“Don’t.” He turned to her again, and shook his head. “I have a lot of experience doing what I do. I know what’s right, and I know what’s wrong. I like to think I can handle anything at this point, but”—he reached out and traced her lips with a fingertip—“I’m finding it hard to handle you. I’m only human, Quinn.” He sighed and stopped touching her. “And you’re so damn…”
So damn neurotic? Narcissistic? Slutty? No way could she let him finish that sentence, even if she deserved every word of it. “Yeah. I’m hard to handle.” She dredged up her shatterproof smile. “You’re not the first person to think it. You won’t be the last.” Now she put a hand on his cheek, because his eyelids drooped and he seemed to be having a hard time focusing. “Driving people to drink is my secret, hidden talent.”
His eyelids snapped up and he looked straight at her. “You don’t have the first clue what your talents are, Trouble.” He rested his forehead against hers. “Besides, I only had two. I just don’t do it very often. It’s counterproductive, and”—he broke off and yawned, hugely, then gave her a lopsided smile—“a shitty coping mechanism.”
Her heart contracted a little at the sloppy grin. She eased back and combed his hair off his forehead with her fingers. “How about rest? How’s that for a coping mechanism?”
He leaned into her touch for a moment, a low noise rumbling in his chest like the purr of a jungle cat when she raked her nails lightly over his scalp, but then he caught himself. The growl bottomed out into a groan, and he flopped down in the sand with his arm folded behind his neck. “Rest is prob’ly a good idea.”
She raised her brows at him, but it was a wasted effort because he’d already closed his eyes. “I was thinking you should get some rest in a bed, maybe in your room?”
He lifted his other hand and gave her a thumbs up. “Give me a sec and I’ll walk you back to your villa first.” Then, without opening his eyes, he patted his chest. “Have you seen the sky tonight? Huge moon.”
Yeah. Right about now, that big old moon was mocking her, but she couldn’t resist Luke McLean, all tipsy and tired and splayed out on the sand in a navy blue T-shirt and rolled at the ankle khakis. She arranged herself alongside him and settled her head into the dip between his chest and his shoulder. The cloud-soft cotton under her cheek covered warm, vital muscle, neither of which muffled the slow, steady thud of his heart. Hers slipped another inch into the danger zone when a warm hand covered the one she’d rested on the center of his chest and then long fingers threaded through hers.
She looked at the endless expanse of sky, listened to the ancient lullaby of the surf foaming out against the sand, and the thunder of his heartbeat in her ear. After a moment, she whispered, “Luke?”
No answer. She lifted her head, intending to wake him, but just then, a light shot across the heavens in a glowing arc. A falling star. They were supposed to be lucky, weren’t they? She strained her eyes to keep it in sight while she scrambled around in her brain for a quick wish.
Callum clean and sober.
No. That needed to be Callum’s wish. She couldn’t make it happen.
Okay, keeping the role.
Work? Really? When confronted with the power and magic of the cosmos, she’d waste a wish on something largely within her control?
Come on, Quinn. You know what you really want. Wish for…
Inevitably, she blinked. The streak of light disappeared before she could finish the thought, leaving her to wonder if something so rare and special had ever been intended for her at all.
…
Luke emerged from a ridiculously good dream of Quinn snuggled against him, with her soft breath caressing his throat and her hand tucked inside the waist of his pants, to a waking nightmare of Quinn snuggled against him, her soft breath caressing his throat and her hand tucked inside the waist of his pants.
And a hard ridge behind his zipper angling to meet it. Strangling a groan, he shifted until her hand fell away, and used his own to shove his relentless cock back into his underwear. Quinn mumbled something that sounded a lot like, “Gotta wish quicker,” and burrowed her face into the curve of his neck.
No doubt. Or sleep deeper. Or best plan of all, not consume fifty ounces of beer before nodding off so he didn’t wake up in the middle of the night with a bladder the size of Delaware.
