Hot in Hellcat Canyon

by Julie Anne Long

  He threw back his head and shouted with laughter. It echoed all around the place and the hideous knot in her stomach unwound and she felt light as a helium balloon.

  Damn. Oh, man. She loved his laugh. It was the freest sound she’d ever heard.

  And then he sighed happily, finally, and shook his head.

  “I bet women might be more tolerant of them if they did. Though I swear a wind chime on the porch of the Angel’s Nest tried to kill me.”

  She smiled at him, basking in his delight as if it were the first day of spring. “Yeah, it’s a minefield of wind chimes over there. You have to watch your step, especially if you’re tall. I mean, I can understand why you’d want to move out of there immediately . . . into this place.”

  He just gave her a “nice try” eye roll. “It’s not just the wind chimes. It’s all the purple, and the frills, and dear God, the potpourri, and did you know the soap is shaped like angels there, too? I can’t bring myself to rub an angel in my armpits. And it’s noisy. I’m next to the honeymoon suite. I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night thanks to Cherisse and Kevin.”

  “Oh, you met your neighbors?”

  “Not formally. They kept name checking each other. ‘Oh, Cherisse. Oh, Kevin.’ And their headboard. BAM. BAM. BAM. All. Night. Long.”

  “Their head . . .”

  She trailed off when she realized what he meant.

  She froze.

  “Can’t remember the last time I did that to a headboard,” he said thoughtfully. Pinning her with his blue gaze.

  And her every cell briefly surged with electricity.

  And boom, or rather, BAM, like that, her breath was gone again.

  She didn’t know if she was wildly aroused or panicked. Both, probably.

  They stared at each other.

  She did know that was her cue to say, “Neither can I.” Or, “I can offer up a refresher.” Or “I bet this carpet is pretty comfortable. Didn’t they have a lot of orgies in the seventies?” “Or surely you have a lot of opportunities to do it.”

  Because she used to have “game,” as Kayla called it. She knew this particular dance from way back in the day, before she’d married Jeff. This exchange was the sort of coded language that men and women laid down to test sexual interest and intent. No one just flung off their clothes and leaped upon another. Well, hardly anyone just leaped upon another.

  But she stood there like a deer in the headlights of his fixed gaze.

  “Me, neither,” she said finally. It was practically a whisper.

  And instead of sexy or clever, it sounded pathetic.

  And scared.

  His expression subtly shifted. “I always wondered why angels wore dresses,” he mused. “Those long robes? Seems they’d get their feet tangled up in them when they flew. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to fly in a unitard?”

  She was both grateful and a little alarmed at how skillfully he’d given her a way out of that flirtation corner.

  She exhaled. “Like . . . Superman?”

  That made him laugh. “But do angels actually fly?” he wondered. “I mean, do they need to, to get wherever they’re going?”

  “Good point. I think they can materialize wherever they please.”

  “Then why do they even need wings?”

  She considered this. “Because wings are pretty?”

  He smiled slowly. “That must be it, Britt Langley. It’s important for things to be pretty.”

  He was teasing her. She wondered if she’d ever be able to talk to him without blushing.

  She exhaled. “If it helps any . . . Rosemary?—­you know, the lady who runs the Angel’s Nest with her husband?—­well, she was raised in Coyote Creek and that is one scary place—­it’s a settlement, kind of an annex of Hellcat Canyon, up there deep in the hills.” Britt waved an arm up toward where the trees were thickest. “They say most people usually leave there in a cop car or a casket. Her life was pretty austere when she was growing up, and she and her husband really wanted a family but it didn’t happen for them. And then they tried to adopt, but I guess it hasn’t worked out, maybe because they’re getting up in years now and they don’t have a big income. Anyway, I always thought that maybe she went overboard with the fluff and the angels and the pillows and whatnot because of all of that. Wanted it to be soft and pretty so people would feel loved and protected in there in a way she never felt.”

  She began to feel like she was babbling.

  Because gradually a shadow, almost a frown, appeared between his eyes.

  “Funny. That’s why my mama planted blue-­eyed Mary’s around our house when we were growing up. My dad used to call her his blue-­eyed Mary.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “Haven’t thought about that in . . . oh, years, probably.”

  Her breath snagged. She realized she was frowning. A casual-­enough sentence. Every word in that sentence had its own subtle character, from the faint bitterness of “dad” to the echo of an ache in “used to.”

  She could build a whole story around them and it wasn’t a pretty one, and she realized her heart was aching as surely as if he’d told it all to her.

  These were the kinds of things that lived between the lines of his Wikipedia entry.

  He must have seen something in her expression because he added lightly. “This place makes the place I grew up in look like a palace.”

  “And I bet your current house makes this place look like a tool shed.”

  “Mmm. It might. Can’t really recall.”

  “You can’t recall your house?” She instantly regretted her astonishment. But still.

  But he just shrugged. “I travel a lot. I rented a house in the Hollywood Hills and that’s where my most of my clothes and stuff is right now. I travel pretty light these days.”

  “Do you miss Tennessee?”

