Last First Kiss

by Sidney Halston

  * * *

  Half asleep, Rocco yawned and stretched his arm to the other side of the bed. It was cold and empty. He opened his eyes and looked around. Then he sat up. “Annie?”

  When there wasn’t an answer he got up and looked through the suite. “I swear to God . . .” he grumbled to himself as he dialed her number.

  “Hello?” she answered, but it was very loud.

  “Where are you?”

  “One second.” The background noise faded a little. “Rocco?”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the set. I wanted to make sure everything was safe.”

  “You left without me?”

  “There’s someone outside your door guarding it, and someone else by the elevator. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  He almost threw the phone across the room. She just didn’t get it. Was her self-esteem that fucked up that she thought he cared about his own safety above hers?

  “I was going to go back but there’s a few things here I’m not happy about, so I’ll just meet you here.”

  He was too upset to even speak. He didn’t want to say something he would regret. Honestly, he couldn’t remember ever being that mad. Maybe because he never cared about anyone enough to get upset.

  In ten minutes he was out the door, wearing the first thing he grabbed—a T-shirt and jeans. He had two hours of hair and makeup anyway.

  The unfamiliar man guarding his door followed him downstairs and escorted him to a car. The conversation was minimal and in thirty minutes they were at the set, which was truly in the middle of Villavincencio. It was located in the center of a busy area with other restaurants, small markets, and shops. Even though rural, from the outside, Ilusiones looked like the most upscale establishment in the street. Perhaps even in the city.

  Most of the street seemed to be cordoned off, and when he identified himself to a security guard standing at the end of a street, the guard moved the wooden barricade to allow them through. The crew was setting up, and Spelling was there talking to everyone, hard at work. He’d seen the schedule last night and Julia had most of the morning scenes, so she was already there filming. He had a later start, which is why he’d hoped to sleep in a little. But apparently his thickheaded woman had other plans.

  The crew all nodded and smiled as he walked in, and he could barely find the strength to return it, which was not like him. He was known for his friendly easy demeanor.

  Sitting at a table, looking away from him, with three laptops in front of her, typing so quickly her fingers looked as if they were gliding across the keyboard, was the woman in question.

  “Before I met you, I was a pleasant person,” he said into Annie’s ear, startling her. She stopped typing and turned to meet him.

  “What?”

  He pulled her chair firmly and turned it around, then he grabbed another chair and dragged it right in front of her, so that they were knee to knee, eye to eye. “Before I met you, people would say—there goes Rocco Monroe. Nice guy. Happy, even.”

  She looked completely confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Do I look like a happy guy right now? I can tell you I don’t at all feel nice.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and sat back. “No, you look kind of like an ass right now. What is wrong with you?”

  “What is wrong with me?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “What is wrong with me? You. You are what’s wrong with me. I’ve never met a woman who avoided spending time with me as much as you do. Or who put herself in danger on purpose like you do.”

  “Again? We’re having this conversation again?”

  “Yes. Again. We’re having it again.” He said it low so the entire crew didn’t hear, but he knew his voice was getting agitated. “I hate this. This isn’t me.”

  “Well, this is me!” she said, hurt contorting her expression, but she quickly schooled it and was back to the impassive robot he disliked so much. “What do you want from me?”

  “What do I want from you? I just want you. You. Not this . . . this emotionless person.”

  “Fuck you, Monroe. I’m not emotionless. I’m focused. I’m doing my job.”

  “So let me ask you this. When this movie is done, and the threat is over, then what? Because there will always be unhappy fans. Crazed fans. Or happy overzealous fans? When will you be my girlfriend? Because I don’t want a bodyguard. I want a woman who is part of my life. An equal. Someone who will love me. Someone I’ll love. Not someone who is working for me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  “You knew how important my job was,” she said softly. It was the softest he’d heard her talk. “I can’t let my guard down. Especially not here. I have a bad feeling.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Annie. I really don’t. I can see myself having a life with you. Having fun together. Building something. I see all that in those moments when you let your guard down and let me in. But that’s only a few hours in the day, and I don’t know if I can have a part-time girlfriend.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just—let’s just get through this week.” He stood and walked to the back where the makeup artists had set up their stations.

  * * *

  Annie’s chest hurt.

  When she’d been slammed against the building from the impact of the bomb in Kandahar, she’d felt a physical pain in her chest and thought she’d never be able to catch her breath. Then, when she’d realized that Yagana and Derek were dead, the pain tripled.

  But even through all that, she’d never felt fear. She was trained to survive and even when she thought she would die buried in the rubble, she wasn’t scared. She had a lot of regrets, but she wasn’t scared.

  Now, however, she was scared. She was scared of the actual situation at Villavincencio. Filming in the hostile province had been a terrible idea. While on the computer she did more research on Mendoza. It seemed that the highest concentration of protestors were in this area. Yet, this was not necessarily the area where Mendoza’s house was located or where his coca crop was.

  So why here?