At least that situation was easily solved, as opposed to the one presented by the woman cuddled against him, breathing in a slow, even rhythm that signified she’d slipped effortlessly back into dreamland. It figured Quinn slept with the same abandon with which she did most everything else. He carefully settled her on the sand and went to deal with Delaware.
Standing at the water’s edge communing with nature, with no one to answer to except the ocean, the sky, and the salty air, he confronted the truths he’d hoped to evade last night with the help of barrel-aged stout.
First truth? He was here to do a job. Eddie and Quinn were relying on him to transform her into convincing action-hero form safely, and he intended to do it.
Another truth? Quinn was a beautiful, complicated, fascinating woman, and against his best intentions, he’d developed feelings for her. Strong feelings. Strong enough to warn him he wasn’t getting out of this unscathed, and worse, a reckless part of him didn’t care.
That said, getting personally involved with a client broke certain fundamental rules he’d learned the hard way a long time ago. It turned him into someone he didn’t want to be—someone he’d have a hard time respecting—even though he wasn’t a twenty-two-year-old up-and-comer anymore, and Quinn wasn’t a self-absorbed diva prone to treat him like an accessory she’d bought and paid for. The fact of the matter was, for the term of their contract, he worked for her. In a town as small and thirsty for gossip as Hollywood, others would say it, and the clichéd whispers were hard for people to ignore. Particularly people like his employees, or the network of doctors and other health providers who referred clients to him, and staked their reputations to his by association, or his existing and potential clients, who might stop to question his professionalism.
So, no, as long as the contract remained in effect, he had to keep a lock on his emotions and behave like the fucking professional he was. Luckily, this issue resolved itself in two lousy weeks. Surely he could hold his shit together that long?
And afterward?
Well, hell. Who the fuck knew if there would be an afterward? Irritated, he tugged his zipper up and dragged his sorry ass back up the beach to where Quinn slept. He couldn’t forget there was some petulant motherfucker on the end of a phone line whom she missed. She didn’t want to talk about him, and insisted she wasn’t involved with anyone, but she still took his calls. She still talked to him, which meant whatever they’d had wasn’t over.
Maybe that was for the best, because his track record with actresses wasn’t stellar, and time had only eroded his tolerance for the petty dramas of the Hollywood game. From his pocket, he dug out the card key that got him into the gym every morning. He palmed it, then bent and slid one arm under Quinn’s knees, worked the other under her shoulders, and lifted her smoothly to his chest.
“Yes,” she murmured as he got to his feet with her cradled in his arms. A quick glance down confirmed she still slept. Yes to whom? Yes to what? A hot spear of jealousy gouged a jagged path through his gut, but the burn subsided somewhat when she curled into him and exhaled his name in a dream-laced voice brimming with desire.
Parts of him responded immediately to her husky, completely unconscious invitation. He carried her up the walkway toward her villa and tried to keep his hormones in sync with reality. Quinn thought she wanted him, but hey, he was also pretty much the only man in her world right now, not to mention someone she needed to help her attain something she desperately desired. He basically had her confined to a cage—a gilded one, but still, the fact that he was currently letting himself into her villa with his access key only underscored the point. And accepting more from her than trust in his
expertise without giving her a chance to view their relationship from a vantage point free and clear of the current dynamic amounted to an abuse of that authority. Completing the contract didn’t magically resolve the issue.
Only time and him affording her some distance resolved the issue, and that flat-out sucked.
She’d left her bedroom light burning. He settled her on the wide, netting-draped bed, and eased her running shoes off. As soon as her feet were free, she rolled to the middle of the fluffy white comforter, gave the baggy running shorts she wore a restless tug, and then curled into a fetal position that put her back to him. The shorts draped low on her hips, and her jog tank rode up several inches. For about half a second, he considered stripping her out of the little shorts and top, but decided against it. However sandy her clothes might be, a little discomfort wouldn’t kill her, but the sight of Quinn Sheridan sprawled naked over a big, roomy bed might do him in.