  “When I was eighteen it seemed pretty important to get out of there. Not sure it would still feel like home. I do . . .” He turned around to check out that view again, and his voice went kind of drifty. “Turns out I do miss trees and hills.”

  She took a deep breath. “You’ll never have to stop looking at trees and hills when you rent this house.”

  Good God. The things she did for a paycheck.

  He didn’t turn around to look at her. J. T. just shook his head to and fro, slowly and a dimple appeared in his three-­quarter profile. He clearly still found her ­entertaining.

  A moment later he did turn around with an air of resolve.

  “So how about it, Britt? I’d love to spend the evening in the company of a real-­life angel instead of one staring at me from a frame. We’ll go check out some live music, have a few drinks. You drink beer? I bet you drink beer.”

  Of all the things she’d thought he’d say, this had to be among the last. As shocked as if she’d fallen through a trapdoor.

  She was afraid she was gaping.

  “Did you . . . did you really just call me an angel?”

  “I think I did.” He was amused. “I don’t know if you’re incredulous or commenting on how cheesy that was.”

  “Kind of both, to tell you the truth,” she said quite honestly. Still reeling.

  She had to force herself not to take a step backward.

  He just grinned again. The man was scrappy, she had to hand it to him. “Excellent news, as to the first. As to the second, I’ll have to work on my patter. I might be a little rusty when it comes to asking women out.”

  Hoooolly. Crap.

  CHAPTER 5

  Her heart felt like a roulette wheel given a good brisk swipe.

  “Oh.” She drew in a long breath. “I . . . um. You were serious about that. Earlier.”

  That had emerged a lot more astonished and a lot less gracious than she’d hoped.

  “Yeah. I was serious.” It was his turn to be
a bit incredulous.

  She would probably remember this afternoon later in terms of its silences, each of them with their own character: tense, fraught, horrifying, painfully sexy, awkward.

  “Um. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “You . . . can’t?” he repeated. As if she’d just taught him a new word in Turkish.

  “I can’t,” she said firmly.

  “But thank you,” she added weakly a moment later, into the dead silence.

  “Mmm,” was all he said. A moment later.

  He turned abruptly then wandered into the second bedroom. Where he was just going to find more of that green carpet.

  She remained rooted to the spot.

  And this time the silence was horrible because she had no idea whether she’d offended him or hurt his feelings. But the room was practically spinning.

  He’d asked her out.

  He’d asked her out.

  He’d asked her out.

  Then again, she supposed he needed to do something to fill his downtime.

  Or someone.

  “So . . . is it all guys, Britt?” he called casually from the other room. “Asking for a friend.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He emerged from the room. “Or maybe it’s guys with tattoos? Or actors. It’s actors, isn’t it?”

  “I’m lost. Why are we suddenly playing Password?”

  “Just trying to get a bead on your current objection to me. You know, so I can refine my future approach.”

  Her jaw dropped. She gave a short, astounded laugh. The nerve of him.

  “Is there another guy?” he pressed.

  “J. T.—­”

  “Another girl?”

  “Um—­”

  “Another guy and another girl? This is California, after all. People get adventurous here.”

  “J. T.!” And now she was laughing.

  “You’re into vampires, blindfolds, My Little Pony? I’m pretty open-­minded.”

  “I’m just—­wait. My Little Pony?”

  “You live in Los Angeles long enough, you hear everything.”

  She had the strangest urge to tell him about the mermaid and the fisherman.

  “Huh.” She was definitely going to Google My Little Pony.

  He detected a softening. “Aw, c’mon, Britt,” he cajoled. “Just one night. Just a few hours. We’ll sing badly, have a few drinks. See where the night takes us. I’m a person, same as you.”

  She almost snorted. The “same as you” part wasn’t remotely true.

  “J. T., it’s just . . .”

  She had no idea how to finish that sentence.

  “Yeah?”

  The moment was as taut as harp strings, suddenly.

  “I’m busy.”

  His face all but blanked.

  He was probably paralyzed by the crushing lameness of this excuse.

  “Busy,” he repeated, finally. As though he was tasting milk that had gone ever-­so-­slightly off.

  He sounded more disappointed in her lack of originality than anything else.

  She would have laughed if she didn’t have a whomping case of vertigo caused from being asked out by a movie star.

  One who had slept with Rebecca freaking Corday.

  It was so wholly unexpected, she was as at a loss, and as breathless and panicky, as if her kayak had tipped over in the Pacific.

  J. T. McCord made her feel way too many things all at once. Things she wasn’t ready to feel again. She needed a wading pool before she entered the dating pool, and he was the whole damn ocean.

  She wondered if he’d ever in his entire life heard the word no from a woman.

  At least he’d remember her for that reason.

  And as the silence stretched, his incredulity seemed to give way to a sort of curiosity. He was studying her as if he was determined to crack the code.

  “Kayla Benoit is single,” she volunteered desperately. “And she’s very pretty. And she owns a boutique. It’s right there on the sign over her door. Kayla Benoit.”