  Now she was scared of going through her life never feeling that same passion and intensity she’d felt for the last three weeks with Rocco. Could she go back to her lonely existence? Pretending everything was fine when it was not even a little fine?

  If they could just make it through this week, then they could sit and have a real conversation.

  Annie quickly learned how intense filming a movie really was, especially when they had to acclimatize to specific working conditions. In this case, since the real-life scene occurred at night, filming was done at night. But that didn’t mean that they got to sleep in and stroll onto the set at eight in the evening. No, it meant that by the third day everyone was cranky, irritable, and exhausted.

  They’d get back to the hotel right before sunrise at five in the morning and face plant into the bed until about ten when they headed back to Ilusiones. It was a grueling schedule. The protestors hadn’t been too bad, all of them standing off to the side holding signs and picketing. They’d had things thrown at their cars as they drove by but it wasn’t anything anyone couldn’t handle.

  It was day four of the shoot, and Annie sat off to the side at one of the restaurant tables where she could see everything. She was sick of the way the cast and crew held their firearms. The first day, she’d been wary since they’d looked so real she actually picked up the weapon and analyzed it.

  Spelling walked by her and picked up a water bottle from the cooler. “So what do you think so far?”

  “I’m impressed. I think it’s going to be great.” She lied because she had no idea if it would or wouldn’t look great since she’d just seen small parts being shot. The magic of editing, she thought.

  “I feel as if you have something to say?”

  “Nope,” she said sitting back, and looking blankly at her computer screen.

  “Say it. I won’t g
et offended. Is it about Julia? She can be a pain in the ass.”

  She chuckled. That was an understatement. “Well, I hate to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but . . .” She reached behind her and took out her weapon. “You see this. This is the way you hold a gun.” Then, pointing the gun down and away from anyone, she slid the top back, racking it. “They’ve been watching too many gangster movies. This isn’t the hood. You don’t hold a gun sideways like that,” she said pointing to an extra who was practicing. “You hold it with arms stretched out, and straight in front of you.”

  Spelling looked at the man and made a little “aha” sound. “Come with me.”

  He led her to the set and called the cast over. “Annie, can you show them what you just told me, please.”

  “Sure.” For the next few moments Annie showed them. As they practiced, she corrected their stance. “That’s good, Rocco,” she said, and repeated it to a few others who seemed comfortable with their weapons. “Now you all look legit.”

  “Can you stick close by? I want this scene to look perfect. It’s the culmination of everything up to this point. This is where Mendoza got away and where we get a really good idea of how much bloodshed there actually was.”

  “Yeah, sure.” She slid into a chair and sat next to Spelling.

  She watched them work. Rocco was a natural. God, she missed him. They’d barely spoken. They were amicable toward each other and it wasn’t exactly as if they’d been ignoring one another, it was just that they didn’t have a moment to really talk. And they really needed to talk.

  Every morning, she woke up blanketed by his arms wrapped tightly around her, and he kissed her cheek and even her lips. But they hadn’t had sex again and there was a clear distance coming from them both. Saying it didn’t hurt was a lie.

  She leaned over to Spelling. “You see how Julia just fired? If she was a novice, which her character is . . . if the first time she holds a gun is to protect herself and her husband, then when she fires, she would not be prepared for the recoil.”

  “Cut! Julia!” Spelling hollered. “Over here, please.”

  He motioned for Annie to explain.

  “Have you ever fired a real weapon before?”

  Annoyingly she said, “No.”

  “Okay, so when you shoot a weapon, especially something of that caliber, you’re going to feel a big recoil. So, maybe take a big step back after you press the trigger and remember that the force would propel your arms up.” They continued to practice and when they began to shoot the scene, Spelling had Annie look into the small screen next to him and give her input. When she made a suggestion he listened and asked her to help make it look factual.

  And it was fun.

  For that evening, she actually let her guard down a little and felt really useful and in charge. If there was one thing she knew how to do, and do well, was handle a weapon.

  At the end of the evening, when they were back in the hotel suite, Rocco grabbed her arm and spun her to him. “You were great today. You looked like you were in your element and the crew responded well.”

  “Thank you. I liked it. It was fun.”

  He moved the hair from her face. “I’ve missed you.”

  “God, I’ve missed you too.” She finally released a breath and pressed her cheek against his chest. “What are we going to do? I can’t go back and sit behind a desk all day. But I also want to be with you.”

  “And I don’t want a bodyguard. I want you as a partner.”

  “Let’s just take it one day at a time, deal?”

  “Deal.”

  She got on the tips of her toes and kissed his lips.

  “Now let’s talk about how hot you look handling a weapon and getting all commando on the team today?”

  “One minute you want some sort of demure bubbly girl by your side and the next you’re telling me my badassness turns you on?”

  “Hey now, I never said anything about a bubbly girl.” He pulled her shirt over her head. “I love that you’re tough, opinionated, can handle yourself, can handle me. I just don’t want you to get hurt, is all.”

  “What if I was a firefighter, I could get hurt.”