Right. Time to go. He had to stop noticing how the glow from the bedside lamp highlighted the shallow V of ass cleavage peeking out from above those low-riding shorts. Stop imagining kissing her just there and then running his tongue up every inch of her spine until he reached the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. Stop standing over her like a fucking creeper. He retreated to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water on his way out, but then snagged one for her as well. It was the least he could do, he justified, as he climbed the stairs, considering she hadn’t abandoned him on the beach. Subjecting himself to another eyeful of Quinn all pliant, relaxed, and unaware was far less of a threat to his sanity than conscious, deliberately seductive Quinn.
As soon as he walked back into her bedroom, he realized how wrong he’d been. Pliant, relaxed, unaware Quinn had kicked the covers to the foot of the bed and shucked off her running shorts sometime over the last two minutes, and was now face down on the sheets, snoring lightly into a pillow, with the shorts tangled around one ankle and her bare ass taunting him with its pale perfection.
In his mind, he saw himself crawl over the mattress, brace his arms on either side of that vulnerable prize, and coax her awake slowly, by degrees, with fleeting kisses, and teasing breaths until she arched and moaned in her sleep, begging for more. Then he’d introduce tongue, and teeth, to drive her higher, pull the need tighter. And then, when she put it all right there within his reach, he would wake her—whip her straight out of her dreams and into an orgasm so real, she’d scream his name before she even opened her eyes. Then, Jesus, then he’d flip her around and…
“Lizard,” she mumbled, flinging an arm across the mattress.
And they were having very different dreams right now. He took a painful step closer, and put the water bottle on the nightstand before leaning over and smoothing her hair from her cheek. “Shh. No lizards.”
Then he pulled the sheet over her, turned off the light, and retreated. On his way out of the villa, he faced up to one final truth he hadn’t managed to confront earlier in the evening. He was a hard-charging, take control kind of person. When he wanted something, he went after it with discipline and intensity until he achieved the goal. It wasn’t in his nature to back off. But when their time here ended, he would have to back the fuck off and give Quinn space. Being fair to her, and to him, meant letting her figure out what she wanted, and needed, once she was free of the cage.
Chapter Twelve
“Your brother wants to come see you.”
Quinn took her phone off speaker and lifted it to her ear. A pang of…something…tightened her stomach. “Mom, no. Impossible.”
Her mother sighed. “Honey, he’s lonely at Foundations, and I think a change of scenery would do him wonders. You’ve got a big villa all to yourself.”
“I’m lonely, too”—spending evenings by herself, reciting lines to an empty room and regretting an apparently unrequited attachment to a certain hard-assed trainer tended to do that to her—“but I’m not on vacation. I’ve got less than two weeks to finish prepping for my role, and I don’t have time to entertain Callum. Besides, I’m not an addiction specialist.”
“You don’t need to be. They have them on Paradise Bay. You just need to be a supportive sister.”
“His doctors recommend shuttling him here for a change of scenery?” Frustration leaked through in her tone. “Because nobody from Foundations reached out to me with the request.”
“Of course not. To them, he’s simply another client, and they recommend he stick with their program. But you know how much it would mean to him, and you’d be a positive influence…”
“Gee, Mom, remember how well it worked out last time I tried to be a positive influence?” She meant Callum falling off the wagon and ending up back in rehab. Her parents had no idea he’d messed her knee up in the process.
“A week, Quinn. I’m not asking you to let him move in with you again, but surely you can spare him one measly week?”
“I can’t, even if I thought it was a good idea.” Unfocused energy propelled her up from the sofa, and into the kitchen. “I’m here to work. An entourage isn’t permitted.” She didn’t even want to think about how Luke would react if her brother suddenly arrived on the scene. Tempting as it was to give in to family pressure, and, yes, her own chickenshit desire for a buffer, or a security blanket, or a way to distract herself from the harsh truth that she’d fallen head-over-heels for a man who saw her mainly as a debt to repay, she couldn’t do it. She’d have to cope with her bruised heart on her own. Since her awkward apology on the beach, Luke had been making it easy—or diabolically difficult—by keeping their interactions steadfastly professional and otherwise keeping his distance.
