such a nice, inexperienced girl, what in God’s name are you doing with me?”
Her eyes grew rounder. She swallowed convulsively. Her hair, curled in long spirals, danced across her back.
He was bearing down on her, huge, powerful in the jet-black tuxedo with the starched white shirt and white tie. “But when your family arrives like some vengeful Celtic warlord, I am not going to forget my responsibility to you. I am not going to walk away from you.”
He stood tall over her, so tall she had to tip her head back to see his dark, angry eyes. “And you, Alexandra, are not going to walk away from me.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE RECEPTION, LIKE the wedding, was a blur of lavender and rose and gold, of helicopters droning overheard and the sea crashing on rocks below. The wind kept catching at Alexandra’s veil, blowing it up and down.
Now that the ceremony was over, she was glad she hadn’t been able to hear the minister. It helped lessen the impact of his words, helped her focus instead on the future, the far distant future when she’d be someone—not because she’d married someone powerful, influential, but because she herself was powerful. Influential.
The guests kept flocking to meet her during the dinner reception. Being Wolf Kerrick’s new blushing bride suddenly catapulted her to a position of importance. Whereas at Spago and the Silverman birthday party she’d been no one worth noting, now everyone wanted to greet her, and she air-kissed celebs, hugged actresses she’d never met and took dozens of smiling photographs with the industry’s top execs.
It’s a shame she hadn’t won everyone over on her own merit, but at least the crowd’s warmth and enthusiasm reassured the Shanahan men that their only girl had done okay for herself.
In fact, by the time Alexandra danced with her father, the men in her family had become Wolf Kerrick’s newest, biggest fans.
Something Alexandra found painful as well as annoying.
The reception, like the ceremony, was held in the Denzinger garden, and the colors of the wedding were the same colors of the blue horizon, where the setting sun painted the ocean shades of lavender, rose and gold. A perfect Hollywood set for a perfect Hollywood film. But this was real.
The reception swept past her in a kaleidoscope of toasts and kisses, hugs and best wishes. There was dinner and then that nerve-racking first dance, the cake and the tossing of the garter. All the traditional things one did at an American wedding.
Wolf was now drawing her back onto the dance floor. He’d just been in conversation with her father—again.
“You and Dad seem to have found a lot in common,” she said through gritted teeth as Wolf spun her around the floor in a grand Strauss waltz.
“He’s fascinating,” Wolf said.
“Maybe you’re just trying to make points.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, twirling her around. “And you should smile, because he’s watching right now and he really wants his little girl to be happy.”
Alexandra stepped intentionally on his toe. “Oops!”
His hand settled lower on her back. “I didn’t realize my love was quite so clumsy.”
She offered him another dazzling but vacant smile. “I guess you don’t really know me either.”
The orchestra was playing with great gusto as they only had one more number before they ended their set, giving way to the R & B band.
“You understand this is for the cameras only, right?” Alexandra made sure everyone could see her teeth in her wide smile. “I’m playing a part, a role, and getting paid for it. Don’t think for a moment that I’m actually attracted to you.”
His smile revealed amusement. “But you are.”
“No.”
“You were.”
“No.”
“Love, I’m an actor, not stupid.”
Alexandra tried to hold herself apart and aloof from him, but the strength in his grip made it increasingly difficult.
“We’ve met before,” he added, spinning her around the floor, thoroughly enjoying the waltz. “Remember?”
She stared at his chin, afraid to look higher.
“It was about four years ago,” he continued. “We met at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the Polo Lounge. You were with friends and—”
“I don’t remember,” she interrupted tersely, glancing wildly up, meeting his mocking dark gaze before glancing even more swiftly away.
“We passed each other in the hallway. I was just coming from the men’s room and you were on your way to the ladies’ room—”
“I don’t remember,” she interrupted breathlessly.
His lips curved ever so slightly. “We left the hotel together.”
“No—”
“Went to the Ivy for dinner.”
Her body felt cold all over and she’d stopped protesting now.
“After dinner we parked high up in the Hollywood Hills with a view of the entire valley.”
Alexandra stared. He’d known. He’d known who she was all along. He’d known this entire time.
His dark gaze found hers, held. “How could you think I wouldn’t remember you?”
Wordlessly she searched his face, trying to understand what he’d been thinking. “But I was heavier by nearly twenty pounds.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Again she searched his eyes. “What do you remember?”
“Your sweetness, your intelligence, your humor—” he broke off, assessed the impact his words were having on her “—and your incredible inexperience.”
When she couldn’t manage to even squeak a protest, he dropped his head, kissed the curve of her ear and whispered, “A girl who didn’t even know how to unzip a man’s pants, give a hand job or perform oral sex. Now that’s a girl to take home to meet Mom.”