  “I wouldn’t like it either,” he admitted. “Call me old-fashioned, but I just want to protect you. I just want you to come to me. It’s not that I want you to quit your job.” He sighed. “We’re at it again.”

  “Okay, we’ll table this conversation until this movie is over.”

  “Speaking of table,” he lifted her up and sat her on the table. “Do you know how hard it’s been to have you wiggling your ass against my cock for the last two nights?”

  “I didn’t wiggle!”

  “Maybe not consciously.” He reached around her and undid her bra, and she let it fall down her arms to the floor. He took one nipple into her mouth and then the other. “So perfect, so pink. Probably the only pink thing you own.”

  She laughed. “Nope. There’s something else.”

  He stepped away and pushed her legs apart and then cupped her sex.

  “No, pervert. That’s not what I meant.”

  When he nipped at her nipple again she forgot what they had been talking about. She wasn’t experienced but that didn’t mean she didn’t have needs or desires. She knew what felt good and maybe she didn’t yet know how to voice what she wanted, but she knew, without any doubt, that he did and he’d get her there, which made it that much better. In the bedroom she didn’t have to think or worry, she let him take full control knowing that she wouldn’t regret it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The cat’s out of the bag. El Traficante is filming in Villavincencio, Colombia. Protestors are at it again and are demanding that Ilusiones cancel their contract with NHN to film at the iconic restaurant.

  The tiniest sliver of light came in through the curtains. Annie turned to check the time. They’d gotten in bed an hour ago, and she’d been tossing and turning since. Sleep was out of her reach today.

  Every chance she’d gotten she’d taken the opportunity to search all over the web, the dark web, for anything related to Mendoza. She wanted to learn as much as she could about him and why it was that the people of Colombia, specifically Villavincencio, idolized him so much.

  So far it seemed a typical case of impoverished people grabbing on to hope. Mendoza, a very charismatic man, promised the masses that he’d feed them, house them, make them rich. He told them that coca was a natural resource of Colombia and that the government was trying to oppress its people by depriving them of their natural rights to cultivate and sell the leaf.

  Also, for years there’d been rumors of sightings of Mendoza all over Colombia. The big break in her research happened yesterday when she found some postings in the deep web calling for action to boycott the movie using violence if necessary to stop production. This worried her so much, it kept her from sleeping. Reading that had been alarming, but more alarming was probably the fact that it was just too quiet on set. Too calm.

  Quietly getting out of bed, she sat on the table in the main room of the suite and started searching where she’d left off the previous day, this time breaking into some of Mexico’s governmental law enforcement sites trying to see if there was something she could find.

  After three hours, she had one laptop running a detailed encrypted search while she was typing furiously on the other.

  “What’s going on?” Rocco’s husky voice behind her surprised her.

  “Working. Look,” she said, pointing to the screen. “Did you know that it’s rumored that the real reason for the gunfight at Ilusiones was not because he was wanted, but because he’d been rumored to have been having an affair with a woman named Hilda, the police captain’s wife? Suffice it to say, the police captain, Joaquin, had a personal vendetta.”

  “Okay.” He kissed the top of her head. “Come back to bed. We don’t start until noon today. How long have you been up?”

  “Haven’t slept.” She continued to type quickly. “So maybe Mend
oza is still out there, or maybe the woman, Hilda, is the one orchestrating this, or maybe . . .”

  “Crazy, it’s a movie. People are upset but they’ve been relatively quiet. You’re digging more than necessary. This isn’t some sort of conspiracy theory scenario.”

  “How do you know? What if there’s something to this?”

  “Stop.” He closed the screen and she jumped up.

  “No! Are you fucking crazy?” She opened the screen. “Goddamn it, Rocco. I’ve had that query running for two hours, and there was one hour left. I’m searching every South American governmental database for information on Hilda. Do you know how long it took me to configure that search?” She tossed a sheet of paper over her shoulder, which he grabbed, and there were codes and algorithms written on each and every corner. “I can’t fucking believe you did that!”

  He held his hands out in surrender. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But really, I think you’re just tired. Come to bed.”

  “Stop telling me to come to bed.” She started to type again, frantically, trying to get the search back up.

  * * *

  Rocco shook his head, this was insane.

  She was acting insane.

  This was not healthy. He wondered if it was because the client was him, someone she was dating, or if it was just her way of doing things. She could not continue working this way. It just wasn’t healthy, and he was genuinely concerned.

  She was typing so fast and almost maniacally, jumping from screen to screen as she wrote notes on her pad, her leg bobbing up and down. She had bags under her eyes, sipping Red Bull left and right. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her eat. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Do not touch anything!” she yelled at him. “I’m going to take a quick shower.”

  He sat on the couch thinking. Something needed to be done or she was going to make herself sick.

  Left with no other option he did the only thing he could think of—he called Joey.

  Carefully and quietly he walked out to the hall and explained everything that was going on. “ . . . and really, there has been nothing to indicate anything is wrong. Even if there was something, it’s your usual upset crowd. Not life and death. But she’s manic, Joey, she isn’t eating, sleeping. I’m really worried.”