“Callum is not your entourage. He’s your brother, and he loves you.”
She jerked the refrigerator open. “I love him, too, which is why I told him I’d treat him to a vacation here, or anywhere else he wanted to go, once he finished his program and I finished the movie.” Bottled water and raw broccoli spears were not going to fill the gnawing hole in her gut. She slammed the fridge and sagged against it. “A few months from now, he’ll be nearly a year clean and sober, hopefully reclaiming his life, and I’ll have time to actually hang out with him. Deferring until then gives us both something to look forward to.”
“A reward months away isn’t going to cut it. He needs something now. Imagine what the last several weeks have been like for him, stuck in the same place, surrounded by the same faces. You know as well as I do, a stagnant environment depresses creative souls. And depression undermines his recovery.”
“His constant urge to escape from whatever’s going on in his head undermines his recovery,” she argued, and approached the fresh goody basket some uninformed member of the housekeeping staff had left on the kitchen island. “He’s made progress, but he’s coming up on a milestone, and shit’s getting tough. His commitment is wavering.” She placed the small bunch of bananas on the counter. “This is so textbook even I can diagnose it.” Two apples followed. “He needs to buckle down and learn how to deal with life—including the inevitable boring, lonely, and depressing parts—not look for a quick, painless eject out of a situation he doesn’t like.”
“Easy for you to say, Quinn. You’re steadier than he is. You always were, right from the start. You don’t have his flashes of brilliance, but you don’t suffer the same lows, either. He came out of the womb needing more support. More attention. And if he can’t get it from the people who care about him, he’ll satisfy the craving somewhere else, in a less positive way.”
The double-edged words barely stung her anymore. In Ann Sheridan’s eyes, Callum would forever be the fragile genius, and Quinn the determined worker bee, overcoming her natural mediocrity through sheer strength of effort. And to an extent, their mother saw them fairly. But fair or not, she didn’t have enough strength to be her brother’s safety net. “So what you’re saying is, if Callum quits rehab and relapses, it’s my fault?” The empty feeling in her stomach yawned as she waited for a reply. She picked a mango from the basket and
squeezed it like a stress ball.
“I’m saying we’re his family, and he needs our help.”
“I have tried to help him.” She put the mango on the counter and pawed through the remaining items. A couple snack-sized bags caught her eye. “I gave him a place to live.” She plucked out one bag—roasted plantain chips. “When that went south, I gave him access to the best rehab facility my money could buy.” She lifted the other bag—toasted coconut chips with sea salt and caramel. Sweet. Salty. Forbidden. Her mouth watered. “I don’t have anything else to give. Not right now. If Callum stays put, if he realizes nobody’s going to rescue him from himself, I think there’s a decent chance he’ll ride out this phase and learn how to manage the lows.”
“I’ll come with him.”
“That doesn’t change my mind. Look, if you and Dad believe Callum needs a vacation from Foundations I can’t stop you from—”
“Your father refuses to discuss it. He just buries himself in work and says he can’t possibly get away. You know how he is.”
Yes, she did. Her father thought it was a terrible idea, but dodged the issue because he didn’t want to alienate anyone. Quinn scrubbed her tired eyes. “Right. So here’s what’s going on, Mom. Dad’s sidestepping because he hates to be the bad guy, and you know you can’t handle Callum on your own, so you’re trying to rope me in.”
“He wants to come see you. He’s begging me. He says he’s not going to make it if he doesn’t get out of that place for a little while. You’re twins. You have a special bond.”
“He wants to escape. At this particular point in time, you can’t trust him to know what he needs. You have to trust the experts. He can do this, Mom. He can do this if he commits.”
Her mother’s sigh flowed over the line. “You honestly believe he can do this on his own?”
Dirty Games (Tropical Temptation) Page 12