Alexandra shoved hard on his chest, abruptly ending the waltz. “You remember.”
Grooves bracketed his firm lips. His lips curved, but it wasn’t a tender smile. He reached for her, pulling her back into his arms and dipping his head. He kissed below her ear, in the small, delicate hollow where a pulse beat wildly, erratically. “Of course I remember.”
His voice dropped even lower, so husky, so sensual it hummed all the way through her. “You couldn’t possibly think that I’d marry just any woman. Could you, Alexandra?”
It was well after midnight before they were finally able to break away from the reception, which had turned into the party of the year. The wedding planners had arranged surprise appearances by several of the guests who happened to be top Billboard recording artists performing their hit songs, and everyone was dancing, including Alexandra, who suddenly felt as if she were the most popular girl in America.
But by the time she climbed into the waiting Rolls Royce, her satin beaded shoes had blistered nearly every toe on her feet and rubbed her heels raw. She’d tried taking her shoes off, but her full wedding gown was too long and she’d ended up tripping so many times she’d inadvertently pulled the bustled raw silk train down.
There was no traffic at such a late hour, and the drive from the Denzinger estate to the historic Four Seasons Biltmore, the premier hotel in Santa Barbara nestled in the exclusive Montecito enclave, was short. So short that Alexandra didn’t even have a chance to get her head around the fact that tonight she and Wolf were sharing a room.
Despite the late hour, the hotel manager was there in person to greet them when the Rolls Royce purred to a stop in front of the Biltmore. The hotel, with its soaring archways and Spanish-colonial detail, had been a mecca for the Hollywood elite since the 1920s when Greta Garbo and Errol Flynn helped put it on the map.
The hotel manager personally escorted them to their suite, the Odell Cottage, the resort’s premier accommodation. The luxury cottage, built in 1904, had three bedrooms, a large salon with fireplace, a fireplace in the master bedroom and an exquisite private patio larger than Alexandra’s whole house in Culver City.
Bottles of chilled champagne and a stocked refrigerator in the cottage’s kitchen came compliments of the hotel. There were plush robes in the marble bathrooms. Any need they had would be met. And then the manager was gone and Alexandra and Wolf were alone.
“I thought he’d never leave,” Wolf said, tugging on his white silk bow tie.
Funny how two people could have such different interpretations. Alexandra had wanted the manager never to leave. She wandered through the enormous cottage, thinking only in California would a house this size be called a cottage. The flat beamed ceiling, painted a glossy white, reflected the firelight from the salon’s and master bedroom’s fireplaces. Votive candles had been lit on the mantel. More candles flickered in the bathroom on the marble ledge beneath the mirror. And then she noticed the dresser in the master bedroom.
Oh, God. She turned away from the dresser groaning beneath the dozens of vivid red, passion-red roses, her stomach heaving up and down as though she were doing jumping jacks. What was she doing here?
“You can’t avoid me forever,” Wolf drawled from the doorway, startling her. She nervously glanced at him over her shoulder, suddenly feeling as though he were a complete stranger.
In ways he was.
She’d seen him in countless movies, had kissed him and been escorted around town by him, but she didn’t know him, didn’t know what he really thought about anything, much less her.
“I’m not trying to avoid you,” she said defensively, watching him pull his bow tie from around his collar and toss the silk onto the table near the bed. She heard the anxious note in her voice and moved past him to return to the cottage’s stylish living room.
The warm fire drew her, and she crouched in her full white bridal gown in front of the hearth, hands outstretched.
“You’re running away from me,” Wolf said with certainty, turning to watch her.
A lump filled her throat and she curled her fingers against the fire’s heat. He wasn’t far off the mark. She was scared. Scared of what would happen next. But she couldn’t tell him that she was still as inexperienced as she had been four years ago, that she still didn’t know how to pleasure a man or … be pleasured by a man.
Jerkily Alexandra pulled the Italian lace veil from her head and folded it into a neat square before rising. “Why should I avoid you?” she said, keeping her voice even, battling to keep her fear at bay. “This is just a studio stunt, a media ploy that will soon be resolved—”
“No,” he interrupted, still standing in the doorway, his coat now off, his shirt partway unbuttoned. “Wrong.”
Her heart stuttered. She was glad he was far away, glad he couldn’t see how she’d begun to shake. Give her a wild horse and she’d ride it, but give her a man like Wolf …
Alexandra licked her upper lip, her nerves making her mouth dry. During the reception she’d done everything in her power to keep from being alone with him, had done everything she could to pretend she wasn’t married to him, but it was awfully hard now that they were here, in the bridal suite, alone.