  His face instantly became a flickering battlefield of emotions.

  The one that settled in was pure hilarity.

  “Are you seriously trying to distract me with another woman? Like throwing a steak at a rottweiler so you can make your getaway?” His voice was hoarse. “Are you attempting to console me in my disappointment with another woman?”

  When he put it that way, it was pretty funny.

  And pretty insulting.

  “You sure came up with that rottweiler analogy pretty quickly,” she hedged.

  “I was on a cop show. That was in the script more than once.”

  That one tugged up one corner of her mouth, and then the other went up, and she was smiling, because that was pretty funny, too.

  And that made him smile, too. It was an amused and wholly determined smile.

  But a subtle little war was taking place. Something complex and dangerous and exhilarating was sparking between them. They were both pretty damn stubborn and accustomed to getting their own ways. Britt had forgotten just how stubborn she could be, in fact. And how much fun a well-­matched sparring partner could be.

  Her grin faded. “It’s just . . . J. T., if you’re just looking for, um, company during your downtime . . .”

  His eyebrows shot up sardonically at how gingerly she delivered that euphemistic word.

  “. . . you must have infinite options.”

  He went silent again. She wondered if he’d been this astonished so many times in a single afternoon in his entire life.

  Then his face got ever so slightly harder. “Spent a little time Googling me last night, eh Britt?”

  More ironic than bitter, that statement. Though he had a right to both bitterness and irony, probably.

  “Of course,” she said instantly.

  He seemed to like that. He smiled. If a little tautly. “Think you know everything about me now?”

  “No,” she said immediately, fervently. “Not for an instant do I think that. You can’t know a person that way.”

  He blinked. And then she realized she sounded as though she was defending him.

  “Okay,” he said carefully, after a moment. “Then do you think that having, as you put it, ‘infinite options’ means discretion doesn’t enter into it? That with me and women, it’s like . . . I’m just reaching my hand into a bowl of peanuts and grabbing a handful and stuffing it into my mouth without inspecting each individual peanut?”

  She was utterly arrested by this analogy.

  “I’m sorry,” she confessed on something close to a whisper after a moment. “But all that does is make me think of a bowl of lady peanuts.”

  His eyes flared in surprise, and then his face went abstracted. “Lady peanuts? Is it like a scene out of an Ethel Merman movie? Are they all wearing little swimsuits?”

  “Yeah, they’re all wearing little swimsuits. And performing a synchronized water ballet. All the lady peanuts.”

  He was staring at her not as though she was a lunatic, which might have been the logical response, but as though she was like a Russian nesting doll of delights and he kept uncovering new ones.

  “Britt,” he just said. Appreciatively. Almost yearningly. Sort of marveling. Apropos of nothing.

  She could feel her face heating again.

  She drew in a breath. “It’s just, J. T., if the public record is any indication, my guess is you took your sweet time getting around to learning discretion, if you ever truly have, and had a lot of fun doing it.”

  That should have pissed him off.

  Instead he whistled, long and low, impressed, as if she’d just deployed a tricky wrestling maneuver.

  And then the devil actually grinned.

  And planted his feet ever so
slightly apart as if he was settling in for a good debate.

  “When my career first took off, I could pretty much go out with any woman I wanted. I could flip through a magazine, call up my publicist, boom. It was practically like ordering something from Amazon. I might have gotten a little carried away.”

  “Amazon? Now you’re only making my case for me.”

  This was actually kind of fun. She’d forgotten how thoroughly she loved to argue with someone who was good at it.

  “Hold on. I was young then. Still figuring things out. What did I know? What would you do? And everybody is good-­looking in Hollywood. What I learned is, when everybody’s a four leaf clover, nobody is. Does that make sense?”

  She hesitated. “In a Zenlike way, sure. I get it.”

  She did. And damn it, she liked it a lot.

  J. T. McCord, she was learning, was not only hot. He was smart.

  He might possibly even be soulful.

  Something was asserting itself through her panic. The Want was still present and accounted for. But its gentler cousin, Yearning, had just shown up. Yearning was seductive. She hadn’t felt anything like that in years.

  Yearning was really only a few degrees different from pain.

  “So I kind of had to learn about myself and women the hard way, Britt. And I did learn. Discretion, as you say.”

  She pictured the photographers hunting him through an airport and knew again a surge of outrage, as surely as if his happiness was critical to her own. It was hardly rational. It was just that she so hated injustice. And bullies.

  “You ever learn anything the hard way, Britt?” he tried. Softer now.

  She hesitated. She swallowed.

  “Sure,” she said faintly. Because she was fundamentally honest.

  She could have said, And how.

  She didn’t have to. She was pretty sure that was the way he heard it.

  He was studying her again.

  He was a little too good at this persuasion thing and a little too intuitive.

  “Okay. Ever think that maybe I’m hopelessly captivated by your command of the English language? ‘Enigmatic.’ ‘Vuvuzela.’ ‘Lady peanuts.’ ”

  She shrugged. “Who could blame you?”

  He flashed a grin. “Well?”