His dark eyes narrowed fractionally. “As I said while we were dancing, I wouldn’t marry just anyone. I certainly wouldn’t marry someone for publicity or for my career. I married you because I want you.”
Wolf’s voice was deep, thick, like honey in sunlight, and it drugged her senses almost as much as his heady, dizzying kisses.
“I want you,” he repeated again, quieter, deeper, his voice hypnotic.
Alexandra looked across the room at him and her brain felt slow, thoughts scattered, fuzzy. With Wolf’s dark hair falling forward on his brow he looked as wild and untamable as his namesake. “You don’t know me. You said so yourself.”
He stretched out his hands, the shirt pulling wider, revealing his chest and the bronzed plane of muscle. “Then this is where we start.”
He was a man, a beautiful, primitive, masculine man, and the idea that he wanted her, that he desired her, filled her with fear and nerves and curiosity.
He wasn’t even touching her, just looking at her, and yet she felt as though he’d already taken her in his arms, run his hands down the length of her. She felt edgy, taut, physical, aware of her skin, her face and lips, her body where it curved, her legs where they joined. She felt all her fingers and toes. The indentation of her waist. The fullness of her hips and breasts.
He made her aware that she was a woman.
But that was the thing—what did a man do with a woman? Oh, she knew the mechanics—how could a farm girl not know?—but the scenes from films, the love scenes and the heat and the passion and the desperation …
And what would a woman do with a man?
Wolf was unbuttoning the rest of his dress shirt now, and she stared at him, watching the way he moved, his hands, the corded muscles of his arms. She watched his eyes, the focus, the intensity, the flare of heat in his dark eyes.
He was waking something in her, stirring her as much as if she’d been on his lap, his hand on her belly, covering her, warming her, making her feel the hunger only he had ever made her feel.
Shirt off, he reached for the button on his trousers. Alexandra’s eyes grew wider, her mouth drier. Her heart thumped as she watched him undo the button. “We can’t,” she finally choked out. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’d be wrong—”
He started walking toward her. “We’re married.”
“In a fake ceremony with a fake minister and fake guests!”
“The minister and guests were real,” he said mildly, watching her take a step away from the fire, behind the couch, doing her best to avoid him, “which means the ceremony was real, too.”
She pressed her hands to the back of the elegant sofa. “But you know this is over as soon as your film wraps.”
She felt cornered, caught, as though he’d been a real wolf tracking her. And now he had her where he wanted her to be. A shudder coursed through her, a shudder of fear, a shudder of desire. “This is just temporary,” she insisted breathlessly, knowing she couldn’t manage him. Or this.
He suddenly moved so fast she didn’t have a chance to escape, and he was there at her side, circling her wrists with his hands. “I don’t
think I ever said that,” he said, the pads of his thumbs caressing her frantic pulse.
But I did, she thought, trying to keep from losing her head. “But I did. I do—”
“And the film,” he continued, interrupting her, “might never wrap. It’s a cursed film, has been from the start.” And then he tugged her toward him, one resistant inch at a time until she could feel the heat of his body scorch hers through the silk bodice of her wedding gown.
“You’re my wife,” he said, tugging her even more firmly, pulling her off balance so that she fell helplessly against him.
She inhaled sharply as his knees parted and she tumbled into his arms, his hips cradling hers, her breasts crushed against his chest. And then his head descended, and his mouth covered hers, stifling her gasp, catching her breath.
She was lost again, she thought, the pressure of his mouth on hers turning her inside out, making her lose track of all thought, all reason.
No wonder all his costars fell so hard for him. He kissed them senseless, kissed them into surrender and submission.
She gripped his shirt, desperate to find some center, some sanity, but his tongue was teasing the inside of her lip and she was shivering, burning from the inside out. Something about his mouth on hers made her want to open herself, open her mouth and body for him.
And the more she wanted him, the more certain she was that this was wrong, these feelings were wrong, and panicked, she now pressed at his chest. She’d intended to push away, but the sinewy planes of his chest felt shockingly good.
His body was warm and hard, his muscle dense and smooth beneath the palm of her hand.
He felt too good. This all felt too good. Anything this good had to be …
Wrong.
“Stop,” she choked out against his mouth.
His hand reached up, tangled in her hair. “Why?”
“This is crazy. It doesn’t make sense.”
She felt his chest lift, fall, as if filled with silent laughter.
“Passion doesn’t have to make sense,” he answered before drawing her closer again, his hand sliding from her hair, down her back, to rest on her hips. Despite the full skirt she felt him, his strength and hunger, as well as his hand as it curved over her backside, shaping her against him.
